Camera Series
Octane Camera for C4D: Quick Workflows
Version 1.0, Updated Apr 2024 using Octane 2023.1.3 and Cinema 4D 2024.4
About This Guide
Sometimes you need answers now. This guide is designed as a series of standalone one-pagers to go through some of the trickier camera workflows and setups as efficiently as possible.
The Octane Camera: Settings & Effects guide goes into a LOT more detail on each of these concepts - be sure to check that out.
If you want to learn more about photographic concepts as they relate to 3D apps, check out the Photography Concepts for 3D Artists guide.
Currently, this guide contains one-pagers on:
- Depth of Field
- Camera Motion Blur
- Object Motion Blur
- Panning
- Isometric Camera
PDF
PDF Version of this guide can be found here.
Depth of Field (DoF):
This controls how much of the scene is in or out of focus.
We want to make sure our objects are at real-world scale and a reasonable distance from one another. Making things larger or smaller than they are in real life messes with DoF calculations.
1. Make sure the correct camera is active (the reticle icon to the left of the Camera Tag is lit up white).
2. Set the focal length in the C4D Camera object’s Object tab. The longer the lens (larger the number), the more apparent the DoF effect is due to background compression.
3. Set up the scene. The strongest effect is had when the camera is close to the subject (and focused on it) and there are objects of varying distances in front of and/or behind the subject.
4. Pick a focus point either with a Focus Object (and making sure Auto Focus is OFF) or by manually setting the distance in the C4D Camera, or by using the Focus picker mode in the Live Viewer (F icon).
5. Change the aperture. Lower aperture numbers (higher f-stop values) mean more of the scene is in focus, while higher aperture numbers (lower f-stop values) mean more is out of focus.
This is confusing. Because of C4D’s quirky behavior, a new camera says the F-stop is at 2.8, but it’s not really since the Aperture value is at 0. If we move the F-stop or aperture slider one way or the other, or manually enter any other value into either field, we’ll get DoF. If we want to turn off DoF, we need to set the Aperture value to 0 again, and then the F-stop will move to “inf” where it should be.
6. Adjust the Render Settings. Depth of field effects take more passes to clean up, so we’ll need to up the number of max samples and/or use the denoiser.
7. Optional: Adjust the bokeh (quality of the out of focus area). There are settings located in the Depth of Field section of the Camera Tag’s Thinlens tab that affect the look of the bokeh and even allow us to select a custom aperture shape. The Universal Camera type has more options that affect bokeh like custom aperture shape.
Camera Motion Blur
This controls how much blur occurs when the camera itself is moving relative to the rest of the scene.
1. Make sure the correct camera is active (the reticle icon to the left of the Camera Tag is lit up white).
2. Turn on Motion Blur in the camera. This is located in the Octane Camera Tag in the Motion Blur tab.
3. Animate the camera (any Position/Rotation values will do). If the camera is sitting still and motion blur is on, nothing will happen. A camera that’s moving fast will create more blur than one that’s moving slowly. Object motion blur is different, and will be discussed next.
4. Change the shutter speed. Newer versions of Octane give us several options in the Shutter type depending on what makes sense to us. Time (sec.) is the default type, but that’s difficult to use. Time (1/s) is better for photographers - if we want 1/30th of a second, we just enter 30. If we want super long shutter speeds (>1sec), then Time(sec.) is a better option because we can just use 1, 1.5, 2 sec, etc.
The effect relies heavily on how fast the camera is moving and how large the objects are, but for the same scene, the slower the shutter speed, the more blur. Try starting at 1/30th of a second. If the objects are moving slowly and the effect is hard to see, go to 1/5th of a second. If it’s too much blur, try 1/125th.
Troubleshooting
Make sure motion blur is enabled, and Disable Camera M.blur is unchecked in the Motion Blur tab (this setting is for when we want object motion blur only). Also make sure the correct camera is active.
Motion blur can get a little finicky in the Live Viewer. The first thing to try is refreshing the scene (hit the R button in the Live Viewer and then the Octane button to start the render again). Then try advancing the animation a single frame at a time rather than scrubbing or jumping from frame to frame.
Octane uses a motion blur cache, so it needs to rebuild that cache to get correct results. Jumping around in the timeline can mess this up until the scene is refreshed. If we have a lot of frames with motion blur, we can try increasing the M.blur caches (frame) setting from 25 to span the amount of frames we’re jumping between.
Object Motion Blur
This controls how much blur occurs on a particular object that is moving at a different speed and/or direction than the camera. This is different from camera motion blur which was discussed above.
1. Make sure the correct camera is active (the reticle icon to the left of the Camera Tag is lit up white).
2. Turn on Motion Blur for the camera. In the Octane Camera tag, we need to make sure motion blur is enabled. This is true for both camera and object motion blur. We can disable camera motion blur here too if we just want to see object blur, but it’s not realistic.
3. Animate one or more objects. Try to make them move at a reasonable speed for that object.
4. Every object that we want to apply object motion blur to requires an Octane Object tag. No tag = no object motion blur. The tag can be applied to a parent object (like a null) that contains several objects.
5. Set the Enable motion data dropdown in the Object Tag’s Motion blur tab. Transform is for when the position/rotation is changing, Vertex is for when individual points are animating (due to deformation or vertex displacement). Vertex speed is for volumetric data (.vdb files).
6. Change the shutter speed. Newer versions of Octane give us several options in the Shutter type depending on what makes sense to us. Time (sec.) is the default type, but that’s difficult to use. Time (1/s) is better for photographers - if we want 1/30th of a second, we just enter 30. If we want super long shutter speeds (>1sec), then Time(sec.) is a better option because we can just use 1, 1.5, 2 sec, etc.
The effect relies heavily on how fast the camera is moving and how large the objects are, but for the same scene, the slower the shutter speed, the more blur. Try starting at 1/30th of a second. If the objects are moving slowly and the effect is hard to see, go to 1/5th of a second. If it’s too much blur, try 1/125th.
Troubleshooting
Make sure the correct camera is active, motion blur is enabled for it, and the shutter time is set slow enough that blur will be noticeable. Make sure there’s an Object Tag on EVERY object (or its parent) that needs to blur. Refresh the scene (R button in the LV) and step through the animation frame at a time rather than hitting play or scrubbing. Try increasing the M.blur cache if there’s a lot of animation with motion blur in it.
Panning
This is a photographic technique where the camera is tracking a subject which “freezes” it in place (so there’s no blur on it) while everything around it is blurred and streaky.
1. Make sure the correct camera is active (the reticle icon to the left of the Camera Tag is lit up white).
2. Turn on Motion Blur for the camera. In the Octane Camera tag, we need to make sure motion blur is enabled and “Disable camera m.blur” is left unchecked. We need both camera and object blur enabled for this to work.
3. Set the shutter speed (see either the object or camera motion blur sections above for guidance).
4. The best way to set this up is to create a null and then nest BOTH the camera AND whatever object(s) we want frozen under it. We can then animate the position and rotation of the null to move the whole rig around the scene. This will ensure the subject freezes while the background blurs.
Important: For best results, we’ll want to zero out the coordinates of the subject to the null (p.x, p.y, and p.z should all be zero after it’s nested). Then we can set the camera anywhere we want in null to frame the subject up. If we zero the camera out and place the subject elsewhere, any rotation of the null will blur the subject as well as the background.
5. An object tag needs to get placed on the null. That will filter down to the other objects.
6. Set the Enable motion data dropdown in the Object Tag’s Motion blur tab. Transform is for when just the position/rotation is changing. Transform/Vertex is used when the object is deforming or displacing as it moves and motion blur is needed on those pieces. Vertex speed is only for volumetrics (.vdb files).
Troubleshooting
Scrubbing the timeline or hitting play will almost definitely break the effect every time in the Live Viewer. We should hit the refresh button often and advance frame at a time to avoid this. Increase the m.blur caches setting in the Camera Tag if there’s more than 25 frames of continuous animation with blur.
Isometric Projection
Isometric projection is a form of parallel/orthographic projection (no perspective or concept of z-depth) where the scene is viewed at a particular angle so that the X, Y, and Z axes all measure the same.
Quirky behavior: In C4D, the Top viewport is turned 180 degrees from what we’d expect when using an Isometric camera. Objects that face “up” in this view are facing the camera, where we’re used to seeing the opposite happen with a perspective camera. The isometric camera is a fixed angle, so if rotation is desired, the objects have to rotate in relation to the camera, not vice-versa.
1. Switch the C4D camera from Perspective to Isometric.
Important: The camera’s focal length must be set to 35mm before switching to isometric (can’t change it in iso mode), otherwise the scale will be different between the viewport and Live Viewer.
2. The Thinlens type camera does NOT require the Orthographic checkbox to be checked in the Thinlens tab. The Universal type camera DOES require Orthographic mode in the Universal tab.
3. Set the C4D Camera Object’s P.X, P.Y, P.Z coordinates to the same value. That value needs to be larger than the coordinates of the bounding box of all the objects or clipping will occur. The value doesn’t affect framing if all three are the same, so start with 1000 cm for P.X/P.Y/P.Z to be safe and adjust as needed. Camera rotation values do not matter since isometric is a fixed angle.
4. Use Film Offset X, Film Offset Y and Zoom in the C4D camera (not the Octane Camera Tag) to frame the scene. Octane’s Lens Shift works, but the viewport won’t match anymore.
5. Depth of field is difficult to visualize since the Isometric camera does not have a cone/focus distance indicator. Use a Null as a focus object to make this easier.
Important: Turn OFF Autofocus in the C4D Camera Tag>Thinlens or Universal tab>Depth of Field section if DoF effects are desired.
Wrap Up
Hopefully this helps get you up and running quickly if you just need a quick reminder for these particular setups. Feel free to suggest other workflows in the Behance comments.
The Octane Camera: Settings & Effects guide goes into a LOT more detail on each of these concepts - be sure to check that out.
If you want to learn more about photographic concepts as they relate to 3D apps, check out the Photography Concepts for 3D Artists guide.
Author Notes
OG042 Octane Camera: Quick Workflows Version 1.0, Updated May 2024 using Octane 2023.1.3 and Cinema 4D 2024.4
This guide originally appeared on https://be.net/scottbenson and https://help.otoy.com/hc/en-us/articles/212549326-OctaneRender-for-CINEMA-4D-Cheatsheet
All rights reserved.
The written guide may be distributed freely and can be used for personal or professional training, but not modified or sold. The assets distributed within this guide are either generated specifically for this guide and released as cc0, or sourced from cc0 sites, so they may be used for any reason, personal or commercial.
This guide originally appeared on https://be.net/scottbenson and https://help.otoy.com/hc/en-us/articles/212549326-OctaneRender-for-CINEMA-4D-Cheatsheet
All rights reserved.
The written guide may be distributed freely and can be used for personal or professional training, but not modified or sold. The assets distributed within this guide are either generated specifically for this guide and released as cc0, or sourced from cc0 sites, so they may be used for any reason, personal or commercial.
