CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart I CINEMA 4D Release 9 Quickstart Manual Programming Christian Losch, Philip Losch, Richard Kurz, Tilo Kühn, Thomas Kunert, David O’Reilly, Cathleen Poppe Plugin programming Sven Behne, Wilfried Behne, Michael Breitzke, Kiril Dinev, Per-Anders Edwards, David Farmer, Jamie Halmick, Reinhard Hintzenstern, Jan Eric Hoffmann, Eduardo Olivares, Nina Ivanova, Markus Jakubietz, Eric Sommerlade, Hendrik Steffen, Jens Uhlig, Michael Welter, Thomas Zeier Product Manager Marco Tillmann.
II CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart MAXON Computer End User License Agreement NOTICE TO USER WITH THE INSTALLATION OF CINEMA 4D AND ALL ITS COMPONENTS AND PLUGINS (THE “SOFTWARE”) A CONTRACT IS CONCLUDED BETWEEN YOU (“YOU” OR THE “USER”) AND MAXON COMPUTER GMBH ( THE “LICENSOR”), A COMPANY UNDER GERMAN LAW WITH RESIDENCE IN FRIEDRICHSDORF, GERMANY. WHEREAS BY USING AND/OR INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE YOU ACCEPT ALL THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart III 4. Transfer (1) You may not rent, lease, sublicense or lend the Software or documentation.
IV CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart (2) The Licensor and its suppliers do not and cannot warrant the performance and the results you may obtain by using the Software or documentation. The foregoing states the sole and exclusive remedies for the Licensor’s or its suppliers’ breach of warranty, except for the foregoing limited warranty. The Licensor and its suppliers make no warranties, express or implied, as to noninfringement of third party rights, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart (2) This agreement is governed by German law. Place of jurisdiction is the competent court in Frankfurt am Main. This agreement will not be governed by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, the application of which is expressly excluded. (3) If any part of this agreement is found void and unenforceable, it will not affect the validity of the balance of the agreement which shall remain valid and enforceable according to its terms. 13.
VI CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart Contents MAXON Computer End User License Agreement .................................................................. II Welcome to CINEMA 4D ..................................................................... 1 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 2. General Information/Interface .........................................................................................
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart VII Welcome to NET Render ................................................................. 106 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 106 2. General Information/Interface ............................................................................................... 106 3. Sample Images ................................................................................................
VIII CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 1 Welcome to CINEMA 4D This is the CINEMA 4D Quickstart Tutorial. We want to help you enter the 3D world with this short and easy to understand tutorial. After you have worked through this tutorial you will have a good basic user knowledge which you can apply to future projects. 1. Introduction Unfortunately books haven’t yet reached the point where they can play an opening melody as soon as you flip them open.
2 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface CINEMA 4D is divided into different working areas as follows: (starting at the top left clockwise)
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 3 The Editor Window shows all objects contained in the scene, for example polygon objects, cameras, lights and bones and other deformers. You can render any view at any time to check your work. A Group Icon contains several attributes for one group which can be accessed by clicking with the left mouse button on the main icon. The group icon differs from normal icons in that you will see a small arrow in the lower-right corner.
4 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface The Object Manager contains all of the scene’s objects. You use the Object Manager to set up a hierarchy, assemble objects, set tags for objects (small icons to the right of the Object Manager let you assign an object certain attributes), or to name objects. Included are polygon objects, lights, cameras, bones, deformers, splines and null objects (objects without geometry). The Attributes Manager manages the attributes of each object or tool.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 5 The Material Manager contains all of your materials, including shaders, textures and other properties. Just click on the material to see its properties in the Attributes Manager. Double-click the material to open the material editor to make changes to its individual material channels. Illumination strength, type of specular, strength of bump and more can be adjusted here as well. We’ll cover this in detail in a later chapter.
6 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface Now we will concentrate more on CINEMA 4D’s icon palettes to get you a little more familiar with them. The following explanation will refer to the colored icons on the next screenshot. The image shows the left icon palette. At the very top you can see the previously mentioned predefined layouts. Below that we have the (green) “Make Object Editable” button. This function lets a primitive be transformed using points, polygon or edges.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 7 You select your points, edges or polygons in “Default Mode” by simply activating the corresponding points, edges or polygons. In the “Auto Switch Mode“ CINEMA 4D recognizes whether your cursor is over a point, edge or polygon. A click of the left mouse button selects the correct mode automatically. The “Tweak Mode“ lets you do the same with an active move, scale or rotate tool. Now you know the most important functions of the icon palette.
8 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface Now select the world-coordinates instead and see how the object moves on the X axis parallel to the world coordinate system. This function can be very useful in modeling or animating your scene. Now to the next group of three, the (red) Render Icons. The first function (Render Active View), with a vase as a symbol, renders the image in the editor view.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 9 One click and the world’s most used object is created – the cube. Click and hold to see all available parametric objects. This is where you choose the initial shape you will need. And don’t forget! “Only parametric objects that have been converted to polygon objects can be edited at a polygon, point or edges level!“ The yellow icon represents spline objects. The term “spline“ has its origin in ship building.
10 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface The advantages, especially in modeling, are obvious. Since the object contains few points (edges/ polygons) that can be edited it remains very managable. You can drag just one point of the original wire frame and the HyperNURBS mesh, with its finer subdivision, will follow the point being dragged (see next screenshot). If the polygon object were made up of such fine subdivision modeling, it would be much more complicated.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 11 Here you will find, for example, the null object (object without geometry), the boolean object for boolean operations (parametric and polygon objects can cut/slice each other), as well as the symmetry object, which can be unbelievably helpful in character modeling. You simply model one half of the figure and use the symmetry object function to mirror it to create the other half of the figure.
12 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 3. Sample Images This is where we could use a little fanfare. Think about it and let these images inspire you a little before we move on to the hands-on part of this tutorial.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Interface 13
14 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging 4. Quick Tutorial – Arranging Objects In order to give you a feeling of how CINEMA 4D works we will begin with the simple creation of a couple of basic objects. Create 13 cubes and one sphere using the main menu (objects/primitive/cube/sphere) or the group icon “Add Cube Object“. “13 cubes“ may give you the impression that we are preparing to create a mammoth project but don’t worry, we are going to arrange the cubes into a little figure.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging 15 As you can see in the editor window, only one cube is visible. That’s because all cubes are located at the same coordinates and are the same size with the sphere in the center. Of course we will want to change this state now. But first a quick introduction to navigating the editor window. How do I rotate and move my point of view? Simple. Take a glance at the top right corner of the editor window.
16 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging Each of the axis‘ arrows can be selected and dragged in its respective direction. This prevents the object from being dragged in the wrong direction in the editor view (as opposed to clicking on the object itself and dragging it). It is often impossible to see in which direction an object is being dragged in a 3D view. A similar method of moving an object in a single direction is the previously mentioned locking of a specific axis in the command palette.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging 17 They make it possible to stretch and squash the parametric object on the respective axis Now we’ll get to the nitty gritty part of this project. You now have enough basic knowledge to be able to arrange the objects according to the following screenshots. If you prefer, you can switch to a four viewport mode (click the little rectangle at the top right of the editor window).
18 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging After you have arranged the cubes it still looks nothing like a “human character“. We have to rotate and stretch the figure a little. Click on “Figure“ in the Object Manager and select the orange handle on the (green) Y axis. Drag this handle until the top edge of the cube lies even with the arms. Using the orange handles, select the cubes that make up the arms and adjust their size and position as shown in the next screenshots.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Arranging 19 If you want to scale all cubes of the arms at once you can do this as follows: with the shift button pressed, select the objects “Lowerarm_L“, Upperarm_R“, Lowerarm_R“ and “Upperarm_R“ and press “C“ on you keyboard to proceed with the “Scale“ function in the Y and X axis. As you can see, the orange handles are not visible. Squash and move the figures arms and legs until it looks like the following image.
20 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling When you’re finished select the objects “Upperleg_R“, “Lowerleg_R“ and “Foot_R“. Once they are highlighted in red in the Object Manager press the “G“ key on your keyboard. This groups all makes all selected objects children of a Null object. If you look at the Object Manager you will see the newly created Null object. Clicking on the “+“ symbol will open the hierarchy and the objects we just selected will be shown.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling 21 5. Quick Tutorial – Modeling This is the most important part of this tutorial: How is a model built? There have been several new tools added to CINEMA 4D’s release 9 that will make modeling easier and improve your workflow quite a bit. For example the knife tool has received a general overhaul and now offers as one of its new knife tool functions the “Loop“ which makes it possible to make a circular cut around the object.
22 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling the mouse a little to the left. A second square should have been created, as seen on the next screenshot. Repeat this procedure to create another square on the top of the cube. Create a HyperNURBS object using the top command palette and make the cube a sub-object of the HyperNURBS object. This will serve to subdivide our polygon object without us having to subdivide the original mesh.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling 23 Grab the blues Z-axis in the editor window and drag it down until a relative large indentation has been made. Rotate your view until you have a good view of the underside of the cube and switch to the “Use Point Tool“ mode.
24 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling switch to the side view and drag these four points using the green Y-axis – drag them until the four inner points of the indentation can be seen. If you created the indentation deep enough you may have already been able to see these four inner points. (In the next screenshot you can see an X-ray view of the cube in which you can see the hidden points very well. More on “X-ray“ at the end of this chapter).
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling 25 Once you have selected all eight points on the object’s underside drag them along the green Yaxis a little to the top to give the object a rounder look. Click on the HyperNURBS object in the Object Manager and drag it down a bit while pressing the “Ctrl“ button on your keyboard. We have now duplicated the hemisphere. The same object is now visible in the Object Manager twice. Now select one of the HyperNURBS objects and select the “Rotate“ tool.
26 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling Repeat this step for the other HyperNURBS object but only to 50 degrees.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling 27 Here you can use the aforementioned locking of the axis function and switch to using the world/ object coordinate system. Now create a sphere and move it into a position almost completely covering both our hemispheres.
28 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Modeling Using the “Scale“ function you can resize the sphere to fit inside our two hemispheres. Congratulations! You have just created your first modeled object. You can increase the HyperNURBS object’s subdivision to give our model a smoother look. Simply select the respective HyperNURBS object you want to smooth and set the “Subdivision Editor“ in the Attributes Manager’s “Object“ menu to a higher value.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials 29 object simply activate “Use X-ray“. You will find this function under display/use x-ray. This lets you see through the object and see every point (Polygon/Edge). Accidental selection of hidden points is thus not possible and you have an excellent overview of the inner points of the object which would normally not be visible from the outside. 6. Quick Tutorial – Materials A well-modeled object can make a mediocre impression if the right textures aren’t used.
30 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials Displacement: Deforms an object using light and dark values (calculates differences in height). Do not confuse this with the relief channel which only imitates an uneven surface. Since our eye still looks a little pale we will liven it up a little with the application of textures and shaders. If you skipped the modeling chapter simply open the C4D_eye_Texture.c4d file. Now we have the eye we created in the previous chapter.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials 31 somewhat indented. A true deformation of the object will only take place in the “Displacement“ channel. The “Bump“ channel does not alter the polygon’s surface but uses an optical illusion to give the surface its structure. Click on the material in the Material Manager with the left mouse button and drag it onto the object eyeball in the Object Manager. (When you drag the material over the object you can let go once the little black arrow points to the left).
32 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials Switch the visibility of the HyperNURBS objects back by clicking again on the dots next to the object in the Object Manager, making them gray. Click on the “Texture Tag“ at the right of the Object Manager next to the object. It’s the material that we applied to the eyeball. You can recognize it by the mini-preview of the texture in the Object Manager. Once you have selected it you will see its parameters in the Attributes Manager.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials 33 this material. Click on “Color“ in the material channel and copy the settings of in the following screenshot. Click on “Color“ in the material channel and copy the settings in the following screenshot. We will give the material a green tone and lower its brightness to 50%. Check the box next to the “Bump“ channel. Click on the little black arrow next to the word “Texture“ and select the word “Noise“.
34 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials The displacement channel deforms the polygon mesh according to the bright and dark areas of an image. Bright areas of the texture raise the polygon mesh and dark areas lower the mesh. This lets you create a wide variety of shapes without having to model such a complex surface, thus saving you a lot of time. The ornamental facade of a house or the relief of a sword handle are good examples. The possibilities are endless.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials 35 the Dirtshader. The “Diffusion“ channel is ideal for this purpose. Just load the shader into the diffusion channel of your chosen material (Effects/Dirt). Render the image and click on the “Dirt“ entry to apply your settings. The higher the “Number of Rays“ the finer the grain. The dirt shader is not ideal for use in animations as a flickering noise may appear). For animations use the render menu (Render/Calculate Dirt).
36 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Materials Danel: Very good for simulating high-gloss finish Banzi: Lets you depict various types of wood. Banji: Calculates complex lighting situations with glass and even makes rear-projection (shadow casting) on partially transparent materials such as rice or canvas paper possible.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Lighting 37 7. Quick Tutorial – Light If you are already familiar with lighting a scene in the “real world“ then you will feel right at home with the CINEMA 4D light objects. They can do everything “real“ lights can do – and quite a bit more. In this tutorial we will set up a 3-point lighting arrangement.
38 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Lighting To make the key light a spot simply go to the Attributes Manager and switch the light from “Point“ to “Spot (round)“. Now our light source has been transformed to a spot. A spot acts like a flashlight. CINEMA 4D offers spots with square and round cones of light. This cone is visible in the editor and can be manipulated. Now we will aim the spot at our figure.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Lighting 39 In the “Shadow“ menu, set the shadow density to 50%. Select “1000 x 1000“ as the shadow map. Render the scene. CINEMA 4D offers three types of shadows: “Hard“ – a shadow with sharp edges, “Soft“ – a shadow with soft edges and “Area“ – a shadow that becomes softer the further it’s away from the object, resulting in the most realistic shadow effect. Try the other two shadow types.
40 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Lighting You will see the result in the editor right away. You can also edit the light’s cone by dragging the orange handles. Now we’re happy with our key light. Next we will create a more even lighting by brightening our figure a little from the other side. Create another light source in the scene and name it “Brightener“. Place it at the following coordinates: X=0, Y=225, Z=-150 and at an angle of H=-20, P=-10 degrees. Select “Area“ as the type of light.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation 41 The scene is now pretty evenly lit, but we want to give it a little more pep. Create another light source, name it “Color“ and, in the Attributes Manager, set its type to “Distant“. Set its color to royal blue and set its H angle to –90. The position of a distance light is irrelevant since it always lights your scene in the direction of the Z axis. This is why we will leave it at the point at which it was created.
42 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation Just to demonstrate the basic principles of animation, let’s look at a “quick & easy“ example. Begin by opening a new (empty) scene. Create a cube (Objects/Primitive/Cube). You will see a blue slider at the bottom of the editor window on which the frame (time) is shown. This is known as the time slider. By moving this slider you can jump to a different point (time) in the animation, similar to fast-forwarding or rewinding a film.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation 43 attributes is the quickest and easiest way to generate keys. There is a disadvantage, though. Often, altered attributes will be recorded even if they had not been altered at all. In the case of the cube it was the X and Y positions. There are other ways in which animation keys can be set. We will now look at how you can select and animate specific attributes. Open a new (empty) scene. Create a floor object (objects/scene/floor) and a cone (objects/ primitives/cone).
44 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation Change the “Top Radius“ value to 200 and set a second key using the method described above. Play the scene in the editor and watch how the cone and the value in the Attributes Manager change. The cone now knows that at frame/time 50 the top radius has to have a value of 200. All changes to this attribute between frames 0 and 50 will be ““interpolated”. Interpolated means that CINEMA 4D automatically calculates the necessary values in between.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation 45 At the end of the animation the cone looks completely different. A nice animation such as ours deserves dramatic lighting so let’s not dwell on the cone anymore and move on to other objects. Make sure you’re at frame/time zero. Create a light source (objects/scene/light) and position it at X=200, Y=250. Set the color to a light yellow in the “General“ menu of the Attributes Manager.
46 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation The cone metamorphosis now takes place in animated light. The color sliders change as the animation plays and CINEMA 4D interpolates the colors between the keys that were set. Our animation is becoming more and more interesting. That’s why we don’t want to see it from only one perspective, but we want to let a camera fly around it. Create a target camera (objects/scene/target camera). Rename the camera in the Object Manager to “Animated Camera“.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Animation 47 In order to view the scene from the new camera’s perspective simply switch to the camera “Animated Camera“ in the editor menu under “Cameras“. The camera is looking at the scene from above but is not living up to its name since it’s not animated – yet. We would like to animate the camera along a circular path around the scene. For this we will need a circle. Create a circular spline (objects/spline primitive/circle). Set the radius to 1000 and the plane to “XZ“.
48 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering Now the camera is positioned on the circular path. If we play the animation, though, we will be disappointed because the camera doesn’t move even one millimeter. That’s because we haven’t yet told it to move along the circular path. Make sure you set the animation back to 0 and the circle is the active object. In the Attributes Manager under “Align to Spline“ you will see an attribute called “Position“ which is set to 0% by default. Set a key for this attribute.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering 49 Open the scene “rendering.c4d“ (file/open). Slide the time slider to frame 20 and click on “Render/Render View“. We will render frame 20 using CINEMA 4D’s standard settings to give you a quick impression of how our final scene will look. This method of rendering is probably the most widely used since it can be used to make sure the scene “is on the right path“. Slide the time slider to frame 0 and press “Ctrl+R“ on your keyboard. The view has been rendered again.
50 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering Use the method with which you feel most comfortable. Often we don’t necessarily want to render the complete editor view but only a small part of it. This is also no problem. Select “Render/Render Region“. The cursor will be transformed into a cross. Drag a frame around the region you wish to render. The second possibility is to render only a single object. Select the sphere and the cone in the Object Manager. Select the command (Render/Render Active Objects).
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering 51 the best rendering if you can’t save the images it generates? Of course there is a command with which you can do this. Select “Render/Render to Picture Viewer“ or press “Shift+R“. The picture viewer will open in a separate window in which the scene will be rendered. When the image has been rendered select “File/Save Picture As“. A further window will open. Confirm the location with “OK“.
52 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering You use the render settings to determine what our final image will look like. Everything from size, quality, single image or animation can be set here. In the first menu, “General“ we can already make settings that will influence the quality of our rendering. Take a closer look at the editor rendering of the scene. You can see the cone’s edge behind the sphere. It looks a little pixelated. You can see a similar effect along the edge of the sphere.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering 53 To quickly check the scene you can leave the anti-aliasing set to “None“ or “Geometry“. “None“ renders the edges without anti-aliasing and very quickly. “Geometry“ renders the image with sufficient smoothing and offers a good compromise between quality and speed. You can select the best quality when you render the final image. You can select additional types of anti-aliasing in the “Filter“ menu. More fine-tuning is possible in the render settings menu.
54 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Rendering CINEMA 4D will now render all of the scene’s pictures. The scene’s length is determined in the preferences (Edit/Preferences) menu. Our scene runs from frames 0 to 90. We just have to determine which file format our images will have and where they will be saved. Switch to “Save“ in the render settings, click on “Path“ and choose a name and a place to save your film. Now choose a format – you can use “Quicktime“ or “AVI“.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering 55 If all you need is a quick preview of your animation you can save yourself the trouble of always opening and changing the render settings by selecting the preview function (Render/Make a Preview). The settings used here are kept to a minimum. Of course the “Output“ and “Save“ settings depend on the requirements of your scene. If you render a single image that will be printed with a resolution of 300dpi on a 8.
56 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering multipass rendering so we can take away the hassle of clients who want you to make unexpected changes to a project ASAP. Open the file “multipass_e.c4d“. The time slider is set to frame 15. We want to render this frame and subsequently make changes to it using an image editing software. Open the render settings (Render/Render Settings) and select multipass.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering 57 Set the format to “JPG“ and click on the “Path“ button. Find a place to save the image on your hard drive and name the image “Multipass_Scene“. (In case you are working with a demo version you will find the result of this function in the following files: “scene_diffuse0015.jpg“, “scene_ specular0015.jpg“, “scene_trans0015.jpg“ and “scene_refl0015.jpg“.
58 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering Photoshop you can download a demo version from their web site at www.adobe.com. Photoshop can split an image into several layers. These layers can be mixed in various ways but it would be a lot of work if we had to open each of our images in Photoshop and mix them manually. CINEMA 4D makes it possible for you to integrate all layers into one file. This function does not work for every file format, such as JPEG for example.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering 59 You may have noticed that there was a shadow in the original scene that is not visible in the Photoshop file. This is because the shadow has its own channel and we simply did not activate it in the multipass rendering menu. Add this channel in CINEMA 4D, render the image and open it in Photoshop. (For the users of our demo version: The result reflects what you see in “MultipassShadow_Scene0015.psd“). Now the shadow has its own Photoshop layer.
60 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering The image already looks brighter. And what should we do with the client who wants his pink panther dove blue? Aside from the fact that our scene contains neither the color pink nor a panther, what should we do when we want to change the color of the cone only? How do we change the color of a single object in the scene? For this we have to prepare a little in CINEMA 4D first.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering 61 The sphere and cone are now in two separate image buffers, 1 and 2. Now we have to activate these buffers in the render settings. Add 2 “Object Buffers“ in the multipass settings window. For the first, set the “ID“ to “1“ and for the second to “2“. Render the scene and open the new file in Photoshop. At first glance nothing has changed in the Photoshop file. There are still only five layers.
62 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Multipass-Rendering Select the “Refraction“ layer in Photoshop. Choose select/load selection. Set “Channel“ to “Object Buffer 1“. We just loaded the buffer channel as the selection. Various image editing options will now be limited to the area within this selection – the sphere. Call up “image/adjustments/hue/saturation. Click on “Colorize“ and set the “Hue“ to 240 and the saturation to 100.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – XPresso 63 Only the sphere will be colored. Since it consists mainly of refractions, we chose the respective layer in advance. Multipass 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.
64 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – XPresso 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 Tag/XPresso.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – XPresso 65 Both cylinders can now pass on their respective Y-position. We will use a special node to calculate the average between these two points. Switch to the X-Pool tab and drag a “Mix Operator“ node from System Operators/XPresso/ Calculate/Mix onto the surface where the other nodes are. Set the “Mix“ node’s “Mixing Factor” to 50% in the Attributes Manager. Connect the “Cylinder_small“ “Position.
66 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – XPresso We still have one problem: you can still drag the cylinder so far that our telescope comes apart. It would be nice if we could restrict the movement a little. Needless to say XPresso also has a solution for this! Go back to X-Pool and drag a “Clamp“ node into the XPresso editor. Set its “Max“ value to 300 in the Attributes Manager. The “Clamp“ node restricts various properties that are transferred to its “Value“ input to a range between 0 and 300.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks 67 Now the cylinders can only be moved a limited distance in the Y-direction, just like a real telescope. 12. Tips & Tricks CINEMA 4D has been able to build a large community of users around it who are more than happy to help newcomers in any way possible, be it through the use of home-made tutorials, directly in one of the many forums or by offering free models, plugins, expressions or textures.
68 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks These Muybridge photos are a must if you’re studying character animation. An online search for his name will be worth the effort. 3D models are being offered online in all quality and price classes. Two well-known sources are “TurboSquid“ and “ModelBank“. Both websites offer access to the CINEMA 4D object database. You will find more than just models here - textures, plugins and even motion capture files that can be imported into CINEMA 4D via the fbx format.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks 69 Google is also a good source for finding models. Through its special image search function you can find photos or drawings of practically any object. Corbis (www.corbis.com) can also be a good source of ideas. Even mail order catalogues can be a great source of information on how an object is supposed to look. Textures are all over the internet as well. Taking your camera and photographing textures yourself is even better. Inspiration is everywhere.
70 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render Welcome to Advanced Render (Optional module) This is the Quickstart Tutorial for the Advanced Render Module. It will show you many of the module’s typical applications and covers some theoretical physics behind the effects. 1. Introduction The Advanced Render Module expands the realm of possibilities of CINEMA 4D’s renderer with several fascinating functions. Users who want to make photorealistic renderings will find these functions especially interesting.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 71 light’s caustics menu it is possible to determine whether the light source should generate surface or volume caustics. “Depth of field“, “highlight“ and “glow“ are so-called post effects. You will find them in the render settings under “effects“. Further settings for “depth of field“ can be made in each camera’s attribute settings. A post effect will first be calculated after an image has been completely rendered.
72 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 3. Sample Images Here you can see what’s possible with the Advanced Render functions.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 73
74 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 4. Quick Tutorial – Radiosity Light as we know it in the “real“ world spreads on its own. It is reflected by the objects it hits. This differs depending on an object’s surface characteristics. Imagine a room with a window on one wall. Light is being cast through the window onto the floor of the room. The light doesn’t stop there, but is reflected from the floor onto other objects which, in turn, reflect the light themselves.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 75 Create another material and give it your favorite color. Drag this color onto the torus. The luminance channel turns the material into a light source. Since the sky object spherically encloses the entire scene. It acts as a huge lamp which lights the torus from all sides. This effect will only be visible when we use radiosity as the render mode. Open the render settings (render/render settings). Switch to radiosity and activate radiosity.
76 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render CINEMA 4D will automatically turn on Auto Light in a scene if there are no light objects present. When using radiosity, this automatic function is excluded since it would make the scene much too bright. A radiosity scene normally takes much longer to render than a raytracing scene. The scene is rendered in two passes, thus offering a more realistic result. Notice the soft shadows and the fact that the red of the torus is somewhat reflected onto the floor.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 77 You will see that a blue light is being cast on the torus and the floor. The blue sphere is not rendered because we have made it invisible using the camera’s compositing tag. 5. Quick Tutorial – Caustics Have you ever observed the lighting effects at the bottom of a swimming pool? This phenomena is known as caustics – light is cast through a transparent material and is broken upon entry and exit. Open another new (empty) scene.
78 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render Create a new material in the Material Manager. Activate the transparency channel in the Attributes Manager and switch to the “Transparency” menu. Set the color to blue. Set refraction to 1.4 and drag the material from the Material Manager onto the platonic object in the Object Manager. If we would have left the setting at 1 the light would have passed through the object unbroken without a caustics effect. Create a light (objects/scene/light).
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 79 Open the render settings menu (render/render settings). Activate “surface caustics“ in the caustics menu here as well. Render the scene. The caustics effect should now be visible on the floor.
80 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 6. Quick Tutorial – Depth of Field You probably are familiar with the depth-of-field effect from the field of photography. Depending on which lens is used in which combination of camera settings it can only be focused on one more-or-less small area at once – everything outside this area is out of focus. This effect is often used as a dramatic element in movies to draw the viewer’s attention to a specific element in the scene.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 81 The target distance is the point of focus of the camera. An object located 1500 units from the camera object – as is the case with our figure located in the center – will appear the clearest. Objects located in front of or behind this object will be rendered out of focus. Simply activate this effect in the render settings to make this effect visible. Open the render settings and switch to “effects“.
82 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Advanced Render 7. Tips & Tricks Rendering often requires you to make a choice between speed and quality. Renderings with radiosity or caustic effects can take especially long to render. This is why we suggest that you experiment with the settings a little. For example, you can set the radiosity’s “accuracy“ value very low to start with and try a “quick“ test rendering.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 83 Welcome to Sketch and Toon (Optional module) This is CINEMA 4D’s Quickstart Tutorial for its Sketch and Toon module. It will introduce you to some of this renderer’s fantastic creative possibilities. 1. Introduction Sketch and Toon belongs to the NPR family.
84 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon There’s more. You will also find Sketch and Toon elsewhere within CINEMA 4D. Take a look at the Material Manager. A sketch material is created as soon as the Sketch and Toon effect has been activated. This is a material especially for the depiction of contours in a Sketch and Toon rendering. You will also see that there are many more settings in association with this material in the Material Manager. These settings are global and affect the entire scene.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 85 will be rendered (Line width? Line color?). Of course not every object has to be rendered in the same style. You can create an arbitrary amount of sketch materials and assign them to different objects. This makes combining a pen drawing with a cartoon object no problem. After all, Sketch and Toon offers four “Sketch Shaders“. These can be placed into the channel of a “normal“ material just like any other shader.
86 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 3. Sample Images Here is a sample of the beautiful imagery you can create with Sketch and Toon.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 4. Quick Tutorial – Outlines The moment of truth has come. Once you have worked your way through this tutorial you will have but a first impression of what you can to with Sketch and Toon. Sketch and Toon is a module that practically seduces you to experiment with it – give in to its seduction! Open the file “schraubkopf_e.c4d“. This scene is comprised of a head made up of just a few primitives.
88 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon Navigate to your CINEMA 4D directory. You will find a number of presets under Library/Sketch/ Styles. Select “technical.c4d“. This style is good for technical illustrations. Render the scene. Again the rendering looks different. Now the lines which are normally hidden are displayed as dashed lines. Along with the preset two additional materials were placed into the Material Manager – “Visible“ and “Hidden“.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon Select the “Hidden“ material in the Material Manager and switch to “Color“ in the Attributes Manager. Use the color sliders to set the color to a dark blue tone. Render the scene. We can use the render settings to influence the entire scene and the material settings to specifically affect the hidden contour. Select the “Visible“ material and switch to “Main“ in the Attributes Manager. Select the “Pen (Leaky)“ style in the “Presets“ menu. Render the scene.
90 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon The visible lines already look like they were drawn with a leaking fountain pen and the hidden lines are still dashed. Go ahead and try out more of the presets! Until now changes to the sketch settings have had an effect on all objects in the scene. We can also choose to change the look of only one specific object. Select File/New Material/Sketch Material in the Material Manager. Drag the material from the Object Manager onto the “Nose“ object.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 91 The nose is now red with a black contour. 5. Quick Tutorial – Shaders and Tags In this tutorial we will combine an object rendered in the sketch mode with an object rendered in the “normal“ mode in the same scene. We will also examine the “Cel“ shader, one of four special sketch shaders. Our goal will be to assign different render styles to each of three objects. The first object will only have a contour and it should look like it was hand-drawn.
92 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon Create a new material in the Material Manager (File/New Material). Deactivate the “Color“ and “Specular“ channels in the “Basic“ menu of the Attributes Manager. Activate “Luminance“ and switch to the “Luminance“ menu. Click on the small arrow to the right of the word “Texture“. Select Sketch/Cel. The cel shader is a type of gradient shader.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon 93 The number of colors represents the number of color steps an object will be colored with. 1-2 colors is always good for a cartoon look. Drag the new material in the Object Manager onto “Figure_center“ and render the scene. Our Sketch and Toon puppet is standing between two “normal“ rendered figures. It is not necessary, though, to activate the Sketch and Toon render effects in order to use a sketch shader. Now we will beautify the rear figure with a contour.
94 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon Select the newly created sketch material and set the preset “Pencil (Soft Sketch)“ in the Attributes Manager. Render the scene. Even though all figures have the correct “filling“ each of the two front figures has assumed the contour style of the figure behind it. We will deactivate the contour rendering for these two objects completely. Select “Figure_front“ and “Figure_center“ in the Object Manager and select (File/Sketch Tags/ Sketch Render Tag).
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroCluster 95 We’ve done it! Three objects, each with completely different render styles coexisting peacefully in the same scene. 6. Tips & Tricks Sketch and Toon offers several levels of control. If you are taking your first steps with this module and are a little overwhelmed by the countless buttons and sliders simply set the level of control to “Easy” (either in the render settings or in the sketch material attributes). Several functions will then be “hidden”.
96 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroClusterr Welcome to PyroCluster (Optional module) This is the Quickstart Tutorial for PyroCluster. It will lead you through the initial steps of this module and show you what’s possible with this amazing 3D shader. Here is how this tutorial is structured: 1. Introduction “PyroCluster“ is a powerful tool for creating volumetric smoke, explosions and fire effects.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroCluster 97 2. General Information/Interface The actual effect basically consists of the PyroCluster shader, the PyroCluster volume tracer, an emitter and an environment object. Together they comprise the necessary elements who’s properties you can set to create any and all pyrotechnic effects. The components in detail: The PyroCluster shader is the material which is assigned to the emitter.
98 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroClusterr You can display the execution and “development“ of an effect in the form spheres, cubes or other objects. This gives you an excellent overview of the effect and keeps you from having to render the entire effect just to see how far a trail of smoke has travelled. Of course all PyroCluster effects can cast shadows on other objects, if desired, using the normal scene lighting.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroCluster 3. Create an environment object (Objects/Scene/Environment). 4. Create an emitter (Objects/Particle/Emitter).
100 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroClusterr 5. Assign the PyroCluster material to the emitter. 6. Assign the Pyrocluster Volume Tracer to the sky object. 7. Set the emitter’s “P“ angle to 90 in the Object Manager’s Coordinates Manager.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroCluster 101 8. Double click the material “PyroCluster“ in the Material Manager and select “Steam“ in the “Global“ menu. 9. Answer “yes“ to the question “Do you really want to convert parameters?“ and close the Material Manager window. 10. Drag the time slider to frame 40 and select “Render/Render View“. Now sit back and finish that cup of coffee.
102 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroClusterr 5. Quick Tutorial – Optimize and Animate Let’s tackle the part of the tutorial that will show us how make the steam effect more realistic and show us how it all looks when it’s in motion. Move the editor view until the emitter sinks below the bottom edge of the viewport. Before we generate our first animation we will have to modify our PyroCluster-Volume tracer a little.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroCluster 103 Raise both of the emitter’s particle values (Birthrate Editor/Birthrate Renderer) to 20 (Click on emitter in the Object Manager and select the “Particle“ menu). Reduce the Lifetime from 500 to 100 and the Speed parameter to 300. Switch to the “Emitter“ and set Angle Horizontal and Angle Vertical to 30. The friction object gets a strength (friction-coefficient) of 4. Now you can generate another preview (Main Menu/Render/Make Preview).
104 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – PyroClusterr 6. Tips & Tricks There are several methods to optimize your rendering but the most effective method is to increase the PyroCluster-Volume’s “World Step Size“ parameter! Here you will also find several settings for the render mode. If you click on the drop-down menu you will see “User“ on the list. Selecting “User“ activates the “World Step Size“ editing parameters. Double click the PyroclusterVolume Tracer. Set the render mode to “User“.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – NET Render 105 example and a good power of observation is one of the most important factors in achieving the desired “Hollywood“ effect.
106 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – NET Render Welcome to NET Render (Optional module) Have you ever asked yourself “What should I do if my CINEMA 4D animation will render far longer than my life expectancy, regardless of any and all medical advances?“ The answer it “NET Render!“ This Quickstart Tutorial will help you reduce the time you have to wait for your renderings. First let’s look how this tutorial is structured: 1. Introduction NET Render helps you deliver your animations on time.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – NET Render 3. Sample Images As we know images say more than words. On that note, here are a few first impressions.
108 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – NET Render 4. Quick Tutorial – Installation/Interface Let’s assume you have 4 computers at your disposal which are all connected to a TCP/IP network. Computer Number 1 (subsequently we will rename our computers “Computer 1“, “Computer 2“, etc.) is your main computer from which you will be distributing the work. The remaining computers will do the rendering.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – NET Render 109 Open your web browser and enter the following address: http://127.0.0.1:8080 This is the default IP address, including the port, you must use when the NET Server has been installed on your computer, from which you can also distribute jobs using the browser. If the working computer has been installed onto a “render slave“, though, you would simply enter the IP address of that respective computer.
110 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics please read the chapter “Tips & Tricks“ where you will find some important information such as “Where should I save my textures so every client can access them?“. That’s it! Now you see how easy it is to operate this module, even if the name NET Render seemed a little forboding at first. We want to make life as easy as possible for you with this module as well so you can concentrate on more important things than complicated program settings.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics 111 Welcome to Dynamics (Optional module) This is the Quickstart Tutorial for Dynamics which will help you get to know the world of gravitation and physics. With the use of sample images and a two part tutorial we will give you an impression of what this powerful tool can do. Let’s begin with how this tutorial is put together: 1.
112 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics the Dynamic Tags of the polygon object, you’ll have your very first Dynamics simulation – but we don’t want to take the wind out of our Quickstart sails just yet. So we’ll give you a few facts about each component and how they work together. The solver object is the star of the Dynamics module. It takes over all calculations in dynamic simulations of its sub-objects and bodies.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics 113 4. Quick Tutorial – Rigid Bodies With just a few clicks of the mouse we will now create a scene in which several primitives will collide with each other. Let’s begin by setting up the necessary objects. In the main menu, click on Plugins/Dynamics/Solver Object. In the same menu, create a gravity object and drag it into the solver object. As we mentioned before, all objects to be affected by the solver object must be a sub-object of the solver object.
114 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics Zoom out so you can see the entire scene. Tilt the plane object in the “B“ angle by 15 degrees and place the other objects in the approximate position they are in, in the following image. The cube and the sphere should be placed quite a bit above the plane, each over one half of the plane as seen from the top so they don’t cross paths.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics 115 into the solver object and convert them to polygons (Main Menu/Functions/Make Editable) or click on The next step is the assigning of Dynamics properties using the Dynamics tags. For soft surface properties we would need to use Soft Body Spring Tags. Since we want to let the sphere and the cube fall onto a surface without them bouncing off, we need the Rigid Body Dynamic Tag.
116 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics Before we play the animation again we will change its length. To do this click on edit/project settings and change the “Maximum“ parameter to 300 frames. So that our solver object doesn’t stop the animation at frame 75 we will also change its “Stop“ parameter to 300 in the dialog field “Main“ to the right.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics 117 Assign a Soft Body Spring to the torus (right mouse/Dynamics Tags/Soft Body Spring). A new window will open automatically in which you can change the parameters for the soft body tag. In the main menu of this window, select Springs/Add Soft Springs and set the “Method“ in the subsequent window to “Cloth“. Click “OK“. In the “Clothing“ menu check the “Relax“ box and close this window.
118 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Dynamics To do this, select one or more of the top points of the torus in the point mode and select plugins/ dynamics/set soft mass. Change the mass value to 0 and click on “OK“. Finally, change the integration method of the solver object from “Adaptive“ to “Softbody“ and start the animation again. We’re done! The torus has a virtual hook and swings to and fro when you push it.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 119 between frames, and so on. The higher the value, the higher the probability a collision will be calculated correctly. Of course the frame rate will suffer with each increase in oversampling. As an alternative you can increase the Eps (Epsilon) value of the solver object. A higher value increases the area around the polygon object in which the collision algorithm occurs.
120 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D Welcome to BodyPaint 3D (Optional module) This is the BodyPaint tutorial. In this tutorial we will explain the most important functions in order to give you a running start in the world of “body painting“. Even if BodyPaint appears to be difficult at first, you will soon notice how intuitive BodyPaint 3D really is. In this tutorial we have also put an emphasis on a fast learning curve and a high degree of user friendliness for this module.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 121 Here you see one of the two standard layouts: “BP UV Edit“. The second layout (“BP 3D Paint“) is set up in a similar fashion, only without the UV-mesh editor window which gives you more room in the editor window to paint. 1. Editor Window (RayBrush Window) Here you can see the object you will be painting. You can rotate, move and zoom the window as needed. The RayBrush mode lets you paint directly onto the object in the rendered version of the view.
122 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 2. Texture Window (UV-mesh Editor Window) This is where you edit your UV-mesh. You can relax and restore your UV-mesh. If you use the UV-Manager’s UV-tools you can watch how the texture relaxes. You can also watch the color application process in this window, which will then be visible in the editor window right away. 3.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 123 4. Quick Tutorial – The Wizard The wizard takes a lot of preparatory work off your hands and lets you begin texturing/painting in seconds. Before we actually start painting the object we would like to show you how quickly you can start painting, just in a few steps. Create a cone primitive (objects/primitive/cone). Switch to the predefined standard layout “BP 3D Paint“.
124 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D Click on the “Paint Setup Wizard“ icon and select the “Next“ button twice, the “Finish“ button once and to exit the assistant click on “Close“. At the left of the command palette select the “Brush Tool for Painting Textures“ and drag the cursor over the cone while pressing the left mouse button. Voila! Aside from the fact that you will never have a need for a cone with a white mark on it, this simply demonstrates how BodyPaint 3D works.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 125 Select the predefined standard layout “BP UV Edit“ at the top and to the left of CINEMA 4D’s main editor window. Click on the Paint Setup Wizard Icon so we can make the necessary preparations to the texture. Click on “Deselect All“ in the window you just opened and apply a green check mark to the “eyelid right“ object only. We have just determined that a texture should be created only for the right eyelid object. Click on “Next“.
126 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 5. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson At the bottom left of the Material Manager you will find the texture we just created, right next to “Mat“ This is the default name for a new texture. Of course you can rename the texture if you like. The first material is the color layer and the second is the bump layer (at the top of the window you will see the abbreviations which refer to these layers – “C“ for color and “B“ for bump).
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 127 Luck is on our side! The UV-mesh looks good. The only thing that bothers us is the fact that the edges of the eyelids are too small (highlighted in red in the next image!). The individual UV-mesh polygons of these eyelid edges take up less texture area than the rest of the polygons. That’s why a texture placed into the bump channel appears larger in these places (photograph of elephant skin, for example).
128 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D and select a pink color using the “Preview Active Channel” directly below. Use the sliders that appear on the right. Now we will prepare a brush for applying the color. Set the size to 25 and the hardness to 40 in the brush’s Attributes Manager. If necessary, increase the HyperNURBS subdivision. Activate the “Render Active View for RayBrush Painting“ on the command palette.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 129 (This will render the view and makes it possible for you to control the color application and the look of the strokes for the final rendering). Activate the “Enable/Disable Projection Painting“ (You already know what this function does) and start painting. Of course BodyPaint 3D supports the use of graphic tablets such as a WACOM Intuous. Painting objects with a pressure sensitive pen on a graphic tablet is much easier than painting with a mouse.
130 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D You have now told BodyPaint 3D that you want to paint in both layers at the same time. If you like you can switch from the standard “BP UV Edit“ layout to the “BP 3D Paint“ layout. This gives you more room to work in the editor window. Rotate the view so you can see the eyelid from the top. Activate the “Render Active View for RayBrush Painting“ and the “Enable/Disable Projection Painting“ mode and set the brush size to 10 and hardness to 40.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D 131 your work a lot easier. Let’s assume you want to color the arm of a figure or sprinkle color on the entire figure. You would have to apply the color with this function deactivated, rotate the arm, apply the color, rotate the arm and, well, you get the idea. When this function is activated you apply the color in the front view and the color is applied to all surfaces lying behind this surface at the same time.
132 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Here the same rule applies for best results: try it, don’t just study it!
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 133 Welcome to MOCCA (Optional module) This is the Quickstart Tutorial for the MOCCA module, a collection of tools especially for character animation. 1. Introduction 3D character animation is a complex subject. It not only challenges the software but the animator as well. Almost anyone can quickly create a character that moves in one way or another, but a convincing character animation requires quite a bit more work.
134 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Exaggeration – can be used in many instances: Arms that are being stretched too long when a character is hanging from a cliff, eyes jumping out of their sockets to help demonstrate a shocked expression. Appeal – a character’s impression, look and nature. Personality – like an actor, a good animator must be able to make his character express himself. You can find more detailed descriptions of these rules online or in any good animation book.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 135 Open the file “claude_mesh.c4d“, a modeled character named Claude who’s left arm is to be boned. Select the bone tool. This tool’s functions will become visible in the Attributes Manager. In the beginning, only the “Add Bone“ button will be active. Click on it. A bone object appears at the scene’s point of origin. This will be our shoulder bone. Move this bone until it sits in the character’s shoulder. It’s best to do this using the top and front views.
136 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Select the shoulder bone in the Object Manager and click on “Add/Update Null Bone“. The top object in the bone hierarchy is now the Null Bone. Give the bones a sensible name. We suggest you end the names with “_L” so you know they belong to the left arm. Null bones constitute the beginning of a bone chain. They don’t influence the geometry but make sure that the local coordinates of the first bone are set to 0 which helps kinematics calculate their movements.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 137 The bones can only influence a figure once they have been fixed. If you want to change their initial position later they will first have to be released. Rotate the lower arm bone and watch how the geometry moves with the bone. It’s still a little uncontrolled, though. We have to constrain the influence of the bones. Select the shoulder bone, then the Claude Bonet tool. The geometry will turn gray which signals that they have not been strengthened.
138 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Repeat this process for the other bones until the complete arm has been strengthened. A proper strengthening can take time. In the beginning we suggest you set values of 0% or 100%. You can use other values later for more accurate strengthening. You can see a demonstration of this by opening “arm_weighted.c4d“. Now it’s time to start with the rigging. Rigging is the “setting up“ of bone skeletons with various limits and constraints.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 139 CINEMA 4D discerns between two types of inverse kinematics, HardIK and SoftIK. HardIK is best used for bone chains with two bones (e.g.; legs). SoftIK is better for controlling longer chains with several target objects and for Dynamics (e.g.; gravitational influence). Open the file “arm_weighted.c4d“. Select the arm’s null bone and click on the MOCCA icon for “IK Setup“ Several bones possess an IK tag. These tags define how the bones should behave within the chain.
140 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Still the bones have a mind of their own so we need more Goal constraint objects with which to control them. Select the lower arm bone and call up the MOCCA command “Add Root Goal“. An additional goal constraint appears with which we can control the root of the bone, the character’s elbow. The lower arm bone will try to reach this object.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 141 Now much more strength is needed to move the shoulder bone from its initial position. You can find the result in the “arm_softik.c4d“ file. Take a little time and continue to work with the scene. Try, for example, to control the arm bones by adding more goal constraints until you get a better feel for this type of work. 4. Quick Tutorial – PoseMixer As we have seen, bones are good for constructing a “control frame“ for a figure.
142 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA These new facial expressions were modeled based on the old head. It is very important that the copies have the same number of points as the original. You will see why we need these copies soon. Find the original head in the hierarchy in the Object Manager. You can find it faster using the “search“ tool (Objects/Search in the Object Manager). Simply enter the name “Head Mesh“ and the object will be displayed in the Object Manager.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 143 We can’t use the original copy of the head because it will be the one we will be deforming so we are using an exact copy of the head. The object to be morphed belongs in the “Destination“ field but since we have assigned it a tag we don’t need to drag it into the Attributes Manager. The last field in the PoseMixer’s Attributes Manager is an empty field with a slider next to it. Naturally one of the modeled poses will be placed here.
144 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA position has been keyed. Go to frame 5 and ctrl-click on the same circles again. Go to frame 3 and set both sliders to 100% and ctrl-click on both circles again. You have just animated the wink of an eye. You can find the result in “posemixer_end.c4d“. By the way, PoseMixer is excellent for morphing entire bone hierarchies. You can set a variety of states for the hand bones – fingers stretched, fingers bent, – and mix them by activating the PoseMixer’s “Rotate“ option.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 145 Plasticman is a human figure with a complete bone skeleton. He still has a pretty lackadaisical T-position stance since he hasn’t yet been animated. We will make him walk in no time using Motion Blending! Merge the “plasticman_walk.c4d“ file with the current scene (File/Merge...) This time a bone skeleton, without geometry, will appear. This difference is, this skeleton has already been animated.
146 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Click on the new scene and switch to “Motion Blend“ in the Attribute Manager. Here you will find a menu with the name “Motion“. This is exactly where we will drag our walk animation, “PlasticMan wak(32)“, into. PlasticMan will assume the animation data immediately and will take on a step stance. Play the animation and you will see that PlasticMan also takes a step. Such a step is nice but it would be better if our character would move even more.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 147 Once you’re happy with the path you have created click on the motion sequence again and drag the new “Spline Object“ from the Object Manager into the “Path“ field in the Attribute Manager. PlasticMan will jump to the beginning (or end, depending on how it has been drawn) of the spline. Is he walking backwards? If so, simply set the Axis attribute to “-X“. Until now we have only dealt with the walk movement.
148 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA Select PlasticMan (“PlasticMan T-Pose“) in the Object Manager and click on the “Motion Blending Setup“ icon. The object will be assigned two motion tracks and one transition track in the Timeline. Click on “Motion A“ with the right mouse button and select “New Sequence...“. Set From to 0 and To to 32. Deactivate Influence Left and Influence Right. Do the same for “Motion B“, but set the To setting to 56 instead of 32.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 149 A completely new animation will be created within this transition which will mix both animations. If the animation is played, PlasticMan will jump back to his original position at frame 32 and start running. This is because the run animation is not positioned correctly. Select the run animation’s bone hierarchy (“PlasticMan Run(24)“) and move it in the editor to Z=-175. The run will now start there where the walk stops. Both animations will be blended smoothly. 6.
150 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA If all the settings have been made the export can begin. Select “File/Export/FBX“. Save the file as a FBX file. Now a program like Motionbuilder can open the CINEMA 4D character. Motionbuilder assigns motion capture data to the character. These are then “plotted“, which means the animation is converted into movement and is assigned directly to bones. The final animation will be saved as an FBX file which CINEMA 4D can easily read. Select “File/Merge. Load the FBX file.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 151 7. Quick Tutorial – Dressing Clothilde is MOCCA’s cloth simulation tool. You can use this tool to let a flag flap in the breeze or to give your character a snappy t-shirt. This is exactly what we want to put on Claude. What’s nice about Clothilde is that it’s not necessary to go through the trouble of modeling a t-shirt. All you have to do is create the front and the back of the shirt. Clothilde will make it fit automatically. Open the file “shirt_start.c4d“.
152 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA The shirt needs to be subdivided a little more so you can deform it better later. Switch to “Use Polygon Tool“ mode and select the polygons on the front and back side of the shirt. Select “Functions/Subdivide“ and set the value to 2. Make sure you don’t subdivide the polygons on the side (the ones created by the bridge tool). OK, it doesn’t really look like a t-shirt yet, it looks more like a box with sleeves. But don’t worry, we’re going to change that right now.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – MOCCA 153 In the dresser menu you will find everything you need to make clothes fit. The other menus deal with the cloth’s behavior. Select “Set“ next to “Dress State“. This is like a security measure. We can recall the shirt’s initial state in case we don’t like the position of the shirt or if we want to add a breast pocket, for example. Switch to “Use Polygon Tool“ mode and select the polygons on the sides (the ones created by the bridge tool).
154 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles The seam will be “pulled together“ in accordance to the “Width“ value. It doesn’t necessarily match the shape of the character’s body, though. The “Steps“ value determines how exact this fit will be. Click on “Relax“. Now other forces such, as gravity, will have an effect on the T-shirt which makes it sag on the character’s shoulders. Does the t-shirt fit? If so, click on “Set“ next to “Init State“. You can also access the initial state anytime.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 155 Welcome to Thinking Particles (Optional module) This is the Quickstart Tutorial for Thinking Particles. It will give you a quick, and hopefully fun, introduction to this extensive particle system. 1. Introduction Thinking Particles is a particle system.
156 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles Each of these nodes has certain properties that can be changed using the Attributes Manager or can be connected to the ports of other nodes. This lets you affect particles in many different ways. The various groups can be subdivided, their look or behavior altered after they have been created and much more. If you have worked with the “old“ particle system up to now, Thinking Particles may seem a little complicated to you in the beginning.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 157 Select the emitter node in the XPresso editor and take a look at the Attributes Manager. Here you will see a bunch of values with which you can change the emitter’s behavior. How many particles should it generate? How long should the particles exist (live)? How big are they? Are they all the same size? You can change some of the values while the animation is playing and will see right away how the particles react to these changes.
158 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles Even if it doesn’t take a lot of time to create such an emitter it can be quite tedious repeating these steps for other emitters. This emitter has a critical disadvantage in that every parameter change requires the selection of the node in the XPresso editor. Never fear – MAXON has placed a standard emitter setup into CINEMA 4D’s object library that gives you convenient access to all emitter attributes over the null object’s user data information.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 159 Open a new (empty) file. Create a square polygon primitive (Objects/Primitive/Polygon). Convert the parametric object to an editable polygon (Functions/Create Polygon). Name the object “Emitter_surface“ and position it to Y=300 (snow most often comes from above). Scale it to X=600 and Z=1000. The snow flakes will be generated from this surface. Assign an XPresso expression to the plane and double click on the tag – the XPresso editor will open.
160 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles Attributes Manager that determines if the particles will be emitted from the face, edges or points of the polygon. Leave the setting on “Face“ because we don’t want the particles to be emitted only from the corners. This node lets you arbitrarily select a polygon object as an emitter. It’s only important that the parametric object is first made editable. Just for fun, try to generate snow emitting from a sphere.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 161 object and therefor cannot be transformed directly. Its orientation is controlled by the “emitter surface’s“ coordinates. Select the “Emitter_surface“ and switch to the “Use Object Axis Tool“. Rotate the object axis 90 degrees around the red X-axis so that the blue Z-axis points down. Presto! The snow is now falling down, as it should. 4.
162 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles Switch to the “Visibility“ menu and set the “Inner Distance“ to 6.5, the “Outer Distance“ to 15 and raise the “Brightness“ to 125%. Switch to the “Noise“ menu. Set the “Type“ to “Hard Turbulence“ and all three scale parameters to 7.5.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 163 Make the light invisible for the editor and the renderer in the “Basic“ menu. It will later be visible only as particles. The “light flake“ is ready. Next we have to let Thinking Particles know that it should use this light as a particle. You guessed it – there’s a special node for this as well. It’s called the “PShape“ node and is located in the X-Pool tab in the “TPStandard“ category. Add a “PShape“ node to the existing XPresso setup.
164 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles In order to understand the purpose of this object you have to know that Thinking Particles can divide particles into groups. To a certain extent, the “Particle Geometry“ object serves to let you assign various geometric objects to these groups. Our example contains only one group named “All“ which contains all particles that will be generated. Nevertheless, a “Particle Geometry“ object is always required.
CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 165 Add “TP Planar Wind“ to the scene. The wind does not yet know which particle group it should influence so open the Thinking Particle Settings (Plugins/Thinking Particles/Thinking Particles Settings) and drag the group “All“ into the “Particle Group“ text field in the “User Data“ menu of the “TP Planar Wind’s“ Attributes Manager. Set the “Strength“ to 300 and the “Turbulence“ to 1000. Our winter wonderland has been turned into a gyrating snowfall.
166 CINEMA 4D R9 Quickstart – Thinking Particles 5. Tips & Tricks Don’t make your life more difficult than it has to be (which doesn’t just apply to working with Thinking Particles) and make use of the object library where you will find the most important Thinking Particles Nodes already assigned to objects and with simple interfaces which, in most cases, will save you a lot of time. Organize your setup. XPresso and/or Thinking Particles setups can become very complex.
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