3D Motion Designer based in Manchester UK
INTRODUCTION
There is a constant wish for Cinema 4D to implement faster viewport handling. While this is a legitimate request, especially in terms of handling large numbers of objects, there a lot of steps users can take to help themselves. A lot of the following information might be common knowledge to some or many, but I rarely see people utilising all of these techniques within their scene.
There is nothing more liberating than being able to animate in real time after taking a few steps to optimise your scene. Of course efficiency is subjective, it is not always worth employing all of these techniques if it will take longer to set up your scene than it would to complete a job! I am usually spending at least a few weeks if not months within a scene so for me it is almost always worth optimising as I create elements.
You don’t have to kill everything in your scene, but knowing what is most likely to be causing the problem is half the battle. It’s still frustrating when things aren’t as fast as you want them to be (I should know), but given the option of sitting here hoping the future is faster or changing a few bad habits that can free you up to actually work faster right now... I know which I’d choose.
If there are areas which you think Maxon could improve then please let them know using the Feature Request page. I think asking for focused things is probably more beneficial than just asking them to make the whole thing faster. I'm fairly certain the developers also want it to be faster, but let them know how they can improve it so you can work faster!
A small disclaimer: Everything in this article is based on personal experience from the last few years of handling huge scenes at Zeitguised. I am by no means any kind of programmer so some terminology and explanations may not be technically accurate and the Xpresso setups may not be clean; but the advice is honest, practical and will hopefully be helpful to some. I will continue to update this article as new workflow methods are discovered or become available. I also welcome all feedback and any extra tips from you!
