Export to Cinema4d workflow?

Started by rojharris, April 14, 2018, 11:52:52 AM

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rojharris

Hi All,

I'm trying to work out how to get a scene from Terragen into Cinema. I'd like to end up with a rendered backplate from TG and an exported terrain that 'fits' the scene exactly so I can add Cinema elements using front projection.
So far I've tried exporting fbx from terragen and using the micro exporter to get a terrain obj. However when I'm in Cinema and have set up the render from TG as a background, when I bring in the obj its always way off in size and position. Scaling up isn't an issue as it seems to be a simple factor of 10 but getting it to match the position it was in TG is proving difficult.

Has anyone worked out a workflow to get this working?

Many thanks,
Roger


cyphyr

Don't forget you will also need to export your camera as well.
This can also be scaled to match your terrain scale. That should do it.
I believe you can change the "base units" in Cinima to 1m so it matches Terragens.
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rojharris

Quote from: cyphyr on April 14, 2018, 12:39:34 PM
Don't forget you will also need to export your camera as well.
This can also be scaled to match your terrain scale. That should do it.
I believe you can change the "base units" in Cinima to 1m so it matches Terragens.
Yep, I did export the camera, lights etc via fbx and then imported that scene into Cinema, however like I say, when then importing the obj of the terrain it doesn't match the viewpoint. Its not a scale issue as I've tried scaling the scene / objects / units etc and nothing seems to work.

Hmmm....

Oshyan

If the scale and rotation orders are correct (which FBX should, I think, account for in C4D, and I know it does in TG), then it should work... Might be a rotation order issue?

- Oshyan

rojharris

OK thanks guy's, I got it working. I needed to change my units to metres in Cinema and export the fbx from Terragen in cm. Once I'd done that everything popped into place.. No idea why it didn't work yesterday.

Cheers
R

cyphyr

Glad you sorted it out.
I do find it odd tam many 3d programs use unusual base scales. Maya for example uses decimetres (10cm) as its base scale so 1 unit is 10cm. It just seems bizarre and an odd size to choose.
Terragens 1 unit = 1 meter makes sense. Lightwave plays very well with Terragen for this reason as it also has 1 unit = 1 meter.

Hmm thinking about this would it be a useful feature to have in the Terragen preferences to be able to set a target application?
That way if a user knows that they will be working with Maya, or Cinima4D, or another application they could set the scale, xyz order and rotation order to be the same as their target application.
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