Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 13.0 Quickstart Manual

CINEMA 4D Release 13 Quickstart Manual

The software described in this document is subject to a license agreement and may only be used in accordance with the regulations thereof.

Programming Christian Losch, Philip Losch, Richard Kurz, Aleksander Stompel, Tilo Kühn,

Per-Anders Edwards, Sven Behne, Wilfried Behne, Thomas Kuner t, David O’Reilly,

Paul Everett, Cathleen Bastian, Ole Kniemeyer, Kent Barber, Jens Uhlig, Frank Willeke,

Sebastian Rath

Plugin programming Michael Breitzke, Kiril Dinev, David Farmer, Jamie Halmick, Reinhard Hintzenstern,

Jan Eric Hoffmann, Eduardo Olivares, Nina Ivanova, Markus Jakubietz, Eric Sommerlade,

Hendrik Steffen , Jens Uhlig, Michael Zeier, Matthias Bober, Markus Spranger,

Michael Kloß, Ralph Reichl, Timm Dapper, Paul Everett, G.E .M. Team Solutions,

Michael Welter, Eberhard Michaelis

Product management Bernd Lutz, Oliver Meiseberg, Marco Tillmann

Quickstart authors Glenn Frey, Sven Hauth, Heiner Stiller

Layout Aron Schmid

This manual and the accompanying software are copyright prote cted. N o part of this docu ment may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmit ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of MAXON Computer. Although every precaution has been taken in th e 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 info rmation contained in this manual . This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may b e used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. The content of this manual is furn ished for informational u se only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by MAXON Computer. MAXON Computer assumes no responsibility or liability for a ny errors o r inaccuracies that may appear in this b ook.

The trademarks [MAXON] (DE 1 139 896, CTM 4639 191, IR 950 459; registered in the European Union, the Russian Federation and Australia), [CINEMA 4D] (DE 2 068 891, CTM 4959698, IR 664 160, JP 4 385 968, KR 40-2008-0033230; registere d in the European Union, Switzerland, the Russian Federation, USA , Japan, South Korea and China), [MAXON FORM] (CTM 4518569; registe red in the Eu ropean Union) and [MOGRAPH] (CTM 4926771; registered in the European Union) are registered trademarks of MAXON Computer G mbH. In addition, trademark rights ca n exist for MAXON Computer GmbH or MAXON Computer Inc. in various territories for the aforementioned or other tradema rks, e.g. BodyPaint 3D, RayBrush , C.O.F.F.E.E. or HyperNURBS.

Acrobat , the Acrobat logo, PostScript, Acrob at Reader, Photoshop, Flash and Director and Illustrator are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated registered in the U.S. and other countries. Apple, AppleScript, AppleTalk, ColorSync, Mac OS, QuickTime, Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in th e U.S. and other countries. QuickTime and the QuickTime logo are trademarks used under license. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark only licensed to X/Open Company Ltd. All other brand and product names mentioned in this manual are trademark s or registered trademarks of their respec tive companies, and are hereby ackn owledg ed. HDRI material preview: Creative Market.

Bullet Time is a registered trademark from Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

The information in this document are subject to change without notice.

ICINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart

II CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart

Contents

Preface __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ IV

Welcome to CINEMA 4D R13 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2

1 . Introduction ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7

4. Quick Tutorial – Materials

5. Quick Tutorial – Lighting

6. Tips & Tricks

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 26

____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 11

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 18

BodyPaint 3D ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 28

1 . Introduction ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 28

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 31

4. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson

5. Tips & Tricks

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 38

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ 29

______________________________________________________________________________________ 33

CINEMA 4D Renderer ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 40

1 . General Information / Interface _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 40

2. Quick Tutorial – Rendering

3. Sample Images

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 47

4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination

5. Tips & Tricks

6. ProjectionMan

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 52

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 53

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 42

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 49

Sketch and Toon ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 60

1 . Introduction ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 60

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 63

4. Quick Tutorial – Shaders and Tags

5. Tips & Tricks

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 69

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ 61

____________________________________________________________________________________________ 65

Character Tools ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 71

1 . Introduction ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 71

2. General Information

3. Working with the Auto Rigger and CMotion

4. Quick Tutorial – Pose Morph

5. Tips and Tricks

6. Quick Tutorial – Cloth

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 73

______________________________________________________________________________ 75

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 83

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 86

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 88

HAIR _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 94

1 . Introduction ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 94

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

4. Quick Tutorial – Fur

5. Tips & Tricks

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 97

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 98

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 110

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ 95

MoGraph ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 111

1 . Introduction ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 111

2. General Information / Interface

3. Sample Images

4. Target Effector

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 115 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 116

5. Quickstart Tutorial: MoDynamics

6. Tips & Tricks

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 122

________________________________________________________________________________________________ 112

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ 121

Dynamics ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 124

IIICINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart

IV CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart

Preface

MAXON always strives to make the learning process for new CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D users as easy as possible. This includes not only the interface and workﬂow but also the accompanying documentation. To best serve the needs of our users we have divided the MAXON documentation into four categories, which are designed for users ranging from absolute beginners through to professional user levels:

1. Quickstart Videos

• Level: 3D newbies who want to get to know CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D

• Topics: Navigation and interface, movement, scaling and rotation, creating objects, modifying

objects and materials, animation, lighting and rendering

• Location: http://www.maxon.net/downloads.html

2. Quickstart Manual

• Level: Novice users with basic CINEMA 4D or BodyPaint 3D skills

• Topics: see Quickstart manual’s table of contents

• Location: Quickstart manual

3. Context-Sensitive Help System Tutorials

• Level: Users with solid CINEMA 4D or BodyPaint 3D basic skills who want to advance their overall level of expertise in specic areas

• Topics: Mechanical modeling, character modeling, materials, lighting and shading, camera and

render settings, MoGraph, XPresso, animation, After Effects

• Location: Main menu: Help.

4. Reference Documentation

• Level: All CINEMA 4D users from beginner to professional.

• Topics: All aspects of CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D are explained

• Location: Can be accessed via the application’s main menu: Help / Show Help... (documentation must

be installed: either automatically via Online Updater or manually as online download).

http://www.maxon.net/downloads/updates-co/documentation.html

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 MAXON website or via the Online Updater.

1CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

2 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart

Welcome to CINEMA 4D R13

After you have worked through this tutorial you will have a good basic user knowledge which you can apply to future projects. In this Quickstart manual you will be asked to open certain ﬁles for demonstration purposes. These can be found on your Goodies DVD or on the MAXON homepage on the download / documentation page.

1. Introduction

To make working with this Quickstart easier, instructional text and tips have been underlain with color for

easy recognition.

Instructional text is highlighted in blue.

If you make an error in working through one of the tutorials, these colors will make it easier to locate

instructional text and tips when trying to nd the location at which you may have made the error.

3CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Interface

No matter if you’re just checking CINEMA 4D out or if you already own your own copy of CINEMA 4D, 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. 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.

4 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Interface

2. General Information / Interface

CINEMA 4D Release 13 offers many new functions that will again speed up and improve your workﬂow.

Let ’s start with the most important step - starting CINEMA 4D. Afte r star ti ng CIN EMA 4D you will see an image

similar to the following screenshot:

Rendered Viewport

Icon Palette (tools)

Icon Palette (modes)

Object Manager

Viewport (perspective view)

Material Manager

Attribute Manager

Coordinates Manager

Clicking on the light blue Cube icon opens the parametric object group selection window, which contains all

of CINEMA 4D’s available parameteric objects. It contains all of CINEMA 4D’s available predened parametric

objects.

Click on the second icon to create a cube. Click and hold to see all available parametric objects. Note: After an object has been initially created it is a parametric object. An object can only be modiﬁed as a whole and

not its individual surfaces (an exception are special deformers from the Deformer menu). Before you begin

modeling, the parametric object must be converted to a polygonal object. To do so, select the object you want

to convert and run the Make Editable command by pressing the c-key on your keyboard. You can now move or

modify individual points and surfaces.

Two icons to the right of the Cube Primitive symbol (black cage with white points and turquoise inner) are the NURBS objects. The most important of these is the HyperNURBS object.

5CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Interface

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 ner inner mesh (blue) shows the subdivision of the HyperNURBS objec t. Change the cub e‘s display mode by selecting (deactivating) Options / Isoline Editing in the Viewport’s 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 same menu. Then switch to the Use Polygon Mode in the left Icon Palette. 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 cube is subdivided and the ﬁnal result is therefore also easier to visualize.

6 CINEMA 4D R13 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 ner subdivision, will follow the point being dragged (The image below shows the same Cube object - one with HyperNURBS and one without).

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.

3. Sample Images

7CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

8 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

We will continue with navigation in CINEMA 4D.

The rst symbol (click – hold – move mouse) moves the view. The second symbol (foreshortened double arrow) lets you dolly 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 view panel into four views, giving you multiple viewports to use. Each of the four views has its own little rectangle which, when clicked, enlarges the

respective window. Create a new scene (main menu: File / New) and subsequently a new Cube in that scene. Zoom out a little and select the word Cube in the Object Manager. The cube’s axis will be visible in the editor

window.

Each of the axis‘ arrows can be selected and dragged in its corresponding direction. This prevents the object

from being dragged in the wrong direction in the editor view. 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 to lock a

specic 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 Cube object and then click on the Scale function at top.

9CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Interface

The ends of the axis‘ arrows have changed from arrows to boxes. Dragging these boxes will scale the object al o ng th at par ticu lar ax is. Pa ram etr i c obj e c ts (n ot co nverte d poly gon ob jects) wi ll dis pla y lit tle or ange handl e s.

Important: If you are in Edit Point Mode or Edit Polygon Mode, only the selected points or polygons will be scaled. In addition, we can no longer see the little orange handles as a result of having made the cube editable.

They make it possible to stretch and squash the parametric object on the corresponding axis. The nal icon in this group activates the rotation mode. A series of rings will appear around your object - clicking and dragging one of these rings will allow you to rotate the object in the respective direction (heading, pitch or bank).

10 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

4. Quick Tutorial – Materials

A well-modeled object can make a medi ocre impres sion if the rig ht 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 a subsurface scattering effect (sub-surface scattering) which lends the surface a slight translucent / reective look, like human skin or candle wax, for example. In short: Textures have the same signicance 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 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 transparency.

Reﬂection: Gives the material reﬂective characteristics.

Environment: A texture is used to simulate an environment reection.

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

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

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

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

visual result.

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

Specular: This determines a material’s specular properties.

Specular Color: This determines the color of the material’s specularity and can be inuenced by

a texture.

Glow: Gives the object a self-emitting glow.

Displacement: Deforms an object using light and dark values (calculates differences in height). Do not

confuse this with the Bump channel which only imitates an uneven surface.

11CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

12 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

We will now create our own material. Open the QS_Material.c4d ﬁle. You can see in the Object Manager to the right that the object does not yet have a texture applied to it. Click on CREATE / 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 tab 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 tab will appear in the

Attribute Manager for the Bump channel. Now click on the Color tab and load a texture into the material by clicking on the small arrow next to Texture. Choose Load Image and load Iristexture.jpg.

In the mini-preview of the Material Manager at the lower left of your screen you will see the texture displayed

as soon as it has been loaded. This gives you a good 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 grayscale 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 th e color texture here and set its saturatio n 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.

13CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

Click on the material in the Material Manager with the left mouse button and drag it onto the Eyeball object in

the Object Manager (when you drag the material over the object you can let go once the 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 correc t objec t 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 right 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).

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.

14 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

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 U and Length V 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.

Tip: If you want to undo an accidental change to the view just press Ctrl+Shift+Z (Mac:

Cmd+Shift+Z). This function is useful if you have inadvertently rotated the perspective view instead of the editor view. You can also select view/undo view in the main menu of

the editor view. The texture will complete our model. Experiment with the parameters of

the individual channels to ﬁnd out how they affect the material. At this point we would like to offer you a few additional tips.

15CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

If you own CINEMA 4D Visualize or CINEMA 4D Studio, you can render human skin realistically using Subsurface

Scattering. By placing this shader in the Luminance channel (click on the small arrow next to Texture and

select Subsurface Scattering from the Effects menu) the effect is created when rays of light meet a slightly transparent object. Some rays inﬁltrate the object further and are dispersed, others are directly absorbed or bounce off.

Further possible uses for this effect would be for materials such as plastic, milk, candle wax or gurines made of jade. You can load black & white textures into the alpha channel to inuence the material based on the texture’s brightness, similar to the way you would use them for the bump or displacement channels. The texture’s black areas would be rendered with a transparency of 100%. As the texture becomes brighter the

transparency is reduced accordingly. White would have a transparency of 0%

If you choose Shader instead of New Material under Create 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.

16 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

Danel: Very good for simulating high-gloss nish.

Banzi: Lets you depict various types of wood.

17CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Materials

Banji: Calculates complex lighting situations with glass and even makes rear-projection (shadow casting) on partially transparent materials such as rice- or canvas paper possible.

18 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

5. 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.

Open the ﬁle QS_Light.c4d and adjust your editor view so the entire ﬁgure is visible to you.

We want to light up our little character. Create a oor object (Create / Environment / Floor) and position it so

the ﬁgure is standing on it.

19CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

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 (Create / Light / Light). Name it Main Light (double-click on the name) in the Object Manager.

CINEMA 4D has several different types of light sources. The Omni light will always be created by default. An Omni 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 Omni to Spot.

20 CINEMA 4D R13 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= -30 0

at an angle of

H= 45

P= -45

degrees (enter the values and click on the Apply button).

Render the scene (Cmd / Ctrl + r).

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 you r display mode is set to Quick Shadin g (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 gure look like it’s oating. 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.

21CINEMA 4D R13 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 OpenGL with activated shadows. (Viewport: OPTIONS / ENHANCED OPENGL) Generally speaking, OpenGL offers a much

more precise depiction of your scene and gives you an impression of how the shadows will fall).

22 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

Now we’re happy with our key light. Next we will create a more even lighting by brightening our gure a little

from the other side.

Create another light source in the scene and name it Brightener. Place it at the following coordinates:

X= -36 0

Y= 225

Z= -23 0

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 gure 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.

23CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

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 Innite. Set its color to turquoise and set its H angle to -160.

The position of an innite 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 omni lights details in

the scene can be brought to light very nicely. But don’t overdo it. With good lighting, less is often more. Only

add lights when necessary and if the scene can actually beneﬁt from them. Two more tips before we end: If you

have several lights in a scene and are not sure which light is lighting what, simply turn off (green check mark)

all other lights in the Object Manager. The light which remains will be the only one visible.

One trick you can use while aiming lights is to view the scene from the perspective of the light. Select the

desired light in the Object Manager and activate Set Active Object as Camera 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 real-time (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 Use Camera / Default Camera from the Cameras menu.

24 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

25CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

26 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

6. Tips & Tricks

CINEMA 4D has been able to build a large community of users around it who are more than happy to help

newcomers in any way possible, be it through the use of home-made tutorials, directly in one of the many forums or by offering free models, plugins, expressions or textures.

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

Here you will nd 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.

Flipping through books which don’t have anything to do with computer graphics can also be helpful. 3D is a complex eld in which many of the classic arts and techniques are combined. Books about photography, lighting, direction, acting, image creation and painting should be part of every serious 3D artist’s library. In

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

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.

27CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Lighting

Even mail order catalogs can be a great source of information on how an object is supposed to look.

Textures are all over the Internet as well. Note that almost all image are copyright protected and cannot be used commercially. 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 will help you master the technical part of 3D graphics. What you do with what you’ve

learned is in your hands.

28 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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 3D 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 application. 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 BodyPaint 3D 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 nally 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 (BodyPaint 3D is a component of CINEMA 4D and can be activated by

simply selecting BodyPaint 3D from the CINEMA 4D Layout menu at the top right of the GUI).

2. General Information / Interface

First take a look at the screenshot below:

29CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

6. Icon Palette (modes)

5. Object Manager and color settings

1. Rendered Viewport

4. Attribute Manager Window

2. Texture Window (UV Mesh Editor Window)

3. UV Manager

Here you see on e of the two standard layouts: BP UV Edit. The second layou t (B P 3D Pai nt) 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.

30 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

1. Viewport

Here you can see the object you will be painting. You can rotate, move and zoom the window as needed. The

RayBrush mode lets you paint directly onto the object in the rendered version of the view. This gives you control over the amount of color applied and can see right away how a new color looks on the object.

2. Texture Window (UV Mesh Editor Window)

This is where you edit your UV-mesh. You can relax and restore your UV-mesh. If you use the UV-Manager’s UV-tools you can watch how the texture relaxes. You can also watch the color application process in this

window, which will then be visible in the editor window right away.

3. UV Manager

Th e UV-Ma n ager le ts yo u resto re th e UV- m e sh usi ng an alg o rith m . It rec ogni zes la yer ed poly gons an d atte m pts 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. Attribute Manager Window

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

tools.

5. Object Manager, Material Manager and color settings

The Object Manager, Material Manager and Color Manager are tabbed in the lower left corner of the interface. As in the standard layout, the Object Manager displays all the objects in your scene.

The Material Manager in this layout has expanded functionality, allowing you to manipulate individual material

layers and paint on multiple channels at once.

Within the Color Manager, you can set up the color or texture that you’d like to paint within each channel.

6. Icon Palettes

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.

31CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

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.

32 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

Now we’ll get to the heart of this tutorial. Open the le QS_BP3D_Start.c4d. Say hello to Claude, our guinea pig for the day. In the course of this tutorial we will alter the color of his right eyelid a little and apply a Bump

layer to give a more elephant-like look to his skin.

Select the predened standard layout BP UV Edit at the top right of CINEMA 4D’s main editor window. Click on the BodyPaint 3D Wizard Icon so we can make the necessary preparations to the texture (brush symbol

with white stars).

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 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 rst brush stroke.

33CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

4. Quick Tutorial – First Painting Lesson

At the bottom left of the Material Manager (in the Materials tab) you will nd the textures we just created, right next to Mat.

This is the default name for a new material. Of course you can rename the material if you like. The rst texture 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! Fortunately, the default UV mesh looks pretty good. The only problem is that the UVs corresponding to the eyelids (highlighted in orange in the next image) are

too small.

34 CINEMA 4D R13 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 Claude’s right eyelid lls the view.

35CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

Now select Brush Tool for Painting Textures for applying the color. Set the size to 25 and the Pressure to 40 in the brush’s Attribute Manager…

…and select a pink color in the Color Manager.

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

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 Projection Painting (so you can paint without distortion and across any UV seams) and start painting. Of course BodyPaint 3D supports the use of graphic tablets such as a WACOM Intuos. Painting objects with a pressure sensitive pen on a graphic tablet is much easier than painting with a mouse.

36 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

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

If you move / rotate the gure 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 important function. We will paint both layers 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. 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.

37CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

Rotate the view so you can see the eyelid from the top. Activate the Raybrush Render View for RayBrush

Painting mode and set the brush size to 10. 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 in the Materials tab under the letters C 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 le 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.

38 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

5. Tips & Tricks

A very helpful function can be found in CINEMA 4D’s preferences (Ctrl+E). In the BodyPaint 3D menu you will ﬁnd the function Project On Invisible Parts, which, when activated, allows you to paint on both sides of an

object in projection paint mode. Let’s assume you want to color the arm of a gure or sprinkle color on the

entire ﬁgure. With this function deactivated 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 t correctly at the point where large and small polygons meet (in the case of lowpoly objects that are subordinates of HyperNURBS) set the Tile UV’s function, in the respective HyperNURBS Object’s Attribute Manager, from Edge Standart to Boundary to Edge. This sends the UV-mesh through the HyperNURBS algorithm and subdivides it to t 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 isoscel es . 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.

Here you will nd a wide variety of preset brushes corresponding to natural media and detail effects. You can

also load preset brushes from Adobe Photoshop, and save your own brushes. Just make the changes you want and click on the Save Brush button.

Now that you’ve gotten a brief introduction to BodyPaint 3D’s painting tools, you can experiment and practice

adding details to your own models.

39CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – BodyPaint 3D

40 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

CINEMA 4D Renderer

This is the Quickstart Tutorial for the CINEMA 4D renderer. It will show you many of the CINEMA 4D renderer’s typical applications and covers some theoretical physics behind the effects.

1. General Information / Interface

As soon as you open the Render Settings (main menu: Render / Edit Render Settings...) you will ﬁnd parameters such as Global Illumination by clicking on the Effect... button. If Global Illumination is enabled,

other options will be made available, which allow you to create custom settings for radiosity. A material’s

illumination settings are closely associated with the render settings. 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.

41CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

Caustics (available in CINEMA 4D Visualize and Studio) 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 nd 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.

42 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

Depth of ﬁeld, highlight and glow are additional post effects available in CINEMA 4D Visualize and Studio. You will ﬁnd them in the Render Settings under Effect. Further settings for depth of ﬁeld can be made in each

camera’s attrib ute set tings. A post effect will rst be calculated after an image has been completely rendered.

You can imagine it as a layer which is placed on top of the image after it has been rendered.

2. Quick Tutorial – Rendering

You’v e bee n a bus y bee . You have cre ated a scene , set up th e lig hting, anim at ed ob jec ts and assign ed ma te ria ls 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. Open the ﬁle QS_Render_01.c4d to work through the following tutorial. CINEMA 4D offers a wide variety of options for rendering your 3D scene in a Viewport:

1. Using the main menu

2. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+R

3. By clicking on the icon in the editor window (the clapboard farthest to the left)

43CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

Use the method with which you feel most comfortable. Often we don’t necessarily want to render the complete

editor view but only a small part of it. This is also no problem. Select Render / Render Region. The cursor will be transformed into a cross. Drag a frame around the region you wish to render.

The second possibility is to render only a single object. Select the object Master in the Object Manager. Select

the command (Render / Render Active Objects).

44 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

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. To save your renders or render a full animation,

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 As. A further window will open. Select the appropriate format and conﬁrm with OK.

Of course you can also save a series of images as an animation. To do so, change the Frame Range from

Current Frame to All Frames, and set Format to QuickTime Movie, for example. 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.

45CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

You use the Render Settings (main menu: Render / Edit Render Settings...) to determine what our nal image will look like. Size, quality, single image or animation can be set here.

If your rendered objects appear pixelated at their edges, this is a result of the anti-aliasing settings. This term

refers to how smoothly an edge is rendered. Open the ﬁle QS_Render_01.c4d. In the Render Settings menu,

set anti-aliasing to None and render the scene.

You can plainly see pixelation along the wire now as well.

Now set anti-aliasing to Best and render the scene again. All edges have been rendered much smoother

without losing clarity.

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 sufcient smoothing and offers a good compromise be twee n quality and speed . You can select the bes t quality when you render the nal image. The Filter menu lets you select the type of anti-aliasing lter.

The parameters you modify/dene in the Output and Save Render Settings menu dep end on the requirements

of your scene.

46 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

If, for example, 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 900 x 1500 will be more than enough.

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 than for television.

3. Sample Images

Here you can see what the CINEMA 4D renderer can do!

47CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

48 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

49CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination

Light as we know it in the real world spreads on its own. It is reﬂected by the objects it hits. This differs

depending on an object’s surface characteristics. Imagine a room with a window on one wall. Light is being cast through the window onto the oor of the room. The light doesn’t stop there, but is reected from the oor onto other objects which, in turn, reect the light themselves. The room is lit by diffused (indirect) light.

The raytracing procedure does not take into account diffused light. For example, if only one light is used,

everything lying in the shadows will not be visible. Maybe you have already built a virtual room into which a light

source is shining through a hole in the wall. The light in the virtual world hits an object, lights it – and that’s it. The

light spreads no further. Global Illumination rendering is different. Global Illumination rendering lets every object within the scene act as a light source. As you will see, you can actually light a Global Illumination scene without using a single light! O pen a new (empty) le. Create a sky object (Create / Environme nt / Sky) and a oo r objec t (Create / Environment / Floor). The sky object encompasses the entire scene like a large sphere. The ﬂoor surface is an inﬁnite surface. Create a Torus (Create / Object / Torus) and move it to a y-position of 100, slightly above the ﬂoor.

Now we will light the scene with diffused light using Global Illumination rendering. We will use our sky object as the light source. Switch to the Material Manager. Create a new material (Create / New Material; alternatively

you can simply double-click on the Material Manager’s gray eld). Switch to basic in the Attribute Manager.

Deactivate color and specular and activate luminance. Drag the material from the Material Manager onto the sky object in the Object Manager.

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

50 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

The Luminance channel turns the sky material into a light source. Since the sky object spherically encloses the entire scene, it acts as a huge lamp which lights the torus from all sides. This effect will only be visible when we use Global Illumination as the render mode. Open the Render Settings (Render / Edit Render Settings). Click

on the Effect... button and Global Illumination. Switch to the Render Settings’ Options menu.

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

51CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

CINEMA 4D will automatically turn on Auto Light in a scene if there are no light objects present. When using

Global Illumination, this automatic function is excluded since it would make the scene much too bright.

Create a sp h ere (Create / Obj ect / Sp here) . Move th e sphe re al ong th e X-ax is a li ttl e to th e rig ht and a Y-p osi ti o n of 100 until it’s next to the Torus. Copy the sky material (CTRL + drag into the Material Manager) and switch

to the Luminance channel of the new material. Use the color sliders to create a bright blue. Drag the material onto the sphere.

We now want to use the blue sphere as a light. We don’t want the sphere to be visible, but only to emit its blue

color. You achieve this by using the Compositing tag.

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

52 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – CINEMA 4D Renderer

You will see that a blue light is being cast on the torus and the ﬂoor. The blue sphere is not rendered because

we have made it invisible using the camera’s Compositing tag.

5. Tips & Tricks

Rendering often requires you to make a choice between speed and quality. Especially scenes using Global Illumination or Caustics can take a long time to render. This is why we recommend that you experiment with the Parameters and to initially use low values. For example, set the Global Illumination Diffuse Depth value to

1 to begin with and make a test render. If the illumination provided by GI is still too dark, increase the Diffuse

Depth value gradually until you achieve the desired result. However, avoid raising this value above 4 since this

will increase your render times enormously!

Make generous use of Compositing tags. This makes it possible to reduce the exactness of the rendering, thus

reducing rendering times greatly. As you already know, CINEMA 4D allows you to animate effect parameters so that you can make changes to them at any time. Imagine caustics that change as you wish or the focusing of a camera.

53CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – ProjectionMan

Load a bitmap image in place of a color into the Luminance channel of a material that you use to illuminate a Global Illumination scene. The objects will then be lit with the colors of the image. This looks especially good

if you use HDRIs. HDRI is an image format that contains special image luminance information and is thus an excellent choice for this effect. You can nd information about HDRIs online. You can pep up your scene even more with the post effects Highlights and Glow. Using highlights you can give your material’s highlights any form you wish, like a star, for example. Glow does just what the name says – it lets a material glow. Try it!

6. ProjectionMan

Once you have completed this tutorial you will be able to save a great amount of working time and maybe even create scenes you never would have been able to without this tool. This tutorial is primarily geared towards

matte painters but can also be used by any 3D artist to keep from having to texture a great number of objects.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term matte painting, here is a brief description of what this is: Matte

painters mostly work in the movie industry and create (paint) background imagery for movie scenes. These backgrounds are for the most part so realistic that the viewer assumes they are real-world backgrounds. An example of matte painting is a scene in which a king on his horse rides across a virtual landscape that, on the one hand, does not exist in the real world and on the other hand does not have to be built in 3D. The matte

painter paints the desired background and the king and his horse are simply composited into the scene.

Advancing technology has also made it possible to create matte paintings in 3D using a computer, which makes it possible to animate a camera and maintain a correct angle of view of the background. This would

not be possible using traditional 2D techniques. The disadvantage (if you can call it that) to using 3D matte painting is that a single image cannot be used – the scene must be modeled and all objects must be textured. And this is exactly where ProjectionMan comes in.

Let’s say you have a scene with a city containing hundreds of buildings. Instead of having to texture each one

of these buildings all you have to do is create one or maybe two matte paintings and project it correctly onto

the scene. You dene the camera’s position and start ProjectionMan that in turn calculates the location of

the geometry and starts Photoshop. In the image that opens in Photoshop or image application you can now paint from the angle of view of that CINEMA 4D camera. When you have ﬁnished painting, save the image in Photoshop and reload it in the corresponding material channel in CINEMA 4D.

Done! ProjectionMan will now project your painted image onto the geometry of that object (or even several objects) in real-time. Sound complicated? Then let’s work through the following tutorial together and you will

see how this tool can free up valuable time for many artists around the world!

54 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – ProjectionMan

Open the ﬁle, QS_PMan_Start.c4d

This is a very simpliﬁed version of a city scene in which a camera is animated to move in slightly to the

buildings. Play the animation once (small green arrow below the Viewport). You can see how the angle of view

changes. In traditional matte painting we would have a simple zoom in which the angle of the front building

would not change in relation to the others. Our buildings, however, still need to be textured. Each building could be textured individually (which would normally not be much work for just three objects) or you can use ProjectionMan (e.g. if you had ve hundred buildings staring at you waiting to be textured). Our scene

contains two cameras. In order for ProjectionMan to be able to open Photoshop, the correct path to the

Photoshop executable le must be entered in CINEMA 4D. Open the CINEMA 4D ProjectionMan preferences menu (main menu: Edit / Preferences / ProjectionMan). Enter (or navigate to) the location of the Photoshop. exe le on your computer. Let’s take a closer look at our scene.

The rst camera (Camera projection) is the camera that ProjectionMan will use to project a painted image

onto the surfaces of the buildings.

The second camera (Camera animation) is the camera through which we just viewed the animated approach

to our buildings. We must now let ProjectionMan know which objects it should use for the projection. And this

is how it’s done:

Make sure you return your animation to frame 0. Select Window / ProjectionMan from the main CINEMA 4D menu. In the window that opens, select all three cube objects and drag them onto the Camera projection

object above (same window). Select Coverage Render from the selection menu that opens.

55CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – ProjectionMan

Enter the location to which you want to render the .psd ﬁle and click on OK. Conﬁrm the prompt that follows wi th Yes.

CINEMA 4D will now automatically start Photoshop and will open the rendered ProjectionMan image. You can either start painting in Photoshop right away or create a new layer and create your matte painting. In order to get to know how ProjectionMan works, edit your own image to look like the one below. Of course you can use your favorite colors if you want.

56 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – ProjectionMan

After you have ﬁnished modifying your image in Photoshop, save the image. Use the current name and location – otherwise CINEMA 4D will not be able to locate the image!

Return to your ProjectionMan scene in CINEMA 4D. In the Material Manager, at the bottom left of your

interface, you can see that ProjectionMan has automatically created a new material. Double-click the material

and switch to the Luminance channel in the window that opens.

Tip: ProjectionMan creates the texture automatically in the Luminance channel. This ensures that the scene

remains completely unaffected by lights. After all, the scene is supposed to assume the color and brightness

traits of your painted texture. This, however, can be changed by either deactivating the material’s Luminance

channel and loading the .psd ﬁle into the Color channel or by changing the ProjectionMan default settings in the CINEMA 4D preferences menu so the .psd ﬁle is automatically loaded into the Color channel.

We are now in the material’s Luminance channel. Click on the small triangle next to the Texture parameter and select Reload Image. This updates the texture and includes the changes we just made in Photoshop. Now close

the Material Manager and your scene should look like this:

Play the animation. As you can see, ProjectionMan projects the texture correctly onto all three buildings

throughout the animation – and that without having to texture each individual object.

Now we will take ProjectionMan a step further and add a few windows to the side of our buildings. Normally,

painting windows onto the surfaces at these angles would be quite difcult but all we have to do here is add a

camera to project the desired image information onto the correct surfaces.

We will point this camera frontally at the light blue surfaces (side view). To create the camera, switch the Viewport to the Right view (Viewport menu: Cameras / Right) and center the view if needed. Create a new camera (main menu: Create / Camera / Camera). Rename the camera Camera right in the Object Manager (double-click on its name). Switch to this camera’s view by clicking on the + symbol next to its name.

57CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – ProjectionMan

Again open the ProjectionMan window (main menu: Window / ProjectionMan) and drag Cube 1 and Cube 2 onto

Camera right. Select Coverage Render and conﬁrm all prompts with Yes. The newly rendered image will also be opened in Photoshop.

Edit the image to look (more or less) like the one below:

Save the Photoshop ﬁle, and return to CINEMA 4D. Again a new material has been created, this time with the

name, PMat Camera right. Double-click the material’s icon and reload the image in the Luminance channel. The texture will be updated in the Viewport immediately and the windows are projected correctly onto the

objects. Play the animation.

You now know how easy it is to texture a scene using ProjectionMan, even without prior knowledge of 3D texturing. If needed, more cameras can be added and used for projection in order to create longer and more complex camera animations or to compensate for areas that may not have been mapped by another camera. As you saw in our example, all you need for a simple zoom animation is a single view and a single painting. If

the camera were to move from left to right you would most likely have to create a matte painting for the start

and end positions of the animated camera. In any event, ProjectionMan saves you from having to texture all

15,876 buildings in a single city!

58 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

59CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

60 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

Sketch and Toon

This is CINEMA 4D’s Quickstart Tutorial for Sketch and Toon. Sketch and Toon is included in CINEMA 4D Visualize and Studio. This tutorial will introduce you to some of this renderer’s fantastic creative possibilities.

1. Introduction

Sketch and Toon belongs to the NPR family. This is an acronym for Non-Photorealistic Renderer and simply means that it’s not the renderer’s intention to generate highly realistic images but to do exactly the opposite: To generate images that look like they were created using traditional animation techniques. Do you want your scene to look like a technical blueprint or maybe a pencil sketch? Do you want to give your animated characters that traditional animation look? No problem for Sketch and Toon!

Sketch and Toon is very easy to operate. For instant results you can fall back on one of the many presets

Sketch and Toon provides. Otherwise you can have a ball with Sketch and Toon’s different settings. You will quickly realize that Sketch and Toon is a very powerful tool that offers limitless possibilities. You can take

inﬂuence on practically any imaginable parameter. This gives you a cornucopia of render styles and you will never break the boundaries of Sketch and Toon – we promise! If you want to get a taste of how you can metamorphose your images just skip ahead to our gallery.

61CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

2. General Information / Interface

Sketch and Toon is a render effect. As you would expect you can nd its settings in the Render Settings (Render / Edit Render Settings). As soon as you have selected Sketch and Toon from the Effect button’s menu

a wide array of settings is put at your disposal. These parameters let you determine the basic look of your Sketch and Toon renderings.

There’s more. You will also nd Sketch and Toon elsewhere within CINEMA 4D. Take a look at the Material

Manager. A sketch material is created as soon as the Sketch and Toon effect has been activated. This is a material especially for the depiction of contours in a Sketch and Toon rendering.

You will also see that there are many more settings in association with this material in the Material Manager. These settings are global and affect the entire scene.

62 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

Keep this general rule in mind: The sketch attributes in the Render Settings determine WHAT will be rendered (contours? Hidden lines?), and the material attributes determine how something will be rendered (Line width? Line color?). Of course not every object has to be rendered in the same style. You can create an arbitrary

amount of sketch materials and assign them to different objects. This makes combining a pen drawing with a cartoon object no problem. After all, Sketch and Toon offers four Sketch Shaders. These can be placed into the channel of a normal material just like any other shader. We suggest you place them into the Luminance channel. These shaders work independently, which means Sketch and Toon does not have to be active. The

shaders are: Art for effects such as oi l or acryli c pa inti ng, Cel for a car to on-like style, Sp ot s fo r a ha lf to ne print effect and Hatch for cross hatching.

3. Sample Images

Here is a sample of the beautiful imagery you can create with Sketch and Toon.

63CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

64 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

65CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

4. Quick Tutorial – Shaders and Tags

In this tutorial we will combine an object rendered in the sketch mode with an object rendered in the normal

mode in the same scene. We will also examine the Cel shader, one of four special sketch shaders. Our goal

will be to assign different render styles to each of three objects. The ﬁrst object will only have a contour and

it should look like it was hand-drawn. We will test the cel shader on the second object and give it cartoon-like

colors. The third object will look like a normal CINEMA 4D object rendered with standard settings.

Open the ﬁle, QS_SaT_Start.c4d.

66 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

Create a new material in the Material Manager (Create / New Material). Deactivate the Color and Specular

channels in the Basic tab of the Attribute Manager. Activate Luminance and switch to the Luminance tab. Click

on the small arrow to the right of the word Texture. Select Sketch / Cel.

The cel shader is a type of gradient shader. It can be loaded into any channel but for a cartoon-like look it should be put into the Luminance channel where its colors will always be rendered as full-tone and will not be inuenced by the scene’s lighting.

Click on Cel. The cel settings will appear. 3 shades of blue are preset here by default but they don’t really match our ﬁgures. Double click on the color sliders and create three colors with a green hue.

The number of colors represents the number of color steps an object will be colored with. 1-2 colors is always

good for a cartoon look. Drag the new material in the Object Manager onto Whimp_middle and render the scene.

67CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

Our Sketch and Toon ﬁgure is standing between two normal rendered ﬁgures. It is not necessary, though, to activate the Sketch and Toon render effects in order to use a sketch shader. Now we will beautify the rear ﬁgure with a contour.

Activate the Sketch and Toon effect in the Render Settings. Switch to the Shading tab and select Background

in the drop-down menu next to the word Object. Only the contour should be visible on the rear gure so we will

set its Inner Color to the same as the background color. If we were to render the scene now the other ﬁgures would appear white as well so we will tell sketch that these settings should only apply to the rear puppet.

Deactivate the All Sketched Objects parameter. Select Include next to Mode and drag Whimp_back from the Object Manager into the text eld under the menu. The shading settings will now only apply to this object.

Select the Sketch material that was just added and in the Attribute Manager’s Main tab, change Presets to Pencil (Soft Sketch). Render the scene.

68 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

Even though all ﬁgures have the correct ﬁlling each of the two front ﬁgures has assumed the contour style of the ﬁgure behind it. We will deactivate the contour rendering for these two objects completely. Select Whimp_ front and Whimp_middle in the Object Manager and select Tags / Sketch Tags / Sketch Render. Deactivate Allow Lines in the Attribute Manager.

We’ve done it! Three objects, each with completely different render styles coexisting peacefully in the same

scene.

69CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sketch and Toon

5. Tips & Tricks

Sketch and Toon offers several levels of control. If you are taking your ﬁrst steps with this tool and are a little overwhelmed by the countless buttons and

sliders simply set the level of control to Easy (either in the Render Settings

or in the sketch material attributes). Several functions will then be hidden.

Once you feel more comfortable with Sketch and Toon (which shouldn’t take too long after having completed this tutorial) you can move to the next level.

The time it takes to render a Sketch and Toon scene depends on the size and / or

complexity of your scene. If it takes too long, check for objects in the scene that can excluded from the rendering process using tags. Lowering the anti-aliasing quality (contour smoothing) can speed your rendering up as well. Make use of Sketch and Toon’s exibility. You can assign different styles to visible and invisible lines,

just as you can assign a different style to individual objects in your scene. The combination of standard rendering and Sketch and Toon can result in especially spectacular images.

Use the countless presets, especially in the beginning, to give yourself a

good working knowledge of Sketch and Toon. If you nd a preset that you really like, examine it closely and see

what all it can do when you apply your own settings. This is the best way to ﬁnd out how Sketch and Toon ticks.

70 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

71CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Character Tools

Character Tools

This is the Quickstart Tutorial for the CINEMA 4D character tools, a collection of tools especially for character animation. CINEMA 4D includes a complete toolset for character animation. Many of these tools are available in all packages and some are available only in CINEMA 4D Studio.

1. Introduction

3D character animation is a complex subject. It not only challenges the software but the animator as well. Almost anyone can quickly create a character that moves in one way or another, but a convincing character animation requires quite a bit more work. The animator needs to know the theory behind character animation

before he or she can judge whether or not the animation is good or bad.

72 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Character Tools

So before we explore the character tools themselves we would like to quickly go over the 12 principles of

character animation. These 12 rules were developed back in the 1930s by Disney animators and can almost be applied 1:1 to modern 3D animation. They are useful not only for characters but for just about anything you animate. Anyone who is serious about character animation should stick these rules to the ceiling over their

bed (and get rid of whatever else that is up there now). A convincingly animated character will then be only a

matter of patience.

Squash & Stretch – every organic object deforms in some matter when it is in motion. Squash and stretch is the exaggeration of this effect when a character is in motion.

Staging – is the setting up of an animation. This includes lighting, camera angle, effects and slow motion.

Anticipation – Expectation of a reaction to an action is known as anticipation.

Pose to Pose / Straight Ahead – these terms describe two animation techniques. Pose to Pose sets

two important key poses and the time between is then ﬁlled. Straight Ahead sets one key after the

next – straight ahead through time.

Follow Through / Overlapping – the impetus or the overlapping of movement of a body parts.

Ease In / Ease Out – an object begins to move slowly, reaches its top speed and slowly comes to a halt.

Arcs – In nature almost every movement is described as arcs, no matter if it’s a swinging arm or the

rotation of a head.

Secondary Action – movement that is created by movement of another object.

Timing – the speed with which an action is executed.

Exaggeration – can be used in many instances: Arms that are being stretched too long when a

character is hanging from a cliff, eyes jumping out of their sockets to help demonstrate a shocked

expression.

Appeal – a character’s impression, look and nature.

Personality – like an actor, a good animator must be able to make his character express himself.

You can ﬁnd more detailed descriptions of these rules online or in any good animation book. These rules might

seem pretty extensive at rst glance but the more you animate the more they will become your own esh and blood. Every time your animation looks a little weird it will most likely be because you didn’t follow one or

more of these rules. Now we want to put these rules to use.

73CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Character Tools

2. General Information

First, we will explain a few basics about character rigging in CINEMA 4D. CINEMA 4D works with a Joint

system. Simply put, this system lets you assign joints and appropriate locations that will in turn be linked to the mesh and used to rotate and move your character. The mesh will follow the joints to which it is linked and the character can be animated. To be able to correctly move your character a rig consisting of controllers must be set up that serve as handles for the animator. This way not every individual joint of an arm must be

moved in order to position the hand at the desired location - only a single controller has to be moved. There are additional character controllers and helpers for character animation. A few of them are explained below.

The Morph tag lets you create various facial expressions for your characters and morph between them. Your polygon object acts as the reference and a base morph (starting position for all following morphs) and

target morph are created in the Pose Morph tag. You select the morph target in the Morph tag and change the mesh...ﬁnished!

You create another morph target for each additional pose and model the poses one after the other. All the

expressions are stored in a single tag. Also, when using the Pose Morph tool, there’s no need to worry if you have to make changes to the mesh after creating the poses. The poses will still work! Suppose you’ve created

all the poses for your character, but decide it would look much better with a second nose. The Pose Morph tool will still happily morph between the poses.

Vamp give s yo u the poss ibi lit y to tran sfer data from ob jec t to an oth er, in clu din g sel ection inform ation, Texture tags, vertex maps and UVs. You can even transfer facial poses from one character to another!

Visual Selector is a great help with day-to-day animation. You load a render of your character into Visual Selector‘s background (or use Visual Selector‘s default character picture) and place your character‘s

controllers onto the picture in the appropriate places. Visual Selector removes the need to keep looking for

your character‘s controls in the Object hierarchy. Everything is now represented visually and you can, for example, select the foot controller by clicking on it directly in the picture. You want to move the eyes? No

problem. Click on the controller for the eyes directly in the picture.

You‘ll nd the CINEMA 4D character animation tools in the main menu under Character.

Since character animation is a complex subject matter, the following overview may help if you’re new to the

process of rigging characters.

As with a real human, your character needs a skeleton of bones (or in our case, joints) in order to be able to move around in the world. You place the joints inside the character’s mesh. The joints are linked to the mesh

via a Weight tag and Skin deformer so that each joint knows which part of the geometry to affect.

74 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Character Tools

You can weight joints by selecting them and painting directly onto the mesh using the Weight tool. While the Weight tool is active, the mesh is displayed black and the currently painted weighting is shown in white. The joint now knows it should affect the white painted parts of the mesh only. In the active Weight tool mode, weighting is shown for the selected joints. Each joint has its own weighting.

The joints must be arranged into a hierarchy in the Object Manager in a similar structure to the bones in your own body. In real life, when you move your upper arm, the lower arm and hand move with it because they are effectively children of the upper arm.

Likewise, in CINEMA 4D’s Object Manager, the elbow and wrist joints must be children of the shoulder joint.

If you move the shoulder joint, the child joints will move with it together with the mesh weighted to the child joints — even though the shoulder joint is weighted to the upper arm only.

As previously mentioned, each child joint has its own weighting and moves the parts of the mesh not weighted to the shoulder joint.

Don’t worry if this seems complex. The following tutorials will explain all this in detail.

75CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

3. Working with the Auto Rigger and CMotion

1. Creating the Basic Rig

Character rigging for 3D animation is one of the most complex and difcult disciplines in the eld of 3D graphics. There is still no one-stop solution available but with CINEMA 4D R13, rigging and animating

characters is no longer a book with seven seals. Several new functions and tools have been added that make working with characters much easier!

2. Preparation

Start CINEMA 4D and make sure you are using the Standard layout for the GUI. Open the scene, MaxonMan. c4d, which contains the character mesh that we will rig in the course of this tutorial and animate using CMotion. To make working with the character easier we should hide all other objects in the Project. To do so,

hide the Environment object in the Object Manager. Now only the character will be visible in the Project. It’s

also a good idea to set your Viewports up so you have a front, side and top view of your character in addition to the perspective view. The Viewports have already been set up correctly for this tutorial so we can get

started more quickly.

76 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

What we will do ﬁrst is put the new character system in place. Select Character from the Character menu. A symbol with the same name will appear in the Object Manager. The newly created object will appear as a gray arrow in the Viewport.

In th e Attr i b ute Ma n ager yo u will se e th e Char a c ter ob j e c t ’s in i tia l se ttin g s . Numero u s para m e ter s are ava i labl e

here. When a Character object is created, its Object tab is active by default. This tab contains 4 menus: Build,

Adjust, Binding, Animate and represent the 4 steps required to complete an animatable character.

Directly below these tabs is the Template selection menu in which you can select the type of character rig you want. You can select from Advanced Biped, Biped, Quadruped and many more. For this tutorial, select Biped.

This will let you create the rig for a humanoid biped. The rig that we will use in this tutorial is well-suited for controlling (animating) a human character. More detailed rigs that offer much more complex control systems can be created using the Advanced Biped rig. The Quadruped option, for example, makes it possible to create a rig for four-legged creatures.

Selecting the Biped option hasn’t yet done much with regard to creating a rig. Directly below the Templates

options is the Components menu, which contains a Pelvis button. Clicking on the pelvis button will generate a pelvis, which in turn will be used as the starting point for the entire rig. Once the pelvis has been created,

another button will appear – the Spine (Fk) button. Clicking on this button will create a spine that is connected to the pelvis. Click on the arrow at the right and 2 options will be made available: FK (forward kinematics) and IK (inverse kinematics). Select the IK option. Additional options will be made available, which let you create a

head, arms and legs.

77CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

Before we continue, lets take a look at our model in the perspective view. The parts of the rig that we have created are not scaled in line with the character model. They are far too small. This is not a problem at this

stage because the adjustment and re-positioning of the rig’s individual components will be done later, after all components have been generated. In the next step we will generate the legs. Here you can select between Leg (foot) and Leg (IK). If you simply click on the button, a single leg will be generated. If you CMD/CTRL+click

on the button, two legs will be generated. Generate 2 legs with no toes. This is designed for characters that

wear shoes, which is the case with our character. If we had selected the Leg (foot) option, legs with feet and

ﬁve toes would have been generated.

Note that if buttons for further rig components are not displayed, check in the Object Manager to see which

component is currently selected. If, for example, you want to generate legs, the spine must be selected. If the pelvis is selected, you will only be able to generate a spine. Alternatively you can SHIFT+click to remain in the

previous hierarchy.

Once the legs have been generated we will continue with the arms. Here you can also select between forward

and inverse kinematics, plus an additional option, Limb. While the former two options generate arms with ﬁve ﬁngers, the latter creates limbs with only upper and lower arm elements. To these you can later add ﬁngers, be it 2, 3, 4 or ﬁve – or however many you want. For this tutorial we will only use upper and lower arm elements. Once you have added the arms, click on the Head button to add the head. This completes our rig.

3. Adjusting the Rig to Match the Mesh:

Let’s have a look at what we have done so far: We have created a rig that contains all components needed

for our character, only that the rig is too small. This is why we will now scale the rig to match our mesh. First, select the Character object in the Object Manager and switch to the Adjust menu in the Attribute Manager.

The rig’s appearance will change drastically in the Viewport: it will turn into a green, red and blue stick gure

at whose joints are circles of the same color.

78 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

First we will position the rig relative to the mesh. Select the Pelvis object in the Object Manager and use the

Move tool to move it upwards until is centered on the character’s pelvis. Don’t forget to check the position

in the side view to make sure the Pelvis object is centered there as well. Use the Scale tool to enlarge the rig

to match the mesh. Don’t worry if individual components are too short or too long – we will ne-tune these as well. Once the rig roughly matches the mesh we can begin with the ne-tuning, which will be done using

the Move tool. Start with the legs by clicking on the joint at the top end of the upper leg and repositioning it accordingly. CINEMA 4D automatically mirrors this adjustment on the other leg. Make sure to also check your work in the side view.

A tip for positioning extremities: Arms, legs and ngers/toes (if present) are structured hierarchically. If, for example, an upper leg is moved, the lower leg and foot will move accordingly. Therefore you should always

make sure to work from the inside out or downwards in the hierarchy.

Continue positioning the rig down to the feet and make sure the feet point slightly outward. This can be done more easily from the top view.

We will now continue with the spine and the arms. The spine should not be placed towards the rear as in a real

body but rather near the center. Next, position the shoulders and arms accordingly.

Another tip: Joints such as knees and elbows deform the character signiﬁcantly when animated. Therefore, you must make sure that enough geometry is present at these locations in order to handle these deformations.

On our character you will see that the knee and elbow regions have three polygon rings. Place the rig’s

corresponding joints at the center of these rings so the bones will have an optimal inﬂuence on the mesh. Furthermore, you should make sure that the knees and elbows have a very slight bend, as in reality. Polevectors are used for these joints internally, which deﬁne the direction in which the joint will bend. By slightly bending the knees and elbows, the ﬁnal rig will be better adapted to the mesh.

79CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

Position the wrist next to the cufinks. Six joints are located because this is where the ngers will be generated later. To locate the right joint, right-click on the wrist and select the right joint from the list that appears (…Hand_con+). Now we just have to adjust the ngers and the head and our rig will be ready to be bound to the character’s mesh.

4. Binding the Rig to the Character’s Mesh

Before you start binding the rig to the mesh it would certainly be a good idea to save your Project. After doing so, make sure that the Character object is selected in the Object Manager, i.e. that the rig is selected. In the Attribute Manager, switch to the Binding tab.

This will again change the appearance of the rig in the Viewport. It will again be made up of joints and bones.

Do uble- check the position of the bones and joints before getting star te d. Th e Bindi ng tab cont ai ns an inc lu sion eld (Objects). Simply drag the polygon objects body and eyes from the Object Manager into this ﬁeld. If you

need to place multiple objects into this ﬁeld you can do so by either dragging each object individually or by

using the Object eld’s Start Pick Session function (click on the arrow in the white circle or right-click on

Object ﬁeld).

Note: Do not place the HyperNURBS object into the Object eld.

This more-or-less completes the binding of the rig to the character’s mesh. However, before we move on to

the Animation menu where we will actually move our character, we still have to complete one more important

step. Don’t forget that the rig that we just bound to our character’s mesh is much more complex than it

looks. Numerous bones, Null objects and Controllers are needed in order to make the rig behave correctly when animated. These have already been generated automatically by CINEMA 4D but are not visible. These

components are actually irrelevant for the person(s) creating the animation.

80 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

Important for the animators are the Controllers. These Controllers represent virtual strings of a marionette

– which our character de-facto is. Hence, we only need these Controllers to be visible. Too many elements

in the Project would clutter up the view and slow your workﬂow. You can modify the visible state of the

rig’s components in the Attribute Manager’s Display tab. Select the Character object in the Object Manager and switch to the Attribute Manager’s Display tab. Here you will nd several options for displaying the rig’s components. The Viewport options affect the character’s rig in the Viewport and the Managers options dene how the character’s rig is displayed in the Object Manager. First, select Controllers from the Manager menu’s

Object Manager setting. Now only these Controllers will be visible in the Object Manager, i.e. the objects that are used to control the character.

5. Creating a Simple Walk Animation

We have now prepared our character so it can be animated. Select the Character object in the Object Manager

and switch to the Object tab’s Animate menu in the Attribute Manager. Click on the Add Walk button at the

right. This will assign a CMotion object to the Character object, which lets you generate cyclical animations or

movements such as a walk cycle. To do so, select the Character object’s CMotion object in the Object Manager and take a look at its properties in the Attribute Manager’s Object tab.

81CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

Set the Stride value to 60cm. Now turn your attention to the list of objects in the Objects menu below and

select one of the legs (L_Leg or R_Leg) in the list. A set of parameters will be made available below. Below the selected Leg in the list you will see the Lift (P.Y.) parameter. This is an Action that, as the name says, creates a

lifting motion so the corresponding foot rises during the walk motion. Try it out by clicking on the green Play

button (the green arrow just below the Viewport) and making your character walk in place.

Stop the animation and jump back to frame 0. Select the Lift parameter; its settings will be displayed below. Increase the Lift value to 10cm and don’t forget to do the same for the other leg.

Alternatively you can right-click on the already modied parameter in the Object list and select Copy. Then select and right-click on the other leg and select Paste. As you can see, you have now copied the lift action

from one leg to the other. If you play the animation again you will see that the character lifts its legs much higher than before when it walks.

You will ﬁnd another Lift action in the Object list, which lies below the Pelvis in the hierarchy. This controls the rising and sinking motion of the pelvis during the walk cycle. You may have already noticed that this motion is very sedated during the walk cycle. Set this parameter’s Lift (P.Y.) value to 3cm and play the animation again. You should now have a more realistic pelvic movement. So far so good. Now we will continue with the arms,

which are still stretched out to the sides and of course don’t represent the natural position of a person’s arms when walking. To repositi on the arms next to the torso, select an arm in the CMotion Attr ib ute Manager. Again , several parameters will be made available below, including Horiz and Vert. These values affect the orientation of the selected arm or the Hand Goals of the respective arm to which the arm is oriented.

Set the left arm’s Vert value to -45cm and its Horiz value to 45cm; set the right arm’s Vert and Horiz values each to -45cm. Now both arms lie slightly bent alongside the torso. Next, we want to make the arms swing

in tune with the walk cycle. So far we have only worked with Actions that were already included in the list.

Actions are an integral part of CMotion. A character’s movements are dened by the use of Actions and the ne-tuning of their parameters. Select an arm from the Attribute Manager’s CMotion list and assign a Push (P.Z.) parameter to it. To do so, select the arm, then the parameter from the drop-down list and then click on the Add button next to the list. The Push (P.Z.) parameter will now appear in the list below the arm to which it was assigned. Select the parameter and set its Push (P.Z.) value to 30cm. Right-Click on the graph below and select Spline Presets / Sin from the context menu. This replaces the straight line with a sinus curve. Now you can copy this Push (P.Z.) parameter to the other arm.

82 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Auto Rigger and CMotion

6. The Finishing Touches

Play the animation again and observe how the arms swing back and forth. We have created a simple walk

cycle animation, which of course can still be ne-tuned quite a bit. You can, for example, make the character

actually walk past the camera instead of having it walk in place. To do so, all you have to do is set the Walk

parameter to Line or Path (which lets you move the character along a given Spline) in the CMotion’s Attribute Manager’s Object menu.

You can also ne-tune the character’s gate, for example by modifying the Lift Action’s sinus curve. This curve

deﬁnes now far the feet rise and fall. Currently, the curve is smooth, which causes the feet to also rise and fall smoothly. If you move the crest of the curve to the right near the end of the curve, the character will walk with a more stomping motion.

You can also add Actions. For example, you can use the Curl Action on the arms with a moderate value,

which will curl the ﬁngers. The higher the value, the more the hand will turn into a ﬁst. You can also begin

modifying the character’s characteristics much earlier by ne-tuning the character’s weighting during the

binding process via the Weights Manager. You can ensure a more accurate deformation of geometry at the joints by adding a Smoothing parameter, or you can add a Muscle parameter to make muscles bulge. All of the

available parameters and options can be used to ne-tune your character’s motion and characteristics until you have an ultra-realistic animation.

83CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Pose Morph

4. Quick Tutorial – Pose Morph

The Pose Morph tool is a powerful tool for mixing Joints, points, UVs, parameters, User Data and much more by morphing between states (e.g. size, position, rotation) using sliders. Using Pose Morph is as easily as it is

logical.

Open the le QS_Maxon_Head_start.c4d.

We will use Pose Morph to change the facial expression of our friend in the image above from friendly and

unassuming to consternated and silly.

Right-click on the Head object and select the Pose Morph tag from the Character Tags menu. Select the tag in the Object Manager and activate the Points option in the Attribute Manager. An initial Pose (Base Pose) will automatically be created. The Base Pose (displayed in the Poses list) is the state in which the points are

positioned at the moment the Pose Morph tag was applied. This list element should not be modiﬁed because

it represents the initial state for all subsequent morphs - all morph poses will reference this initial state. Therefore, make sure this element is not selected (active) when modifying the object.

To start modifying the object, select the element Pose.0. Normally you would have to switch to the Point tool but we have already taken care of this step for you.

At the right of the Head object in the Object Manager are three tags, each with four orange dots. Double-click

on the tag farthest to the left.

84 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Pose Morph

The pre-dened points will automatically be selected and CINEMA 4D will automatically be switched to Point mode. In our example, the points that affect the eyebrows will be selected. Move these points downward,

slightly to the rear and rotate them slightly (To drag the eyebrows farther down for a “mean” look, the points at the end of each eyebrow must be deselected and each eyebrow rotated separately. For our tutorial, however, we can simply drag all points downwards simultaneoulsy.). If the eyeglasses get in the way, simply turn off their display in the Object Manager. When ﬁnished, your object should look like the one below:

Tip: The axis orients itself according to all selected points as a whole, which can lead to unwanted rotations. Hence, it is sometimes easier to use the World axis when rotating selected points. To do so, select the desired function (Move, Scale, Rotate) and set Axis to World in the Attribute Manager’s Modeling Axis tab.

With the Pose Morph tag selected, click on the Add Pose button in the Attribute Manager to deﬁne additional

poses for the mouth and tongue, for example (these points are also pre-dened in the Object Manager). Simply double-click on the respective icon (with four orange dots).

85CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Pose Morph

On ce all pose s have been de ned we ca n beg in mixing the poses. In the Attri bute Mana ger, set the Mode option from Edit to Animate (Tag tab). The Pose Morph tag’s options will change automatically and you can dene the strength with which the poses will be mixed using the Strength value. All morph targets are animatable.

86 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Pose Morph

5. Tips and Tricks

• To create Joint poses with Pose Morph all you have to do is add a Pose Morph tag to the top-most Joint and enable the Rotation and Hierarchy options. You can then rotate the Pose Target’s Joints without modifying the Joints’ original position.

• The joints of the ngers of a hand only need a single Pose Morph tag with an enabled Hierarchy option.

Simply create a new Pose for each ﬁnger pose. This lets you keep the Object Manager more organized because all Poses for a single hand will handled by a single Pose Morph tag.

• You can use the Driver tag to control Poses automatically. Assign the Driver tag to the Joint and link a Pose directly to a specic rotational direction of the Joint. This can, for example, be used to simulate the exing of

muscles when an arm is bent.

• If you want to use a specic Pose as an initial state you can right-click on the desired Pose and copy & paste

it accordingly.

• If you want to convert a Pose into a polygon object outside of the Pose Morph tag, right-click on each Pose

and select the To Mesh command.

• Make sure not to disable options previously enabled in the Pose Morph tag’s Basic tab (e.g. Points, Rotation,

etc.). This will delete all deﬁned Pose Morph Targets. Enabling these options again will not restore these Targets.

• To avoid accidentally modifying the initial pose, right-click on the Pose, select the Lock command from the menu. Alternatively you can click on the lock icon next to the element in the list.

87CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

88 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Cloth

6. Quick Tutorial – Cloth

CINEMA 4D contains a very powerful Cloth engine. You can use this tool to let a ﬂag ﬂap in the breeze or to

give your character a snappy T-shirt. This is exactly what we want to put on Claude.

What’s nice about the Cloth engine is that it’s not ne cess ary to go through the trouble of mode li ng a T-sh ir t. All

you have to do is create the front and the back of the shirt. The integrated algorithms will make the garment ﬁt automatically.

Open the ﬁle QS_Cloth_Start.c4d. This le already contains both T-shirt halves as a single object.

If you don’t like the shirt feel free to replace it with your own creation. As you can see it was created with very few polygons. The simplest method of closing the edges of the T-shirt is to switch to the Use Polygon tool and select all of the shirt’s polygons (Cmd / Ctrl + a in the Viewport). Then activate the Bridge tool and disable the

Delete Original Polygons option in the Attribute Manager. Now click on one of the rear polygons, whose edges will then be highlighted. Keep the mouse button pressed and drag the edges towards the front polygons, whose edges will then also be highlights.

Once the mouse button is released, all the polygons necessary for connecting the halves will be created. Just make sure that the corners are connected correctly. Otherwise the polygons will be connected incorrectly.

You can now delete the superuous polygons (neck opening, sleeves, waist).

89CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Cloth

The shirt needs to be subdivided a little more so you can deform it better later. Switch to Use Polygon Tool mode and select the polygons on the front and back side of the shirt. Select Mesh / Commands / Subdivide

from the main menu. Make sure you don’t subdivide the polygons on the side (the ones created by the bridge

tool). OK, it doesn’t really look like a T-shirt yet, it looks more like a box with sleeves. But don’t worry, we’re going to change that right now. The Cloth engine is very easy to use. Most functions are contained in one tag, the Cloth Tag. It will be assigned to the object, which will then be turned to cloth!

Right-click on the shirt and select Simulation Tags / Cloth. The Cloth engine’s properties will appear in the

Attribute Manager.

If the cloth object is to collide with another objec t, as is the case with the T-shi rt and the body, the other object

must be assigned a collision tag. Select the character’s body (polygon obj ec t Body) in the Object Manag er with the right mouse button. Select Simulation Tags / Cloth Collider.

Now the T-shirt knows that is should not pass through the character. It’s about time that we gave the shirt its

proper shape. Select the cloth tag and switch to the Dresser tab.

90 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Cloth

In the dresser tab you will nd everything you need to make clothes t. The other tabs deal with the cloth’s behavior. Select Set next to Dress State. This is like a security measure. We can recall the shirt’s initial state in case we don’t like the position of the shirt or if we want to add a breast pocket, for example. Switch to Use Polygon Tool mode and select the polygons on the sides (the ones created by the bridge tool). Alternatively you can select Select / Invert in the Selection in the CINEMA 4D main menu - since the front a back side of the

shirt should still have been selected, this can save you time.

These polygons will serve as the T-shirt’s seam. The Cloth engine will do this for us as well. Select Seam Polys in the Dresser menu and set it to Set. The seam is still a little too wide. Click on Dress-O-Matic and look what happens with the T-shirt.

91CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Cloth

The seam will be pulled together in accordance to the Width value. It doesn’t necessarily match the shape of the character’s body, though. The Steps value determines how exact this t will be. After setting the Init. State, click on Relax.

Now other forces, such as gravity, will have an effect on the T-shirt which makes it sag on the character’s

shoulders.

Place a Cloth NURBS into the scene (Simulate / Cloth / CNURBS). Make the T-shirt a child of this object.

Cloth NURBS acts similar to a HyperNURBS object: it smooths the geometry which was subordinated to it

but with a slightly different algorithm which works better for cloth objects. Additionally, a thickness can be speciﬁed for Cloth NURBS fabric objects.

92 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Cloth

Set the Thickness to 1 or 2 in the Attribute Manager and the subdivision to 0. Create a HyperNURBS object and make the Cloth NURBS object to a Child object of this HyperNURBS object. Now the Cloth NURBS object will concentrate on the thickness of the cloth and the HyperNURBS object will take care of the T-shirt’s edges.

The character should be clothed now. Of course there is still some ne-tuning necessary to make the T-shirt behave properly in an animation. As you can see, though, the rst steps weren’t that difcult.

93CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – Sample Images

94 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – HAIR

HAIR

CINEMA 4D Studio features a hair rendering and simulation system that you can use to easily create hair, fur and feathers. This tutorial will show you how.

1. Introduction

HAIR is a powerful tool for creating various types of hair and fur. Even feathers, animated grass, and much more can be created using HAIR.

Althou g h ac h i e v i n g yo ur r s t re s u l t s in HAIR is relatively easy, HAIR is an im m e n s e l y di ver s e an d co m p reh e n s i v e

tool that will satisfy any beautician.

HAIR can be accessed from the Simulate menu at the top of your standard interface.

95CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – HAIR

HAIR’s only limitation is your fantasy, whether it’s creating fur for a rodent, feathers for a rufed chicken, the perfect English lawn or the newest hairstyles. And, HAIR is fast – what else have you come to expect from CINEMA 4D? HAIR renders immense amounts of hair with unmatched speed. The variations that HAIR offers

are so great that any hairstyle can be created, from smooth and straight to curly or just about anything you can imagine.

2. General Information / Interface

HAIR works with so-called guides that serve as placeholders for the rendered hair.

The number of guides displayed in the editor view is far less than the actual number of hairs that will be rendered. The number of guides displayed can also be increased. The missing hairs are interpolated between

the guides when rendered. Naturally, you will require some standard grooming tools to bring your hair into shape. Among the tools HAIR offers are Brush, Comb, Scissors and more.

96 CINEMA 4D R13 Quickstart – HAIR

HAIR’s own IK makes sure hair moves realistically. Even some of the CINEMA 4D particle modiers, e.g. wind, can be combined with HAIR and the HAIR dynamics ensure hair behaves naturally. And if you want to transplant hair, that’s no problem, either. HAIR lets you easily transplant hair roots.

Before we get sta rted with the HAIR tutorial, thoug h, let’s take a lo ok at what can be create d wi th CIN EM A 4D ’s HAIR system:

Maxon Computer Cinema 4D - 13.0 Quickstart Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual