Cinema 4D to Smoke via FBX issues

[sthaywood]

Hey All,

I’m looking for anyone who has experience going from Cinema 4D to Smoke/Flame. I’ve tried a few different ways to get my C4D files to our 2 Flame artists. It is proving to be pretty difficult for me. To me FBX seems like the best way to get my C4D information to their systems. I can also export 3ds and wavefront (obj), but obj won’t take the animation. After I export the FBX and they ingest it into their systems these are the typical problems.

– No textures transfer over

– Only the camera animation transfers properly.

– Character animation transfers on primary movements (not bends, squashes, etc)

– And only certain lights transfer over

Even if you are a Maya, 3dsMax, or other app user I’d like to know how your pipeline with Flame/Smoke works to see if it can give me some ideas of how to solve my problem. We have a big job that is coming up at the end of November that involves lots of 3D tracking from PF Track,compositing my 3D into the live action, and heavily manipulating the existing live action scenery. And if we can figure out a better FBX pipeline we can do away with me having to render out huge amounts of picture sequences, with 30 multipasses, and creating more work for all of us. If this is the only C4D>>Smoke pipeline oh well haha.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks much!

-Tyler

[claudio antonelli]

deforms and rigging won’t come across. There is a way (possibly only in Autodesk software–Maya etc) to bake mesh animation into a point cache that’ll come in as animated deforming geometry into flame. You won’t get much in the way of further modification once it’s in flame however as all the vertex animation is baked.

Flame’s got a few more types of lights, and now supports depth map shadows, which is great, but you’re still far better served in a dedicated 3d app.

In a nutshell, flame’s got some 3d capability, but it’s not a 3d app. I’d see if there’s a way to pair down your render passes to simplify things.

[Anonymous]

Hey andy_dill

Thanks for the response. I actually didn’t think about using a point cache to bake the deformations into keyframes on every frame of the timeline. I think that would definitely help bring over the animation. I still have the whole texture issues though. But that is a great solution for the animation portion!!

[Steven]

Hi,

Textures should come over in the FBX export provided you have done 2 things.

It is recommended that if you are using sub-object textures on a model, you should bake it into one texture bitmap.

Secondly in the export options, there is an option called EMBED MEDIA. This should be enabled and the textures get placed inside the FBX file which is than expanded out when imported into Smoke or Flame.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Thanks Grant!

Maybe that “Embed Media” check box is what I’m missing, because when our Smoke Artists import the FBX it always creates separate material nodes for each polygon group but the nodes have no assigned textures.

But creating a single bitmap for the whole object could be a great solution as well. It sounds like from andy_dill’s and your responses the best way to get from C4D > Smoke is to bake as much of the project into simplified versions as possible.

Thank you both so much for the responses! It is greatly appreciated.

Is there anything different the Smoke Artist needs to do when importing the FBX?

-Tyler

[Steven]

Hi Tyler,

The embed media setting is hidden in the vast FBX options and that normally does the trick. I normally use 3dsmax or Maya but I am unfamiliar with the available settings in the FBX export plug-in for Cinema 4D.

Whether a bitmap is associated with a 3d model or not, all geom nodes when imported in will be assigned a material node. This node controls the default material on the model – this refers to a default colour, shininess and behaviours of a standard material. When a diffuse material is embedded in the FBX, there is a second node added with the texture with further controls.

There is no difference importing a FBX through Flame or Smoke.

Regards
Grant

[Author]

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