This Can't Be Unreal!? | The C4D To Unreal Workflow

‍Get your scene out of Cinema 4D and into Unreal Engine without losing all the hard work you’ve already done.

One of the biggest things that holds people back from learning Unreal Engine is the fear that you’ll be wasting all that time and hard work you’ve spent learning Cinema 4D. However, that isn’t the case at all. Your C4D knowledge will be paramount when it comes to working in Unreal Engine. The two go hand in hand.

Unreal Engine currently has quite a few different limitations when it comes to modeling, UV texturing, and in most cases even rigging. In a lot of ways, Unreal should be looked at as a really awesome real-time (or path-traced if you choose to go that route) render engine with some added functionality and bells and whistles. This means you’ll want to do a whole lot of your work in your DCC of choice, and send all of your assets into Unreal, rather than doing everything inside. 

However, sometimes that’s a bit easier said than done, and there are some little quirks that you’ll need to know about. In the above video, Jonathan Winbush gives you the run-down on all of the appropriate ways to get your scene from Cinema 4D into Unreal, while still holding on to all the important stuff. 

The New Cineware Plugin

Before doing anything, you’ll want to make sure you’ve installed the new Cineware plugin from Maxon, which will make everything so much easier.

The plugin will allow you natively export certain things from your Cinema 4D scene into Unreal Engine. You can import your C4D project directly into your content browser inside of Unreal. This will really only apply to things like cameras, lights, and certain objects like nulls. 

This will allow you to retain your camera animation and things like that. If nothing else, sometimes it’s incredibly useful to have the position data from certain objects in your scene. The Cineware Plugin will help you with that.