3D World

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.





Hi There,
Excellent, but I didn’t really get the point when you are saying about using a fracture object to follow more accurately the contour… Well I guess, I will go back to some courses I enrolled in fxphd when you explained about it.
But anyway, great stuff, thanks a lot.
Thx
-Regis
Is there a way to see the Tutorial online?
Best regards, Phil
Tim,
Love it! Can’t wait to get it in the mail.
Best wishes,
Rob
maxwellvisual
just wow !
I have to take some classes from fxphd !!!
Sorry Phil, I don’t think the tutorial will be online.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by nickvegas, MAXON, Joe Myers, PeterP, Joshua Cole and others. Joshua Cole said: RT @helloluxx: Cover Art and Tutorial created for 3D World Magazine, now on sale in the UK. http://bit.ly/5oygSQ [...]
Can’t wait for the weekend to have a nice look on this brilliant piece of art work…
Big Thanks for this one!!!
Hi Tim, that’s a great tutorial, but can ou give more tips about placing the elements by hand, using the Fracture Object as you have mentioned!
Thanks!
the tutorial is online at the 3d-world website, along with the project files.
http://www.3dworldmag.com/page/3dworld?entry=tutorial_files_for_3d_world3
looks great Tim! I’m going to sit down and go through it tomorrow.
Thanks for the online tutorial.
It was a good job from you.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the tutorial. Very informative and I apppreciated it a lot.
Especially the part on shaders, materials and lights.
//Klas
Hi Tim,
Firstly thanks for the awesome tutorial, but could you please explain how to manipulate the individual objects using Fracture Objects ? Do you use Shatter or Explosion to separate them ?
Thanks
Raj
The objects are all placed by hand to make the shape of the letters. Sorry no quick way to achieve this. For the 3D World logo, it was designed in Illustrator first with simple vector shapes representing the objects, then this was used as a background image to help position the 3D objects in C4D. Once all the objects are in place, you then make them children of a Fracture object and set up the dynamics from there.
thanks
Tim
That’s a lot of work, but the result is much better, thanks for answering Tim!
Hey Tim, I was working on this tutorial and everything looked good till I brought it into AE. It seems the dynamics were jumping on several frames. I was using Net render to render this out. Do I have to cache the dynamics before I send it out to my farm? would the render farm give me those issues?
yeah you’ll need to cache the dynamics for rendering over NET
Just ordered the February issue because of this!
I know it will be amazing!
Thanks!
Ryan Farmer
Ryan, it is issue 126 you should have ordered, I think you ordered the wrong issue for my tutorial! Well if that’s what you’re after?
was watch your tutorial “Create a Brilliant Motion Graphics in Cinema 4D”, and I was wondering how do you get the cloners objects perfect align to the logo shape?
tim, you’re a champ. i’m going through the tutorial and i had 2 questions.
first, it would be cool if you could go over what you had to do with the fracture object to make everything align perfectly to create the letters. that process is unfamiliar to me.
second, for some reason cinema 4d was crashing when i tried to export the .aec composting file after i made the render. as a test i opened your file that came with the project and exported the .aec file fine, cinema 4d didn’t crash. it did take a few minutes to make the file. i’m just curious if you’ve ever encountered that problem.
keep up the good work, your tutorials are the best.
you can ignore the first part of my post, after i posted i read what everyone else wrote…. oooops
Hey Tim,
Great tutorial! The final result is unbelievable. I’m working through it right now.
One question though, for you or anybody who had worked through the tut.
I’m on step 4. In my material editor, under Color>Gradient, I don’t have the same options as you do in the screenshot, or that you describe in the mag. Specifically, I can’t turn off interpolation. I also can’t numerically define the knot positions (20%, 40%, etc.), although that’s not as essential (I just eyeballed the positions).
It appears from the screenshot that these options are a function of the knots themselves. I’ve double, right, and single clicked on the knobs. I can’t find those options though!
I have 11.5.
I’m going to feel really dumb when I hear the answer I’m sure….
My God. I spend half an hour trying to figure this out on my own, and then two seconds after I post the question, I figure out that there’s a triangle by gradient to expand the options. I’m a fool.
Thanks for the great tut! The effect looks amazing!
I’m having the same issue as Eric while exporting the .aec file. I’m on a Mac and I get the endlessly spinning beach ball when I click “SaveProject File…”
This happens with my created file AND the downloaded original file.
I can muddle through the rest of the tutorial, but I’d like to know what and if this problem is. Thanks.
Try deleting everything in the scene except the camera and any objects you want exporting with external compositing tags, then export the AEC.
I’m curious how you achieved the Slow-mo look of your final. I’m assuming in your final you used a much slower rotation for the “Rotate Null”? I’m stumped on this one.
Thanks for sharing how this was done, beautiful piece and awesome tutorial… thanks a million
@Jason – I used the Time Scale parameter in Document Settings to slow down the simulation.
Amezing motion man!! your particular system is singular outstanding!! cheers!!