Because I intended to use Unreal Engine for rendering, I spent a significant amount of time testing how different Cinema 4D systems would transfer into Unreal.
I tested:
- Datasmith / Cineware
- Alembic
- Geometry Cache
- deformers
- Bend
- Extrude
- Volume Mesher
- Booleans
- Matrix
- Cloner
- MoGraph Cache
- splines
- sweeps
I started with very simple tests, such as an animated cube, before gradually increasing the complexity.
A useful discovery was that many Cinema 4D deformers could be transferred successfully because Cineware baked the deformation into the imported geometry.
This suggested a much more efficient workflow:
Cinema 4D — animation and procedural systems
Unreal Engine — lighting, rendering and final look development
This meant I would not necessarily need to rebuild complex animation systems inside Unreal.
However, the stitching tests also revealed that not everything visible inside Cinema 4D could be exported successfully. Some Redshift-driven effects did not exist as conventional animated geometry and therefore did not survive the pipeline.
Although these tests involved several failed attempts, they were extremely useful because they clarified which parts of the project were technically viable.