9.5.2

XPRESSO EDITOR • 1063
22. XPresso Editor
In earlier releases of CINEMA 4D, to create extra interactions between objects required you to manually
program C.O.F.F.E.E. expressions; and you can still do this if you wish. However, with CINEMA 4D’s
XPresso node editor, you can set up complex, automated object interactions simply, by drawing lines
from one object to another. From muscles that bulge automatically to eyes that blink at random,
from clock mechanisms to light switches that really work when your characters press them, XPresso
enables you to automate animations with ease. The XPresso Editor is the place where you build these
behaviors, which are called expressions.
To create a new expression and open the XPresso Editor, in the Object manager, select any object
and choose File > CINEMA 4D Tags > XPresso. You can close the editor at any time and reopen it by
double-clicking the XPresso Expression tag.
Nodes are the building blocks of your XPresso expressions. Nodes can perform a wide variety of tasks,
from reporting the animation’s current frame number to setting an object to a particular position. To
build your expression, you create the necessary nodes and connect them to one another by drawing
lines, called ‘wires’, between the node input and output ports. The nodes are then able to pass values
to one another via these ports and wires.
The illustration above shows two nodes: one for a cube and another for a cylinder. The red and blue
circles, both labelled Rotation, are ports. Red ports are output ports and send values to XGroups
or other nodes. Blue ports are input ports and receive values from other nodes or XGroups. In this
example, the cube’s rotation value is being sent to the cylinder. This will cause the cylinder to point
in the same direction as the cube in the viewport.
To learn XPresso as quickly as possible, we recommend that you work through the tutorials in
the CINEMA 4D Tutorial manual and, if something isn’t clear, look it up in this reference for a full
description. In addition, you’ll also nd a variety of example expressions on your CINEMA 4D CD, each
documented with comments. Much can be learnt from these examples by reading the comments and
then trying out your own changes.