Cinema4D and Smoke 2015

[Anonymous]

Hey forums!

So over the last few days, our studio has been trying to incorporate Smoke 2015 into our workflow, primarily to finalize compositing and integrate 3D models and animation into our editing directly. Coming from Maya, this is a breeze, and while we have a couple Maya workstations, our render farm primarily uses VRAY, and we use Cinema4D R14 as our primary 3D modeler because of its close integration with Adobe's software.

We've been trying to get models from C4D into Smoke for a couple days, and keep running into issues. I can get cameras and lights from C4D to import, but any object seems to just appear as a pure-white model that obscured the whole scene.

I'm very new to Smoke, so there may not be a great way to do this. My question, then, isn't necessarily the exact steps of what to do, but simply to ask if it's possible to integrate Smoke into our existing editing and C4D workflow without creating a ton of hassle for us. Any links to tutorials or information about it would be much appreciated if it is possible.

Edit: For slightly more information, I've been exporting from C4D using FBX to try to bring it into Smoke.

[ColinRush2112]

Sadly the built in FBX exporter is still giving problems and we've had issues since R8. Can't help thinking that this is why the development has been focused on the c4d to AE pipeline where the native .c4d files open directly. You may want to check out the Cactus Dan plugin for FBX import / export here- http://www.cactus3d.com/CDFBX.html. Whilst I've not tried that plugin itself, his character animation tools are super solid.

Cheers.

[grant.kay]

Hi,

The FBX exporter in C4D is a plug-in from Autodesk which you should be able to check what version C4D is using.

The big thing about FBX, and this applies to Autodesk apps as well as 3rd party, is that the FBX support a certain type of geometry.  So if you are using any other modelling techniques such as nurbs etc, you will need to covert it to an editable mesh prior to exporting or the exporter will not pick it up.

However when you say that importing a FBX gives you the model which is solid white, my first question to you is did you go to the Action preferences menu and enable SHADING after importing.

Perhaps you can mock up a small sample which does not work for you and we can take a look at it.

Regards

Grant