Is there a way to use Cinema4D V4 from the Amiga for using in Blitz3D?

Hi,

A few years back I was really good in creating scenes in Cinema4D V4 on my Amiga1200.

Great scene I created back then:


Is there a way to use these scenes in Blitz3D?

I have a converter on the Amiga, with about 15 different export-formats, but nothing to use directly in Blitz3D, I think.

I have searched for converters on the PC, I had found one, but it could only import C4D V6 scenes.

It would be nice if there was a Freeware converter available somewhere.

I'm using 3DS Max now, but it's a slow learning process, because there are so many options (too many in fact).

The scene (the picture above) was created when I only had Cinema4D for about 4 days and it took 3 days to create it (with several testrenders).
And I didn't have a manual of the program.

Oh yes, the picture on the projectorscreen really was projected onto it (it was a flat, white plane).
The picture is located inside the projector and is projected, just using a lightsource.

Scene looks cool - my only advice would be to try Aminet for a converter or ask for help on some Amiga forums (try Amiga).

I did some stuff on Real3d many yonks ago - took 30 minutes to render a scene - still put a more expensive PC to shame at the time though!

Well, if C4D R6 will work for you, you can get that in the upcoming issue number 88 of Computer Arts, which comes with a fully working version! :)

C4D R6 can probably import R4 scenes and save them out either in R6 format, or another format that can be converted with the freeware you were talking about.

Let us know how it works out for you. :)

Russell

p.s. Cinema 4D R8 is the bomb!

p.s. Do you have a Phase 5 PPC603 board for your 1200? What do you think of the latest goings on at www.amiga.com? Will they be able to bring the 'Amiga' back to life?

Russell

It is back alive - but if you mean like b4 (say 1990-1992 in popularity)... probably not... but I can always hope. Having to get involved in court battles though is never a good sign, they'll win but it's probably taken their eye of the ball a bit, something they can not afford to do.


Afraid not - I have a good old Blizzard 030, and it still works... don't know if the HD will last another 6 months, never mind the next 10 years though.

Oh well...they've made it this far. Maybe they can pull through this, as well. If the Amiga is anything, it's a survivor!

Too bad they can't get an influx of $$$ to get things going MUCH faster... 200 million should be about enough ;)

With Windows, OSX (Mac) and Linux in the top three, it's going to be hard to get a foot in the door at all for them. :(

I wish them luck, but will be very surprised if they can move forward significantly (enough to be known by the non-enthusiast).

Russell

p.s. On the original topic, I think the free version of C4D R6 will be just the ticket. (issue 88 of Computer Arts)

I believe that they even give a decent discount for upgrading from Amiga versions (give them a call directly - they are very nice and can probably set you up with a deal that's hard to beat - or check out the R8 demo at www.maxoncomputer.com)

I love Cinema 4D....just be aware that if you do character animations like bones you will NOT be able to export those animations into a Blitz 3D game. I talked with tech support and confirmed that there is really no way to do this.

Stick with 3Ds max. As far as Blitz is concerned, its a much better tool IMO.

Yup, but the cost is just too prohibitive, Mrs Garion would leave me 8(

Garion
from Scotland

It probably is possible to convert animations, just not directly with C4D (you'll need some go-between).

And speaking of which, look at this page for links to lots of different object converters:

http://www.3dlinks.com/software_converters.cfm

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Russell

I think I will just use 3DS MAX.

I have bought some books about the program, and I'm starting to find my way around in it.

P.S.: The processor used in my Amiga 1200, is the Blizzard 1260 processor board (fully featured 060 @ 50MHz).

The scene above took about 35 minutes to render, because of the complexity of the lens of the projector.
The lens was created using 2 oval spheres and a cilinder, which were all transparent (not completely).
If the lens was removed, it took about 16 minutes.


Back to Blitz3D.
I'm having trouble with finding children in my scene.
I created a scene (in 3DS MAX 4.2) with 2 cubes (they're not grouped or something else).
They have the names: "Garage" and "GarageDoor", because I wanted to create some garages in my game where the player could hide out or something.
I used the B3D pipeline (V0.2) to export the scene.

The code:

Graphics3D 1024, 768, 0, 1

MyScene = loadmesh("2Cubes.b3d")
NumberOfChildren = CountChildren(MyScene)

repeat
text 10, 10, "Number of children in scene" + NumberOfChildren
until keyhit(1)

end



This code always displays "0" onto my screen.
When I tried:

Child1 = FindChild(MyScene, "GarageDoor")

and display the variable Child1 onto the screen, it also contained "0", which should contain an entity-number or handle (I suppose, because there's not much info in the help-file).

Could anyone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Yep, you need to use "LoadAnimMesh" otherwise Blitz will convert all your objects in to a single mesh (no parents or children).