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CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – MOCCA
No part of the polygon mesh should be moved after the “Skin Object” is turned off. This means that the actiation
of the Skin Object itself constitutes a deformation. However, we want the deformation of the polygon mesh
to be caused by the character’s movement. Try turning the Skin Object off. The mesh will jump away from the
joints. This can, however, be rectified in just a couple of steps:
Leave the Skin Object turned off and move the Pole Vector back up (Y-direction) until it is at the same height
as the elbow (as viewed from the front). You will see that the joints will abandon their position and that the
polygon mesh will ignor this alltogether. Unfortunately our joints no longer have the correct position and
protrude through the mesh.
This can be rectified by selecting the “Joint Object.3.Target” and “Hand.Target” objects and moving them
slightly forward and down. Use the perspective view to make sure that the joints are back within the mesh.
Now click on the “Weight” tag to the right of the “body” mesh in the Object Manager and go to the “Joints”
tab. Select all three joints and select the “Tag” tab. Click on “Set Pose” and you’re done. Now our mesh no
longer jumps when the Skin Object is turned on and our Pole Vector is where we want it - derectly below the
“elbow joint”.
Although joints in R11 are generally faster than in R10.x, you can speed things up further in the editor by setting
the Skin object’s “Type” (Object tab) to “Linear” (remember the Skin object from before? It’s a child object of
the deforming mesh that takes over the deformation for the joints). The “Linear” deformation is calculated faster
than the “Spherical” method, but the results are not as good. “Spherical” achieves better results by preventing
the mesh from shrinking. Simply switch the “Type” back to “Spherical” before rendering your animation.
4. Quick Tutorial – Visual Selector
Next, we’ll take a look at the Visual Selector, which is designed to save you time when selecting your character’s
controller objects. Suppose you’ve fully rigged your character and you’re ready to animate. At the top in the
Object Manager, you have your hand and foot targets, and nested deep within the hierarchy are the Morph tags,
Pole Vectors, hip and head joints, target for eyes, and so on. Finding the various controls can slow you down
substantially while you are animating. As a character animator, you’ll want to concentrate on the essentials so
that you can quickly take the next step without having to rummage around for the tools you need.
This is where Visual Selector can help. With Visual Selector, you only need to search for the controllers once:
when you create your Visual Selector interface.
Start a new scene (File/New) and add a cube (Objects/Primitive/Cube). In principle, it doesn’t matter which
object you choose because the Visual Selector tag can go on any object. In the Object Manager, right-click on
the cube and choose Character Tags/Visual Selector to add a Visual Selector tag to the cube. The Visual Selector
interface opens automatically. Here we can see the default Visual Selector background with a character in front
in a typical character setup pose with enlarged hands and feet.