"Take System" like in C4D for easy multiple shots rendering
Hi Blender Dev Team,
I’d like to propose a feature that I believe would significantly enhance Blender’s workflow for professional productions. As someone who uses Blender in a professional environment, I often find myself needing to render multiple variations of the same project—different camera angles, animation sequences, with different lighting setups and render settings, and than, after the clients feedback re-render them multiple times.
A Take System, similar to what Cinema 4D offers, would allow users to save multiple takes within the same project file, with unique settings for each. This would include:
Object visibility
Material overrides
Active camera
Render settings (including resolution)
Active Lights
Animation start/end frames
Active render passes
Currently, managing these different setups can be cumbersome, and the workarounds don’t always offer the flexibility required. A robust Take system would streamline the process and make it far easier to handle complex projects with multiple render variations.
I’d also like to note that some years ago, I also suggested (along with others) having a clickable "camera select" icon next to the camera objects in the Outliner to set a camera as active, inspired also by Cinema 4D’s interface. That feature was implemented and has become an integral part of Blender’s usability—thank you for that! I hope this new suggestion can have a similar impact.
Keep up the good work guys, you are doing a great job on Blender!
Best regards, Imre
7 Comments
I do agree with that, we currently working on a big project with 30 illustrations which should be done in C4D, but we intend to do it in Blender because we want to leave C4D for good, but… without a solid takes system it's a bit tricky…
I (as many other Blender users) don't know C4D, so it's not clear how you plan to manage those properties. I'm in product design, and I always make configurations (of those properties an many others), since Blender provide all the tools to do it; and they don't seem to be cumbersome to me. But I'm aware that could be better systems that we just can't imagine, so please explain those systems. BTW BlenderBob already showcased some examples of how he would do it in Maya; is it the same for C4D?
Okay, let me give you a concrete example. I have a Blender project with a car and a truck. I need several separate animations for the truck and the car, as well as some together, plus I also need static and moving images of the components inside the vehicles. For example, one where the car stops, and the break system inside become visible. Both vehicles need two different shaders, one normal and one holographic, transparent shader.
I have, let’s say, only 6 cameras and only 8 different setups, including close-ups, wide shots, vertical and horizontal shots. In some, I need to show just the car, in others the car and a few components, or just the truck, or truck parts, or the entire scene.
In Cinema 4D, I can organize all of these into Takes so when I am done with one setup I save it into a take (like a collection or scene). When I need to render something, I can easily activate the specific Take from the 8 available, and I’m ready to render with just one click. All settings are saved in the Take.
In Blender, as far as I know, I have two options: either create eight different projects for the eight Takes, which is a nightmare in production, (where we usually save the project incremental every day and we have many other projects running parallel) or I must always manually toggle everything on and off, hoping I don’t forget anything. This is why I said it's cumbersome. I speak from scenes with hundreds of components.
The Scene option in Blender isn't suitable either because the objects are either fully linked or fully independent. If the two scenes are linked, I can’t activate different elements separately in each scene, nor different cameras or materials on one object. If they are fully independent, they won’t update, if I change something, which is most of the time the case. So if a client decides to change the car model, for example, and the new model needs to be in all animations, I have to update every single scene manually.
In Cinema 4D, these things are separated into Takes, but you can still decide what information to share between them later. So, staying with the example, if I replace the car model, I can choose "update in all takes" or only in Take 1, 2, and 7. The same applies to shaders, lighting settings, and render settings. You can select what should be automatically updated and what shouldn't across different Takes.
Let's say in Take 1 I need a close-up animation of the car from frame 1 to frame 210 with car paint shader, while in Take 2, I need a zoom in to the interior of the car with the Holo shader from frame 180 to frame 300 with a different camera. All this can be saved in a Take, and when you click on that Take, all settings are there. This is just another layer of organizing things, specifically for rendering.
I completely agree. I worked in C4D for nearly two years, and the Take System is arguably the feature I miss the most. While I found the hierarchical structure had its own downsides, it is definitely the main anchor keeping users from switching to Blender.
The good news is that I am currently finalizing a solution that bridges this gap. I'm in the polishing phase of a new Blender addon designed to handle exactly these kinds of complex render setups. It combines the best of both worlds to solve the workflow issues you described. I really believe this will be the missing piece that finally allows C4D users to make the switch.
Stay tuned for more.
We're found "Shot manager", which is almost the C4D take system. Not as simple as C4D but honestly it does the job. We managed the 30 illustrations I talked about with not big issues. The hardest was to understand the way I works :p
There is an urgent need for this feature.
Hi, it's already in process. Public Beta goes soon live.