Recently released from Greyscale Gorilla.

Real Studio Lights for Cinema 4D
HDRI Light Kit Pro turns Cinema 4D into a professional lighting studio. Quickly light your scene with realistic lights directly in Cinema 4D.

What is it?
HDRI Light Kit Pro is a collection of lights, studios and objects that lets you quickly light your scene with realistic soft boxes, spotlights, ring lights and more.

What’s Included?
10 Light Types
including, soft boxes, ring-lights, spotlights, light tents, dome lights, window lights and more.

2 Hours of Video Training
including a bonus “How to Make your Global Illumination Renders Shine” tutorial.

10 Hi-Resolution HDR Images
to instantly light your scene with photo-real light.

6 Studios Pre-Lit
Just add your models and hit render for perfect, studio-lit renders.

6 Test Models
to use to help light your scenes.

Visit Greyscale Gorilla for all the details.

I just posted a quick tip about creating scripts within Cinema4D. This tip will show you how simple it can be to create your own script, create an icon and then add it to your layout.

So head on over to Motionworks and check it out.

On my old download page I had a set of lighting presets for download. I have had a few requests for these and decided to update them to the newer GI and place them here for download.

You do need Cinema4D r11.5 with the Advanced Render to use these, they all use Global Illumination. The GI settings are set low for the presets, so you may want to increase this when you use them on your own projects.

Here’s a preview of each of the included presets. I hope you find them useful.

Download the presets here.

Lighting Presets

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.

It was recently brought to my attention that a superb set of procedural shader presets has been made available to purchase. Eric Smit, the man behind this set creates some of the most stunning Cinema4D landscapes, so you can be sure of good quality with this product.

The LANDSCAPE SHADING KIT is a collection of 3D procedural Cinema 4D materials. 170 materials patiently designed to offer a high level of realism and flexibility. The whole kit is the most powerful solution for landscape texturing within Cinema 4D. It offers almost the same level of realism as photo based maps, without the limitations and frustrations of 2D mapping.

Landscape Shader Kit Example 01

Created by Eric Smit, this looks to be an awesome collection and anyone who is working with Cinema4D to create landscapes should take a serious look at this collection.

Created with ease of use in mind, and for a very affordable price too.  Head on over to Eric’s website to read more about this stunning collection.

Landscape Shader Kit Example 02

Hi everyone and welcome to helloluxx, the new home of my blog.

As a thank you for all the continued support, I’ve created a Light Dome scene that you can download for use in your own Cinema4D scenes. You will need MoGraph to use the setup and I created it using Cinema4D r11.5, but it should work fine in r11, and maybe even 10.5.

Light Dome - Basic Render Result

The Light Dome is fairly straight forward to use. Here’s a screenshot of the available parameters.

Light Dome Parameters

I’ve also created a short tutorial that gives you a quick overview of the controls. You can check this out on Vimeo.

Light Dome Introduction from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

Download the Cinema4D Light Dome scene as a zip file here.

Click the image for a full resolution JPEG

Here is one of my tests using the 11.5 Render Instances. Two lights with area shadows and global illumination.

1098001 objects
490380300 polygons
505851300 vertices

Yes that’s 490 million polygons… You may ask why? Well, just because we can!

Section at Actual size

Uploaded a short test animation I created using Cinema4D Thinking Particles and Tracer.  Visit Vimeo for the HD version, although the compression destroys it some what!

HYPA Strings from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

If you ever wanted to go about creating your own layouts for Cinema4D, then this short video will give you a few tricks to help you out along the way. Creating tabbed managers, customising your icon palettes and a few more tips that will hopefully enhance your workflow experience with Cinema4D.

Working with Layouts in Cinema4D from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

Head on over to Vimeo to watch this full screen.

I’m sure all of you out there are familiar with the fantastic work that Trish and Chris Meyer offer the After Effects community through their website, Pro Video Coalition, the AE List and of course their awesome Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects books series.

I studied Creating Motion Graphics Edition One years ago when it was first released and it is incredible the amount of information they pack into those pages. I still have a copy of CMG Edition 4 sitting here on my desk right now. It is most definitely the bible for any Motion Graphics artist who uses Adobe After Effects.

Trish has recently posted a review on Pro Video Coalition of Making It Look Great 6, the latest Cinema4D training that I have released as part of the Motionworks Making It Look Great Series.

So if you are interested in buying the training and are looking for a review then head on over to Pro Video Coalition for an in depth review that spans three long pages.

Many thanks to Trish for spending the time to go through Making It Look Great and writing such a glowing review.