Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 11.0 Quickstart Manual

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Quickstart Manual

3D FOR THE REAL WORLD

CINEMA 4D

RELEASE 11

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

CINEMA 4D Release 11

Quickstart Manual

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

Plugin programming Michael Breitzke, Kiril Dinev, Reinhard Hintzenstern, Eduardo Olivares, Nina Ivanova,

Product management Marco Tillmann, Bernd Lutz

Quickstart writers Glenn Frey, Sven Hauth, Dirk Beichert, Fabian Rosenkranz

Layout Oliver Becker, Oliver Krawczyk

Translation Scot Wardlaw, Luke Stac y

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, elec tronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without

the express written permission of MAXON Computer.

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

no responsibility 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 th e te rm s of suc h license. Th e co nt ent of thi s manual is fur ni shed for informati on al u se only, is s ubject to c ha nge wi tho ut

notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by MA XON 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 trademark s of MA XON

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

are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies, and are hereby acknowledged.

Cathleen Bastian, Per-Anders Edwards, Paul Everett, Aleksander Stompel,Sven Behne, Wilfried Behne,

Markus Jakubietz, Hendrik Steffen, Jens Uhlig, Michael Welter, Thomas Zeier

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

Contents

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

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2

2. What’s new in CINEMA 4D R11 ........................................................................................ 3

3. General Information / Interface ........................................................................................ 9

4. Sample Images ............................................................................................................... 19

5. Quick Tutorial – Arranging Objects ................................................................................. 21

6. Quick Tutorial – Modeling ............................................................................................... 29

7. Quick Tutorial – Materials ............................................................................................... 36

8. Quick Tutorial – Lighting ................................................................................................. 46

9. Quick Tutorial – Animation ............................................................................................. 52

10. Quick Tutorial – Rendering ............................................................................................ 61

11. Quick Tutorial – Multi-Pass Rendering ........................................................................... 68

12. Quick Tutorial – XPresso .............................................................................................. 75

Welcome to BodyPaint 3D ................................................................ 82

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 82

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

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

4. Quick Tutorial – The Paint Wizard ................................................................................... 86

5. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson .............................................................................. 88

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................... 92

Welcome to Advanced Render (Optional module) ......................................................... 94

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

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

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................... 98

4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination .............................................................................. 100

5. Quick Tutorial – Caustics ............................................................................................... 104

6. Quick Tutorial – Depth of Field ..................................................................................... 106

7. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 108

Welcome to PyroCluster ................................................................. 110

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 110

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 111

3. Sample Image ............................................................................................................... 112

4. Quick Tutorial – 10 Steps To Glory ................................................................................ 113

5. Quick Tutorial – Optimize and Animate ........................................................................ 116

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 119

7. In Closing .....................................................................................................................119

Welcome to Sketch and Toon (Optional module) .......................................................... 121

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

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

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 124

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

4. Quick Tutorial – Outlines ............................................................................................... 126

5. Quick Tutorial – Shaders and Tags ................................................................................. 130

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 134

Welcome To NET Render (Optional module) ...................................................................... 135

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 136

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 136

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 136

4. Quick Tutorial – Installation / Interface ......................................................................... 137

5. Quick Tutorial – Jobs and Administration ..................................................................... 139

Welcome to Dynamics (Optional module) .......................................................................... 142

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 142

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 142

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 143

4. Quick Tutorial – Rigid Bodies ........................................................................................ 144

5. Quick Tutorial – Soft Bodies .......................................................................................... 147

6. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 148

Welcome To Thinking Particles (Optional module) ....................................................... 150

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 150

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 151

3. Quick Tutorial – Particle Snow ....................................................................................... 154

4. Quick Tutorial – Objects as Particles .............................................................................. 157

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 163

6. In Closing .....................................................................................................................163

Welcome To MOCCA (Optional module) ............................................................................... 165

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 165

2. General Information/Interface (Joints and Rigging) ...................................................... 166

3. Quick Tutorial – Forward Kinematics / Inverse Kinematics (FK/IK) .................................. 171

4. Quick Tutorial – Visual Selector ..................................................................................... 174

5. Quick Tutorial – PoseMixer ............................................................................................ 177

6. Quick Tutorial – Morph Tool .......................................................................................... 181

7. Quick Tutorial – Muscles ............................................................................................... 183

8. Quick Tutorial – VAMP .................................................................................................. 186

9. Quick Tutorial – Dressing .............................................................................................. 191

10. Quick Tutorial – FBX Import / Export ........................................................................... 195

Welcome to HAIR (Optional module) ............................................. 199

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 199

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 200

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 201

4. Quick Tutorial – Fur ....................................................................................................... 202

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 213

III

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

Welcome To MoGraph (Optional module) ........................................................................... 214

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 215

2. General Information / Interface .................................................................................... 215

3. Sample Images ............................................................................................................. 218

4. Quickstart Tutorial ........................................................................................................ 218

5. Tips & Tricks .................................................................................................................. 223

Welcome To 3D Ghosting ............................................................... 225

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 225

Welcome to Projection Man ........................................................... 228

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 228

Welcome to Non-Linear Animation in the Timeline ....................... 233

1. Motion Layer ............................................................................................................... 234

2. Animation Layer ........................................................................................................... 238

Note:

As a result of continued product development, differences between the current and printed documentation with regard to referenced ﬁles can occur. The most current versions can be found on the product DVD included in your order, or can be downloaded from the MA XON website or via the Online Updater.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

Welcome to CINEMA 4D

After you have worked through this tutorial you will have a good basic user knowledge which you can apply to future projects.

1. Introduction

No mat ter 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 (MOCC A module) or a cartoony 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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – What’s new in R11

2. What’s new in CINEMA 4D R11

Before we get started with the Quickstart Manual we would like to give you a brief overview of what’s new in CINEMA 4D Release 11.

Once again, CINEMA 4D is brimming with new and innovative functionality and innumerable improvements to make yo ur 3D life easier and improve work ﬂow. R11 now of fers inst ant answer s to almost any question regarding CINEMA 4D functionality with its integrated help system. If you are not already familiar with this system simply right-click on any function in CINEMA 4D and select the Show Help command from the menu that appears. The integrated help system is also extremely helpful when working through the Quickstart Manual. CINEMA 4D offered numerous additions in its R10.0 to R10.5 update, including Squash & Stretch (indispensable for character animators), the Secondary Motion Deformer (for jiggly effects), multi-processor support for HAIR, Generators (HyperNURBS) as collisions objects for Clothilde, the ability to drag images (regardless from where) into the 2D Viewport to be used as modeling templates, and the new automatic save function. And that’s just to name a few.

Note: Make absolutely sure you do not modify any ﬁle or directory names within the installation folder. Also, do not add any ﬁles to this folder. Doing so will lead to malfunctions within CINEMA 4D! All user-speciﬁc information will be saved to the user directory, including Content Browser libraries and similar items (with the exception of plugins).

Some of the most important additions to R11 are the following:

Non-Linear Animation

This new way of mixing animations is a true blessing for all animators. Motion Capture data or manually created motion data can be layered, mixed and transitioned. This system contains two methods for mixing layers: Motion Layer System and Animation Layer System.

Motion Layer System

Motion Layers are mixed in the Timeline. So-called Motion Sources are created using animation data that can then be mixed in the Timeline using Motion Clips. It is important that the Motion Clips themselves contain no animation data. The Motion Clips reference the already created animation data. This makes it possible for multiple Motion Clips to reference a single source (non-destructive animation) and deleting a Clip will not result in the source (original) animation being deleted. The Motion Layer System takes the place of the Motion Mixer functionality, familiar to many users from Release 9. This new and more powerful system lets you save Motion Sources that you have created as presets, which can be used to create your own preset library.

Animation Layer System

This system works roughly similar to Posemixer or the Morph tag. Individual animations are displayed in the Attribute Manager and are organized there as superimposed layers. For example: You assign the character you want to animate a Motion System tag (can be assigned to the top object in the hierarchy. All keyframes of all Child objects will be taken into account by the Motion System tag when the animation is recorded) and add an animation layer. Now record the ﬁrst keyframes for your character’s motion and add a new layer at any time during the process. The currently active layer will contain any keyframes created while it is active. If a new layer is created, all subsequently created keyframes will lie on this layer.

Your character’s walk cycle has been completed and it can walk from point A to point B. After viewing the animation you decide the character’s head should move more dynamically. So you create a new layer and record the key frames for this more dynamic head movement. After you have ﬁnished you can play all layers simultaneoulsy or turn individual layers off (and on again).

Not happy with the new head movement? No problem. Turn the corresponding layer off and create a new layer for animating the shoulder movement. So you decide the shoulder movement is a little “too much” and want your head movement back after all. Two clicks and it’s done – simply turn your shoulder layer off and the head layer back on. The Animation Layer System bears one invaluable advantage: You have your head animation back and you now want to see what it looks like if the head leans a little to the left and a little to the right. All you have to do is copy the layer containing the original head animation and experiment on the new layer. If you don’t like the result simply delete the new layer. The Animation Layer System offers innumerable possibilities for creating perfect animations and lets you quickly get the animation you want.

Onion Skinning: 3D Ghosting

Even though the 3D graphics world is full of technological advances with no end in sight, we can also use this technology to integrate very useful techniques that stem from the very traditional days of 2D animation, even dating back to the 1960s. One of these cornerstones of traditional animation is the so-called “onion skinning” method of animation, an essential tool for displaying the progression of movement of an animation. Onion skinning displays the frames of animation before and after the current frame as “ghost” (semi-transparent) images with increasing transparency the farther away they are from the current frame. Traditional 2D onion skinning basically consisted of images drawn on translucent paper that was placed over a light box or relied on dexterous animators who ﬂipped back and forth between pages containing sequential images they had drawn. As you can imagine, the CINEMA 4D R11 onion skinning (called 3D Ghosting) feature is much more versatile. You can, for example, deﬁne the number of frames before and after the current frame that should be displayed, their color and even the how they should be displayed (wireframe, Gouraud shading, etc.).

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – What‘s new in R11

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – What’s new in R11

COLLADA Import / Export

The COLLADA ﬁle format is a 3D ﬁle format from the Khronos Group. Originally created by Sony Computer Entertainment for use with the Playstation 3 and portable Playstation formats, this increasingly popular format (in addition to the existing FBX format) is being supported by a growing number of applications and has also found its way into CINEMA 4D R11. The COLLADA Import/Export functionality lets you exchange data between the most important 3D applications.

Online Updater

You no longer have to worry about looking for CINEMA 4D updates. A simple click and CINEMA 4D will tell you if an update is available or components such as language ﬁles or new libraries are available. CINEMA 4D will then install the items you select so you can always stay up-to-date.

Doodle

The Doodle tool lets you doodle/scribble notes or instructions directly in the Viewport. Make notes for yourself or for others before sending them the scene.

Projection Man

This powerful tool is especially interesting for matte painters but also for everyone who would like to save loads of time texturing a large scene. Example: Your animation consists of your camera brieﬂy panning across a cityscape from left to right. Large cities generally have the irritating habit of consisting of hundreds to thousands of buildings. Why should a starving texture artist spend an unbelievable amount of time texturing each building individually? And why texture the backside of a building when it will never be seen in the animation? It would be much easier to paint the scene as a whole in a single step – and this is exactly where Projection Man comes in. Projection Man generates a geometry rendering of the scene and automatically opens the image in Photoshop where you can paint it just as you would a normal image. After saving the image in Photoshop you simply reload it in CINEMA 4D and the image will be projected onto the geometry in the scene. The animation can now be played and the texture you just painted will be displayed as a texture on the 3D geometry with the correct perspective for the camera ﬂight. If the camera ﬂight is long and the perspective shift is correspondingly larger you can create an additional camera from which to project and, following the same procedure as just described, use this projection create an even longer camera ﬂight.

Cineman

Cineman is a new connectivity feature that lets CINEMA 4D users communicate with 3Delight, Pixar’s RenderMan and AIR. RIB and SL ﬁles, among others, can be converted to CINEMA 4D materials and sent back to any of these three renderers.

New Render Settings

The Render Settings have been completely reorganized in order to give you a better overview of the numerous Render Settings. Render Settings can now be saved as presets that can be grouped, commented and renamed. This lets you better organize large projects and easily switch from one Render Setting preset to another. The Render Settings menu has been given a new look and offers a better overview of the available options.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – What‘s new in R11

New Global Illumination (GI)

The GI render engine has been completely reworked and operates entirely differently in R11 – for even more realistic rendering! The new GI boasts noise reduction and ﬂicker-free rendering. The interface has been redesigned to make it easy to use for both professional and novice users alike.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – What’s new in R11

BodyPaint 3D R4.0

BodyPaint 3D has been given various new functionalities to make working with textures even easier and more versatile. Among these additions are the arrangement of Photoshop-adapted tools and the addition of the Blur, Sharpen and Colorize tools. The Brush, Clone, Dodge, Burn and Erase tools now have their own separate brush settings. Photoshop brushes can be impor ted directly into BodyPaint 3D and the Texture View now has its own complete ﬁle menu. The Save Brush function has been expanded and colors can now be saved with a brush.

Also adapted to Photoshop was the Airbrush function that now allows control over the Flow option. Wacom Art Pen rotation is now supported and much more. Listing all the new features would over whelm the Quickstart Manual. Check the integrated help ﬁles for a complete list of new features in CINEMA 4D R11 or visit us online at www.MAXON.net.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – What‘s new in R11

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Interface

3. General Information / Interface

CINEMA 4D Release 11 offers many new functions that will again speed up and improve your workﬂow.

Let’s 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)

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Interface

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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 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 Attribute 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 is used to display and manage all of a scene’s materials and 3D shaders. Textures and parameters can be modiﬁed in the Attribute Manager or the Material Editor. 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Interface

By default, CINEMA 4D starts with four open Viewports. You can, however, add any number of Viewports to your layout. 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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Interface

Now we will concentrate more on CINEMA 4D’s icon palettes to get you a little more familiar with them. The following explanation will refer to the colored icons on the next screenshot.

The image shows the left icon palette. At the very top you can see the previously mentioned predeﬁned layouts. Below that we have the (green) “Make Object Editable” button. This function lets a primitive be transformed using points, polygon or edges. The editability of primitives is limited until they are 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”. Use these tools to 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 (yellow). 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).

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 next icon (dark blue) is the “Selection History” icon. Clicking and holding on this icon displays the last eight tools used. This makes switching to a recently used tool much easier.

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.

The next function (purple) lets you switch between the “Us e Wo rl d / Object Coordinate System“. Let’s assume the object axis of your wonderfully modeled 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Interface

Now select the world-coordinates instead and see how the object moves on the X axis parallel to the world coordinate system.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Interface

This function can be very useful in modeling or animating your scene.

Now to the next group of three, the (green) 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.

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“.

If a polygon object is a sub-object of a HyperNURBS object it will be virtually 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). 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. Change the cubes’ display mode by selecting (deactivating) Tools / Isoline Editing in the main C4D menu and switching to Gouraud Shading (Lines) in the Editor’s Display menu. In the end it’s up to you how you want your objects displayed in the Editor. However, for this tutorial, this is the most effective way to show the effect HyperNURBS objects have on polygonal objects or primitives since it shows how the cubes are subdivided and the ﬁnal result is therefore also easier to visualize.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Interface

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).

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Interface

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 gott en to kn ow the loft and Hyp erNURBS. 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 symmetry object, which can be unbelievably helpful in character modeling. You simply model one half of the ﬁgure and use the Add Symmetry 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 (page 18, command palette - shown black & white for clarity).

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).

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Interface

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Interface

4. 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

5. 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 data entry ﬁeld for renaming the object). You can simply refer to the next screenshot.

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.)

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

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 editor 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

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. These objects are not locked. Select the “Body” object and then click on the “Scale” function at 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 conver ted polygon objects) will display lit tle orange handles.

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-editor 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 “Display“ in the editor’s menu. Now let’s get to work. Here’s a screenshot of the ﬁgure from the front for reference.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

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 “Body“ 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

Using the orange handles, select the cubes that make up the arms and adjust their size and position as shown in the next screenshots.

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 your 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).

When you’re ﬁnished select the objects “Upperleg_R“, “Lowerleg_R“ and “Foot_R“. Once they are highlighted in white in the Object Manager press the “Alt+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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Arranging Objects

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Modeling

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Modeling

6. Quick Tutorial – Modeling

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

CINEMA 4D R11 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 (Obje cts / Prim itive / Cu be). Pr ess the “C “ ke y on yo ur keyb oard. By doing this y ou have jus t converted the parametric object to a polygonal object. Most commands can be executed via socalled “hot keys“ which, when used heavily, can speed up your work in CINEMA 4D quite a bit. 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 Attribute 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 “Extrude Inner“ from the menu that appears (hot key “I“). With the left mouse button click on the top orange 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.

Repeat this procedure to create another square on the top of the cube.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Modeling

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.) Select the cube in the Object Manager and alt+click on the HyperNURBS symbol. This will make your cube a Child of the HyperNURBS object Your cube will now look like this:

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Modeling

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

Rotate your view until you have a good view of the underside of the cube and switch to the “Use Point Tool“ mode. 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.

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 Attribute 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 Attribute Manager!

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Modeling

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Modeling

Click on the HyperNURBS object in the Object Manager and drag it down a bit while pressing the “Ctrl“ button on your keyboard. We have now duplicated the hemisphere. The same object is now visible in the Object Manager twice.

Now select one of the HyperNURBS objects and select the “Rotate“ tool.

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

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

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

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Modeling

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Modeling

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

Congratulations! You have just created your ﬁrst modeled object.

You can increase the HyperNURBS object’s subdivision to give our model a smoother look. Simply select the respective HyperNURBS object you want to smooth and set the “Subdivision Editor“ in the Attribute 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. You can also simultaneously press the “.” key while dragging in the Viewport.

If you should want to select points that lie within an object or if you have “Only Select Visible Eleme nts“ deacti vat ed and wan t to avoid acc identall y sele cting points on the ba ckside of the object simply activate “X-ray“. You will ﬁnd this function under display / x-ray. This lets you see through the object and see every point (Polygon / Edge). Accidental selection of hidden points is thus not possible and you have an excellent overview of the inner points of the object which would normally not be visible from the outside.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

7. Quick Tutorial – Materials

A well-modeled object can make a mediocre impression if the right textures aren’t used. Textures 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 surface a self-illuminating property or integrate an 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 Global Illumination calculation.

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

Reﬂection: Gives the material reﬂective characteristics.

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

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

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

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: T h i s d e t e r m i n e s t h e c o l o r o f t h e m a t e r i a l ’ s s p e c u l a r i t y a n d c a n b e i n ﬂ u e n c e d b y

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 Bump 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. Open the “QS_Material.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.

A standard material has been created. If you click on this material its properties will be made visible in the Attribute 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 tex ture 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 overview 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“ (click on the small light gray arrow next to the word “Texture” in the Bump channel) 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

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 down). Alternatively you can drag the material onto the desired object (the eyeball) directly in the Editor. Just make sure you drop the material onto the correct object if there are several in the scene or in close proximity to one another. You can check in the Object Manager to make sure the material was dropped onto the correct object - the material icon will appear next to the object onto which it was dragged.

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 double-click on the top small gray dot to the right of the object in the Object Manager (until it turns red).

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

Double-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.

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 Attribute 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

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 check box next to the word “Texture“ and select “Noise“.

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.

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 Attribute 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

You have s een h ow yo u can g et quic k r es ults wi thout h aving to c re ate a comp le x texture . 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

Here are some more tips about channels for you to try:

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 selecting the “Ambient Occlusion” in the main page’s “Effects” menu..

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 Sub 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 fur ther 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 tex ture’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 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.

Banji: Calculates complex lighting situations with glass and even makes rear-projection (shadow casting) on

partially transparent materials such as rice- or canvas paper possible.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Materials

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Lighting

8. Quick Tutorial – Lighting

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 “QS_Light.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 Attribute Manager and switch the light from “Point“ to “Spot“.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Attribute 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 (If this is not visible in the Editor it may be due to the fact that your display mode is set to “Quick Shading” (uses a single default light source) instead of “Gouraud Shading” (uses all scene lights)). 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 Attribute 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Attribute 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 (If your graphics card will support it you can set the editor’s display mode to “Enhanced Open GL” with activated shadows. Generally speaking, OpenGL offers a much more precise depiction of your scene and gives you an impression of how the shadows will fall).

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Attribute Manager, set its type to “Inﬁnite“. Set its color to turquoise and set its H angle to -160.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Animation

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 necessar y 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

9. 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 Attribute 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.

Furth er to the right yo u will see th e “re cord“ button (the red button fu rthes t to the le ft with the key icon). You can use this button to record certain object attributes. Use the buttons to the right of t he r ecord but ton to set these attributes. With these buttons you ca n “key“ (re cord) 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 time slider you ca n se e the cub e move betw een the two rec ord ed points. Congratulations, you’ve animated the cube! Using the red button to record an object’s changing at tributes is the qu ickest an d e asi est way t o gene rate keys. T here is a dis advantage, 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 Attribute 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.

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 starting 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 fur ther 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

Change the “Top Radius“ value to 200 and set a second key using the method described above. Play the scene in the editor and watch how the cone and the value in the Attribute Manager change.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Animation

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.

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 the time li ne is not y et v is ib le , s im pl y op en it (wi nd ow / t im eline) or s wi tc h t o th e 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 Attribute Manager. Set a key for the color value by CTRL-clicking on the black circle in front of “Color“.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Came ra“.

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. 1“. 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. 1“ in the Object Manager. Click on the cross hairs next to the camera. Now drag the cone from the Attribute 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

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 Attribute Manager. Drag the circle from the Object Manager into this text ﬁeld.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Attribute 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.

Th e attr ibute “ Position“ de termines how much o f the p ath , in %, will b e complet ed wit hin a given amount of time (frames). This means that the c ame ra followe d 0% of th e 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 Attribute 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Animation

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Rendering

10. 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.

Open the scene “QS_Render.c4d“ (ﬁle / open). Slide the time slider to frame 20 and click on “Render / Render Vi ew “.

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 (the clapboard far thest to the left)

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Rendering

Use the method with which you feel most comfortable.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

Often we don’t necessarily want to render the complete editor view but only a small part of it. This is also no problem. Select “Render / Render Region“. The cursor will be transformed into a cross. Drag a frame around the region you wish to render.

The second possibility is to render only a single object.

Select the sphere and the cone in the Object Manager. Select the command (Render / Render Active Objects).

Only the selected objects will be rendered.

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“.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Multi-Pass Rendering

Now you can save any image to your hard drive so you can edit them in an image editing 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).

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

You use the Render Settings to determine what our ﬁnal image will look like Everything from size, quality, single image or animation can be set here. Render the image again in the editor window and take a closer look at the result. 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“.

The ef fect 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 very quickly. “Geometry“ renders the image with sufﬁcient smoothing and offers a good compromise between quality and speed. You can select the best quality when you render the ﬁnal image. The “Filter” menu lets you select the type of anti-aliasing ﬁlter.

The Render Settings “Transparency“, “Reﬂection“ and “Shadow“ can be deﬁned according to how they are needed. Remove the check mark next to the “Transparency” Function and render the scene. You will see that the sphere is no longer transparent.

Re-activate the “Transparency” function and 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 ever ything in motion. Set the render size back to “320 x 240“ and “Frame“ to “All Frames“.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Rendering

CINEMA 4D will now render all of the scene’s pictures. The scene’s length is determined in the preferences (CINEMA 4D main menu: 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 the button next to “Path“ and choose a name and a place to save your ﬁlm. Now choose a format – you can use “Quicktime“ or “AVI“.

You can also choose single image formats such as TIFF, for example. CINEMA 4D will then 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“ from CINEMA 4D’s main menu and watch CINEMA 4D work.

In the “Options“ menu of the Render Settings you also 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.

Of course the “Output“ and “Save“ settings depend on the requirements of your scene. If you render a single image that will be printed with a resolution of 300dpi on a 8.5x11 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!

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Rendering

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.

11. 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 “QS_MultiPass.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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

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. To activate the Multi-Pass function, use the check box at the left of the function’s name. Further to the bottom is a button named “Multi-Pass...” which will, when clicked, offer numerous Multi-Pass channels that can be added for rendering.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Multi-Pass Rendering

On the “Save” page you will ﬁnd a set of parameters for saving Multi-Pass ﬁles. Set the format to “JPEG“ and click on the “Path“ button. Find a place to save the image on your hard drive and name the image “MultiPass_Scene“. Click on the “Multi-Pass...” button and add the channels “Diffuse“, “Reﬂection“, “Specular“ and “Refraction“ and render the scene using the command “Render / Render To Picture Viewer“.

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

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. 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 ”Save” window’s “Format” parameter. If you have Photoshop 7.0 or newer, activate the check box under “Options“ at the bottom right of the window. Render the image.

On your hard drive you will now have a ﬁle named “Multi-Pass_scene0015.psd“. 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.

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Multi-Pass Rendering

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. 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%.

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 “Tags / CINEMA 4D tags / compositing”. Switch to the “Object Buffer“ menu of the Attribute Manager and activate “Buffer 1“.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

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.

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“ by selecting them from the “Multi-Pass...” menu. For the ﬁrst, leave the “ID“ set to “1“ and set 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart –Multi-Pass Rendering

Select the “Refraction“ layer in Photoshop. Choose select / load selection. Set “Channel“ to “Object Buffer 1“.

We just loaded the buffer channel as the selection. Various image editing options will now be limited to the area within this selection – the sphere. Call up “image / adjustments / hue / saturation. Click on “Colorize“ and set the “Hue“ to 240 and the saturation to 100.

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

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Multi-Pass Rendering

Multi -P ass re ally come s to shine when it ’s used with animated scene s. What P hotoshop does for singl e im ages, compositi ng prog ram s do for animations. After Effec ts and Com bustion are tw o of these pro gra ms. Edi tin g soft ware such as Final Cut le ts you edi t image lay ers as well. CINEMA 4D works with all of these programs, partly over special export plugins which offer an extensive number of settings. You can change a color in a 15-minute animation in seconds.

12. Quick Tutorial – XPresso

Expressions let you set dependencies for object properties. In other words, you can use rules to automate a scene: “When object A performs action B object C should perform action D.“ MAXON created XPresso so you don’t have to enter these expressions manually. XPresso is a graphic interface which puts an end to the cumbersome act of typing code. XPresso lets you create expressions using drag & drop which is simple (and can even be fun) and offers enough functionality to be able to solve just about any problem. We will now take a look at what this problem solving looks like. In this tutorial we will build a kind of telescopic arm.

Open a new scene. Create three cylinders (objects / primitives / cylinder). Rename them into “cylinder_small”, “cylinder_medium” and “cylinder_big”. In the Attribute Manager set the radius of “cylinder_medium” to 45, the radius of “cylinder_small” should be 40.

We now have three cylinders with different radii in the scene. Our goal will be a telescopic effect by pulling the smallest cylinder up while keeping the medium cylinder dead center as it moves with the smallest cylinder. This is a case for XPresso!

Apply a new XPresso tag. The quickest way to do this is to click on one of the cylinders in the Object Manager with your right mouse button. Select CINEMA 4D Tags / XPresso. By the way, it doesn’t matter which object you apply the tag to. The XPresso editor will open. Drag all three cylinders from the Object Manager onto the empty surface of the XPresso editor. The objects will be transformed into little boxes, so-called “Nodes“.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – XPresso

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 (Attribute 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“.

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 (small tab at the top left next to the X-Manager). Set the “Mix“ node’s “Mixing Factor” to 50% in the Attribute Manager.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – XPresso

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 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 Attribute 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.

Cli ck o n the blu e cor ner of t he “ Cyl in der _smal l“ n ode and ope n a n i npu t for the 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – XPresso

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

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – XPresso

13. Tips & Tricks

CINEMA 4D has been able to build a large community of users around it who are more than happy to help newcomers in any way possible, be it through the use of home-made tutorials, directly in one of the many forums or by offering free models, plugins, expressions or tex tures.

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

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 support department. You can even get information about third party seminars and training.

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 librar y. In addition, you will ﬁnd a wealth of information on all of these topics online.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks

Since the internet is always changing, doing a search for “CINEMA 4D“ in various search engines would be a good idea.

The Internet is a good source for ﬁnding models. Through its special image search function you can ﬁnd photos or drawings of practically any object.

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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks

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.

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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.

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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks

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. UV-Manager

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. “Active Tool” Window

Differnt tabs display different brush types and their respective attributes as well as the UV Manager’s UV tools.

5. Material Manager and Texture Layers

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.<

This is the CINEMA 4D Material 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 Bump 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 Wizard, the Projection Painting and many other tools (that you’re probably used to using with 2D paint programs). The BodyPaint 3D 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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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.

www.muharraqi-sudios.com, Kingdom of Bahrain

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

4. Quick Tutorial – The Paint Wizard

The BodyPaint 3D Paint 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 BodyPaint 3D wizzard 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!

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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 “QS_BP3D_Startl.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 BodyPaint 3D 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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart –BodyPaint 3D

5. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson

At the bottom left of the Material Manager (and other Managers) you will ﬁnd the texture we just created, right next to “Mat“ in the “Material” tab.

This is the default name for a new texture. Of course you can rename the texture if you like. The ﬁrst material is the color layer and the second is the bump layer (at the top of the window you will see the abbreviations which refer to these layers – “C“ for color and “B“ for bump).

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!).

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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.

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 Attribute Manager (“Active Tool” window).

and select a pink color in the Manager directly above the “Color” tab.

If necessary, increase the HyperNURBS subdivision. Activate the “Render Active View for RayBrush Painting“ in the active view in the “Render” menu (BodyPaint 3D main menu).

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart –BodyPaint 3D

(This will render the view and makes it possible for you to control the color application and the look of the strokes for the ﬁnal rendering). Activate the “Enable / Disable Projection Painting“

(You already know what this function does) and start painting. Of course BodyPaint 3D supports the use of graphic tablets such as a WACOM Intuous. Painting objects with a pressure sensitive pen on a graphic tablet is much easier than painting with a mouse.

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

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

If you move / rotate the ﬁgure now or click on the “Apply the Content of Projection Paint Plane“ (click and hold on the “Activate/Deactivate Projection Painting” button)

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 impor tant 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.

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 (both color layers are located at the left of the Object or Material Manager in the “Material” tab under the letters “F” and “B” + pencil symbol). 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 Bump channel it would “raise” the brush stroke instead of indicating indentations). The result could look like the following image.

Load the “QS_BP3D_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.

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart –BodyPaint 3D

6. Tips & 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 “Tile UV’s“ function, in the respective HyperNURBS Object’s Attribute Manager, 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. 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

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks

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 Save Brush“ 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!

CINEMA 4D R 11 Quickstart – Tips & Tricks

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.

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Advanced Render

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.

2. General Information / Interface

As soon as you have ins talled the Advanced Render mod ule you will ﬁnd the “Global Illumination“ by clicking on the “Effects...” button in the Render Settings. 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 “illumination“ settings are 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.

Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 11.0 Quickstart Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual