9 August 2023

Important: C4DtoA 4.6.4.1 includes an important licensing fix for Windows and macOS (there was no issue on Linux).

C4DtoA 4.6.4 uses Arnold 7.2.3.0 and is a minor feature release bringing improvements to the IPR window and to the text overlay settings, and a number of bug fixes.

Installation

• Download the Arnold for Cinema4D plugin
• Follow these installation instructions.

Cinema 4D Compatibility

• S24.111 and above
• R25.010 and above
• S26.013 and above
• 2023.0.0 and above

Note: Known issues in the legacy Arnold Shader Network Editor since Cinema 4D S24:

• Drag & drop nodes to the node editor does not work as expected:
  • Drag & drop an Arnold Material to create a reference. A Cinema 4D Object Operator node is created instead of an Arnold Material reference node.
  • Drag & drop an object to create an object reference. A Cinema 4D Object Operator node is created instead of an Arnold object node.
  • Drag & drop a Vertex Map to create a Vertex Map shader. A Cinema 4D Object Operator node is created instead of an Arnold Vertex Map shader.
• Ctrl + drag a shader in the node editor in S24 creates two copies instead of one. shift + drag and Shift + Alt + drag does not work.

Enhancements

• Global light Sampling support on GPU: Global Light Sampling (GLS) is now available with GPU rendering. Many scenes with moderate to large number of lights render 2-6x faster with GLS. Scenes that do not benefit from GLS tend to be a few percent faster or slower. See the GLS documentation for important information on the optimal number of light samples to use with GPU. (ARNOLD-13109)

• Fit and fill window mode in the IPR window: The IPR window now has two new resolution settings in the toolbar. The Fit mode scales the render resolution to fit the window maintaining the current aspect ratio. The Fill mode overrides the render resolution to fill the entire window, aspect ratio is not maintained in this mode. (C4DTOA-2942)

• Test render in the IPR window: This new button on the IPR window toolbar allows you to run a final render of the current frame directly into the IPR window. When running a test render, features related to an interactive session are disabled, such as render region, debug shading, isolate selected, etc. Test render is also available via the Alt+W~T shortcut. (C4DTOA-3028)

• Copy image to clipboard from the IPR window: You can now copy the image in the IPR window to the clipboard with the Ctrl+C shortcut, or with the new button on the IPR window toolbar. Use the View menu to show the toolbar button (it is hidden by default). (C4DTOA-3021)

• Compressible IPR window toolbar: Items on the toolbar no longer block the resizing of the IPR window. When the window is smaller than the toolbar, the toolbar extends vertically and a button appears to collapse or expand the toolbar. (C4DTOA-3020)

• Configurable IPR window sidebar location: Position of the sidebar (top, bottom, left, right) can now be changed from the View menu. (C4DTOA-2893)

• No bucket corners in IPR snaphots: Snapshots taken from the IPR window no longer contain corner idicator of buckets in progress. (C4DTOA-2935)

• Disable bucket corners in GPU and progressive render: GPU and progressive render are no longer displaying bucket corners while rendering. (C4DTOA-3023)

• Custom object attribute in text overlay: You can use the <object:object_name.attribute> token in text overlay settings to print the value of a given object attribute, which can be a user data or any built-in attribute. The attribute can be defined by its name or id. Object hierarchy and attribute groups are defined by the / separator. (C4DTOA-3030)

  Examples:

  • <object:MyCamera.Film Offset X>: Film Offset X attribute of the first object named MyCamera.
  • <object:MyCamera.1118>: Film Offset X attribute of the first object named MyCamera. The attribute is defined with its id.
  • <object:Cameras/Shot01/MyCamera.Film Offset X>: Film Offset X attribute of MyCamera under Shot01 and Cameras.
  • <object:/MyCamera.Film Offset X>: Film Offset X attribute of MyCamera at the root level of the object tree.
  • <object:Arnold Sky.Main/Skydome/Samples>: Samples attribute under the Skydome group on the Main tab of the Arnold Sky object.

• Custom render settings attribute in text overlay: You can use the <render_settings:attribute> token in the text overlay settings to print the value of any attribute from the render settings. You can define the attribute by name or id. Attribute groups can be defined by the / separator. (C4DTOA-3033)

  Examples:

  • <render_settings:Width>: Width attribute of the Cinema 4D render settings.
  • <render_settings:Sampling/Diffuse>: Diffuse samples from the Arnold render settings.

• Image shader Reload, Edit and Locate buttons in the Node Material: The Arnold Node Material now has the Reload, Edit, and Locate buttons. (C4DTOA-3037, C4DTOA-3040)

• Support native OCIO color space in Bitmap shader: OCIO color space setting of the Cinema 4D Bitmap shader is now translated to Arnold. (C4DTOA-3015)

• Triplanar utility script: C4DtoA includes a new Python script that inserts a triplanar shader after each image shader in an Arnold material. The script is available from the Arnold > Utilities menu or from the Cinema 4D Command Manager window. (C4DTOA-3036)

• Light linking procedural override default value: Light linking override in the Arnold Procedural is now enabled by default. This means light linking defined on new procedural objects in the scene now overrides links within the procedural. (C4DTOA-3024)

• Return direction and distance to nearest hit in distance shader: Arnold 7.2.3 adds out_distance and out_direction output parameters to the distance shader, which return the direction and distance to the nearest surface, respectively. The shader still returns the color-mapped result by default, which is now available as the out_rgb parameter. (ARNOLD-13473)

• state_float, state_int, state_vector multiple outputs: The shading state shaders now have multiple outputs, so you can use a single state shader with multiple output connections in a shading network. (ARNOLD-13579)

USD Enhancements

• Support vertex UV coordinates on Curves in the render delegate usd#1435
• Curves without width should render with a default value usd#1579

API Additions

• AiProceduralExpand: A new API AiProceduralExpand expands on demand the contents of a procedural (such as a 'usd', 'alembic', or 'procedural' node), as it would happen in a regular render. You can use this to force the creation of procedural child nodes before the rendering starts, and to avoid race conditions when the procedurals are not thread safe. (ARNOLD-7067)

Bug Fixes

• C4DTOA-2995 - Material preview fails if UDIM set does not start with 1001

• C4DTOA-3004 - Crash when removing shape of particle instances in IPR

• C4DTOA-3012 - Wrong color space when rendering selected objects

• C4DTOA-3013 - Incorrect bitdepth in Team Render output after changing file format

• C4DTOA-3019 - Fit image to IPR window does not work correctly

• C4DTOA-3022 - Enabling bucket corners during IPR has no effect

• C4DTOA-3025 - Render to Picture Viewer randomly hangs in Cinema 4D 2023.2 on Windows

• C4DTOA-3026 - Wrong shape position in the viewport if a procedural contains motion blur

• C4DTOA-3039 - Flush texture cache from the Utility menu fails

• ARNOLD-10643 - FIS no longer forces a box filter

• ARNOLD-12917 - Viewport API uses incorrect motion blur reference time

• ARNOLD-13645 - Instancer crash if a single node is instanced but set to null

• ARNOLD-13678 - Holes in alpha channel when opacity is almost 1

• ARNOLD-13741 - Log messages missing colors

• ARNOLD-13770 - Name scope clashes with nested procedurals

• ARNOLD-13776 - NaNs when using global light sampling with low-light-threshold

• ARNOLD-13789 - Corrupted tiff output if skip_alpha and unpremult_alpha are both enabled

• usd#1538 - Fix triplanar in USD MaterialX

Incompatible changes

• Absolute paths in ASS procedurals are no longer corrected in Team Render: In previous versions the plugin tried to replace absolute paths with relative paths in .ass files used in procedurals, thus they resolved correctly in Team Render clients. This is no longer supported and you have to make sure ASS procedurals contain relative paths. (C4DTOA-2993)

• Python API: GetConnections() method of the ArnoldNodeMaterial class now returns the string id of the input and output port, to be consistent with the legacy material implementation.

System Requirements

• Windows 10 or later, with the Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.
• Linux with at least glibc 2.17 and libstdc++ 4.8.5 (gcc 4.8.5). This is equivalent to RHEL/CentOS 7.
• macOS 10.13 or later.
• x86_64 CPUs need to support the SSE4.1 instruction set. Apple Mac models with M series chip are natively supported.
• GPU rendering works on Windows and Linux only and requires an NVIDIA GPU of the Ada, Ampere, Turing, Volta, Pascal, or Maxwell architecture. We recommend using the 525.89 or higher drivers on Linux and 528.49, or higher on Windows. See Arnold GPU for more information.
• The cache also needs to be re-populated after installing a new Arnold version, updating to a new NVIDIA driver, or changing the hardware configuration of GPUs on the system. More information can be found here.
• OptiX™ denoiser requires an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA™ Compute Capability 5.0 and above.