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Background material setup?
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:34 am
by zeitmeister
Hoi...
another favorite question:
How do I setup a correct background material in C4D? I create a new Indigo material... and then?
Maybe an extra material type for that would be nice; filed under these like phong, diffuse, null etc.
Would this make sense in your opinion?
I am wondering every time what to do when setting up a background material.
Thank you very much!
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 7:45 am
by pixie
zeitmeister wrote:Hoi...
another favorite question:
How do I setup a correct background material in C4D? I create a new Indigo material... and then?
Maybe an extra material type for that would be nice; filed under these like phong, diffuse, null etc.
Would this make sense in your opinion?
I am wondering every time what to do when setting up a background material.
Thank you very much!
The simple thing to do was to create a background object and add it an indigo material, unfortunately you have to go to trough the indigo rendering settings on effects panel where you'll find an option on the
environment tab, where after selecting the
light type to
background you can then drag the indigo material to.
You might want to check the manual on page 14.
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 7:55 am
by dakiru
zeitmeister wrote:Hoi...
another favorite question:
How do I setup a correct background material in C4D? I create a new Indigo material... and then?
Maybe an extra material type for that would be nice; filed under these like phong, diffuse, null etc.
Would this make sense in your opinion?
I am wondering every time what to do when setting up a background material.
Thank you very much!
Hey,
well, I don't know how to do it in Cinema4D, but in Blender I use textured diffuse material with emission. I put this emitter to the separate light layer to get control over the look of the background. I tried to experiment and this seems to be the most effective choice. The one more thing I noted is that it's quite important for the realistic look of the background is to put the texture to the curved plane and adapt this curve to the camera position.
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 8:59 pm
by zeitmeister
Hey guys,
I know how to add a background IBL... I just wondered how to
setup the material for that!
Daikiru, you choose a diffuse material? Do you load the IBL texture into the diffuse slot, too? Or only into the emission slot? And what is your spectrum type in the emission slot? RGB with simple 50% grey?
These are the questions making me mad... !

Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 10:17 pm
by dakiru
I'll better post the settings of such a background. For example, in
this scene the background looks like this:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<scenedata>
<material>
<name>backplane_right</name>
<diffuse>
<texture>
<path>E:\+projects\projects\intone_interior\intone_interior_resource\pano\pano_1.jpg</path>
<uv_set>default</uv_set>
<exponent>2.200000</exponent>
<a>0</a>
<b>1</b>
<c>0</c>
</texture>
<emission>
<texture>
<texture_index>0</texture_index>
</texture>
</emission>
<base_emission>
<constant>
<rgb>
<rgb>1.000000 1.000000 1.000000</rgb>
<gamma>1</gamma>
</rgb>
</constant>
</base_emission>
<layer>1</layer>
</diffuse>
</material>
</scenedata>
I forgot the emission scale setting under a model tag
Code: Select all
<!-- Plane.002 -->
<model>
<scale>1.0</scale>
<rotation>
<matrix>
1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 -0.000000 -1.000000 0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000
</matrix>
</rotation>
<pos>-1.295336 -14.989920 1.648356</pos>
<mesh_name>Plane.002</mesh_name>
<emission_scale>
<material_name>backplane_right</material_name>
<measure>luminous_flux</measure>
<value>200000.000000</value>
</emission_scale>
</model>
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:05 am
by pixie
zeitmeister wrote:Hey guys,
I know how to add a background IBL... I just wondered how to
setup the material for that!
Daikiru, you choose a diffuse material? Do you load the IBL texture into the diffuse slot, too? Or only into the emission slot? And what is your spectrum type in the emission slot? RGB with simple 50% grey?
These are the questions making me mad... !

Preferably on the emission.
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:43 pm
by zeitmeister
Alright.
But does the diffuse color or texture effect the emission color in some way? I think so?
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:41 pm
by pixie
zeitmeister wrote:Alright.
But does the diffuse color or texture effect the emission color in some way? I think so?
They shouldn't, more then they would otherwise (as indirect light) meaning that if you turn the emission off they become a regular object and as such, when compared the indirect light would be meaningless when compared with the emission
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:01 am
by Zom-B
Afaik there was some changes done to Indigo that BG materials always get converted to Diffuse material with pure black in diffuse channel!
This pushes the speed of rendering, because rays that get bounced back from scene into the cosmos don't get bounced back by the diffuse component of the BG material (also it isn't very plausible like pixie told!)
Generally I can advise to use pure black diffuse with emission as a base for each light material, that don't need any "off status" in Light Layeres for composing reasons etc. (=> black bulbs if light turn off etc...)
Light emission (also for BG) can be also ISL based btw.
Re: Background material setup?
Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:05 am
by zeitmeister
So a diffuse material whith pure black in the diffuse channel and the texture in the emission channel.
Thank you very much!
This should find it's way into the manual... or as a new material preset into the cindigo material.