Are Your MATERIALS OPTIMIZED for the FASTEST Render Times? - Cinema 4D
29Are you optimizing your Materials in Cinema 4D for the Fastest Render times? This video goes through every channel in the material editor of Cinema 4D to show you exactly what each channel does and what you can do to save time while preserving your glorious results.
The first channel is, of course, the Color channel:
This is the most basic and will be used most of the time as it's the way textures are applied. There's not much that can be done here as it's a baseline that we have to work off of.
The second channel is Diffusion:
This one is used to add imperfections to your color channel in case you have a texture that looks too good to be true. Again, not much optimization can be done here other than the fact that maybe you should add the imperfections before you set it as a texture in the color channel. This way, the diffusion channel doesn't even need to be used in the first place.
The third channel is more interesting; Luminance:
The luminance channel allows the material to emit light ONLY WHEN Global Illumination is enabled. If Global Illumination is NOT enabled, the Luminance channel will simply make the object glow in the dark. Obviously, having Global Illumination takes up previous render time that doesn't have to be taken up. We can fake the illumination given off by the luminance channel by creating a physically accurate light on the position of the luminant object, then set the light to exclude the object. This gives the illusion that the luminant object is glowing when it really isn't.
Fourth down is Transparency:
This one takes up the most render time depending on what results you want. For the most physically accurate results, you need Refraction and unfortunately, that costs time. Refraction time can be saved by turning down the max ray depth in the render settings. On the other hand, the frosted glass look that comes from blurring the transparency can be saved easily by turning down the max samples and accuracy. If you're making a cartoon like Levaslier, you may not even need Refraction and can get away with having just a transparent object.
Fifth is Reflectance:
If you were doing a cartoon and had just a transparent object with no refraction, adding a reflectance channel actually helps sell the fact that it's something like glass. The reflectance channel doesn't take too long to render by default but starts taking forever when blurry reflections are introduced. A workaround is to either lower the samples or blur the background that the object is supposed to reflect in the first place. This doesn't work 100% of the time and doesn't produce accurate results, but if it works, it works!
We skipped over Environment because I don't know what it does.
Seventh is Fog:
This makes the inside of the object foggy to give it an "Aerogel" look. Not much to save time here.
Bump and Normal channels are next:
These two work very similarly in that they require a "map" texture to allow them to fake 3D in an object. Not much optimization here.
The Alpha channel is next and works very similarly to transparency, the only difference being this one requires an "Alpha map". The takeaway with the Alpha channel is to not use it where it's not neccesary as it adds render time while giving 0 effect.
The glow channel does what it says and can't really be optimized.
Finally, while the bump and normal channel FAKE 3D in an object, the displacement channel IS 3D. To optimize this, turn down the sub-polygon sampling but be aware that it may also ruin the effect.
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