Not long now…

Making It Look Great 7 – Coming Real Soon!

Thanks to Selcuk Can Guven for the sound design.

Making It Look Great 7 – MoCap from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

Making It Look Great 7 – Coming Soon

Thanks to Selcuk Can Guven for the sound design.

Making It Look Great 7 – Flocking from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

3D World

The new 3D World magazine is on sale from today in the UK. I was offered the exciting opportunity of creating the cover artwork and a twenty second animation for this months issue.

3D World from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

Working with Mark Allin, an old friend and my ex-business partner from HYPA. We both developed the concept and design of the piece. I then took the designs and worked up the 3D animation in Cinema4D and completed the composite and grade in After Effects. Thanks to Mark, who also created the sound design for the animation.

As part of the project, I wrote a 36 step tutorial that walks you through the processes to create something similar yourself. Please visit the 3D World official website to find out more and order your own copy.

Making It Look Great 7 – Coming Soon.

Many thanks to Selcuk Can Guven for sound design.

Making It Look Great 7 – Dynamics from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

When you are working with Xpresso in Cinema4D it is often important to choose the correct datatype. This is particularly true when you are creating user data for your objects.

Open the user data manager and choose to add data. The next thing you need to do is select the data type. Unfortunately if you go back to edit existing user data later you cannot change the data type specified, so it is preferable to create the correct data type in the first place.

User Data Manager

Another time you need to know the correct data type could be if you are working with XGroups and need to specify your input and output ports. Again you will be presented with a list of names and all you really want to do is add a port for perhaps position, rotation or colour, etc.

XGroup Ports

One of the simplest methods to find the required data type is to add an xpresso node that already has a similar port. For instance, you may wish to add user data to an object to control position, to adjust radius or to create a checkbox.

Create a cube and drag it to the Xpresso window and add the ports like the images below. Then as you mouse over the ports, take a look at the lower left of the Xpresso window. Cinema4D will display some text that gives you the name of the port and also the data type used.

Kai Pederson made a very valid point in his comment below which definitely deserves a mention.

“Personally I hate having to look down there when I’m mousing over a port so I turn on bubble help, this way when I mouse over a port or a wire, it will show that information in the bubble help right where my mouse is.”

Thanks for the tip Kai.

Position : Vector

Radius : Real

Checkbox : Bool

So if you are unsure of the correct data type, simply find a node or object that has a similar type of parameter. You can then drag this object into Xpresso and create a port for that parameter. The status bar will then let you know the data type.

If all of this seems like a bit of a long winded method to find out this information, don’t worry! There is actually a really quick way to do this. If you have an object that already has the type of user interface that you need. Be this a checkbox, vector field, colour chooser, etc.

Copy User Data Interface

Right click on the element in the Attribute Manager, choose Copy User Data Interface. Now instead of choosing User Data > Manage User Data, choose Paste User Data Interface. The user data manager will open and the element you copied will be already created. You just need to adjust the parameters so they are more suitable for your needs.