C4D & Arnold TUTORIAL | Grain-Free Renders in 4 Steps [Cinema 4D & Arnold Renderer]

Tack så mycket to Arnold Renderer for sponsoring this Tutorial: arnoldrenderer.com/
Freelance flawlessly: processofmotion.com/
Join the peeps on Patreon: / motionviking
When I first used Arnold Renderer I didn’t really /get/ how sampling worked, which often made my Arnold renders very grainy. Much like porridge. But once you understand the logic behind sampling, fast and clean optimised renders in Arnold is just four steps away. Imma show you.
TUTORIAL: Fast and grain-free renders in Arnold Render for Cinema 4D:
00:00 - Eyoo
00:25 - Introduction to the Scene
00:42 - Flogging the Process of Motion Course as fast as I can while doing a test render
01:37 - Introduction to the Arnold Sampling Render Settings
01:46 - How does Arnold Camera AA (the Supersampler) work?
02:29 - The other Samples: Diffuse, Specular, Transmission, Sub-Surface Scattering & Volume Indirect
03:10 - Indirect VS Direct Samples (Render Settings VS Light Samples)
Four-step method to fast & grain-free renders in Arnold for C4D:
04:00 - STEP 1: Using AOVs and Camera (AA) for Grain-hunting
04:30 - STEP 2: Cleaning up Direct Rays (Light Samples and Light Volume Samples)
08:29 - STEP 3: Cleaning up Indirect Rays: Diffuse, Specular & SubSurface Scattering
10:20 - What does Volume Indirect Samples do?
12:03 - STEP 4: Cranking the Supersampler (Camera AA) & Optimising with Maths
12:25 - How Camera AA affects other samples and render times
14:30 - Introducing the Optimisation Equation (for your elation): X²×Y²=Z
16:28 - Cutting Corners to speed up your Arnold Render
17:25 - Summary
17:48 - Next tutorial
18:00 - Kthxbai
CREDITS
Sound Effects from freesound.org:
Fanfare by FunWithSound
Record Scratches by filmsndfx
Overn timer-ding by gloriaeffect
MUSIC
Intro & Outro - Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It by Ice Cube
Boom! by Roadman Shaq a.k.a. BIG SHAQ (the one and only)
Background - Cello Concerto No. 1 In C Major by Joseph Haydn
Yes, I am on the internet:
danieldanielsson.com
/ motionviking
/ motionviking
/ motionviking
www.behance.net/danieldanielsson
vimeo.com/danielsson

[@technologic3739]

Wait, how did you get the 196 and 400 rays per pixel or is that a fixed thing?

[@DanielDanielsson]

You get it from the sampling values in step 2. For example at 06:07 my Keylight needs 20 samples to be clean at Camera AA 1. In the equation (Samples² × Camera AA² = Rays Per Pixel) that becomes 20² × 1² = 400 rays per pixel in total. I should've been more clear about samples VS rays.

[@technologic3739]

@@DanielDanielsson Ahhh, I understand now. Thank you! On a side note, will you be touching ray depth or the denoiser?

[@Fabianofr]

@@DanielDanielsson 14/3 = 4.6, also 20/3 = 6.6... why didn't you just divided by 3 then?

[@redfalconvfx7050]

come on man get in the class... your doing the same as the old day

[@allanjeremias6060]

i dont mean to be off topic but does anybody know a way to get back into an instagram account?? I was stupid forgot my account password. I would appreciate any assistance you can offer me

[@ExacoMvm]

1) Set AA to "1" 2) Enable Adaptive Sampling and set the AA Samples max to "100". 3) At this point Arnold gonna automatically adjust the AA on the fly and render only how much is needed. Control how noisy you want your render using the threshold. "0.01" is usually default and has fairly clean renders in most cases, but noise is still noticeable usually, "0.008" should be fine for production.

[@akashsawant2816]

This tip is great for gpu rendering

[@dxuro]

i get a very weird black pixel artifact, what did i do wrong?

[@mister13sud]

I tested it is very long on Arnold 7 c4d

[@gokaybrk]

You are the best! i almost went crazy cuz my all renders grainy and render times was taking 1.5-2 hours.Thank you lifesaver

[@Multi4nick8]

"BOOM" long time no see, and with my dear Arnold when everybody talking about redshift and octane, thank you soo much!

[@Br4nTheBuilder]

This is excellent! More Arnold for C4D content, please! 🤘🏼

[@Fabianofr]

I can not find Arnold animation instructions and its render time it is so ridiculous big, I only think to change to Octane.

[@blurrsucks]

great tutorial i also loved the amazing visualization of the samples/supersampler!

[@DanielDanielsson]

I regret using Diffuse at 10 as an example. That's many lines!

[@orcunakman]

As always another great tutorial! Thanks!

[@RansomniacCartoons]

This video was so unbelievably helpful. Thanks so much for this, mate. Your channel is amazing

[@DanielDanielsson]

Thanks!

[@alborzdesign]

Thank you. I learnt quite a bit about noise in Arnold. Despite having watched many other videos about reducing noise in Arnold. You did a great job of explaining the math and the relation of the different samples.

[@Gireshahid33]

Superb as always

[@arthurlefevre7706]

Good to see you dude! Thanks you so much!

[@JamalQutub]

Great breakdown. May try Arnold again. ;)

[@andrewbatson7458]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Upset it took a year of googling arnold for me to come across this.

[@Fabianofr]

As far As I researched, you are the most advance content for C4D and Arnold in KZbin ! Keep going ! Maybe just find someone to help in with the plataform, cuz qualitity of content, good voice and edition you have. You deserve way more subscribers. People wouldn't need to pay for online classes if they were as qualified as you ! Regards from a brazilian artist and admirer.

[@revocolor]

u are insane, thanks for detailed tutor ♥

[@VIDMOO]

Daniel you are a very well known, well respected Motion Designer, this is what Dobromir Dyankov did in his tutorial, it is the exact same thing, step by step, almost verbatim. He released it 7 years ago. It d have been nice if you at least gave him a shout out. I might be wrong, but it is really similar.

[@abrarsavan7709]

This tutorial is gold for C4D/Arnold users.

[@sarimsak]

Simply the BEST tutorial in my life.

[@VIDMOO]

Check out Dobromir Dyankov's tutorial series, this is his technique from 2013!

[@sarimsak]

@@VIDMOO 1 Whole yea has passed, watched it all over again. Yep, its "Certified Boredom-Free"!!! The humor amount, clarity, speed, background music volume, the lacking "hey welcome to my channel. Dont forget to subscr...." part. All of it makes it the ******* best tutorial in KZbin. ps. I aint even use C4D.

[@laucaminero]

Thaaaank you for this tutoriaaal!

[@mustafasaleem7468]

Daniel Danielsson, a goat in 3d world.........Amazing

[@blurrsucks]

OUR BOY IS BACK!

[@klimaco360]

thanks for the explanation

[@alrzafshr]

amazing video

[@leosaramago00]

Very, very, very helpful video!!! Daniel, I was wondering if you could make one about working with the motionvector pass in C4D / Arnold.

[@DanielDanielsson]

I am often confused by motion vectors, so maybe I should.

[@juanalejandromeyer3192]

relaxing background

[@user-fk8zj6td6i]

How do you not get more likes? Your contents are so high in quality...and fun.

[@DanielDanielsson]

Thanks!

[@nikotandra6935]

Thank you sir, such a handy guide for new arnold user. Hope there will be guide for banding too.

[@DanielDanielsson]

Very glad you enjoyed it! If you're getting banding, it might fix it to output 16 or 32 bit images instead of 8 bit.

[@gunkat]

thanks for your time

[@kavumayahaya7060]

nice work 👍

[@jannovak6987]

Wtf youre obviously a genius. Would have never thought of this

[@arash926]

Man! I wasted 15 min on my last render which could be done under 3 min with your workflow XD THANK YOU!

[@SereneBobcat]

Invaluable...BOOM!

[@HectorLuisNavas]

I love this tutorial, this helped me improve the quality of the renders by 200% but I have one question/request; is there any technique to apply the same (remove grain) with RedShift in C4D? I newbie completely with RS and I don't know where to start. Thank for your help, regards.

[@workflowinmind]

Very nice. Only complaint is you are not talking about clamping which has a huge role in cutting rendertimes/grain

[@krowwithakay]

I'd love to see a tutorial on how to make the glowing red material from the asteroid

[@DanielDanielsson]

That's actually a 3D scan. (Not of an asteroid, but a volcanic rock.) The toasty glowy material is using a similar technique to this tutorial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3W0cmCwpdqEkLM But with the displacement map instead of a curvature shader.

[@krowwithakay]

Daniel Danielsson Awesome! Thanks so much for getting back to me! I currently use Arnold for Maya, but it seems to work fairly similarly

[@lucasordonez4335]

Amazing! Is the asteroid a Xref? Could you tell me how is that displacement working in the asteroid? Because in viewport you don't have too much subdivision. Thanks! Great tutorial.

[@DanielDanielsson]

It's actually a small photoscanned volcanic rock. The displacement map is cheekily enough just based on a heavily edited version of the colour map. But for a shape like that it worked a charm!

[@dzynofficial4130]

I Miss you!!!!!!

[@laplanddream]

Next tutorial: How to solve the formula. With your delivery it would be awesome =)

[@AhmadHassan-hg3tf]

good video boiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii good teach man

[@7ens3nButt0n]

I bet it took you longer than you willing to admit to animate those pixel subdividing graphics. They were super helpfull and worth the effort

[@DanielDanielsson]

Mate, so long. Rendered like swoooosh though.

[@Uxcis]

You could also just set the filter to box or if it's gaussian of something else set it to 1 and add the Intel denoiser

[@DanielDanielsson]

Any denoiser is essentially just a clever blur. Usually I prefer a bit of grain over blur, but using a bit of both might give the best of both worlds!

[@petrholusa5855]

Would be better to try redshift or octane? :P

[@elvindash]

Hi. How can I choose denoice all frames?there is no active start frame and end frame. Can you help me?İ want denoice all animation

[@jankarl5269]

17:41 quick mathss, BOOM SCRATATATATATA, THE DING GOES QUACK QUACK QUACK

[@mister13sud]

hello I have a problem, I can't find the solution, in the view render I no longer see diffuse direct diffuse indirect, you wouldn't know why please?

[@ashcello93]

Daniel, are you a cellist man? I love that you keep picking Haydn C Concerto hahah!

[@DanielDanielsson]

I do love the sound of the cello (or even better the double bass) but never touched one myself. XD

[@william_chidube]

I love Arnold but I fear it's just too slow especially in interior scenes. I don't have the freedom to create freely because I have to think/worry about how each decision affects render times. I am considering switching over to Redshift.

[@itsrayhandesigns]

How we gonna set the DIFFUSE to remove grainy "Diffuse_indirect" using GPU rendering. there is no way to set Diffuse sampling in render setting after converting it to GPU.

[@francisbeausoleil4620]

How do you generate the starfield? I see you're using a C4D Sky object with an Arnold tag instead of the Arnold Sky? Any reason?

[@DanielDanielsson]

That ol thing is just a sphere with an emissive material on it. I'm using a lovely 16k image of the night sky by NASA that you can find here: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3895

[@stevens3d]

Hi ! On the first step of your tutorial, u can change the camera AA, diffuse, specular value. You're rendering on a Mac with your CPU i guess. I use an rtx 3070 GPU and i can only change the camera AA value. Do you know if i need to check a parameter or something ? Thanks for your job ! (Sorry, my english is bad).

[@felipeolaya3737]

not sure if u still have this question go to Arnold Renderer settings, System and switch GPU for CPU

[@yasaipicles6295]

I came for Arnold left with a math degree... what a twist*

[@DanielDanielsson]

Two tuts for the price of one!

[@Mrsmifff]

how do i see these render passes in maya? I'm not able to change the render view to difuse etc like cinema4D

[@DanielDanielsson]

I've not used Maya for a decade or so... But they ought to be there in a drop-down menu somewhere. You need to add the AOV in render settings first, but assuming that's done, idk why they wouldn't be there. 🤷‍♂️

[@eleganckieshoty808]

How to add bloom Effect?

[@VFXTV]

Do more arnold tutorials

[@DanielDanielsson]

Alright.

[@TurpoChargedGaming]

Anyone have advice for ray depth settings? How do you know how many bounces you need??

[@DanielDanielsson]

Generally very low reflection and diffuse depth (both

[@randomcommenter6734]

You can also use the new AI denoiser to get faster renders

[@DanielDanielsson]

It scares me. I've seen Terminator.

[@delizade]

Thanx for the video. Is there anyone who knows why Arnold GPU renderer has not those samplimg options for diffuse, specular etc? (For a while, I’ve been tryin Arnold GPU without those settings)

[@DanielDanielsson]

I have no clue, but it's a good question.

[@OjiHamidin]

Out of curiosity why don't you use NOICE for a faster render time? Is there a pro vs con with NOICE vs this brute force AA cleanup?

[@DanielDanielsson]

All noise reducers are effectively blurring the images so results usually just look splotchy rather than grainy, and I prefer grain. But I haven't actually tried NOICE, and it does seem like a very _clever_ blur. Definitely something I'll have a go at at some point.

[@OjiHamidin]

@@DanielDanielsson yes I also like a little more grain in my render. NOICE seem a bit more cleverer than other method but I haven't try it on huge render for production yet. On 2K render it seem nice

[@lunabeige]

Can u make a tutorial for how to GPU render with Arnold in C4D?? Please

[@DanielDanielsson]

Possibly once I have a GPU worth the title. XD

[@Serapha6]

I want I know how to make the material on the asteroid that he’s standing on in the scene

[@DanielDanielsson]

That's actually a 3D scan. (Not of an asteroid, but a volcanic rock.) The toasty glowy material is using a similar technique to this tutorial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3W0cmCwpdqEkLM But with the displacement map instead of a curvature shader.

[@Serapha6]

@@DanielDanielsson thank you👍

[@sergiomarchelli]

The best way is to switch to Redshift 3D. Hehe!

[@eliomolinaro2979]

Hello sir, I've got an issue with Arnold. each time I do a render it lasts forever even with your method but as soon as it finishes it indicates render times like 7, 8, or 9 minutes. I don't know why this is happening would you have an answer to that? thank you very much

[@DanielDanielsson]

Sounds like you might have a lot of render time subdivisions happening, or many instanced particles or clones. Preparing geometry can take hella time!

[@_screm]

Hi! How do u get a colored null? Cant find info :(

[@DanielDanielsson]

Ah! In the 'Basic' tab in the Attributes Manager you can set 'Use Color' to On, then you get to pick and can also check 'Icon Color'

[@alf4]

I just have 2 questions. Why don't you start with AA to like 3 so you don't get aliasing artifacts and don't have to do all the math? And why do you exclude volume from the light when you could just turn off the volume inside the light?

[@DanielDanielsson]

To me the maths becomes easier with AA at 1. You never really know how high Camera AA needs to go in the end. Starting at AA1 I know the total rays per pixel needed for any sample value to be Certified Grain Free™, no matter what AA ends up at when I’m done.

[@alf4]

@@DanielDanielsson thanks for the answer , big fan!

[@herveprudent5604]

j'essai d'utiliser arnold, mais au rendu ca m'affiche ma scene en noir et blanc seulement?? tu sais comment arranger ce soucis, c'est une scene avec deflecteur, lumiere materiaux, et j'aimerais mettre un environnement brouillard???

[@Praudas]

Nice...What GPU do you own?

[@DanielDanielsson]

Evenings and weekends I work on a MacBook Pro, so just a Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB. But I use Arnold with CPU anyways. At the studio we've got PC beasts with (I believe) a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti each. We mostly use them for Redshift tho.

[@juanalejandromeyer3192]

Hi, How did you reduce al those polygons?

[@DanielDanielsson]

They were like that when I got here. A friend scanned a volcanic rock for the meteorite and his settings in Agisoft Photoscan gave the geometry that resolution. (A lot of the detail is in the displacement.)

[@drne6244]

thanks for the video. i relate to you cuz my name is also very similar to my surname...

[@DanielDanielsson]

It is a gift and a curse, my friend.

[@Olivierhero]

Thanks for taking the time to do this very helpful video! I often have firefly in my renders I was wondering if you plan to do a little video about it? Thanks for your work!

[@Jacobbrothers]

How can I convert cinema 4d standard lights to Arnold

[@DanielDanielsson]

There's no automatic conversion, but you can do it yourself just by matching the values and look by eye.

[@andreankuna3008]

hi , how did you make those coal heat renders?]

[@DanielDanielsson]

It's a 3D scan of a volcanic pumice rock, then I remapped the displacement map into a nice hot gradient and plugged into the emission channel.

[@andreankuna3008]

@@DanielDanielsson thanks, tutorial on tha t please

[@jeffpapangue1839]

hhaaaaaaa enfin

[@jankarl5269]

I don't 100% get what renderers are for, they seem to make things more complex compared to physical. btw nice video, helped me a lot with arnold itself, but like I can achieve the same output with physical

[@DanielDanielsson]

It's essentially just to render faster, or to do more advanced or realistic shading. The Physical Renderer is pretty damn good, the only place it really fails is with volumetrics, which it hardly even attempts to do realistically.

[@jankarl5269]

@@DanielDanielsson So you render faster compare to just turning up the samples, how about your time tweaking all them settings, your time is still compensated after all the work, so I guess it's better to just turn up the samples then ,if your not an advance tweaker or smthng?

[@STFSTUDIO]

❤️👌👌

[@andreankuna3008]

tutorial please

[@QuackerJack09]

isnt it easier and faster to use an ai denoiser? dont know if arnold has this option. im not an arnold user, just like your tuts :D

[@DanielDanielsson]

Easier and faster, yes. But any denoiser is essentially just a clever blur. Usually I prefer a bit of grain over blur, but using a bit of both might give the best of both worlds!

[@user-lu8kk2kx1p]

Hello, there is a project to share

[@AUSTORMCHASERS]

Which is why I switched to Corona :)

[@DanielDanielsson]

I think most people are trying to avoid Corona these days. XD

[@deniszaika9534]

And now we have intel denoiser.

[@hamzamajbour7391]

if i have atmospher_volume to show a spot light then i have no light in my scene just the sky so dont need to do step 2 !

[@o---Elden-Beast---o]

any render more than 30 seconds for me is slow ... thanks for the tutorial.

[@alisaid.86]

I would pay serious money for anyone out there to teach me arnold renderer for c4d - theres literally no more than 5 good tutorials out there on the subject and even the arnold documentation is outdated for simple things like applying normal maps and displacement - I've been troubleshooting for countless hours on just trying to do the basics with arnold for c4d let alone trying to create hyper real skin shading. Can anyone point me to any solid resources?

[@DanielDanielsson]

What really helped me get started was the Mastering Arnold for C4D Course by Dobromir Dyankov: inlifethrill.com/mastering-arnold-cinema-4d-bundle/ 6 hours of training going through all the basics. It's a few years old now, but I think it still holds up and it's not particularly pricey.

[@blurrsucks]

ngl astro dude is kinda thicc

[@DanielDanielsson]

They don't call him Jiggly Buttface for nothing.

[@pushqrdx]

5:15 so the title is a click-bait eh?

[@DanielDanielsson]

Oh I don't know about that. It's more of a lure to entice people to click. Then I've got them on the hook.

[@jontiways]

Urmhrgurd its u

[@DanielDanielsson]

'Tis I!

[@davideghirelli4453]

lol, just use the adaptive sample

[@DanielDanielsson]

lol

[@msganga1974]

Your Video is great but I find Arnold 7 quite a disaster about the noise you get especially when you are dealing with complicated Interior design. In order to get rid of the noise the amount of light samples to clean direct diffuse must be at least 6 - 8 and the Super Sampling cannot be less than 6 -8 as well. It means that the rendering time become a weak point and sometimes IPR take so long to generate the final image that you have to pray it is going to work or you risk to wait 6 hours to get a quite bad result. Ok...you can check all the light one by one ...but let's be honest...the original Vray bridge (2013) was basically noise free...vray 3.7 got quite noisy, Vray 5 even more and Arnold 7 made it the biggest part of your job...Honestly I wonder what is happening...why the noise issue is getting so bad with the time?...Meanwhile we have Unreal 5 that is almost time free in term of rendering with a touch of noise that I thought it was a problem at the beginning but now not anymore. I keep hoping I'm still missing something in Arnold 7 but I start getting worry it is really a bad Engine for Interior design. What do you think?

[@fimich]

вот зачем эта формула, проще надо. ТЫ выставил соотношение семплов по каналом, а дальше крутишь супер семпл и он тупо множит их. Правда и в твоем и моем случае результат один - оооочень долгий рендер)))

[@DanielDanielsson]

No hablo, lo siento.

[@soycriz]

Oh, now we have cash in videos :(

[@DanielDanielsson]

I take it you did not enjoy the course being rapidly flogged in your face?

[@soycriz]

@@DanielDanielsson no, don't enjoy it. It feels bad that now you do it for money and not for hobby or for helping.

[@DanielDanielsson]

@@soycriz Why not both?

[@soycriz]

@@DanielDanielsson oh, i see.