11.0

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

Multi-Pass really comes to shine when it’s used with animated scenes. What Photoshop does

for single images, compositing programs do for animations. After Effects and Combustion are

two of these programs. Editing software such as Final Cut lets you edit image layers as well.

CINEMA 4D works with all of these programs, partly over special export plugins which offer an extensive number

of settings. You can change a color in a 15-minute animation in seconds.

12. Quick Tutorial – XPresso

Expressions let you set dependencies for object properties. In other words, you can use rules to automate

a scene: “When object A performs action B object C should perform action D.“ MAXON created XPresso so

you don’t have to enter these expressions manually. XPresso is a graphic interface which puts an end to the

cumbersome act of typing code. XPresso lets you create expressions using drag & drop which is simple (and

can even be fun) and offers enough functionality to be able to solve just about any problem. We will now take

a look at what this problem solving looks like. In this tutorial we will build a kind of telescopic arm.

Open a new scene. Create three cylinders (objects / primitives / cylinder). Rename them into “cylinder_small”,

“cylinder_medium” and “cylinder_big”. In the Attribute Manager set the radius of “cylinder_medium” to 45,

the radius of “cylinder_small” should be 40.

We now have three cylinders with different radii in the scene. Our goal will be a telescopic effect by pulling

the smallest cylinder up while keeping the medium cylinder dead center as it moves with the smallest cylinder.

This is a case for XPresso!

Apply a new XPresso tag. The quickest way to do this is to click on one of the cylinders in the Object Manager

with your right mouse button. Select CINEMA 4D Tags / XPresso. By the way, it doesn’t matter which object you

apply the tag to. The XPresso editor will open. Drag all three cylinders from the Object Manager onto the empty

surface of the XPresso editor. The objects will be transformed into little boxes, so-called “Nodes“.