Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 10.0 Quickstart Manual

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Quickstart Manual

3D FOR THE REAL WORLD

CINEMA 4D

RELEASE 10

CINEMA 4D Release 10

Quickstart Manual

ICINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

Programming Christian Losch, Philip Losch, Richard Kurz, Tilo Kühn, Thomas Kunert, David O’Reilly,

Plugin programming Sven Behne, Wilfried Behne, Michael Breitzke, Kiril Dinev, Reinhard Hintzenstern,

Produc t Manager Marco Tillmann

Writers Glenn Frey, Sven Hauth, Dirk Beichert, Fabian Rosenkranz

Layout Oliver Becker, Oliver Krawc zyk

Translation Scot Wardlaw, Luke Stacy

This manual and the accompanying software are copyright protected. No part of this document may be translated, reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without

the express written permission of MA XON Computer.

Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the program and this manual, MAXON Computer assumes

no responsibilit y for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the program

or from the information contained in this manual.

This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance

with the terms of such license. The content of this manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without

notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by MAXON Computer. MA XON Computer assumes no responsibility

or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this book.

MAXON Computer, the MAXON logo, Sketch and Toon, CINEMA 4D, Hyper NURBS, C .O.F.F.E.E. are trademarks of MAXON

Computer GmbH or MA XON Computer Inc. Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, PostScript, Acrobat Reader, Photoshop and Illustrator

are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated registered in the U.S. and other countries. Apple, AppleScript, AppleTalk,

ColorSync, Mac OS, QuickTime, Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the U.S. and

other countries. QuickTime and the QuickTime logo are trademarks used under license. Microsof t, Windows, and Windows

NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and /or other countries. LightWave is

a registered trademark of NewTek. 3D studio max and 3ds max are registered trademarks of Autodesk /Discreet Inc. UNIX is

a registered trademark only licensed to X/Open Company Ltd. All other brand and product names mentioned in this manual

are trademarks or registered trademark s of their respec tive companies, and are hereby acknowledged.

Cathle en Poppe, Per-Anders Edwards, Paul Everett

Eduardo Olivares, Nina Ivanova, Markus Jakubietz, Hendrik Stef fen, Jens Uhlig, Michael Welter, Thomas Zeier

II CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

MAXON Computer End User License Agreement

NOTICE TO USER

WITH THE INSTALL ATION OF CINEMA 4D AND ALL ITS COMPONENTS AND PLUGINS (THE “SOFTWARE”) A CONTR ACT IS CONCLUDED BET WEEN 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. IN THE CASE OF NON-ACCEPTANCE OF THIS LICENSE YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL THE SOFTWARE.

IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THIS LICENSE PLEASE SEND THE SOFTWARE TOGETHER WITH ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION TO MAXON COMPUTER OR TO THE SUPPLIER WHERE YOU BOUGHT THE SOFTWARE.

1. General

Under this contract the Licensor grants to you, the User, a non-exclusive license to use the Software and its associated documentation. The Software itself, as well as the copy of the Software or any other copy you are authorized to make under this license, remain the proper ty of the Licensor.

2. Use of the Software

(1) You are authorized to copy the Software as far as the copy is necessary to use the Software. Necessary copies are the installation of the program from the original disk to the mass storage medium of your hardware as well as the loading of the program into RAM.

(2) Furthermore the User is entitled to make a backup copy. However only one backup copy may be made and kept. This backup copy must be identiﬁed as a backup copy of the licensed Software.

(3) Further copies are not permitted; this also includes the making of a hard copy of the program code on a printer as well as copies, in any form, of the documentation.

3. Multiple use and network operation

(1) You may use the Software on any single hardware platform, Macintosh or Windows, and must decide on the platform (Macintosh or Windows operating system) at the time of installation of the Sof tware. If you change the hardware you are obliged to delete the Sof tware from the mass storage medium of the hardware used up to then. A simultaneous installation or use on more than one hardware system is not permitted.

(2) The use of the licensed Software for network operation or other client server systems is prohibited if this opens the possibility of simultaneous multiple use of the Software. In the case that you intend to use the Software within a network or other client server system you should ensure that multiple use is not possible by employing the necessary access security. Otherwise you will be required to pay to the Licensor a special network license fee, the amount of which is determined by the number of Users admitted to the network.

(3) The license fee for network operation of the Software will be communicated to you by the Licensor immediately after you have indicated the number of admitte d users in writing. The correct address of the Licensor is given in the manual and also at the end of this contract. The network use may star t only af ter the relevant license fee is completely paid.

IIICINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

4. Transfer

(1) You may not rent, lease, sublicense or lend the Sof tware or documentation. You may, however, transfer all your rights to use the Software to another person or legal entity provided that you transfer this agreement, the Software, including all copies, updates or prior versions as well as all documentation to such person or entit y and that you retain no copies, including copies stored on a computer and that the other person agrees that the terms of this agreement remain valid and that his acceptance is communicated to the Licensor.

(2) You are obliged to carefully store the terms of the agreement. Prior to the transfer of the Software you should inform the new user of these terms. In the case that the new user does not have the terms at hand at the time of the transfer of the Software, he is obliged to request a second copy from the Licensor, the cost of which is born by the new licensee.

(3) After transfer of this license to another user you no longer have a license to use the Software.

5. Updates

If the Sof tware is an update to a previous version of the Software, you must possess a valid licence to such previous version in order to use the update. You may continue to use the previous version of the Soft ware only to help the transition to and the installation of the update. After 90 days from the receipt of the update your licence for the previous version of the Sof tware expires and you are no longer permitted to use the previous version of the Sof tware, except as necessary to install the update.

6. Recompilation and changes of the Software

(1) The recompilation of the provided program code into other code forms as well as all other types of reverse engine ering of the different phases of Software production including any alterations of the Sof tware are stric tly not allowed.

(2) The removal of the securit y against copy or similar safety system is only permitted if a faultless performance of the Software is impaired or hindered by such security. The burden of proof for the fact that the performance of the program is impaired or hindered by the security device rests with the User.

(3) Copyright notices, serial numbers or other identiﬁcations of the Software may not be removed or changed. The Software is owned by the Licensor and its structure, organization and code are the valuable trade secrets of the Licensor. It is also protected by United States Copyright and International Treat y provisions. Except as stated above, this agreement does not grant you any intellec tual propert y rights on the Software.

7. Limited warranty

(1) The parties to this agreement hereby agree that at present it is not possible to develop and produce software in such a way that it is ﬁt for any conditions of use without problems. The Licensor warrants that the Software will perform subst antially in accordance with the documentation. The Licensor does not warrant that the Sof tware and the documentation comply with certain requirement s and purposes of the User or works together with other sof tware used by the licensee. You are obliged to check the Software and the documentation carefully immediately upon receipt and inform the Licensor in writing of apparent defects 14 days after receipt. Latent defects have to be communicated in the same manner immediately after their discovery. Otherwise the Sof tware and documentation are considered to be faultless. The defects, in particular the symptoms that occurred, are to be described in detail in as much as you are able to do so. The warranty is granted for a period of 6 months from delivery of the Software (for the date of which the date of the purchase according to the invoice is decisive). The Licensor is fre e to cure the defects by free repair or provision of a faultless update.

IV CINEMA 4D R10 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 it s suppliers’ breach of warranty, except for the foregoing limited warranty. The Licensor and its suppliers make no warranties, express or implie d, as to noninfringement of third part y rights, merchantability, or ﬁtness for any par ticular purpose. In no event will the Licensor or its suppliers be liable for any consequential, incidental or special damages, including any lost proﬁts or lost savings, even if a representative of the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such damages or for any claim by any third party.

(3) Some states or jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental, consequential or special damages, or the exclusion of implied warranties or limitations on how long an implied warrant y may last, so the above limitations may not apply to you. In this case a special limited warranty is attached as exhibit to this agreement, which becomes par t of this agre ement. To the extent permissible, any implied warranties are limited to 6 months. This warranty gives you speciﬁc legal rights. You may have other rights which vary from state to state or jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the case that no special warrant y is attached to your contract please contact the Licensor for further warranty information.

8. Damage in transit

You are obliged to immediately inform the transport agent in writing of any eventual damages in transit and you should provide the Licensor with a copy of said correspondence, since all transportation is insured by the Licensor if shipment was procured by him.

9. Secrecy

You are obliged to take careful measures to protect the Software and its documentation, in particular the serial number, from access by third parties. You are not permitted to duplicate or pass on the Software or documentation. These obligations apply equally to your employees or other persons engaged by you to operate the programs. You must pass on these obligations to such per sons. You are liable for damages in all instances where these obligations have not been met. These obligations apply equally to your employees or other persons he entrusts to use the Software. The User will pass on these obligations to such persons. You are liable to pay the Licensor all damages arising from failure to abide by these terms.

10. Information

In case of transfer of the Soft ware you are obliged to inform the Licensor of the name and full address of the transferee in writing. The address of the Licensor is stated in the manual and at the end of this contract.

11. Data Protection

For the purpose of customer registration and control of proper use of the programs the Licensor will store personal data of the Users in accordance with the German law on Data Protection (Bundesdatenschutzgeset z). This data may only be used for the above-mentioned purposes and will not be accessible to third parties. Upon request of the User the Licensor will at any time inform the User of the data stored with regard to him.

12. Other

(1) This contrac t includes all rights and obligations of the parties. There are no other agreements. Any changes or alterations of this agreement have to be performed in writing with reference to this agreement and have to be signed by both contracting parties. This also applies to the agre ement on abolition of the written form.

(2) This agreement is governed by German law. Place of jurisdic tion 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. Termination

This agreement shall automatically terminate upon failure by you to comply with its terms despite being given an additional period to do so. In case of termination due to the aforementioned reason, you are obliged to return the program and all documentation to the Licensor. Furthermore, upon request of Licensor you must submit written declaration that you are not in possession of any copy of the Software on data storage devices or on the computer itself.

14. Information and Notices

Should you have any questions concerning this agreement or if you desire to contac t MAXON Computer for any reason and for all notiﬁcations to be performed under this agreement, please write to:

MAXON Computer GmbH Max-Planck-Str. 20 D-61381, Friedrichsdor f Germany

or for Nor th and South America to:

MAXON Computer, Inc. 2640 Lavery Court Suite A Newbury Park, CA 91320 USA

or for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland to:

MAXON Computer Ltd The Old School, Greenﬁeld Bedford MK45 5DE United K ingdom

We will also be pleased to provide you with the address of your nearest supplier.

VCINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

VI CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

Contents

MAXON Computer End User License Agreement .................................................................... II

Welcome to CINEMA 4D ..................................................................... 2

2. General Information / Interface ........................................................................................ 3

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................... 12

4. Quick Tutorial – Arranging Objects ................................................................................. 14

5. Quick Tutorial – Modeling ............................................................................................... 21

6. Quick Tutorial – Materials ............................................................................................... 28

7. Quick Tutorial – Light ...................................................................................................... 37

8. Quick Tutorial – Animation ............................................................................................. 43

9. Quick Tutorial – Rendering .............................................................................................. 50

10. Quick Tutorial – Multi-Pass Rendering ........................................................................... 57

11. Quick Tutorial – XPresso .............................................................................................. 63

Welcome to BodyPaint 3D ................................................................ 70

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 70

2. General Information / Interface ...................................................................................... 71

3. Sample Images .............................................................................................................. 73

4. Quick Tutorial – the Wizard ............................................................................................ 74

5. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson .............................................................................. 76

6. Tips and Tricks ................................................................................................................80

Welcome to Advanced Render ......................................................... 82

2. General Information / Interface ...................................................................................... 83

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................... 85

4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination ................................................................................ 87

5. Quick Tutorial – Caustics ................................................................................................. 90

6. Quick Tutorial – Depth of Field ....................................................................................... 92

7. Tips and Tricks ................................................................................................................94

Welcome to PyroCluster ................................................................... 95

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 95

2. General Information / Interface ...................................................................................... 95

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................... 97

4. Quick Tutorial – 10 Steps to Glory .................................................................................. 98

5. Quick Tutorial – optimize and animate ......................................................................... 101

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 104

7. In Closing .....................................................................................................................104

Welcome to Sketch and Toon ......................................................... 107

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 107

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 107

VIICINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 110

5. Quick Tutorial – Shaders and Tags ................................................................................. 114

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 118

Welcome to NET Render ................................................................. 121

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 121

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 121

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 122

4. Quick Tutorial – Installation / Interface ......................................................................... 123

5. Quick Tutorial – Jobs and Administration ..................................................................... 124

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 125

Welcome to Dynamics .................................................................... 126

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 127

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 127

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 128

4. Quick Tutorial – Rigid Bodies ........................................................................................ 129

5. Quick Tutorial – Soft Bodies .......................................................................................... 131

6. Tips and Tricks ..............................................................................................................133

Welcome to Thinking Particles ....................................................... 134

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 134

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 135

3. Quick Tutorial – Particle Snow ....................................................................................... 137

4. Quick Tutorial – Objects as Particles .............................................................................. 140

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 145

6. In Closing .....................................................................................................................145

Welcome to MOCCA ....................................................................... 146

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 147

2. General Information/Interface (Joints and Rigging) ...................................................... 148

3. Quick Tutorial – Forward Kinematics/Inverse Kinematics (FK/IK) .................................... 153

4. Quick Tutorial – Visual Selector ..................................................................................... 155

5. Quick Tutorial – PoseMixer ............................................................................................ 158

6. Quick Tutorial – Morph Tool .......................................................................................... 160

7. Quick Tutorial – Muscles ............................................................................................... 162

8. Quick Tutorial – Vamp .................................................................................................. 165

9. Quick Tutorial – Dressing .............................................................................................. 168

10. Quick Tutorial – FBX Import / Export ........................................................................... 171

Welcome to HAIR ............................................................................ 174

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 174

2. General / Interface ........................................................................................................ 174

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 176

4. Quick Tutorial – Fur ....................................................................................................... 177

VIII CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 187

Welcome to MoGraph .................................................................... 188

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 188

2. General / Interface ........................................................................................................ 189

4. Quickstart Tutorial ........................................................................................................ 192

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 197

2 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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. Just use your imagination this time as we “congratulate you to the testing of the demo version of CINEMA 4D or the purchase of CINEMA 4D!“ No matter if you’re just checking CINEMA 4D out or if you already own your own copy of CINEMA 4D or one of its complete XL or Studio Bundle packages, you already know about the incredible things CINEMA 4D can do. We have been working very closely with our customers for several years now in order to satisfy their needs and wishes. This has lead to the creation and introduction of new functionality, according to their needs. These ideas and concepts are then creatively implemented to satisfy the needs of our customers and those of the 3D markets. No matter if you work in the ﬁeld of print, advertising, design, visualization or ﬁlm, CINEMA 4D gives you all the tools you need to make your ideas reality. The intuitive interface and the ease with which CINEMA 4D can be learned makes entering the versatile world for 3D a snap. Whether you need character animation (MOCCA module) or a car toony look of your renderings (Sketch and Toon module) – CINEMA 4D’s modular setup lets you customize it to suit your needs. CINEMA 4D places a link between your job or hobby, and your creativity in the palm of your hand. You can create what your fantasy demands. CINEMA 4D will be your dependable partner. In order to give you an impression of what to expect from the interface we’ll go straight to Part 2 of the Quickstart Tutorial – the interface.

3CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

2. General Information / Interface

CINEMA 4D Release 10 offers many new functions that will again speed up and improve your workﬂow. One of the most notable changes is the newly-designed interface. So many functions have been added to CINEMA 4D in the past six years that made a redesign necessary. The new design is more deﬁned, more concise and offers a more uniform look. Warm colors were used for functions and modes and cool colors for objects. Furthermore, the design of the icons was made more abstract in order to make them more recognizable.

Let’ start with the most important step - starting CINEMA 4D. After starting CINEMA 4D you will see an image similar to the following screenshot:

CINEMA 4D is divided into different working areas as follows: (starting at the top left clockwise)

4 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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.

A Tab indicates different windows or managers which are layered over each other. In each window or manager you will ﬁnd different settings or attributes.

5CINEMA 4D R10 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. This is where you can change the strength of the HyperNURBS subdivision (more about that later) or an object’s visibility in the editor window. The object’s coordinates can be found here as well as the tool setting such as the radius of the live selection and the “Only Select Visible Elements“ option.

The Coordinates Manager lets you place, rotate or scale your objects. Enter the values in the given ﬁelds and conﬁrm your entry with the “apply“ button or simply press the return key.

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 R10 Quickstart – Interface

You can open up to 4 Editor Views simultaneously, giving you an overview of your scene from different perspectives. You can view your scene in different modes ranging from gouraud shading (includes any lights you have placed into the scene) to quick shading (displays your scene using only a default light, not lights you have placed into the scene), wire frame and more. This lets you adapt your editor window layout to your needs or your computer’s processor speed.

The Icon Palettes stretch down the left side and across the top of the editor window. The horizontal palette contains the tools you will be using most often, depending on which module you are using at the moment. If you are using the Modeling Layouts, for example, tools needed to work with polygons, edges and points will be displayed. You can use one of the standard layouts or create your own Icon Palette. CINEMA 4D lets you choose which layout you want to work with.

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.

7CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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. The editability of primitives is limited until they transformed! You can determine size and number of segments but you cannot make any polygonal transformations. Next we have the “Use Model Tool” and “Use Object Axis Tool” (red icons). You can move, scale or rotate a selected object or rotate it around its own axis. The next three (blue) icons represent the “Use Point Tool”, “Use Edge Tool” and “Use Polygon Tool”. In each of these modes you can either move, scale or rotate an object’s points, edges or polygons or edit the object with CINEMA 4D’s integrated tools. The next (purple) icon lets you choose between point, edge or polygon selection.

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 icon palette’s most important functions.

Now we will turn our attention to the most-used icons on the top palette.

On the left you will ﬁnd the “Undo / Redo“ arrows (orange). This lets you reverse or repeat each step. You can determine how many steps CINEMA 4D lets you undo by changing the presets in the main menu (edit / preferences / document).

8 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

Next to the Undo / Redo icons you will see the “Live Selection“ (pink) tool. This lets you select your points, edges or polygons for editing. The next three (turquoise) icons are pretty much self-explanatory. Use these to move, scale or rotate your object or your object’s selected points, edges or polygons. When rotating, please note that the center of the rotation will always be that of the active object (or camera).

The following three (red) icons let you lock & unlock the X, Y or Z axis. These settings let you determine the direction in which your object will be edited. If only one of these icons has been activated it will only be possible to move the object in that particular direction, unless you are using the object axis arrows, which are always independent of the locked or unlocked X, Y or Z directions.

Th e n ext fu ncti on (p urp l e) le t s you s witch be t ween t he “Us e W orl d / Ob jec t Coord ina te System“. Let’s assume the object axis of your wonderfully modele d head is slanted (whereas the term “wonderfully modeled“ is open to interpretation in this case ;o). If you lock the X and Y axis, make the head active and move it, you will notice that your model moves in the X-direction of the object axis.

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 clapboard as a symbol, renders the image in the editor view. The rendering will be made using the settings you have speciﬁed, with exception of image size and several post effects. Icon number 2 renders the image in the “picture viewer” using the settings you have speciﬁed in icon number 3’s “Render Settings”. You can also render animations in the picture viewer since the function “Render Active View” (as the name states) is only meant for checking the scene in the active view.

The next (blue) symbol is the group window “Add Cube Object“. It contains all of CINEMA 4D’s available predeﬁned parametric objects.

9CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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. The wooden slats which were elastic enough to conform to the shape of the ship’s hull were called splines. In the 3D world splines can be deﬁned as “point-based curves“. A spline “follows” several previously deﬁned points while still retaining a curved form. This group window offers several tools for drawing splines, as well as predeﬁned shapes from which to choose. A spline can act as a path for a camera to move along. Just draw a spline and let the camera move along its path. Splines can also be used to model. To put it simply, splines are placed in a row as a wire frame over which a skin is stretched using “Loft NURBS“, for example.

The next (dark orange) group icon hosts probably the most important CINEMA 4D object, the “HyperNURBS object“.

10 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

If a polygon object is a sub-object of a HyperNURBS object its polygon wire frame (mesh) will be subdivided to a higher degree. Visually it will be comprised of many more smaller polygons than before the subdivision (the object automatically looks softer / rounder) without losing the original mesh. As you can see in the next screen shot: The outer mesh (light blue) shows the polygon cube’s actual subdivision. The ﬁner inner mesh (black) shows the subdivision of the HyperNURBS object.

The advantages, especially in modeling, are obvious. Since the object contains few points (edges / polygons) that can be edited it remains very manageable. 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. You would pull one point and only one point would be moved. All other surrounding points would retain their position. You would have to move each one individually in order to achieve the desired shape. Haven’t quite understood? No problem, in part 2 of our Quick Tutorial you will try modeling like this yourself so you can learn the functions ﬁrst-hand. Of course this group window contains several NURBS objects, of which you have already gotten to know the loft and HyperNURBS.

11CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

Let’s take a look at the objects behind the (green) “Function Objects“.

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 symmetr y object, which can be unbelievably helpful in character modeling. You simply model one half of the ﬁgure and use the Add Symmetr y Object function to mirror it and create the other half of the ﬁgure.

The second-to-last icon contains at least one object without which the best model would appear inconspicuous and ﬂat: the light (black & white).

The proper lighting of a scene is at least as important as the scene itself. You can make a better impression with simple models and great lighting than you can with a fantastic model lit by a default light. We’ll go more into detail about that later. Here you will ﬁnd camera objects, the sun object and the environment object, among others (adds a general color and / or fog to the scene).

The “Deformers“ can be applied with the objects of the last icon (light blue).

Use these to bend, deform or squash objects for modeling or animation. There are several helpful tools in this group window. After you have worked your way through this tutorial you can try some of these yourself. You can deduce what most of them do by their names (which appear at the lower left of your monitor when you place the cursor over each icon).

12 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

3. Sample Images

This is the “ooohs and ahhhs!” section. Take a look at these images and let them inspire you a little before we move on to the hands-on part of this tutorial.

13CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

14 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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. When you’ve created the cubes you can see their alignment in the Object Manager at the right.

For better reference, give each cube a unique name (double click the current object name in the Object Manager to open the context window for renaming the object). You can simply refer to the next screenshot.

15CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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. Here you will ﬁnd four small symbols with which you can change your point of view (of course we mean the point of view of the editor window, not your personal point of view. We can have little inﬂuence on the latter.)

The ﬁrst symbol (click – hold – move mouse) moves the view. The second symbol (foreshortened double arrow) lets you zoom in and out and the third (curved arrows with a dot in the center) lets you rotate the scene. Selecting the little rectangle to the right will divide the entire viewport into four views, giving you a better overall view of the scene. Each of the four views has its own little rectangle which, when clicked, enlarges the respective window. Zoom out a little and select the object “Head“ in the Object Manager. The head‘s axis will be visible in the editor window. Drag the head‘s green object axis to a point over the cubes.

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. This prevents an object from being moved in the direction of an axis that has been locked unless you click and drag one of the object’s own axis arrows. If no axis are locked, click on the “Scale“ tool on the icon palette at the top.

The ends of the axis‘ arrows have changed form arrows to boxes. Dragging these boxes will scale the object along that particular axis. Parametric objects (not converted polygon objects) will display little orange handles.

16 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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). If the objects are displayed as wire frame objects you can switch to “Quick Shading“ or “Gouraud Shading“ under “View“ in the editor’s menu. Now let’s get to work. Here’s a screenshot of the ﬁgure from the front for reference.

17CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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.

18 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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 convert the objects and scale them with the “Scale“ function along 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.

This should be no problem with the knowledge you have gained up to this point. To squash the legs, for example, you can squash several objects at once instead of each one individually (as was the case with the arms).

19CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Interface

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 and 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. When the Null object is selected, the axis of this Null object serves as the axis for all three leg objects. If this axis is rotated all children of this Null object will be rotated. Move and rotate the Null object a little and you can make the ﬁgure stick its leg out.

After you have selected the “Rotate“ function you can select the axis rings of the rotation sphere and rotate the object into position. Try changing the ﬁgure’s position by using these different “moving“ functions. If necessary, group objects into a Null object or select several objects at once in order to bring them into position.

21CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

5. Quick Tutorial – Modeling

This is the most important part of this tutorial: How is a model built?

CINEMA 4D R10 has numerous tools that make modeling even easier and greatly simplify workﬂow.

A helpful function for quick navigation is the “General Popup“ which you can activate by pressing “V“ on your keyboard.

A circular menu lets you choose from several menus in which sub-menus appear when the cursor is placed over them. Play with the menu a little and ﬁnd out how it can improve your workﬂow.

In order to show you the basic functions and the most common way to work with the modeler we will create an eye for a comic character.

Let’s start with the creation of a cube, which happens to be the most-used primitive for modeling (O bj ect s / Primitive / Cub e). Press th e “C“ key on your key board. By do in g this yo u have ju st converted the parametric obje ct to a polygonal object. Most commands can be execute d via socalled “hot keys“ which, when used heavily, can spee d up your work in CINEM A 4D quite a b it. Switch to the “Use Polygon Tool“ mode (on the command palette on the left) and select the “Live Selection“ tool (upper command palette). Make sure that “Only Select Visible Elements“ is active in the Attributes Manager. Mark the cube’s top polygon which will become brighter when you place the cursor over it and turn orange when you have selected it. Click on this polygon with the right mouse button. Choose “Ex trude Inner“ from the menu that appears (hot key “I“). With the left mouse button click on the top red polygon, hold the left mouse button pressed and drag the mouse a little to the left. A second square should have been created, as seen on the next screenshot.

22 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

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. (Select the cube in the Object Manager and drag it onto the HyperNURBS object and let go when the little arrow points down.) Your cube will now look like this:

Grab the blue Z-axis in the editor window and drag it down until a relative large indentation has been made.

23CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

Rotate your view until you have a good view of the underside of the cube and switch to the “Use Point Tool“ mode. Now, using the “Live Selection“ tool, select all four points on the underside,

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.

24 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

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).

We want to round off the shape a little more and to do that we will select the inner points. Even though they are visible you won’t be able to select them with the “Live Selection“ tool. This is due to the fact that “Only Select Visible Elements“ in the “Options“ menu of the “Live Selection“ tool in the Attributes Manager is active. Deactivate this option and try the selection again. Now it’s possible to select the points. Be careful! If you forget to turn this option off you might select all the points in the front of the object and accidentally select all points at the backside of the object as well. The surface on the backside will be altered and you won’t notice until you rotate the object at a later point. So always be aware of this option in the Attributes Manager!

Once you have selected all eight points on the object’s underside drag them along the green Y-axis a little to the top to give the object a rounder look.

25CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

Cli ck on the Hype r N URBS object in the O b j ec t Man a ger an d dra g i t dow n a b it whil e 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.

You can now adjust the object’s angle by using the “Rotation Rings“ on the “Rotation Ball“. Drag the blue Zaxis ring down 150 degrees.

Repeat this step for the other HyperNURBS object but only to 50 degrees.

26 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

Position both hemispheres as pictured using the “Move“ function:

Here you can use the aforementioned locking 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 hemispheres.

Using the “Scale“ function you can resize the sphere to ﬁt inside the two hemispheres.

27CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Modeling

Congratulations! You have just created your ﬁrst modeled object.

28 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

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. The parameter “Subdivision Renderer“ is only responsible for renderings in the picture viewer.

Our eye still looks a little blind. We’ll change this in the next chapter by adding a pupil texture. Before we do that, though, we’d like to give you some more modeling tips.

Adjust the inﬂuence of HyperNURBS: Select both cubes and several polygons in the Object Manager. Press the “V“ key on your keyboard, select the “Structure“ menu and click on “Weight HyperNURBS“. If you now click anywhere in the editor window with the left mouse button and drag the mouse to the right you can determine the strength of the HyperNURBS for the selected polygons. If you are not satisﬁed with the result and have unclean edges try this function in the “Use Edge Tool“ mode. This will give you better results.

If you should want to sel ect points that li e with in an obje ct or if you have “Only Sele ct Visible Elem ents“ de act ivate d and wa nt to avoid accidentally se lec ting p oints on the ba cks ide of th e object simply activate “X-ray“. You will ﬁnd this function under display / x-ray. This lets you see through the object and see ever y point (Polygon / Edge). Accidental selection of hidden points is thus not possible and you have an excellent over view 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 tex tures aren’t used. Tex tures give a model color, highlights, structure and other important surface properties. A texture placed into the bump channel, for example, gives the object’s surface an uneven, bumpy look without actually altering the geometric structure. This effect can be used to imitate skin wrinkles, scars or the surface of an orange. The displacement channel works in a similar fashion, only that it actually does change an object’s geometric structure. Using the luminance channel you can give an object’s sur face a self-illuminating property or integrate a SSS effect (sub-surface scattering) which lends the surface a slight translucent / reﬂective look, like human skin or candle wax, for example. In short: Textures have the same signiﬁcance as the outer shape of an object because they are necessary for achieving the desired atmosphere, coloring and surface structure.

We will begin with a brief introduction to the individual material channels:

Color: This is where the material’s color or the base color for the texture is set.

Diffusion: This channel makes your texture “irregular“. Through the application of a noise shader or a texture

your object receives a dirty or dusty look. If desired it can also inﬂuence the specular, reﬂection and luminance channels respectively.

Luminance: The material is given an illuminative property which is also taken into account in the radiosity Global Illumination calculation.

Transparency: This is where you determine the material’s opacity.

Reﬂection: Gives the material a reﬂective characteristics.

Environment: A material is used to simulate an environment reﬂection.

29CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

Fog: This channel lets you apply a fog or cloud property to a material.

Bump: Uses an optical trick to translate light and dark elements of a texture or a shader to simulate the height

and depth of an uneven surface. Scars, wrinkles or scratches can be simulated using this channel.

Normal: This channel is meant for use with “normal textures”. Normals give a low-res polygon object a hi-res look when RGB textures containing the required properties are applied. This lets a hi-res polygon object be replaced by a low-res object, thus saving a lot of render time and offering the same visual result.

Alpha: A texture’s transparency is determined by a material’s light and dark areas. Black equals a transparency of 100% and white makes it opaque.

Specular: This determines a material’s specular properties.

Specular Color: This determine s the col or of the mate rial’s specularity and can be influenced by

a texture.

Glow: Gives the object a self-emitting glow.

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. You can see in the Object Manager to the right that the object does not yet have a texture applied to it. We will do something about that now.

Click on ﬁle / new material in the Material Manager at the lower left.

30 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

A standard material has been created. If you click on this material its properties will be made visible in the Attributes Manager to the right. In the “Basic“ menu you can determine which channels should be activated for this material. Go ahead and activate the Bump channel. As soon as you have done that a new menu button, “Bump“ will appear. Now click on the menu button “Color“ and load a texture into the material by clicking on the small arrow next to “Texture“. Choose “Load Image“ and load Iristexture.jpg. In the mini-preview of the Material Manager at the lower left of your screen you will see the texture displayed as soon as it has been loaded. This gives you a good over view of the materials being used in the scene.

Repeat this procedure for the “Bump“ channel and load Iristexture_bump.jpg into the channel. This JPEG contains the gray scale version of the iris texture which we need to create a relief effect for the surface. You can also choose “Filter“ and load the color texture here and set its saturation to 100%. This saves you from having to load a second image. The bright areas of the image will later appear to be raised on the object and the dark areas of the image will appear to be 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).

You have probably noticed that the eyeball brightened somewhat after you applied the material but you aren’t able to see the actual texture. We still have to change the offset properties and the mapping size so the texture will be aligned properly on our object. At the moment the actual image of the iris is lying distorted on the left side of the eyeball. You can check this by making both HyperNURBS eyelid objects invisible for the editor. To do this click on the top small gray dot to the right of the object in the Object Manager.

Click on the dot again and it will turn green, which makes the objects visible again independent of the visibility settings of any parent object. The dot directly below has the same function except that it affects the rendering.

31CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

Once you have made the eyelids invisible and have rotated the view a little the eyeball should look as follows:

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 in the mini preview of the texture in the Object Manager.

Once you have selected it you will see its parameters in the Attributes Manager. Adopt the settings you see in the next screenshot:

We have just aligned the texture on the eyeball mesh by changing the “Length X“ and “Length Y“ parameters. The offset setting put the texture in the correct position. If you rotate your view again you will see that the iris texture is positioned correctly.

32 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

(Tip: If you want to undo an accidental change to the view just press “Ctrl+Shift+Z“). This function is useful if you have inadvertently rotated the perspective view instead of the editor view. You can also select edit / undo view in the main menu of the editor view.

Our eye may be able to look at us now but the eyelids still make it look a little too gray. We will change a couple of settings that will give the eye a reptilian look.

Create a new material (Material Manager / File / New material) and double click the new material. This will open a dialog window for the material where we can make the necessary changes to 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 light gray arrow in the checkbox next to the word “Texture“ and select “Noise“.

33CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

Click on “Noise“ and on the following dialog page set the global and relative scale factors each to 30%. This reduces the size of the bump-noise mapping which will result in a ﬁner depiction of the bump map.

Check the box next to “Displacement“ and repeat the previously mentioned steps for the bump channel but set the global and relative scales each to 150%. This will increase the size of this channel. Click on the word “Displacement“ to return to the displacement channel’s main menu.

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.

34 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

Close the Material Editor window and set the HyperNURBS subdivision of the eyelids to at least 4 in the editor (Click on the respective HyperNURBS object and change the settings in the Attributes Manager) and apply the new material to the eyelid objects. Render the view (Ctrl+R). The result should be at least somewhat similar a reptile’s eye.

You h ave s e en how you ca n g et quic k r esu lts w ith out hav ing t o cr eat e a com ple x t exture. CINEMA 4D’s integrated shaders and channels offer so many possible variations that you will never be able to try them all. Play around with some of the parameters, add a couple of channels and ﬁnd out how they inﬂuence your renderings.

Here are some more tips about channels for you to tr y:

Got dirt? CINEMA 4D does! Most objects in the real world are not as clean and immaculate as they might appear in CINEMA 4D. Real stone ﬁgures show signs of weathering over the years and dirt has settled in the wrinkles and cracks. You can simulate such “dirt“ very easily with CINEMA 4D (if you own the Advanced Render module) by activating the Dirt option on the Render Settings’ Ambient Occlusion page..

If you own the “Advanced Render“ module (or are testing the CINEMA 4D demo version) you can render human skin, for example, very realistically. The shader Surface Scattering makes it possible. By placing this shader in the luminance channel (effects / sub-surface scattering) the effect is created when rays of light meet a slightly transparent object. Some rays inﬁltrate the object further and are dispersed, others are directly absorbed or bounce off. Further possible uses for this effect would be for materials such as plastic, milk, candle wax or ﬁgurines made of jade.

You can load black & white textures into the alpha channel to inﬂuence the material based on the texture’s brightness, similar to the way you would use them for the bump or displacement channels. The texture’s black areas would be rendered with a transparency of 100%. As the texture becomes brighter the transparency is reduced accordingly. White would have a transparency of 0%

If you choose “Shader“ instead of “New Material“ under “File“ in the Material Manager you will see a list of bhodiNUT 3D shader presets. The advantage of these shaders is that you don’t have to worry about mapping your texture or seams in your texture because a 3D shader will be calculated for the 3D space. Here are a couple described in detail:

Cheen: Generates an electron microscope effect good for the depiction of bacteria or mites.

Danel: Very good for simulating high-gloss ﬁnish Banzi: Lets you depict various types of wood.

35CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Materials

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.

37CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Lighting

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. This type of arrangement is used often in portrait photography to achieve an even lighting and is an excellent method for lighting an object quickly and professionally in the 3D world

Adjust your editor view so the entire ﬁgure is visible to you.

We want to light up our little character. Open the ﬁle “AS_Whimp_Start.c4d”. Create a ﬂoor object (Objects / Scene Objects / Floor) and position it so the ﬁgure is standing on it.

A 3-point lighting arrangement begins with setting a key light. As the name suggests, this light emits the main lighting for the scene and will cast the main shadows. Create a light object (Objects / Scene / Light). Name it “Main_Light“ in the Object Manager.

CINEMA 4D has several different types of light sources. The key light will always be created by default. A point light emits from its center in all directions. For our key light we will need a spot light which we can aim directly at the object.

To make the key light a spot simply go to the Attributes Manager and switch the light from “Point“ to “Spot“.

38 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Lighting

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.

Position the light at the following coordinates in the Attributes Manager: X=300, Y=580, Z=-300 at an angle of H=45, P=-45 degrees. Render the scene.

The light now falls at an angle onto our object. Of course the exact position of the light is strongly dependent upon the camera’s angle. Unfortunately the light is not casting a shadow, letting the ﬁgure look like it’s ﬂoating. CINEMA 4D’s lights have an advantage over real light in that you can choose which kind of shadow, if any, they should cast - a plus for any studio photographer.

In the “General“ menu of the Attributes Manager, set the light’s shadow to “Shadow Maps (Soft)“. We don’t want the shadow to be completely black so we’ll make it a little transparent.

In the “Shadow“ menu, set the shadow density to 50%. Select “1000 x 1000“ as the shadow map. Render the scene.

39CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Lighting

CINEMA 4D offers three types of shadows: “RayTraced (Hard)“ – a shadow with sharp edges, “Shadow Maps (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. Careful, the area shadow can take a long time to render! The larger shadow map allows the shadow to be rendered more accurately.

The light’s cone is a little too small. We will change this as follows:

Switch to the details menu in the Attributes Manager and set the “Inner Angle“ to 30 degrees and the “Outer Angle“ to 100 degrees.

You will see the result in the editor right away. You can also edit the light’s cone by dragging the orange handles.

40 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Lighting

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=

-360, Y=225, Z=-230 and at an angle of H=-20, P=-10 degrees. Select “Area“ as the type of light.

Since the brightness of the lights in the scene is additive, we must “dim“ the brightener a little.

Reduce the “Intensity“ in the “General“ menu to 40%.

This area light illuminates the ﬁgure from a different angle and softens the contrast somewhat. It won’t cast a shadow since this would cause “crossing“ of the shadows and make the object look bad.

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 “Inﬁnite“. Set its color to turquoise and set its H angle to -160.

41CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Lighting

The position of an inﬁnite 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. It gives our Amphibian an interesting color edge and sets him off of the background a little.

Your scene’s mood can be changed by simply changing the color of some of the lights used.

That completes our classic 3-point lighting arrangement. Now the real work starts. If the scene has a background, which is often the case, it will have to be lit as well. With the proper use of point lights details in the scene can be “brought to light“ very nicely. But don’t overdo it. With good lighting, less is often more. Only add lights when necessary and if the scene can actually beneﬁt from them. Two more tips before we end: If you have several lights in a scene and are not sure which light is lighting what, simply make all other lights invisible in the Object Manager. The light which remains will be the only one visible in the editor.

There is a trick how you can determine how to best light which objects in your scene. Select the desired light in the Object Manager and activate Link Active Object in the editor view’s Cameras menu. Selecting this option lets you view the scene from the point of view of an active object, in our case the light. Moving the editor view will automatically change the position of the light when in this mode. This way you can see how the change of position of the light affects the lighting of the object in realtime (Gouraud Shading must be active in the editor view). Once you have reached the desired angle and position you can return to the editor view by selecting Editor Camera from the Cameras menu.

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43CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

8. Quick Tutorial – Animation

With but a few exceptions CINEMA 4D lets you animate every attribute of an object. This means you can alter any attribute in the Attributes Manager over time, whether it’s an object’s Y-coordinates, the color of a light or the strength of an explosion object. By animating different attributes you can easily add complex animation effects and visually attractive scenes.

Let’s look at a “quick & easy“ example just to demonstrate the basic principles of animation.

Begin by opening a new (empty) scene. Create a cube (Objects / Primitive / Cube).

You will see a turquoise slider at the bottom of the editor window next to 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. You can also use the turquoise arrows to the right of the slider to play the ﬁlm at a predetermined speed.

Fur ther to the right you will see the “re cord“ button (the orange button furthest to the lef t with the key icon). You can use this button to record cert ain objec t attributes. Use the but tons to the right o f t he rec or d button to set these at tribu te s. W it h the se but tons you ca n “key“ (reco rd) the position, size, rotation, attribute and / or point-level-animation of an object at any given time in the animation.

Make sure the time slider is to the left, on 0. Deactivate all symbols to the right of the red buttons, except the ﬁrst (position), and click on the record button.

We have now told the cube that it should stay at its position of 0 / 0 / 0 starting at time / frame 0. In other words, we have generated a key that contains the information on the position of the cube at time / frame 0. We will tell you later what exactly a keyframe is. Where can you ﬁnd this ominous key? It’s located in CINEMA 4D’s “timeline“. The timeline is where you can change the position of the keys on the timeline, change the values they contain, delete them, set new keys and much more.

Switch to CINEMA 4D’s animation layout (Window / Layout / Animation).

Take a look at the timeline at the bottom of your screen. You will see the cube along with a “track“ for its position. This track contains three “sequences“ (one for every recorded coordinate) with a light blue box at time / frame 0 – a key.

44 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

Slide the time slider to frame 90. Move the cube along its blue Z-axis (back) a little. Click on the record button. Three more keys will appear on the timeline, this time at frame / time 90.

When you move the ti me slider you can see the cube move betw een the tw o rec or ded point s. Congratulations, you’ve animated the cube! Using the orange button to re cord an object ’s changing at tribute s is the qu ic ke st a nd e as ies t w ay to g enerate keys. The re i s a di sad va ntage , tho ugh. 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). Move the cone up a little along its green Y-axis so that it’s standing on the ﬂoor.

The cone has a lot of attributes that we can change using the Attributes Manager. We will now animate two of these attributes - the upper radius and the number of segments of the cone.

Make sure that your scene is set to frame 0. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the small black circle in front of “Top Radius“. It will turn red.

45CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

We just told CINEMA 4D that the “Top Radius“ attribute of the cone at point 0 of the animation should have a value of 0. Of course we haven’t created an animation yet, only a star ting point for the animation. The ﬁlled red circle in front of the attribute name tells us that a key has been set at this point in time in the animation. This is an easy way to see if an attribute has been animated. A further ctrl-click on this circle would delete the key.

Go to frame 50.

The ﬁlled red circle is now empty. This means that the attribute has been animated at some point in the timeline but no key exists at this particular point.

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. This means the value at frame / time 25 of the animation will be exactly 100 since half the time equals half the altered value of the attribute. The attribute’s value changes over time – it has been animated.

Go back to frame 0. Set a key for the “Bottom Radius“ attribute. Go to frame / time 90. Reduce the number of segments to 3 and set another key. Play the animation.

46 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

Now two of the cone’s attributes have been animated. One changes between frames 0 and 50 and the other between frames 0 and 90. For an overview of the keys that have been set we us the timeline.

If t h e tim e l ine i s n ot ye t visi b le, s i mply o p en it ( w indo w / time l ine) or swit c h to the predeﬁned animation layout (window / layout / animation). In the timeline you can see the cone, its animated attributes and the keys that were set.

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. Set a key for the color value by ctrl-clicking on the black circle in front of “Color“.

Go to frame / time 50 and set the color to pink and set a key.

Now go to frame / time 90, set the color to a friendly blue and set a third key. Play the animation.

47CINEMA 4D R10 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“.

48 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

A target camera differs from a normal camera in that it focuses on a speciﬁc object. This has the advantage that the camera can be moved freely within a scene, without “losing sight“ of your targeted object. When a target camera is created, it places with it into the scene an additional object, a Null Object named “Camera Target“. This is the object upon which this camera is targeted by default. In this case we don’t need it because we want to target the camera onto the cone. Delete the “Camera Target“ in the Object Manager. Click on the cross hairs next to the camera. Now drag the cone from the Attributes Manager into the “Target Object“ ﬁeld in the “Tag Properties“ below.

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“. Set the spline’s coordinates to Y=20 so the circle is above the ﬂoor and angle the spline a little by setting the P-angle to 30 degrees.

Now we have a circle that encompasses our scene – a track for our camera. We just have to tell the camera to follow this circle. This is done with a special CINEMA 4D tag.

Using the right mouse button, click on “Animated Camera“ in the Object Manager and select “CINEMA 4D Tags / Align to Spline“ from the menu that appears. A further tag will appear next to the camera.

This tag has a text ﬁeld named “Spline Path“ in the Attributes Manager. Drag the circle from the Object Manager into this tex t ﬁeld.

49CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Animation

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. Go to frame 90 and set this attribute’s value to 100%. Set another key and play the animation.

The att ri bute “P os it ion“ de te rmines how m uch of th e p at h, in %, wi ll be complete d w it hi n a given amount of time (fram es). This means that the camera followe d 0% of the path at frame 0 and 100% of the path at frame 90. It followed the entire length of the path once.

Make sure you set the animation back to 0. In the “Coordinates“ menu of the Attributes Manager, set a key for the Y position.

Go to frame 90. In the editor, move the circular path up along its green Y-axis until the camera has a bird’s eye view of the cone. Key the new Y position.

Now the circular path and the camera move together on the Y-axis in the course of the animation. With just a few animated attributes we have managed to create a complex animation.

50 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

9. Quick Tutorial – Rendering

You’ve been a busy bee. You have created a scene, set up the lighting, animated objects and assigned materials to them. Now we want to see the result of all this work. What you have to do is to transform this 3-dimensional scene into a 2-dimensional image (in the case of an animation it would be an entire series of images. We will “render“ the images. CINEMA 4D offers a wide variety of options for rendering your 3D scene. We will use a scene from the animation chapter as our source and we will add a transparent sphere and a bright background to the scene.

51CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

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. There are three ways you can render the active view.

1. Using the main menu

2. The keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+R“

3. By clicking on the icon in the editor window

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.

52 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

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).

Only the selected objects will be rendered. You can also access both commands by clicking on their respective icons.

Rendering the editor view gives us a quick overview of the scene but it does not offer the possibility to process this image further, to save it to the hard drive, for example. What good is 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“. (If you are using CINEMA 4D’s demo version this function will not be available to you).

53CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

No w you c an s ave any ima ge t o your har d dri ve s o you c an e dit the m in a n imag e edit ing program or just send them to your grandma via email if you want. Rendering to the Picture Viewer has the additional advantage that you can continue working on your scene if the image should take a while to render. You have probably noticed that the image which is rendered to the picture viewer is very small. 320 x 240 pixels to be exact. Why this size? And what should you do if you need a larger format? The time has come to make use of the render settings.

Close the picture viewer and open the render settings (Render / Render Settings).

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. This is called “anti-aliasing“. This term refers to how smoothly an edge has been rendered.

Set Anti-aliasing to “None“ in the “Render Settings“.

54 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

The effect is much worse without anti-aliasing. You can plainly see pixelation along the left edge of the cone now as well.

Set anti-aliasing to “Best“ and render the scene again. All edges have been rendered sharp as a knife.

To quickly check the scene you can leave the anti-aliasing set to “None“ or “Geometry“. “None“ renders the edges without anti-aliasing and ver y 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.

The render set tings “Transparency“, “Reﬂection“ and “Shadow“ can be set depending on how they are needed. Switch the transparency to “None“ and render the scene. You will see that the sphere is no longer transparent.

Select “Render / Delete Render Settings“. The render settings will be set back to the default settings. Switch to “Output“ in the render settings.

This is where we will ﬁnd out why the image in the picture viewer is being rendered so small. “Resolution“ lets you choose from a wide variety of image resolutions. You can also simply enter the desired image size. Slide the time slider back and forth until you ﬁnd a frame you would like to render. Set the size to “800 x 600“ and render the image in the picture viewer.

55CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

Now you can see a lot more of the scene. We’ve done enough with single images and want to move on to an animated scene. We want to set everything in motion. Set the render size back to “320 x 240“ and “Frame“ to “All Frames“.

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“.

56 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Rendering

You can als o ch oo se singl e imag e format s such as TIFF, for example. CINEM A 4D will the n save 90 images for this particular animation. You can then create a ﬁlm from these single images using editing software. Some formats even allow you to save an alpha channel with the image. Alpha channels help you to cut out objects in the image in an image editing program, letting you change the background, for instance.

Select “Render / Render in Picture Viewer“ and watch CINEMA 4D work.

In the “Options“ menu of the render settings you will ﬁnd further settings that inﬂuence your rendering. Here you can turn textures off, generate a protocol as a text ﬁle and regulate the level of detail.

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.

57CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-Rendering

Of cour se t he “ Out p ut“ and “Sav e“ s ettin gs d epen d on the req uire m ent s of you r sc ene. If you render a single image that will be printed with a resolution of 300dpi on a 8.5x11 size page you should render the image with a resolution of at least 2550 x 3300. If you want to print the image in a picture size of 3x5, a render resolution of 1000 x 1500 will be more than enough. By the way, there are many services that will print your digital images. Maybe you can send us your ﬁrst CINEMA 4D work of art as a Holiday card!

Animation is a different story. The frame rate, which is also editable in the “Output“ menu of the render settings, plays an important role in animation. The frame rate is the speed at which the animation plays. A frame rate of 25 means that 25 images per second will be played. If you produce an animation for the European market you will have to adhere to the PAL standard which uses an output size of 768 x 576 pixels and a frame rate of 25. If you produce a ﬁlm the frame rate must be set to 24 and a much higher resolution that for television.

10. Quick Tutorial – Multi-Pass Rendering

As you have read in the previous chapter rendering can take up a lot of time. The last thing you want to have to do is render a long animation a second time because you accidentally set a wrong property. Let’s say you look at your ﬁlm again the next day and realize the specular light on the sphere was set much too bright. Or worse, you’re a 3D professional and a client is looking over your shoulder telling you he would rather have the pink panther dove blue! Now you have to create a new texture for the character and render the entire animation again – unless you had secretly activated Multi-Pass rendering. With the help of Multi-Pass rendering you can place 3D objects in front of a real background (keyword: compositing) or you can use ﬁlters in post-production to make the images more attractive. In this chapter we will show you how to use Multi-Pass rendering so we can take away the hassle of clients who want you to make unexpected changes to a project ASAP.

Open the ﬁle “Multi-Pass_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 Multi-Pass.

Multi-Pass rendering means that not only the actual image will be saved but also the individual channels (passes) which comprise such an image. A channel can, for example, contain an image’s environment light, specular light, transparency or even single objects. This information is output as a separate image. These images can be edited individually using an image editing software and brought together to a single image after editing. In the top right corner of the Multi-Pass settings there is a menu which you can call up by clicking on the arrow which shows all renderable channels.

58 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-Rendering

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 “Multi-Pass_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“. Add the channels “Diffuse“, “Reﬂection“, “Specular“ and “Refraction“ and render the scene using the command “Render / Render To Picture Viewer“.

59CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-Rendering

You will not notice anything special when the image is rendered. When you look into the “channel“ menu of the image viewer you will see that you can call up each of the channels you just rendered individually. If you now look on your hard drive where you saved the image you will see four ﬁles. Since “Layer Name as Sufﬁx“ was activated in the Multi-Pass window each image was given a name according to its channel: “Diffuse” for the diffuse lighting, “reﬂ“ for the reﬂection, “specular“ for the specular light and “trans“ for the transparency / refraction, each with the frame number. If you take a look at each image you will see that only the information from the individual channel is contained in the respective image. In the “trans“ image only the sphere can be seen since it is the only transparent object in the scene.

But how can we use these images to manipulate our scene after it’s been rendered? By using an image editing software such as Photoshop. Photoshop is a very popular program which has established itself as the standard image editing software. If you don’t own a version of 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. Since we want to work with Photoshop it makes sense that we use Photoshop’s own format “PSD“ (Photoshop Document).

Set the format to “Photoshop (PSD)“ in the Multi-Pass window. If you have Photoshop 7.0 or newer, activate the checkbox under “Options“ at the bottom right of the window. Render the image.

“Multi Layer File“ is automatically activated in the Multi-Pass window as soon as we select PSD as our format. This simply means that all four images will be contained in one image ﬁle as separate layers. Convince yourself: On your hard drive you will see a ﬁle named “Multi-Pass_scene0015.psd“. Users of the demo version will ﬁnd this ﬁle alongside with the Quickstart PDF-document. Open the ﬁle in Photoshop. The image you just opened looks like the rendered image in CINEMA 4D. Take a look at Photoshop’s layer palette and you will see our channels, properly named and linked with each other.

60 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-Rendering

The great thing is that we can change the layers in Photoshop and at the same time the channels of our rendering. Remember the specular light we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter? We think it can be a little brighter.

Select the “Specular“ layer in Photoshop and call up the “Levels“ function (Image / Adjustments / Levels).

Now you’ve already made the specular light brighter without having to render the image again.

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 Multi-Pass 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 “Multi-PassShadow_Scene0015.psd“). Now the shadow has its own Photoshop layer. The shadow is very dark and the right edge of the cone can barely be seen. We want to change that now. Select the shadow layer in Photoshop and set its “Opacity“ to 50%.

61CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-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.

Assign a compositing tag to the sphere in CINEMA 4D’s Object Manager under “CINEMA 4D tags / compositing”. Switch to the “Object Buffer“ menu of the Attributes Manager and activate “Buffer 1“.

The compositing tag makes it possible to assign an image buffer to one or more objects in the scene. Assign a compositing tag to the cone as well. Activate the second buffer.

62 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – Multi-Pass-Rendering

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 Multi-Pass 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. Where are the new objects? They can be found in the channel palette. An “Alpha Channel“ was created for each object. An alpha channel is a gray scale image used to cut out objects in the image.

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.

63CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – XPresso

Only the sphere will be colored. Since it consists mainly of refractions, we chose the respective layer in advance.

Mult i-Pass reall y co mes to shi ne w hen it’s u sed with ani mated sce nes. W ha t P hotosho p d oes for sin gl e image s, composi ti ng programs d o f or animations. Af ter Ef fec t s a nd Combust ion are tw o of the se programs. Edit in g s oft ware such as F in al Cut let s you e di t i ma ge layer s a s w ell. 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.

11. 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.“ So you don’t have to enter these expressions manually MAXON created XPresso. 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 Attributes Manager set the radius of “cylinder_medium” to 45, the radius of “cylinder_small” should be 40.

64 CINEMA 4D R10 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 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“.

Nodes are XPresso’s cornerstones. They represent objects or functions. Nodes have an input and an output which allow them to exchange information with other nodes. You can view a node’s complete input by clicking on the little blue box in the top left corner of the node. A node’s output can be viewed by clicking on the red box. Take a look at the exits of the cylinder’s nodes. Some of them will surely be familiar to you (Attributes Manager).

Think about what it is we want to happen. We want to pull the small cylinder up, i.e.; change a Y-value. This movement should in turn inﬂuence the Y-value of the medium cylinder which should stay exactly in the center of the Y-positions of the big and small cylinders. We can say that we want to set the medium cylinder to an average value of the other two cylinders.

Click on “Cylinder_big’s“ red corner and select Coordinates / Position / Position Y. Do the same for “Cylinder_ small“.

65CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – XPresso

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.Y“ output to the “Mix“ node’s input 1 and the “Cylinder_big“ exit to the “Mix“ node’s input 2.

Both Y-positions will now be transmitted to the “Mix“ node which will now calculate their average of their respective values. The 50% setting makes sure the values will be mixed evenly. The result will be the Y-position of the medium cylinder.

Click on the blue corner of the “Cylinder_medium“ node and open an input for the Y-position (Coordinates / Position / Position.Y). Connect the “Mix“ node’s output with the input of “Cylinder_medium“ node.

Now gaze in amazement at the result in the editor window. Move the small cylinder along its green Y-axis. The center cylinder aligns itself automatically.

66 CINEMA 4D R10 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. Now we just have to connect the node to the rest of the setup.

Click o n t h e blue co r n e r o f t h e “Cylin d e r _ s m a l l “ n o de and o p e n a n i nput for t h e Y-position (Coordinates / Position / Position.Y). Drag “Cylinder_small“ from the Object Manager into the XPresso editor again and open an output for the Y-position. Connect this output to the “Value“ input of the “Clamp“ node. Connect the output of the “Clamp“ node to the “Position.Y“ input of the “old“ “Cylinder_small“ node.

Now the cylinders can only be moved a limited distance in the Y-direction, just like a real telescope.

12. Tips and Tricks

67CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – XPresso

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.

One of the main sources of information, of course, is the MAXON web site www.maxon.net.

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Here you will ﬁnd news, interesting projects that were done with CINEMA 4D, an extensive CINEMA 4D link library and even a form for questions for our suppor t department. You can even get information about third party seminars and training.

The Plugin Cafe is a sister site to the MAXON web site www.plugincafe.com.

If you’ve pushed your skills to the limit or if you are looking for a speciﬁc tool you can probably ﬁnd what you need at this site. You will ﬁnd an extensive collection of plugins, expressions, interfaces and BodyPaint 3D brushes, many of them free. There is even access to CINEMA 4D’s Software Development Kit (SDK) for those who would like to program their own plugins. The SDK documents how CINEMA 4D works and how you can expand it.

A large selection of books is also available for those who would like to expand their CINEMA 4D library. There are books from the basics to specialization such as character animation. Just enter the keyword CINEMA 4D into the search engine of your favorite online book store.

Flipping through books which don’t have anything to do with computer graphics can also be helpful. 3D is a complex ﬁeld in which many of the classic arts and techniques are combined. Books about photography, lighting, direction, acting, image creation and painting should be part of every serious 3D artist’s library. In addition, you will ﬁnd a wealth of information on all of these topics online.

Eadweard Muybridge’s photo books are especially good for character animators. Muybridge was known for his photographic depiction of human and animal motion.

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. Commercial sites also offer a wealth of content.

If you’re looking for advice and don’t want to test the MAXON support just yet you can ﬁnd help quickly in the CINEMA 4D forums. These are independent discussion forums in which users can meet to help each other with problems or to “just talk 3D“. Here you won’t have to wait long for an answer. Since many topics have been discussed here already it’s advisable to search the archives ﬁrst. Chances are you will ﬁnd the solution to your problem in the archives. The C4D forum is a part of the “C4D meet“, a so-called portal site that offers information about CINEMA 4D around the clock. These portal sites are perfect place to rummage for information. A couple of large English language portal sites that deal with 3D and CINEMA 4D are CGTalk (www.cgtalk.com) the PostForum (www.postforum.com) or Renderosity (www.renderosity.com). Here you can ﬁnd out what’s going on in the “3D scene“.

Another English language portal site with extensive information about animation is the “Animation World Network“ (www.awn.com). Here you will ﬁnd anything and everything that has to do with classic and computer animation.

Since the internet is always changing, doing a search for “CINEMA 4D“ in various search engines (such as “Google“, www.google.com) would be a good idea.

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 (ww w.corbis.com) can also be a good source of ideas.

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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. You can build your own texture archives in no time.

Try to get away from the technical point of view. Learning a software is only a matter of time. A good 3D artist has the ability to use software as a tool that helps him realize his ideas. The real creativity lies with the idea, not the software. So when you create your next scene don’t worry so much about creating the perfect object. Concentrate rather on how you can make a harmonious composition with this object with a ﬁtting theme and proper lighting. Also, think about the message you are trying to send to the viewer. The same goes for animators. A technically perfect animation is a great achievement but it will put your audience to sleep if the concept is bad. It’s not so bad, on the other hand, if your animation is a little bumpy and imperfect but your story touches the viewer.

We hope this manual has helped you to master the technical part of 3D graphics. What you do with what you’ve learned is in your hands.

70 CINEMA 4D R10 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

Welcome to BodyPaint 3D

This is the BodyPaint 3D 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 3D 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. Let’s start with its structure.

1. Introduction

BodyPaint 3D will revolutionize the way you work with textures in such a way you will wonder how you ever got along without it! With this module you can paint your models as they are: in 3D. This is what BodyPaint 3D, the revolutionary way to texture objects, is all about. In addition, BodyPaint 3D lets you paint in several texture channels at once, and thanks to RayBrush even directly on the rendered image itself. Projection Painting is a tool we have integrated that makes it possible to paint on complex objects without distortion.

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Using the UV-tools you can relax and stretch your UV-mesh, no matter how complex it is. Put simply, a UVmesh is a second impression of a polygon mesh that projects the texture onto a polygon object. The days of 2D texturing are over and you can ﬁnally concentrate on what’s important in texturing: creativity. Everything that took up so much time with 2D texturing is now done by BodyPaint 3D and you can deliver your projects faster. Let’s move to the user interface.

2. General Information / Interface

First take a look at the screenshot on the next page.

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.

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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. This gives you control over the amount of color applied and can see right away how a new color looks on the object.

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. Active Tool / Attributes Window including UV-Manager

Here you can switch between tabs to make the properties of the different types of brushes and the UV-tools of the UV-Manager visible. The UV-Manager lets you restore the UV-mesh using an algorithm. It recognizes layered polygons and attempts to relax the UV-mesh for optimal placement over the entire surface and, if necessary, new placement. All remaining “relaxation“ can be adjusted manually.

4. Object Manager

We’re sure we don’t have to say much about the Object Manager. It’s the same manager as in the CINEMA 4D main program and lets you select the object to be edited or change its position in the hierarchy.

5. Material Manager

This is the same manager as the CINEMA 4D manager with expanded functionality. This is where you will ﬁnd your textures with their respective layers. If needed, you can paint in several layers at once (for example color and relief channels). To do this simply select the texture to be painted and the respective layer and start painting.

6. Command Palette

The command palette contains the paint assistant, the Projection Painting and many other tools (that you’re probably used to using with 2D paint programs). The wizard eliminates the need to manually create a texture including the UV-mesh. It also calculates the texture size and channels. Without these bothersome preparations you can begin painting right away.

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3. Sample Images

We’ve reached a part of the tutorial for which words are not necessarily needed. Simply take a look at the

following images.

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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“.

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!

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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.

Now we’ll get to the heart of this tutorial. Open the ﬁle Claude_BP_start.c4d. Say hello to Claude, our guinea pig for the day. In the course of this tutorial we will alter the color of his right eyelid a little and apply a bump layer in elephant-look to his skin.

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 white 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“. Leave the settings in the next window the way they are. The selection “Single Material Mode“ would create a texture for each object individually. If the box is not checked all objects will share one texture surface. Click on “Next“ again. In the next window check the bump channel. The color channel is selected by default. You can double click the little gray boxes next to each texture channel and assign each channel a base color. Since Claude likes elephant gray we will leave the boxes the way they are. Leave the rest of the settings the way they are and click on “Finish“, then on “Close“ in the next window. The basic textures have been created and we can start painting. If you have experience with earlier texturing methods and the time it took to even get started BodyPaint 3D will seem like a blessing to you. BodyPaint 3D saves you a lot of time. Now let’s move to the second part of the tutorial: the UV-meshes and the ﬁrst brush stroke.

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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 de fault n am e for a new texture. Of course you can rename the texture if y ou like. The fir st material is the color layer and the se cond is the bump layer (at the top of the window you w il l s ee the abbr eviations wh ic h r efer to the se laye rs – “C“ for colo r a nd “B“ for bump).

Now Select the “Use UV Polygon Edit Tool” symbol.

Once you have selected the corresponding texture in the color channel the UV-mesh should become visible in the texture window at the upper right. If the mesh is not visible, activate it by clicking on “UV Mesh / Show UV Mesh“ in the texture window menu. 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 orange in the next image!).

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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). We can do without this, though, since we are painting our own skin structures onto the surfaces and not using an existing texture. We can counter any distortion we encounter when painting manually by using “Projection Painting“. The stroke will maintain its width no matter how the polygon is spread over the mesh.

Move and zoom the editor window view until Claud’s right eyelid ﬁlls the view.

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Select the brush on the command palette on the left, Now select “Brush Tool for Painting Textures” for applying the color. Set the size to 25 and the hardness to 40 in the brush’s Attributes Manager.

and select a pink color using the “Preview Active Channel” directly below. Use the sliders that appear on the right.

If necessary, increase the HyperNURBS subdivision. Activate the “Render Active View for RayBrush Painting“ on the command palette.

(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 suppor ts 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.

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Paint along the edge of the eyelid. The eyelid will probably end up looking like this:

If you move / rotate the ﬁgure now or click on the “Apply the Content of Projection Paint Plane“

you will see how the color was applied to the texture (you can see the recently applied strokes of color in the window to the right).

You can take the same steps for the bump layer. We will take you one step further, though, in order to be able to explain an important function. We will paint both eyelids at the same time!

Select the texture in the color channel of the Material Manager. Now click on the icon with the black/orange pencil at the left of the Material Manager. A light gray background tells you the multi-brush mode is active. Select the pencil icon next to the “B“ of the bump channel as well.

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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. Switch to the color layer’s “Color” menu and set the color to a medium gray which will be the base color for our eyelid. Now go to the bump layer’s color preview and set the color to black. When you paint on the object you will notice that both colors are being applied to the object – the gray base color and the black (to indicate indentations). (If white were the color of the relief channel it would “raise” the brush stroke instead of indicating indentations). The result could look like the following image.

Load the Claude_BP_ﬁnal.c4d ﬁle and take a look at it when you have time. Here are some everyday tips with which you can achieve great results quickly and easily.

6. Tips and Tricks

A very helpful function can be found in CINEMA 4D’s preferences (Ctrl+E). In the “BodyPaint“ menu you will ﬁnd the function “Project On Invisible Parts“. Which, when activated, can make 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. Just make sure you don’t apply color to objects you don’t want to color when this function has been activated.

If a texture map does not ﬁt correctly at the point where large and small polygons meet (in the case of low-poly objects that are subordinates of HyperNURBS) set the function “Tile UV’s“ from “User” to “Border“ or “Edge”. This sends the UV-mesh through the HyperNURBS algorithm and subdivides it to ﬁt the polygon object.

Avoid UV-mesh polygons that meet to a point when applying a “noise texture“ to a bump layer. The narrower a 3-sided polygon becomes, the coarser the bump noise channel will be rendered. Of course such a polygon has much less area for the noise structure at its tip than it does at its center which results in a magniﬁcation effect of the noise structure. Try to set up each side of a triangulated polygon as an isosceles. This also goes for “4-point polygons“ when they converge into a trapezoid. The more square the polygon the more even the structure will be.

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It goes without saying that you need different brushes for different texture looks. CINEMA 4D has a wide variety of brush types for you to use. Just select the tab “Attributes“ and click on the small arrow on the brush preview

Here you will ﬁnd all the brushes your heart desires. If you don’t ﬁnd the brush you’re looking for we’ve beat Murphy to the punch and have given you the possibility to create and save your own brushes. Just make the changes you want and click on the “Add Preset“ button.

With this tutorial you have gotten to know how BodyPaint 3D works and you can convince yourself of the advantages painting directly onto objects themselves offers. With only a little practice you can also achieve similar results as you can see on the next image – Claude’s new texture outﬁt.

Here the same rule applies for best results: try it, don’t just study it!

82 CINEMA 4D R10 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. The module integrates itself seamlessly into existing rendering settings which makes learning to use it a simple matter. The module adds the following functions to the standard renderer: Global Illumination (a rendering method for especially realistic lighting), caustics (achieves lighting effects on mirrored and transparent materials), depth of ﬁeld, specular lighting, glows and sub-poly displacement.

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2. General Information / Interface

As soon as you have installed Advanced Render you will notice several new options in your render settings (Render / Render Settings). Under “Global Illumination“ you can activate “Global Illumination Rendering“. As soon as you have activated “Global Illumination Rendering”, other options will be made active which allow you to create custom settings for radiosity. A material’s “luminance“ channel is closely associated with this ﬁeld. These settings let you determine if a particular material should be rendered with Global Illumination . Further settings can be applied to individual objects using the “compositing tag“.

Caustics acts in a similar fashion. The global settings can be found under “render settings“. Here you can activate or deactivate surface and volume caustics separately. Options relating to speciﬁc materials can be set in the luminance channel. In addition, caustics also offers a third setting. You will ﬁnd this in the light object. The use of caustics requires at least one light object. Within a 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. You can imagine it as a layer which is placed on top of the image after it has been rendered.

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The Sub-Polygon Displacement can be activated in a material’s “displacement“ channel.

3. Sample Images

Here you can see what’s possible with the Advanced Render functions.

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4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination

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. The room is lit by “diffused“ (indirect) light.

The raytracing procedure takes into account diffused light. For example, if only one light is used, everything lying in the shadows will not be visible. Maybe you have already built a virtual room into which a light source is shining through a hole in the wall. The light in the virtual world hits an object, lights it – and that’s it. The light spreads no further. Global Illumination rendering is different. Global Illumination rendering lets every object within the scene act as a light source. As you will see, you can actually light a Global Illumination scene without using a single light!

Op e n a new (e m pty) fil e. Crea te a sk y ob ject (obj ects / scene / sk y) and a f loor ob ject (objects / scene / ﬂoor). The sky object encompasses the entire scene like a large sphere. The ﬂoor surface is an inﬁnite sur face.

Create a torus (objects / primitive / torus) and move it to a y-position of 100, slightly above the ﬂoor.

Now we will light the scene with diffused light using Global Illumination rendering. We will use our sky object as the light source.

Switch to the Material Manager. Create a new material (ﬁle / new material). Switch to “basic“ in the Attributes Manager. Deactivate “color“ and “specular“ and activate “luminance“. Drag the material from the Material Manager onto the sky object in the Object Manager.

Create another material and give it your favorite color. Drag this color onto the torus.

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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 Global Illumination as the render mode.

Open the render settings (render / render settings). Switch to Global Illumination and activate Global Illumination. Switch to the options menu and make sure that “Auto Light“ is deactivated.

Rotate the scene in the editor viewport so the camera is at such an angle as to show only the ﬂoor in the background. This speeds up rendering since the rendering will only be done to the “horizon“. Render the scene.

CINEMA 4D will automatically turn on Auto Light in a scene if there are no light objects present. When using Global Illumination, this automatic function is excluded since it would make the scene much too bright.

A Global Illumination 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. In addition, the torus is lit somewhat by the light reﬂected from the ﬂoor below. Of course Global Illumination lighting can be combined with “normal“ light sources which may be necessary when darker shadows are needed

Create a sphere (objects / primitive / sphere). Move the sphere along the X-axis a little to the right until it’s next to the ring. Copy the sky material and switch to the luminance channel of the new material. Use the color sliders to create a bright blue. Drag the material onto the sphere.

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We now want to use the blue sphere as a light. We don’t want the sphere to be visible, but only to emit its blue color. You achieve this by using the “compositing tag“.

Apply a compositing tag to the sphere in the Object Manager (Tags / CINEMA 4D Tags / Compositing). Switch to the Attributes Manager and deactivate all options except “Seen by GI“ (Global Illumination). Render the scene.

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.

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5. Quick Tutorial – Caustics

Have you ever obser ved 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. Create a ﬂoor object (objects / scene / ﬂoor). Create a platonic (objects / scene / platonic) and give it a Y-position of 140 using the Attributes Manager.

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 spot light (objects / scene / spot light). Place it at the following position: X=270, Y=300, Z=-100 at an angle of H=70 degree s, P=-25 degrees using the Attributes Manager. The light is now shining through the object onto the ﬂoor. Render the scene.

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Part of the light is falling on the platonic, part of it is falling on the ﬂoor. Still there is no caustic effect anywhere in sight - the effect must ﬁrst be activated. Select the light and switch to the caustics page of the Attributes Manager. Activate “surface caustics“ for the light.

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.

Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 10.0 Quickstart Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Welcome to CINEMA 4D

1. Introduction

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

Welcome to BodyPaint 3D

1. Introduction

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

Welcome to Advanced Render

1. Introduction

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images