Camera Import from and Export to CINEMA 4D and Houdini

[penboack]

Currently I am evaluating Terragen 2 Free Edition and Vue 10 PLE.
From the point of view of working in the applications I prefer Terragen, but from a pipeline integration point of view Vue 10 looks better.

The key issue is that having done some research I am unable to see a way to export Camera animation data from CINEMA 4D or Houdini into Terragen.

The workflow I have in mind would be to export the terrain from Terragen and use that as a guide in C4D / Houdini for setting up the scene. Then to export the camera animation from C4D/Houdini to Terragen where the scenery animation could be rendered. Then everything can be put together in Compositing with the advantage that each application being used in its area of strength.

Both CINEMA 4D and Houdini have FBX support, so FBX support in Terragen would no doubt solve this.

BTW, all the links to CINEMA 4D plug-ins on this site are broken, which doesn't give me much confidence...

Very interested to here your opinions / suggestions on this.

[cyphyr]

Sorry I can't help specifically about using data from CINEMA 4D or Houdini but I can say that the import format for animation data is the .chan format. This is an easily edited text format.
Cheers
Richard

[ndeewolfwood]

Strange i did'nt found any info on planetside terrain about the TG Asset for Houdini.
I've just discover this few day ago and this is just awsome.

Go to the official Houdini/Sidefx website and download the TG Terrain asset.
(sorry i did'nt succed to make a direct link) just go to exhange section and seach for TG Terrain.
If you want to learn how to use it, take a look on this excellent tutorial : http://vimeo.com/831399.
This asset is old but it's working like a charm on H11.

With this you can import heighfield or powerfractal terrain (via micro exporter) in houdini.
Make some proxy file to get better performance.
Animating and export  camera...and more.
This a excellent tool.
You have definitly to take a look on this.





   

[penboack]

Thank you ndeewolfwood, that's very helpful.

Interestingly Side Effects website lists 543 downloads for TG Terrain, so a lot of Houdini users are using Terragen!
Downloaded the Digital Asset from Side Effects website and the video from Vimeo, it's much sharper playing back in Adobe Media Player (on Mac OS X) than trying to play it on Vimeo.

Given the lack of support for exporting camera animation from CINEMA 4D at this time one option would be to export the camera animation from CINEMA 4D via Houdini (or Maya if you don't have Houdini, but have Maya) to TG2.

Did a test of creating a very simple camera animation in CINEMA 4D exporting to FBX and importing into Houdini. That works with two minor issues, firstly you need to have the Project Scale in CINEMA 4D set to meters, secondly the camera needs to be adjusted in Houdini by -90 degrees on the y-axis.
Next step is to investigate the TG Terrain Digital Asset and video.

Did some more research on exporting directly from CINEMA 4D, there was a thread on this http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8679.0. However the SteadyCHAN C4D Cam To TG2 Animation Plugin is no longer available.

In general I would say that it is much better if the developer of the software handles the integration with other apps. My experience is that plugin developers often loose interest after a year or two, or become busy with other work, and plugins then all to frequently cease to work in new versions!

Does anyone have any other suggestions regarding exporting camera animation from CINEMA directly?

[ndeewolfwood]

543 download does'nt mean 543 users :-)
I did'nt found any topics about this on internet :-(

Maybe you could try to contact the cinema 4d plugin maker to solve this.

[Matt]

Can you export a .chan file? If you can export a .chan file in the format that Nuke expects, it will also work in Terragen.

Each line contains the following:

Nuke format:
frame tx ty tz rx ry rz vfov

OR

"Houdini format":
tx ty tz rx ry rz vfov

More details here:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1409.msg14025#msg14025

Matt

[penboack]

Matt,

Thanks for your reply.

I've done quite a bit of research on this.

It isn't possible to export a .chan file from CINEMA 4D except by Python (or COFFEE) scripting, as the thread link you mentioned confirms.

There was a plug-in from tcastudios, http://www.tcastudios.com/ for CINEMA 4D, that worked for both Terragen 2 and Nuke, but it is no longer available due to changes in the CINEMA 4D SDK introduced in R13.

Interestingly the last two posts on that thread you mention read:

"Is this script available somewhere to download, as I'm in the need of an camera export utility from c4d to Terragen? Would be truly appreciated!"
"i would be interested in this as well."

I have to say that I feel you guys are totally missing a trick with this. I suspect that the effort required in producing plug-ins/scripts for CINEMA 4D, Maya, Max, Softimage would be pretty minimal, but it would make Terragen easier to integrate into a pipeline and therefore much more likely to be taken up by studios that appreciate it's superb image quality but lack the resources to do create such a solution themselves.

[Walli]

there have been scripts for Cinema4D writing out camera position for TG or other applactions. I think someone with coding knowledge can do this in short time. I probably can, but not in short time ;-)