New in Cinema 4D R19: Release 19 Polygon Reduction

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  • Duration: 03:32
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  • Made with Release: 19
  • Works with Release: 19 and greater

In CINEMA 4D R19 the Polygon Reduction workflow has been completely re-worked from the ground up.

Polygon reduction has gone through a significant overhaul in CINEMA 4D R19. The workflow has changed from a deformer based workflow to a generator based workflow, while expanding on the functionality, giving you much better control over the resulting polygon count as well as the overall quality. Under the hood the reduction is cached, making it easier to try different levels of reduction with ease.

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In Cinema 4D Release 19, polygon reduction has gone through a major overhaul, moving polygon reduction to a generator instead of a deformer like in previous versions. When an object is placed under the generator, it will go through a pre-processing phase where the geometry you wish to reduce is created. This can take several moments depending on the number of polygons in your original object. Once the pre-processing is finished, you can start adjusting the polygon count. This can be done either through the reduction strength slider or by manually setting a value in one of the three Edit fields. As you adjust these values, the reduction will happen fairly quickly, as the generator's accessing the cache that was created earlier. Now the one big thing that becomes obvious fairly quickly, is that the UV's of the object being reduced are now being maintained. UV's aren't the only thing that are going to be maintained. The generator also does its best to maintain vertex maps, and upon converting a polygon reduction object, the selections that have been created as well. There are also a few additional options inside of the attributes for this generator and it should be warned that changing any of these will cause the cache to be rebuilt, as they change the way that the reduction will be performed. The first option is to preserve 3D boundaries. 3D boundaries represent the open edges of a model. When Preserve 3D Boundaries is active, the open edges of the model will be preserved as best as possible based on the boundary reduction angle. A smaller value will result in better preservation of these edges, while a larger value will result in more reduction. If Preserve 3D Boundaries is deactivated, the boundaries of the object will no longer be maintained. This can allow for greater reduction of your object. The next option is to preserve the UV boundaries. UV boundaries represent the seams in the UV map that is created for your object. When the option is turned off, you can see that the reduction can be fairly uniform, but when looking at a model that has the Preserve UV Boundaries turned on, you can see that the seam where different UV islands are created is fully maintained. The results of the Preserve UV Boundaries can also be seen by looking at the UV maps created after converting the polygon reduction generator. The 'Reduce all generator children as one object' checkbox changes the way that the reduction strength functions. By default, this option is turned off. This means that each object that is a child of the polygon reduction generator is going to be reduced by the full reduction strength. This means that objects like the antler, which have a lower subdivision level to begin with, can be reduced more. When this checkbox is enabled, all of the objects in the generator are going to be considered as one object. This checkbox is handy to use when you have objects with different polygon densities, as objects that start with lower polygon counts will be reduced less, making for a more even distribution of polygons across the reduced object. So, with Cinema 4D R19, polygon reduction has been elevated to a whole new level while maintaining your textures, selections and vertex maps. Be sure to check out the other videos on cineversity.com to find out more about the other great features in Cinema 4D Release 19.
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