Re: XSI and Cinema4D

[Rainer Schmidt <itrisk(at)gmx.net>]

digimata wrote:
> Do you use both packages for the projects and what are your likes and 
> dislikes?
Some lunchtime thoughts...

I won't like to be without either of them but I have a preference for 
C4D for day to day work and XSI because of animation and MR for special 
projects. I am not doing character animation and I have no real use for 
a Face Robot. But I do a lot of illustrations and a lot of web media and 
in the meantime some arch viz topped of with presentations and as hobby 
weird/abstract renders and less and less 'special projects'.

C4D is more straight forward and to the point. Anti Aliasing does not 
allow so many different settings with a bunch of different algorithms. 
But the C4D Anti aliasing has not produced any 'bad' results which would 
require a different approach. If there would be multiple modes one could 
compare and maybe prefer one or the other option depending on the task. 
But there is only one with a few settings and that works well and that's 
the end of that.
This is valid for many other settings as well. Where you can loose 
yourself in XSI C4D is providing a limited set of functions (by 
comparison) which do work well. C4D has a nice sky light which works 
very well. A small greeble city is lit in 10 seconds where fondling with 
XSI lights to achieve the same becomes tedious.
Rendering  passes in C4D for a complex still directly into a large PS 
file with all the passes as layers and preset layer modes happens in C4D 
on the push of a button. Very decadent.
Export into VR formats and rendering into  panoramas is a direct 
function in C4D. C4D has a great interface for multi media development 
which XSI lack completely.
Also the generation of HDRI's using an existing scene is possible with a 
push of a button, which allows the flexible creation of studio like HDRI 
light setups. Those HDRI can be used for lighting as well as environment 
maps. Resolution can be very high. There is little penalty regarding 
HDRI size and memory consumption in comparison to XSI with the 
contiguous memory problems I run into on occasion. Maybe all this is 
possible in XSI with baking and projecting and and and but it's a simple 
function in C4D.
GI and AO and sophisticated lighting topics like this are handled well. 
Photorealistic renders are not a challenge but require tweaking as they 
do in MR. No real gain or loss there. What I like in C4D is the ability 
to create lights form objects straight out of the box. A challenge in 
XSI only tackled with plugins and added effort. ZBrush Displacement map 
import into C4D is way easier and more straight forward than in XSI.
Modeling is more fancy in XSI than in C4D except you invest in some 
plugins and then C4D leaves XSI behind. Of course.... C4d does NOT have 
the history as XSI does.... So... XSI is stronger in modeling where C4d 
with a few plugs can be more fun 8-). Animation... when you have a 
couple of extras then C4D is really more than alright. But XSI is way 
ahead and allows way more complexity. If you need it... I am currently 
experimenting with fbx to see what I can push back and force. A lack of 
experience makes it difficult to judge the abysmal results I achieve. 
But for now I con't even know the difference between fbx 5 or 6.... So 
more about that some time when it actually works to get any fbx into 
XSI. There is also a renderer called FinalRender which is available for 
another few hundred bucks. It is supposed to be very powerful and also 
has a physical sky. It is available for C4D/Maya and soon for XSI 
according to the Web Page of the manufacturer CEBAS from Germany. That 
offers a render tree as the one in MR (as far as I could see). C4D has a 
inferior material manager compared to XSI. But I must confess, that I 
prefer to use it as I am usually lost in the MR tree and end up to use 
spruced up Phongs and Lamberts for my purposes... So a cool render tree 
is pearls thrown in front of the piggy when it comes to my use. There is 
a vibrant community providing a plethora of plugins and advice which is 
nice.
Go download the demo which is fully functional except for saving. Maybe 
the Riptide even provides .obj saving with the demo but I am not sure 
about that.  Try and see. It's a cool addition to the monster XSI is by 
comparison. I work a lot in C4d in the meantime as Hair is affordable 
and the dynamics and cloth are easier to set up and don't tend to 
explode as badly as XSI tends to do on me. But judge yourself. In the 
meantime C4D is doing much more than just hair and doing it well enough 
for my purposes. With 9.x Maxon seems to have landet quite a hefty 
package compared to the bickering on forums regarding older versions.
Programing is also fine in C4D. They have a C like script language and a 
really cool 'controller tree'. With the node based 'controller tree' one 
can quickly plug math and other nodes together to achieve something like 
scripted operators in a very visual and fun way. Controling the rotation 
of an object according to a sound file is a fun and 'toy train building' 
like experience. For simple tasks like that I prefer to have nodes with 
all the I/O visible as nodes rather than a pure scripting language for 
expressions. But that's a personal preference. And bare bone scripting 
is possible in any case.
The amount of animatable parameters seems equivalent to XSI as far as I 
can see. However, as mentioned before, the depth of XSI it has not... 
But growing a tree with the XFrog Plugin while having the growth pruned 
by geometry (no branch grows into the living room...) is a matter of a 
few key strokes. Branches can even be cut and capped with an appropriate 
texture...

So C4D is my MS Office Sort of Package with paint worn off as it's used 
all day and XSI is my shiny precision laser brain surgery tool which is 
in it's mahogany box clad with red velvet.

Lunchtime done.....
Cheers
Rambling Rainer

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