Camera angles and Cinema 4D

andykarta

I've decided to minimize my use of Daz to just poses, clothes and animation.  I'm going to use Cinema 4d for rendering, props, textures and just about everything else. I'm doing something like a comic book so I'm rendering in layers (characters in one, props in the next, then walls and so on).  So I'm building the set in Cinema 4D, exporting it as a obj file to Daz, placing my characters, making the imported set invisible rendering the character and putting all the layers together in photoshop. (I'm doing this because I'm frustrated with the functionality of  the import, rendering, and interface of Daz).  And to do this I need to match or pretty much match up the camera angle. (I've got a nice workaround for the lighting.)  But the coordinate system doesn't match so the camera positions aren't the same.  Right now, I'm actually creating a polygon object in Cinema 4d like a big L shape that goes from the center to just under the camera and then in Daz, I'm putting the camera on top of the big L shape.  But goodness, there's got to be a better way.  Anyone have any ideas?  

Richard Haseltine

As far as I know C4D uses the same axis system as DS, but it may use a different unit (DS uses the cm).

prixat

Have you tried FBX?

FBX 2014 Binary to c4d R13 works for me. Just tick the camera box in the export options.

The scene size, props and the position and direction of all cameras in the scene were correct. The 1m cube and 1m sphere primitives were correctly sized to 1000mm in c4d.

For the camera, it does not transfer the focal length or gate size, but that's easy enough to type in.

Just tried it with a couple of FBX versions, they both worked.

prixat

What method are you using for the lights?

andykarta

prixat said:

What method are you using for the lights?

Set lighting is in Cinema 4D.  Character and prop lighting will unfortunately be post production in photoshop.   I'm a noob so any workflow advice would be greatly appreciated.  I think I was using a different FBX file type.  I'm using R12 btw.  I'm doing a weird bastardization between storyboard and showreel.   My videos are superhero stories set to music with no narration or dialogue (with the exception of a few talk bubbles).   I felt that it was best to start with a storyboard in an MP4 format to show the synchronization between music and story.  I'll start animating after I get a couple of storyboards under my belt.  Then I'll be asking about .mdd files and finding a good way of importing Daz animation into Cinema 4D.  I can predict that's going to be a nightmare.  But hey, if I wanted easy I would be on a dog walking forum now.

Love the see through chair by the way.