Environment Creation for Cinema 4D (P2): Xfrog

Xfrog is a procedural organic 3D modeller that allows you to create and animate 3d trees, flowers, nature based special effects or architectural forms. Xfrog was originally developed by Oliver Deussen and Bernd Lintermann while at the University of Karlsruhe based on their research into natural systems and systematic processes found in nature in 1996. Since then, Xfrog’s plants have been featured in over 100 Films and they were nominated for a Scientific Oscar for contribution to the development of digital plants in film. Xfrog is available as a plug-in for Maya, Cinema 4D and as a standalone application.

Let’s find out about Xfrog and its plugin for Cinema 4D with iRender today.

Xfrog components make it easy to build plants, organic shapes or abstract objects. Below you will find a list of the different components and what they can do for you.

• Branch Object is for easily setting up elaborate multi-level branching structures with numerous parameters to give them a natural look.
• The Phyllotaxis Object arranges other Objects on an abitrary surface of revolution, according to the rules of nature (golden section).
• The Hydra Object arranges Objects in a circular pattern.
• The Curvature Object creates Splines which can be used as a basis for naturally curved leafs or twigs.
• The Variation Object allows you to use multiply different Objects with Branch, Phyllotaxis and Hydra.
• The Tropism Object lets your spline-based objects bend towards an abitrary direction or position.
• The Deviation Object is a simple way to add natural detail to your Branches, by deviating a Branch Object at the places where other Branches emerge.

XfrogPlants are realistic, highly detailed, fully textured 3D trees, shrubs, and flowers, carefully modeled with Xfrog procedural software. They have 6,000 plants with 600 species available in libraries or as individual species.

XfrogPlants can be used inside a lot of 3D software, renderers and formats: Maya, 3ds Max, Vue, Cinema 4D, Modo, Blender, Unreal, Unity, Terragen, Vray, and many more.

Xfrog for Cinema 4D offers several components that you can use to build plants, organic shapes or abstract objects.

Branch
The Branch component by default creates a branch like shape and is capable of multiplying child objects. To create a branching structure you can combine several Branch components.
The Branch component can also be used to create leaves, just replace the Profile spline.

Phyllotaxis
The Phyllotaxis component is a so called multiplier. Child objects are arranged on a surface of revolution, by default a sphere. This surface is defined by a spline (default: Arc spline) which is rotated along the longitudinal axis. If you want to visualize this surface of revolution, just copy the spline and use it inside a Lathe NURBS object.

Hydra
The Hydra component is a so called multiplier. Child objects are arranged in a circular manner around the center of the Hydra.

Variation
The Variation component can be used to create variations of multiplied objects. Different modes like random or spread are availlable.

Curvature
The Curvature component is a new spline object that can be used inside the Branch component, but also in typical Cinema 4D objects (Sweep NURBS just to name one).
When you use the Curvature component as path spline for a Branch component, then you can simulate the behaviour of the Xfrog 3.5 Horn component.

Tropism
In contrast to Xfrog 3.5, the Tropism is handled as a separate object in Xfrog 5. The new Tropism object also offers some more features compared to Xfrog 3.5.

Deviation
Similar to Tropism, Deviation is a separate object that you can use to deform the path spline of a Branch component.

Xfrog Cinema 4D adds seven procedural Objects to Cinema 4D. By combining Xfrog Objects with each other and with any Cinema 4D Objects, you can quickly create very realistic organic models and animations far beyond the built-in capabilities of Cinema 4D. All Xfrog components can be animated by varying their parameters: Growth, number of branches, strength of attraction, gravitropism, or phototropism, and each parameter of every Xfrog component can be animated! With this flexibility, Xfrog can animate things like blossoming flowers or trees growing from seed to adult.

• OS: Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.
• Xfrog for CINEMA 4D is available for Cinema 4D R10, R11, 12, R13, R15, R17, R19, R20, R21/S22, R23.
• Windows installations require Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.
• Mac OS installations require Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher.

iRender is a GPU-Acceleration Cloud Rendering Service for Multi-GPU Rendering with Powerful Render Nodes: 2/4/6x RTX 3090/3080/2080Ti, provides high computing performance on the model of IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). Cinema 4D users can easily choose their machine configuration from recommended system requirements to high-end options, which suit all your project demands and will speed up your rendering process many times.

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• 10/24 GB vRAM capacity, fitting to the heaviest images and scenes. NVLink/SLI requested for bigger vRAM.
• A RAM capacity of 128/256 GB.
• Storage (NVMe SSD): 512GB/1TB.
• Intel Xeon W-2245 or AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX CPU with a high clock speed of 3.90GHz.

Let’s see rendering tests with Cinema 4D and different renderers on servers (4/6x RTX 3090) at iRender:

iRender provides high-end configuration at a reasonable price. You can see that iRender’s package always costs much cheaper than packages of other render farms (in performance/price ratio). Moreover, iRender’s clients will enjoy many attractive promotions and discounts. For example, this November, we offer a promotion for new users and discounted prices for many servers, users will take advantage of these to level up their renders.

For Cinema 4D users with large-scale projects, iRender offers the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly Fixed Rental packages, which saves you up to 50% of the cost compared to the hourly rental. Please read more about our Fixed rental service here.

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In addition, users can request extra services to make full use of iRender servers, for example, expand image threshold, increase the size of network drive (Z:), open port, install NVLink, and change hardware. Surprisingly, you get all of these services for free.

Xfrog creates 3d and 2d models of plants for you to use in your feature films, commercials, and landscape architecture. With all the outstanding advantages mentioned above, you must have found yourself the perfect choice for Cinema 4D and Xfrog projects. We believe together with Cinema 4D and Xfrog, our GPU accelerated servers will bring greater interactivity and speed to artist workflows. What users can get from iRender is not only the best quality products but also the high security and the most comfortable render time.

So, do not hesitate anymore, let’s REGISTER for an account today to get a FREE COUPON to experience our service and reach a new level of cloud rendering.

Thank you & Happy Rendering!

Source and image: xfrog.com, maxon.net