Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/711111
51 Q3 2016 / CINEMONTAGE 51 Q3 2016 / CINEMONTAGE TECH TIPS scene. If there are 24 frames in each second in a movie and 30 frames in video, that means there's 1,440 frames in one minute at 24 fps and 1,800 frames at 30 fps. With a little math, we can calculate that for half an hour of video, it would take an astonishing 300 days to render at 30 fps on one computer. Double that for an hour, and quadruple it for two. That's not only a long time, it's insane. Most everything else about the process is real-time and the computer keeps up with you every step of the way. Only the final rendering takes such an outrageously long time. To deal with this, people have built huge arrays of computers called render farms. As you can imagine, this can be expensive, both to build and to rent. GOOD NEWS Suddenly, this hellish scenario is coming to an end, thanks in a large part to OTOY, which has figured out how to use the parallel processing CUDA cores on NVIDIA GPUs to render final-quality frames in a mere fraction of the time it takes to render them on a computer's CPU. In fact, GPUs have been part of computers for years, but nobody was using them for final rendering. Instead, 3D programs relied on them during the modeling and texturing process to give a rough approximation of how things will look. On the other hand, games have always used GPUs for real-time rendering. There is progress there as well. The results are starting to get so good, it's often difficult to tell the difference between real-time rendering and pre-rendered final frames. CINEMA 4D AND OCTANE When I first learned about Octane Render, I was skeptical. People were saying that it could produce high-quality, unbiased, photo-realistic renders almost instantaneously by using the NVIDIA GPU in your computer. So I downloaded the CINEMA 4D version to see for myself. Naturally, MAXON CINEMA 4D, the software I use, comes with its own built-in CPU renderer, which is capable of delivering excellent, albeit slower, results and is tightly integrated with the rest of the package. Keep in mind that you're free to use it whenever you want, even if you choose to use a third-party renderer like Octane. One of the best features of Octane Render for C4D is the Live Viewer, an Octane window that continuously displays a final-quality render of your scene. This is an incredibly useful tool, especially throughout the iterative design process. C4D's native viewport also presents a basic representation of your scene, which is useful during modeling, but it ignores factors such as global illumination, depth of field, motion blur and other effects. In Octane's Live Viewer, however, every subtlety and effect that will be present in the final render is represented and is immediately updated upon the slightest change. Amazing. Aside from full support for subdivision surfaces and displacement, Octane also supports MoGraph, C4D's much beloved cloner toolset. Also supported is C4D's native hair system, as well as particles generated by Insydium's X-Particle plug-in. Setting up materials, textures and shaders is straightforward and similar to C4D's native material system, which makes it easy to master. LIGHTING TOOLS Since lighting plays such a large part in rendering, Octane Render naturally offers a robust set of lighting tools, including the ability to simulate natural daylight Top: GPU rendering is great for designing complex sets such as this one, especially during the iterative design process. Image rendered with Octane by Javier Leon. Above: Octane quickly delivers excellent results such as this high-quality production still from the short film Keloid by Big Lazy Robot.