Ok finally here is the new version of LuxC4D
I just had a quick look at 0.03 and there have been quite a few changes...Let's start with the light tag. You assign this to a C4D light to specify how this light should be exported to Lux. It also allows you to specify a Lux light type that doesn't exist in C4D (sun, sky and sun-sky). I hope that the parameters in the tag are more or less straight-forward and self-explanatory.
If no light is set, an auto light get's exported, regardless if it's enabled in C4D or not (as Lux crashes, if the scene has no light).
As I had trouble with the C4D preference system (changes made in the C4D preferences were not always stored, especially in R9.6) I have moved the LuxC4D preferences into an own dialog. You can access it via the plugins menu under "LuxC4D" -> "LuxC4D Preferences...". There you can specify the path of the LuxRender executable which will be launched with the exported sccene, when you click on "LuxC4D Export + Render".
The biggest change is the conversion of C4D standard materials to Lux materials. At the moment I export only materials that are not restricted to a polygon selection and of those only the first material of an object. That means if you mix materials or if put different materials over different parts of an object, they will not be exported. At least the automatic splitting of objects into parts with different materials will be implemented in the next release. For now you have to do it manually. Sorry for that.
At the moment the plugin also only supports UV mapping and no shaders. That means you have to do everything with bitmaps and colors.
As the material system of C4D and Lux are quite different, the conversion is also not straight forward and not all effects of Lux are accessible that way and not all possibilities of C4D materials can be converted to Lux. I hope that this first implementation is good enough to start learning Lux and to do some nice renders with C4D scenes.
This is the conversion map from depending on the activation of the C4D material channels "Color" (== "D"), "Transparency" (== "T") and "Reflection" (== "R"):
D: The material will become a Lux matte material. If the illumination model is Oren-Nayar, the illumination roughness will be exported as sigma value.
T or T+R or D+T+R: The material will become a Lux glass material, if the dispersion is set to 0, or become a Lux rough glass if the dispersion is set to >0. You will see that mixing reflectivity and transparency works quite different in Lux compared to C4D. There is not much I can do about. The diffuse channel is ignored and not exported.
R: The material will become a Lux mirror material if the dispersion is set to 0 and a shiny metal metal if not. If it's a shiny metal material the reflection channel (Kr) will be turned of and only the specular reflection channel (Ks) will be set .
DR: The material will become a Lux glossy material.
DT: The material will become a Lux matte translucent material. This can be used for some SSS-like effects. The material will look very different in Lux compared to C4D.
If none of these 3 channels is activated or the material is not a standard material, the plugin exports a dummy matte material with the average color of the material.
If at least one of these 3 channels is enabled, and there is also bump enabled, it will be exported, too.
I hope this very short introduction helps you to start using Lux with C4D. If you have questions/problems - feel free to ask. At some point we need to document the plugin. It would be nice if someone else could do that, as my time budget is quite limited (as you already know...). Her you can find some general information about Lux materials: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php ... _Materials
Now the plugins:
These are the release binaries for Windows which run only under C4D 32-bit:
For Cinema 4D R9.6 please use this one:
LuxC4D_0.04_win32_r9.6_release.zip- (133.87 KiB) Downloaded 125 times
For Cinema 4D R10.1 or higher please use this one:
- LuxC4D_0.04_win32_r10.1_release.zip
- (134.27 KiB) Downloaded 320 times
These are the release binaries for Mac OS which run only under C4D 32-bit:
For Cinema 4D R9.6 please use this one:
- LuxC4D_0.04_mac32_r9.6_release.zip
- (280.51 KiB) Downloaded 85 times
For Cinema 4D R10.1 or higher please use this one:
- LuxC4D_0.04_mac32_r10.1_release.zip
- (333.8 KiB) Downloaded 151 times
Please test if the plugin runs in your version of Cinema 4D (>= 9.6). If there are problems with versions >10.1, I can build binaries for these versions, too.
Cheers,
Marcus
