High-Quality Real-time Rendering for Design, Animation, and Visualization
Based on the latest advancements in real-time rendering, U-RENDER integrates into traditional rendering pipelines and is designed to support and even replace offline CPU and GPU rendering solutions.
All the Speed of a Game Engine, None of the Hassles.
Achieving high-quality rendering results in milliseconds, U-RENDER is the ideal solution for look development, design ideation, and creative experimentation. It provides stunning results that can be used to accelerate the creative process, delivering high-quality results suitable as a final image.
U-RENDER helps to dramatically reduce iteration times and allows for cost savings in both hardware investments and energy consumption.
Fastest Rendering
Blazing Speed of a Game Engine
Immediate, noise-free rendering results in full resolution are ideal during client supervised session. Make changes during meetings and show final frame results for instant decisions. Stop endless iteration loops right there.
Immediate rendering results empower your creativity like never before.
Live Render Sync
Stay in your Favorite Application
U-RENDER brings the blazingly fast real-time rendering technology from video games to your favorite DCC application (starting with Cinema 4D today). It’s seamless integration eliminates the need for cumbersome data conversion and optimization.
There is no need to learn a complex new engine. Stay in your favorite application.
Wide GPU Support
Work on a Notebook
U-RENDER runs on typical game-ready hardware from AMD and NVIDIA and does not need expensive multi-GPU setups. Bringing your notebook with a dedicated mid-range graphics card to a meeting allows you to make changes on the fly, right there.
Involve your client in look development and fine tuning and save countless hours.
About U-RENDER
U-RENDER brings the latest advancements of realtime rendering to your established rendering pipeline. Currently available for Maxon Cinema 4D, U-RENDER integrates into the existing rendering pipeline and is designed to support and even replace offline CPU rendering software and GPU rendering solutions.
Really Realtime Rendering
Create high quality rendering results in milliseconds and accellerate your creative process! U-RENDER is the ideal solution for look development, design ideation and creative experimentation. Deliver stunning results in final frame quality within the blink of an eye!
Save Time & Money
U-RENDER helps to dramatically reduce iteration times and allows for cost savings in both hardware investments and energy consumption.
U-RENDER is fully integrated, easy to learn and a cost effective solution to establish high quality realtime rendering in your production workflow.
What’s new in U-Render 2021.1.3?
A new layout
Thanks to our Quality Team and the researches we did in the last months, we created an outline that permits you to work totally stress-free with U-RENDER.
In the new layout you will notice that the text of the user interface is clearer and the viewport has now the support to work in live mode.
Furthermore, we improved the default values for render settings, materials, lights and camera tag. Your workflow is more streamlined and the necessary steps to achieve a better looking render result are reduced.
In addition, the new shortcut commands permit you to create light sources with U-RENDER tags already attached. The new layout can be deactivated and the classical one could be easily restored, whenever you want.
New Layout – U-RENDER Tutorial from U-RENDER on Vimeo.
Smart is better
Ready-to-use material types can be easily and quickly adjusted with the new materials presets. They reduce the number of parameters that need to be tweaked, which is why we call them smart!
Materials are now correctly assigned when switching the material preview scene and material previews are rendered even when live mode is on.
Furthermore, you have now a large amount of possibilities to create your favorite material, because it’s available for different material types like gold, glass, glossy plastic, metallic paint, rough metal, chrome, dark rubber. Your objects are even more accurate and realistic now.
Last, but not least, by applying a U-RENDER material to a selection, you can create a selection tag.
Changes and improvements
As usual, a release is always a good occasion for us to fix some issues and improve the overall workflow.
In this last version, for example, we improved the interaction between volumetrics and screen space reflections and GPU shaders are now compiled in parallel to reduce the starting time of the renderer.
What’s new in U-Render v2020.9.2?
Following the release of Cinema 4D R23 made by Maxon last month, U-RENDER is now fully integrated into Cinema 4D!
Reflections
In the feature related to reflections, the screen-space reflections now show specular and environment reflections on reflected objects. Thanks to this refinement, depending on the scene, you can give it a large range of different styles and be more competitive.
Volumetrics
As far as volumetrics is concerned, shadow colors can be enabled to affect volumetric shadows to reach a more realistic result, like for example self-shadowing clouds. In addition, some visual artefacts, caused by a mismatch of the volumetric clipping plane and the camera’s near plane are now fixed, in order to give you more precise results.
Materials
The features about clear-coat’s glossiness/roughness texture and clear-coat’s environment reflection are now working properly, to permit creating well-defined looking materials like car paints, varnished woods, coated metals and plastics.
New feature
The stable full integration into C4D is not the only news for this U-RENDER release. You can also have at your disposal a new feature in the color correction post processing filter. The RGB curves are now part of the colour correction post processing filter. They allow advanced color grading effects, by remapping the colour input to a different output.
The color channels for red, green and blue can be adjusted individually to achieve very flexible and versatile results.
What’s new in version 2020.6.2?
In U-RENDER 2020.6.4 we introduce a major new feature with real-time subsurface scattering.
Overview
With the newly introduced subsurface scattering and translucency properties for U-RENDER’s physically-based materials, you can now create believable materials like skin, marble, milk, and many more organic materials.
Have a look at the subsurface scattering overview video that quickly explains how to set it up.
This video overview shows the key features and parameters of U-RENDER’s real-time subsurface scattering.
Learn how to set up a basic material:
- Setting up the light source
- Using scattering color and settings
- Translucency settings
With real-time subsurface scattering and translucency properties for U-Render’s physically-based materials, you can create believable materials like skin, marble, milk, and many more organic materials.
U-RENDER Subsurface Scattering Sizzle
What’s new in version 2019.11?
U-RENDER 2019.11 introduces real-time volumetric rendering which enables visual stunning effects like atmospheric haze, fog, and participating media.
Dedicated Volume Objects allow for easy control over the placement of volumes and properties like density and scattering. Animated, procedural 3D noises and gradients allow for full creative control over the appearance of volumes.
Lights have been enhanced with settings for volumetric light contribution and individual shadow behavior. Control how objects cast shadows inside volumes. Volumes themselves can be self-shadowing and cast shadows into the scene on a light by light basis.
Volume Objects Use volume objects to easily control the placement of your volumes. Settings for density and scattering result in distinct looks for each volume. Choose between a volume layer of a cube. Each volume object comes with additional controls for volume noise. |
Volume Noises Control the volume’s appearance using animated, procedural 3d noises for density. Parameters like octaves, contrast, and gradients give you substantial flexibility. Additional settings for animation and transformation invites you to experiment with limitless possibilities. |
Volumetric Light Individually control which lights contribute to the volumetric lighting. Light and shadows from all direct light sources like spotlights, point lights, directional lights, and area lights are calculated. |
Volumetric Shadows Not only can lights cast a shadow into volumes, but volumes are able to cast shadows onto themselves and onto objects in your scene as well. Use this feature for moody images and incredible atmospheres. |
Key Features
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Realtime Physical Based Rendering (PBR)
Powerful Materials for 3D Design
Lighting with Ease
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Volumetric Rendering
Real-time Post Processing Effects
Tight Cinema 4D Integration
Examples
Lego Car – Real-time Rendering Showcase
Geometry Displacement – Real-time Rendering Showcase
Cheese – Real-time Rendering Showcase
Wristwatch – Real-time Rendering Showcase
Description
Physically Based Rendering
High Quality in Real-Time
Multi-pass Rendering
Ever wanted to bring your real-time renderings into your favorite compositing software to add some final touches? U-RENDER fully supports multi-pass rendering with custom passes for the object and material IDs and all the usual suspects.
PBR Materials
Physically based materials in U-RENDER use a unified shader that allows for a wide variety of different looks. Using a GGX reflectance model you can rely on familiar parameters to adjust and tweak surface appearance.
Image-Based Lighting
Image-based lighting (IBL) allows you to use an HDR environment map to quickly add ambient light to your scene. This creates a rich, colorful mood with little impact on rendering performance.
Materials
PBR Materials
Physically based materials in U-RENDER use a unified shader that allows for a wide variety of different looks. Using a GGX reflectance model you can rely on familiar parameters to adjust and tweak surface appearance.
Specular & Metallic
Use the familiar specular/glossiness workflow with U-RENDER or choose metallic/roughness. The choice is yours. You have full control over reflectance color and amount as well as glossiness to achieve a wide range of material looks, from dull plastics to glossy metallic surfaces.
Screen Space Reflections
Screen-space reflections allow materials in U-RENDER to reflect the surrounding scene in real-time. Even though only what is visible on the screen can be reflected, screen-space reflections can dramatically improve the overall look of an image.
Transparency
U-RENDER supports the rendering of transparent materials. Combined with reflectance and refraction effects, create materials like glass that render in real-time.
Emissive
On some days you just need some neon to go with your chrome. U-RENDER supports emissive properties for your materials that are supplemented by effects like bloom.
Normal & Bump Maps
Use your existing normal and bump maps to add minute detail to surfaces. U-RENDER allows you to fine-tune their appearance without the need to adjust the texture itself.
Displacement Maps
Quickly add geometric detail to your models through displacement maps. Detailed geometry is generated on the fly on the GPU using greyscale height maps or vector displacement maps.
Shader Baking
Use Cinema 4D’s shader in any material texture slot. U-RENDER automatically bakes the shader into a 2d texture at selected resolutions and synchronizes it with the real-time renderer.
Material Converter
Tired of re-creating all your materials again? We too. So we created a converter that puts all those Cinema 4D material textures and shaders into U-RENDER materials and tweaks all those parameters.
Lights
Light Types
U-RENDER supports a range of different light types with control of light color and separate specular and diffuse contribution. Choose from spotlights, point lights, and infinite (directional) lights. Each light type supports different shadow and falloff types.
Shadow Types
U-RENDER supports real-time shadow maps on all light types. Choose between hard and soft shadows with control over shadow map resolution and shadow color.
Falloff Types
Control of lights is essential in creating beautiful images. U-RENDER supports a wide range of falloff types. Use no falloff for distant light sources like the sun or inverse-square for physically accurate falloff. Or choose a linear of step falloff.
Cameras
Camera Types
Using a plain old standard camera is not always enough. So U-RENDER supports parallel cameras in addition to the regular perspective camera. Render glorious top- and side views as well as isometric perspectives of your scenes.
Depth of Field
The depth of field is an important artistic tool and being able to make adjustments in real-time takes it to a new level. Once you are used to it, you cannot go back to any other way of working.
Vignette
Adding a vignette is one of the last finishing touches in compositing. Why wait until this late in the process? Get your image to this final state while you are still working on the lighting in real-time.
Cinema 4D Integration
Procedural UVs
Creating texture coordinates for all your assets can be a time-consuming task. U-RENDER supports a large number of procedural UV texture coordinates so that you do not have to create UV-maps.
Render Instances
U-RENDER supports the rendering of instances. Geometry is not duplicated on the GPU, saving VRAM. Both regular and Cinema 4D’s render instances are supported.
Mograph Cloner
Cinema 4D integration without the support for Mograph would not be complete. So U-RENDER understands and renders Mograph cloners.
Material Converter
Tired of re-creating all your materials again? We too. So we created a converter that puts all those Cinema 4D material textures and shaders into U-RENDER materials and tweaks all those parameters.
Shader Baking
Use Cinema 4D’s shader in any material texture slot. U-RENDER automatically bakes the shader into a 2d texture at selected resolutions and synchronizes it with the real-time renderer.
Camera Types
Using a plain old standard camera is not always enough. So U-RENDER supports parallel cameras in addition to the regular perspective camera. Render glorious top- and side views as well as isometric perspectives of your scenes.
Effects
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient occlusion is essential to add soft contact shadows for more realistic lighting. U-RENDER uses screen-space ambient occlusion that can be adjusted in real-time.
Bloom
Add some credibility to those bright specular highlights and emissive materials by adding some bloom. Quickly change it from nuanced to full neon city. The choice is yours.
Depth of Field
Depth of field is an important artistic tool and being able to make adjustments in real-time takes it to a new level. Once you are used to it, you cannot go back to any other way of working.
Vignette
Adding a vignette is one of the last finishing touches in compositing. Why wait until this late in the process? Get your image to this final state while you are still working on the lighting in real-time.
Tone Mapping
Rendering in high dynamic range is essential to get great results. At some point, you need to compress it down though. U-RENDER provides several methods to handle those highlights with Linear, Exponential and Reinhard tone mapping.
Chromatic Aberration
There are days that call for subtlety and then there are those that call for all effects to go the max. We have got you covered, and you can dial back chromatic aberration anyways.
System Requirements
Customers are encouraged to download the test version before purchase to test U-RENDER on your system before purchase.
System Requirements
- 64-bit Intel or AMD x64-based processor, 2 GHz or faster
- 8 GB or more of RAM
- 64-bit Windows 10 (version 1607 or later)
- 1 GB of available hard-disk space for 64-bit installation. Additional free space required during installation and for optional, additional materials
- at least 1920×1080 display resolution with 32-bit color
U-RENDER is available in English only.
In addition to the U-RENDER standalone, you also need the U-RENDER host plug-in for Cinema 4D.
Cinema 4D Requirements
Not all features of Cinema 4D are supported in U-RENDER. The U-RENDER Cinema 4D plug-in currently supports these versions of Cinema 4D:
- Cinema 4D R16.051
- Cinema 4D R17.055 (SP3.5)
- Cinema 4D R18.057 (SP3)
- Cinema 4D R19.068
- Cinema 4D R20.059
- Cinema 4D R21.026
- Cinema 4D S22.123
- Cinema 4D R23.110
Make sure you have the latest update for Cinema 4D installed.
Graphics Processor Requirements
- AMD or NVIDIA GPU
- OpenGL 4.5 capable
- 3 GB or more of graphics VRAM (8 GB or more recommended)
- Multi-GPU setups (NVIDIA SLI, AMD Crossfire) are untested and therefore not supported
Tested Graphics Cards
- AMD Radeon RX 480 with 8 GB VRAM
- AMD Vega 64 with 8 GB VRAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 1060 GTX (mobile) with 6 GB VRAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 1060 GTX with 6 GB VRAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 1080 GTX with 8 GB VRAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 2060 RTX (mobile)
- NVIDIA GeForce 2080 RTX with 8 GB VRAM
We cannot test all cards in a timely manner. If your card is not listed above but meets the Graphics Processor Requirements, chances are high that it will work with the latest version of U-RENDER.
Change Log
U-RENDER Release Notes 2021.1.3
Renderer
3. February, 2021
What’s new
Release 2021.1.3 focuses on quality of life improvements for the Cinema 4D integration. Notable new features are better default values for render settings, materials and lights.
- We have added a special U-Render layout to accelerate look development.
- New smart material presets come with ready to use material types that can be adjusted quickly. These smart presets reduce the number of parameters that need to be tweaked. Smart presets can be converted to a full advanced material at any time to allow access to all material features.
- We have added shortcuts to quickly create lights with attached U-Render tags. The lights have now improved default values.
- We made improvements to the default render settings. They reduce the steps necessary to achieve a better looking render result.
- We have made many smaller improvements and fixes to correctness that should improve the overall workflow with U-Render.
Changes & Improvements
- Fixed an issue where volumetrics brightened screen space reflections (TACH-1980)
- GPU shaders are now compiled in parallel which reduces starting time of the renderer (TACH-2055)
Cinema 4D Plug-in
Release 2021.1.3 focuses on quality of life improvements for the Cinema 4D integration. Notable new features are better default values for render settings, materials and lights.
- We have added a special U-Render layout to accelerate look development.
- New smart material presets come with ready to use material types that can be adjusted quickly. These smart presets reduce the number of parameters that need to be tweaked. Smart presets can be converted to a full advanced material at any time to allow access to all material features.
- We have added shortcuts to quickly create lights with attached U-Render tags. The lights have now improved default values.
- We made improvements to the default render settings. They reduce the steps necessary to achieve a better looking render result.
- We have made many smaller improvements and fixes to correctness that should improve the overall workflow with U-Render.
New Features
- Material previews are rendered even when live mode is on (TACH-1952)
- Improved UI text and default values for render settings (TACH-2019, TACH-2083)
- Improved default values for materials
- Improved default values for lights (TACH-2171)
- Improved default values for camera tag (TACH-2082)
- Added a custom U-Render layout for a streamlined workflow
- Added smart presets for different material types (gold, glass, glossy plastic, metallic paint, rough metal, chrome, dark rubber)
- Added shortcut commands to create light sources with U-Render tags already attached
- Added support for Viewport Solo in live mode (TACH-2057)
- Added an object / instance color render pass as experimental feature (TACH-2056)
- Applying a U-Render material to a selection now creates a selection tag (TACH-2015)
Changes & Improvements
- Materials are now correctly assigned when switching the material preview scene (TACH-1989)
- Fixed a potential hang up when switching the integrated renderer on and off quickly (TACH-2046)
- The material converter now supports undo. (TACH-2010)
- Changed render settings only updated in the live view after the left mouse button was released (TACH-1996)
- Live view now updates immediately when the “Frame Selected Elements” is used (TACH-1987)
- Creating a U-Render material did not automatically select in in the Material Manager (TACH-2093)
- Moved Material ID from the left column to its own channel (TACH-2101)
- Fixed an issue where live mode temporarily showed outdated content on start (TACH-2091)
- Fixed an issue where live mode went out of sync with updates that caused flickering as the update was not ready for the viewport update (TACH-2170)
- Fixed update issues of Boole generator in live mode (TACH-2140)
- Fixed update issues with modelling updates like extrude (TACH-2137)
- Fixed an issue with Sweep object growth that sometimes rendered geometry even though growth was set to zero (TACH-2114)
- Fixed an issue with updated of the Connect generator (TACH-2011)
- Mesh under a subdivision object will disappear when a material tag on a polygon selection is deleted (TACH-2164)
- Improved the status display what the renderer is doing in live mode (TACH-2165)
- Applying several U-Render materials to an object now stacks them just like standard Cinema 4D materials. Previously they overwrote the assignment when using Shift-LMB. (TACH-2096)
- Improved update performance for objects with high polygon counts, especially when used with instances (TACH-2120)
U-RENDER 2020.9.2 Release Notes
U-Render 2020.9.2 is now fully integrated into Cinema 4D. You no longer need to have the standalone renderer running. With the full integration of U-Render into Cinema 4D you can now show the live rendering in the Cinema 4D viewport.
Renderer
This version also adds RGB curves to the color correction post processing filter.
New Features
- Post Effects
- RGB curves have been added to the color correction post processing filter (1860)
Changes & Improvements
- Reflections
- Screen-space reflections now show specular and environment reflections on reflected objects (1838)
- Volumetrics
- Shadow colors can now be enabled to affect volumetric shadows as well (1455)
- Fixed black artefacts when the volumetric clipping plane was smaller than the camera’s near plane (1705)
- Materials
- Clear-coat’s glossiness/roughness texture blend mode did not work properly (1854)
- Clear-coat’s environment reflection was missing when the reflectance channel was disabled (1855)
C4D Plug-in
New Features
- Full Integration into Cinema 4D
- The renderer is now included with the plug-in. No standalone renderer is required but can still be used optionally.
- U-Render live preview is now fully integrated into the Cinema 4D viewport.
Changes & Improvements
- Improvements to the full integration with Cinema 4D since the preview.
- Background object rendering now works in the viewport (1857)
- Eliminated freezes when “Use as Render View” is enabled in a different view panel (1851)
U-RENDER 2020.06.04 Release Notes
Renderer Changes & Improvements
In U-RENDER 2020.6.4 we introduce a major new feature with real-time subsurface scattering.
With the newly introduced subsurface scattering and translucency properties for U-Render’s physically-based materials, you can now create believable materials like skin, marble, milk, and many more organic materials.
New Features
- Introducing Subsurface Scattering and Translucency (1728)
Changes & Improvements
- Fog post effect now works correctly with height falloff. Fog is no longer experimental. (1719)
- Licensing: License management dialog now can show localhost ids (1760)
- FXAA anti-aliasing was not correctly used with multi-pass rendering (1759)
- Added analysis of anonymous usage data for future product improvements (1735)
- Fixed black artifacts with subsurface scattering (1757)
- Fixed NaNs (not a number) errors with high subsurface scattering depth falloff values (1779)
- Subsurface scattering wrap lighting now works with area lights (1770)
- Post-processing color correction produced a different result with 32-bit color depth. Now uses sRGB color space. (1775)
Renderer Changes & Improvements
In U-RENDER 2020.6.4 we introduce a major new feature with real-time subsurface scattering.
With the newly introduced subsurface scattering and translucency properties for U-Render’s physically-based materials, you can now create believable materials like skin, marble, milk, and many more organic materials.
New Features
- Introducing Subsurface Scattering and Translucency (1728)
Changes & Improvements
- Fog post effect now works correctly with height falloff. Moved the fog settings to the Environment render settings. Fog is no longer experimental. (1719)
- Changing a primitive’s parameters (e.g. cube size) using the viewport handles did not update in the renderer (1763)
- UVs: Camera projection UV type did not work (1767)
- Light Tag: moved subsurface scale into shadows group (1768)
U-RENDER 2020.04.04 Release Notes
U-RENDER 2020.04.04 introduces support for Cinema 4D S22 and improves correctness.
Renderer Changes & Improvements
Scenes with many materials caused the renderer to hang (1740)
Cinema 4D Plug-in New Features
Support for Cinema 4D S22
Changes & Improvements
Fixed a UI issue in the tone-mapping render settings (1733)
U-RENDER 2020.04.03 Release Notes
3 April 2020
U-RENDER 2020.04.03 introduces real-time color corrections and falloff (attenuation) for emissive materals. It further improves correctness and performance.
Renderer
New Features
Real-time Color Correction (1715)
Falloff for emissive materials (398)
We made it easier to give feedback by adding a feedback button (1730)
Changes & Improvements
Alpha channel can now be anti-aliased when using multi-frame sampling (1722)
Cinema 4D Plug-in
New Features
German localization of UI (1717)
Real-time Color Correction (1713)
Falloff (attenuation) for emissive materials (398)
Changes & Improvements
Changing background-color or settings on background object did not always update correctly (1720)
Visibility of background object is now respected (1720)
When texture search paths had many nested folders or were on slow drives (e.g. network drives) it took a long time to parse settings, especially when no images were set. (1725)
U-RENDER 2019.12 Release Notes
December 2019
U-RENDER 2019.12 introduces an improved material converter that now can convert U-RENDER materials back into Cinema 4D materials.
Overview
The new material converter allows users to switch back to other renderers more easily, improving the pipeline integration of U-RENDER.
This release also adds the choice of texture sampling method for all material texture. The point, linear, bilinear and anisotropic are supported.
This release introduces translations for Japanese in the Cinema 4D Plug-in.
Additional changes improve performance and correctness.
Renderer
New Features
Added sampling method for material textures. The point, Linear, Bilinear and Anisotropic are supported. (1375)
Changes & Improvements
Improved image and texture handing. (1542)
Fixed contrast behavior in displacement channel (1555)
Non-default phase values for a single cube Volume Object resulted in artifacts (1574)
Combining film offset with overscan did not work (1578)
Activating ambient occlusion multi-pass caused issues with the RGBA pass (1580)
Various fixes and improvements (1552, 1554)
Render time display in the status bar did not show the actual render time (1606)
Cinema 4D Plug-in
New Features
U-RENDER to Cinema 4D Material converter (649)
Japanese Language support for the user interface (1613)
Added Strength slider for emissive material properties to allow the brightness only affects the color but not the overall emission – strength. The strength now also affects the emissive texture. (1618, 1620)
Changes & Improvements
Performance improvements for scene parsing (1586)
parametric objects where parsed even though they did not change – especially with unsaved scenes – which resulted in severe – performance degradation (1587, 1590)
Material displacement affected performance even though the global render setting had displacement disabled (1584)
fixed an issue, where material preview rendering caused an issue with the scene rendered in the picture viewer (1591)
Fixed an issue where the standalone renderer was not detected to be running by the Cinema 4D Plug-in (1610)
U-RENDER 2019.11 Release Notes
November 2019
Renderer
New Features
Volumetric Rendering with support for volume objects and volumetric noises
Shadows now interact with transparent objects (1399)
Changes & Improvements
Improved shadow cascade fitting (1549)
Improved performance and VRAM usage with single sided area lights (1421)
Showing used VRAM and peak VRAM use in the statusbar (1359)
Showing an warning icon in the status bar if there are OpenGL errors (1359)
Fixes
Various improvements to hardware specific behavior for both AMD and NVIDIA (1519)
Fixed crashes when loading large HDR images (1359)
Cinema 4D Plug-in
New Features
Added render settings for volumetric rendering
Added Volume Object with layer and cube mode and support for 3d noise
Added Volumetric Shadow options to light tag
U-RENDER 2019.10.06 Release Notes
6 October 2019
U-RENDER 2019.10.06 is a service release that improves performance, stability, and correctness and improves license management.
This release requires a valid license to work and no longer runs in demo mode without a license. A free 30-day license is available upon request.
Improvements
Improved license management handling [1364]
Improved license management UI [1495]
The additional parameter in simple fog post effect that controls its effect on the background [1460]
Fixes
Fixed OpenGL errors that could occur in live mode with activated multi-frame sampling. [1533]
U-RENDER 2019.09.01 Release Notes
1 September 2019
U-RENDER 2019.09.01 is a service release that improves performance, stability, and correctness and introduces support for Cinema 4D R21.
Renderer
Fixes
area-light shadows single-sided [1419]
Fog color on background changes with camera distance [1187]
bloom causes blocky artifacts (caused by INF numbers from transparent objects) [1450]
various other improvements
Cinema 4D Plug-in
Changes & Improvements
improved performance: render only one-sided shadow map for single-sided area-lights [1421]
improved performance with material shader baking in live-mode [1420]
improved performance when changing texture tag settings on high polygon objects [1377]
support for selection tags from Voronoi Object [1258]
various other improvements to live mode performance and correctness
Fixes
Banding artifacts when rendering 8-bit multi-frame images [1395]
Dynamics Cache did not load when U-RENDER was installed [1406]
Global Shadow Settings did not update correctly [1094]
Cinema 4D UI locks when opening console immediately after activating live-mode [1418]
live mode: loft, sweep, lathe generators geometry updates properly in live-mode [1246]
live mode: putting a light source as a child to a camera is not updating when moving the camera [1360]
live mode: fixed live move sync issues that sometimes occurred when starting live mode for the first time [1255]
live mode: wrong rotation axis when scrubbing the timeline [1398]
live mode: when disabling updates for geometry, the geometry disappeared in the renderer [1374]
fixed: Increasing render time when rendering image sequences with animated materials in texture tags [1365]
improved Xref performance and fixed wrong Xref object position [1394]
Camera sensor size was not properly transferred for the depth of field [1438]
fixed banding in picture viewer when changing from TIFF 8-bit to EXR 32-bit [1440]
U-Render caused a crash when GI was enabled in Standard/Physical Render (in R16, R17, R18 only) [1447]
U-RENDER 2019.06 Release Notes
June 2019
2019.06 major new feature is the support for 360° spherical camera rendering. In addition, there are improvements to the physically-based materials, overscan rendering and dashboard improvements for Live Mode. This release also includes a number of improvements in incorrectness and stability.
Overview
Introducing 360° Spherical Camera Rendering
Improved physically based materials: Clear Coat now supports its own normal map layer
Improved Live Mode Dashboard: Added Controls for Live Mode Render Resolution
Introducing: Overscan Rendering
360° Spherical Camera Rendering
Create Videos for Dome Projections and Planetariums
Create Immersive Experiences for Events and Shows
Stand out with 360° Images and Videos on Social Media (Facebook and Youtube)
Create Environment Maps for your Projects
Limitations of Spherical Rendering
Most screenspace effects show discontinuities between rendering fragments. This can largely be mitigated by using overscan rendering.
GTAO ambient occlusion is extremely dependent on the viewspace and does not work with spherical rendering. Use SSAO instead.
Clear-Coat Improvements
Separate normal maps for the clear coat layer allow for
enhanced details in car paints – use separate normal maps for metal flakes and coating
use the clear coat to quickly create effects like water droplets
use different surface normal properties for the base and clear coat layers
Dashboard Improvements
The Dashboard now allows you to control your Live mode render resolution
use the viewport resolution (identical to the current behavior)
use the render settings output resolution
use a custom resolution
The percentage setting allows for additional quick control over the resolution.
Overscan Rendering
Render additional image information outside the visible frame to improve screen space effects like:
screen space reflections
ambient occlusion
refraction of a transparent object at image borders
bloom
Renderer
New Features
1254 – 360° Spherical Camera rendering support
1299 – additional normal map layer for clear coat
1315 – optional overscan rendering to improve screen-space effects
Fixes
1279 – Fixed banding artifacts in multi-pass rendering
1310 – at certain render resolutions, the clear coat produced black artifacts
1312 – V-Sync status does not show correctly in the status bar
1321 – meshes sometimes loose material assignment (only Cinema 4D materials) when switching between cameras
1329 – front, top & right orthographic projections showed empty render result
What’s new in U-Render 2019.05.04 (Beta)
4 May 2019
U-RENDER 2019.05.04 is a service release that improves correctness and stability.
It includes improvements for Live Mode and fixes a license activation issue.
Fixes
[1331] License Activation does not store the retrieved license file
[1305] Live Mode: some object might disappear when selecting them
[1327] Live Mode: Instance transforms only update when instance itself is selected
What’s new in U-Render 2019.05.01 (Beta)
U-Render Standalone
2019.05.01 improves stability and correctness.
Major improvements focus on better multi-lingual support and scene parsing.
With enhanced Unicode support for characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) issues with certain Cyrillic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters in file paths should be fixed.
Changes & Improvements
[1252] Enhanced Multi-language support with Unicode support outside the Basic Multilingual Plane
[1251, 1280] Improved handling of image gamma when loading textures
[1261] Renderer restores its last used window position
[1275] Improved ID handling for scenes to combat certain synchronization problems.
Fixes
[1264] fixed an issue where a motion-blurred instance could disappear in the last frame of a sequence
[1286] fixed a possible memory leak with animated mesh deformations
[1303] displacements stopped working when transparency was enabled
U-Render Cinema 4D Plug-in
Changes & Improvements
[1306] Improved scene parsing for Connect object. Material assignments and animations (deformers, baked simulations) had issues in certain situations.
[1301] Dashboard settings are no longer stored in a hidden “DashboardSettingsObj” object
[1311] Fixed some scene parsing issues with cached dynamics that caused objects to disappear during a second render pass.
Fixes
[1270, 1282] Multipass Rendering: The RGBA pass was active by default and was toggled to inactive when changing other passes.
[1287] Multipass Rendering: Increasing the render resolution resulted in incomplete multipass render results.
[1297] Restarting U-RENDER during Live Mode could result in a crash due to synchronization issues
What’s new in U-Render 2019.03.01 (Beta)
1 May 2019
U-Render Standalone
Please update the Cinema 4D plug-in to 2019.03.01 as well! Older plug-in versions will not work.
Changes & Improvements
various internal improvements [1155, 1212]
Fixes
[1210] Motion blur now works better with transparent objects.
[1214] Fixed Screenspace Reflection flickering that occured in certain situations.
[1224] Fixed black rendering artefacts on transparent objects that have malformed geometry.
[1226] Fixed bad viewport culling that happened with orthographic cameras that used film offset.
[1233] Infinite light disappeared from rendering when its shadows were enabled.
[1236] Fixed an error where Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion did not work with transparent objects.
[1240] Activation/Deactivation of light sources in scenes with more lights could result in shadow artefacts.
U-Render Cinema 4D Plug-in
2019.03 introduces major improvements for Live Mode. At the center of the improvements lies the U-RENDER Dashboard that provides granular control over how scene data is updated for rendering.
You can separately enable updates for:
Transforms (object positions, orientation and scale)
Camera updates
Light updates
Material updates
Geometry updates (object deformations, newly created geometry)
Instance updates
Render settings
Make sure to check out the new Dashboard. We recommend that you dock the Dashboard in your default layout so that you have immediate access to it.
Note for R20 users: Please make sure you have version 20.057 of Cinema 4D R20 installed. The plug-in will not work with older version of R20.
Please Update the standalone to 2019.03.01 as well! Older renderer versions will not work.
Changes & Improvements
[1193] Multi-Frame Samples can now adjusted in single steps instead of “power of two”. This is more intuitive and allows finer control over sample count, image quality and render time.
[1212] Improvements to scene parsing for Live Mode.
[1228] Improved Layer visibility support.
[1216] additional internal improvements.
[1242] Live Mode: Objects with several material tags caused material updates during UNDO operations for all materials even though they are not affecting the object. This could cause noticeable slowdowns in certain situations.
Fixes
[1217] Removed background tone mapping option from Render Settings (it no longer had an effect).
[1220] Live Mode crashed when moving instance / multi instance objects.
[1222] Material UI: Limited subdivision level of displacements to 64. Larger values had no effect.
[1225] Live Mode: when activating live mode with an animated camera that has been changed but not keyframed yet, the modified position was not used but the old keyframed position was transferred.
[1229] Fixed an error with Multi-pass rendering that resulted in “Oops, there was an error” image.
[1230] Fixed an error with Multi-pass object buffers that resulted in empty passes when the object had no material assigned and fixed an empty “Object Buffer 0”.
[1231] Live Mode: Environment Maps still were used for rendering after they were removed from the render settings.
[1232] Live Mode: activating and deactivating diffuse IBL did not update properly.
[1235] Switching to a scene with U-RENDER materials that bake Cinema 4D shaders froze Cinema 4D.
[1237] Live Mode: subdivision surface objects had sync issues when subdivision settings for editor and renderer were set differently.
[1238] Live Mode: Materials disappeared when selecting objects.
[1239] Material previews where rendered in linear color space when render settings were set to 32-bit linear output format and the gamma set to use the output gamma.
[1241] Live Mode: Transformation changes within instanced hierarchies did not update.
[1249] Material Editor preview image did not update properly when changing preview scene preset.
[1250] Live Mode: Fixed disappearing multi-instances when instance syncing was disabled.
What’s new in U-Render 2019.01.17 (Beta)
17 January 2019
U-RENDER Standalone
Fixes
[1192] – Camera jitters when scene scale is larger. Fixed general transformation precision issues.
[1202] – Motion blur direction is wrong in certain situations.
[1203] – Incorrect motion blur when rendering a single frame.
[1207] – Objects on layers with render visibility on were always visible.
U-RENDER Cinema 4D Plug-In
Fixes
[1192] – Camera jitters when scene scale is larger. Fixed general transformation precision issues.
[1208] – Update Check Dialog no longer blocks UI.
2019-Jan-15 Beta
A notable new feature in this release is the addition of Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion. Furthermore, materials have received additional channel selection controls for textures and a number of bugs have been fixed.
U-RENDER Standalone
New Features
[1136] – New Improved Ambient Occlusion Method (GTAO)
Fixes
[1194] [1196] [1198] – Fixed artefacts with screen-space reflections in certain situations
[1190] – screen-space reflections do not render at certain render resolutions
[1170] – GPU system information is working again
various other fixes and improvements
U-RENDER Cinema 4D Plug-In
New Features
[1136] – Added Settings for new GTAO Ambient Occlusion
Improvements
[1163] – added texture channel selections for Transparency (Opacity and Blurriness), Reflectance Glossiness/Roughness and Bump Height
Fixes
[1149] – Live Mode: wrong synchronization of light visibility when multiple lights are selected
Tutorials
Subsurface Scattering on Abstract Scenes - U-RENDER
Angela from U-Render shows you how to create an Abstract Flower using Subsurface Scattering in Cinema 4D with U-RENDER.
More...Elbow Crab Workflow: U-Render, ZBrush, Substance Designer, C4D
Get an in-depth look at working with 3D scanned objects, including retopologize, UV-layout, texturing, rigging, and animating. And, create an elbow crab.
More...U-RENDER Subsurface Scattering Overview
In the U-RENDER 2020.6.4 update, Uppercut introduced real-time subsurface scattering. Learn how to use and set up subsurface scattering.
More...3 U-RENDER Quick Tips
U-RENDER is one of the newer renderers available for Cinema 4D, and furthermore, it's 10% off at Toolfarm through April 30, 2019.
More...U-RENDER / Substance Workflow
The Substance Workflow tutorial explains how the Substance Designer integration with Cinema 4D to create physically based U-RENDER materials. Speed up your texturing workflow with real-time rendering with U-RENDER.
More...Cinema 4D and U-Render
This continues our series on Cinema 4D and third-party renderers. U-Render is no longer in beta and is available at Toolfarm
More...Tutorial: Cinema 4D and U-Render
We are continuing our series on Cinema 4D and third-party renderers and U-Render is our focus for today. U-render is no longer in beta and is available at Toolfarm.
More...
