The garden – 2012 version

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on my short film project in between jobs, and wanted to show and discuss some of the changes I recently implemented. The changes are mostly related to the render pipeline.

The best way to show the implemented changes is by showing you an old scene in a new look: the garden.

The 2012 version (click for full-res):

And, as a reminder, the 2011 version:

The garden scene hasn't seen any changes to its geometry or overall shape, so the "only" thing that has changed are lighting, textures, and the general render pipeline (apart from a few minor things like the look of the eyebrows). There are two main reasons for the difference in appearance between the 2011 and 2012 versions:

1. Cinema 4D R13 offers some great new rendering functionality, and is able to deal with a lot of issues that couldn't be resolved with the old engine. The most obvious one in this picture would be the new SSS shader, which allows for a much more realistic/friendly skin texture, making the main character look less creepy and more appealing.

2. The cool thing about being busy with commercial projects is that you learn a lot from them. The research you often have to put in can come in handy, whether it's something very broad like improving your renderpipeline or something very specific like creating a leafshader for a tree. So for this scene which was almost one year old, I was able to implement many pipeline improvements, making the final image look better ánd making the process of coming to a final image a lot easier.

That's it for now, stay tuned for more updates!