Animation in C4D/Corona | Collection of questions

Corona Corona for Cinema 4D Help Required
1

Hello

I am currently trying to render simple animation in Cinema/Corona and have some questions for you.
For example, I want to point a camera frontally at a building facade and move this facade from left to right frontally.
Would be great if you can help me with this.

  1. animation as MOV / MP4 file versus Image Sequenze as PNG/TIF
    I have read that it is better to render image sequences, because in case of a crash the render time is not completely lost. How do you see this? Do you render the stills as PNG or TIF? How many bits?

  2. when I render image sequences, is there a way to also export the Corona multipasses so that I can later work with masks in Davinvi Resolve for example?

  3. reduce render time via UHD Cache: how does this work in C4D/Corona? I found this link here for 3ds Max /Corona (https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515648-how-to-use-the-uhd-cache-for-animations-and-stills).
    Under point 1 it says “For example for 400-frames animation, you can set 3ds Max to render every 50th frame to render the UHD Cache only for 8 frames.” where can I set this in C4D?

  4. what influence do the camera settings have on the render time?
    e.g. shutter speed and DOF.

  5. do you have any tips to shorten the render time without losing image quality? Especially for slow camera movements where many stills are necessary?

  6. do you know any good video tutorials for creating videos from Cinema/Corona? Or gladly also good online courses?

Thanks for your help!

2

Be sure to check C4D tutorials for understanding animation in C4D itself. For Corona, an animation is much the same as a still, and most things animation-related happen in the host software.

  1. Sequence of stills, always. Not just crashes and power cuts but also if you get to the end and find the video compression is too high (artifacts) or too low (file size too large), you have to render again from the beginning if you used an animated file format, but you just re-encode in your video editor if you used a sequence of stills. So lots of benefits from stills, zero benefits from rendering to animation format.

  2. Yes, this works same as saving stills, so long as you set save multipasses.

  3. There is the same article for C4D at https://help.c4d.corona-renderer.com/support/solutions/articles/12000005458-how-to-use-uhd-cache-in-corona-renderer-for-c4d- and it’s the same thing, you use Load + Append along with Save, and just set the frames to render in the regular C4D render settings.

  4. Shutter speed no difference to render time, DOF raises render time vs. no DOF, and stronger DOF raises render time. Same as stills.

  5. All tips on shortening render time are same as for stills.

  6. Since there are no settings that are different for Corona other than UHD Cache, there are no animation specific tutorials :smiley: Again it’s “the same as for stills” (as animations are just a series of still images played very fast, whether you render to image sequence or animation file format)

3

Hi TomG

Thank you very much for your quick reply! Regarding the UHD cache, am I correct that I should use it more when rendering indoor scenes? Or would you also use it for outdoor animations?

4

Much the same rule and guideline as for stills there - if there’s more than about 20% bounced light (not a hard and fast number, just a guesstimate), go for the cache. E.g. you might be rendering a narrow pathway between two tall buildings; it’s outdoors, but most of the light in there will be bounced rather than direct (unless the sun is shining straight in there :smiley: ).

5

Tom said it best and I completely echo everything he said. I would however like to add one thing and that is to always switch the UHD cache to animation mode (Render settings → Secondary GI:UHD Cache->Preset). It might save you some funky lighting errors that could otherwise pop up.

To read more about the animation preset head on to here → https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515648-how-to-use-the-uhd-cache-for-animations-and-stills-

Happy rendering! :smiley:

6

Hi Nejc Kilar, thanks for your advice!