This tutorial from demonstrates a method to create Thinking Particles from Dynamic Collisions using Cinema4D and some simple Xpresso.
Although the technique described is fairly basic, this will lay the foundation for much more complex effects that are possible by developing the principle further.
A new collection of training for Cinema4D R12 will soon be available.
This teaser shows an example of the content that is covered in the tutorials.
Here’s a simple setup that I thought I’d share with you all. It is a way of emitting Thinking Particles as one object collides with another. The particles are actually emitted from the centre of the polygon of the colliding object, so not 100% accurate with the collision point, but hopefully you’ll still find it useful.
Xpresso Setup
The Xpresso isn’t too complex. Basically the Collision node checks if there is a collision occurring between the two objects, if there is it switches the PStorm node on.
To decide where the PStorm node should emit from the Polygon Selection is used and all the polygons from the object are iterated through. The polygon centre is then passed to the PStorm node and used for position.
Emit On Collision
Should be a nice preset to add to your arsenal of TP tools. Enjoy.
A new collection of training for Cinema4D R12 will soon be available from helloluxx.
A wooden world…
It has been a while since the release of Cinema4D r12 and I must apologise for the lack of blog posts. To be honest, I’ve been absolutely snowed under with work. Lots of really great projects that will hopefully be online at the Luxx website as soon as I have time to update it.
Exclusive!
I worked with TWP on a long piece that is all about a wooden world for GE Fleet Card. Created some cool jellyfish animations that were projected onto Queens House in London for Bombay Sapphire via Ultrascope in the UK.
Jellyfish
Spent a few weeks with the lovely people over at MTV Networks Australia working on their promo for the Aria’s. Worked on a typography and infographic based animation for another great client who I cannot mention yet (shhhhh!) Soon I’m off to spend some time working with the talented crew over at Umeric for another exciting new project.
Pollution!
In between all of this creative mayhem, I’ve been planning and recording my next set of training. You are gonna love this! Release 12 saw the addition of some exciting new Dynamic features, possible one of the greatest additions to the application for a long time. Lucky for me, I was involved throughout the development process helping to beta test the new features along with the other members of the Maxon Beta team. During this period I managed to develop some awesome tips, tricks and techniques for working with Dynamics and I thought it would make an ideal subject for my next training series. This new set of training will be based around several complete projects that cover many of the aspects of Dynamics. From the initial creation of simple rigid bodies, through soft bodies, connectors, springs, motors and of course plenty of Xpresso to compliment the toolset. We start with an empty scene and develop an animation using Dynamics from start to finish. Not only is the dynamics toolset covered in detail, but I also discuss workflow, materials and shaders, tons of mograph, caching and rendering the projects.
I’m in the process of proofing all of the new tutorials and will be sending out a few teasers soon. I have a huge free tutorial recorded and set to go live as a taster of what to expect in the new training. So follow me on Twitter for updates and don’t forget to check back here regularly.
In the mean time I have been digging about in my hard drive to find some interesting presets to share… I posted this Thinking Particles preset earlier today and I’ll be posting more in the coming weeks.
Have fun!
So as promised, here is another preset for Thinking Particles. This is from the old HYPA archive that I am slowly resurrecting. I told you I’d get them online eventually, my apologies that it is taking some time! I’ve been pretty busy lately with projects and some new training, but more about that later. On with the particle goodness!
Thinking Particles Fire?
This preset uses the P_MotionInheritance node. It also covers a few other TP / Xpresso tricks.
The Start Group Xpresso
The particles are emitted and they take on a cone shape. The cone shape is forced to point in the direction of travel using the PAlignment node. PGravity and PScale are used to… well give the particles gravity (upwards via some spherical gravity) and affect their scale. The PBubble node gives the particles a little deviation from their paths as they move along.
The top few nodes use PData to obtain the particle position, this is then compared with the Y position of a null object. Once the particles are above this null, they are moved from the Start group into the End group.
Check the Height of the Null
Once the particles are moved from the Start group into the End group the second set of Xpresso takes over.
The End group Xpresso
This is fairly simple, firstly the particles change shape to become cubes. They also scale down using the PScale node. The PMotionInheritance node is used here. Basically there is a null object in the scene that is rotating around. This is then referenced by the PMotionInheritance node and the motion is applied to the particles. This makes the cubes swirl around as they rise up.
Here’s a quicktime movie that shows a render of the result. I used GI for the render and you can see that the ‘fire’ is the main source for illumination. Of course there are a lot more creative uses for this technique, but hopefully this simple example is enough to spark your creative juices and encourage you to play more with those lovely Thinking Particles!
You can download the scene file here. It is saved with r11.5, but I’m sure it will be ok with r11 and r12 too.
This quick tip shows you how to create two separate Attribute Managers, one for displaying only tool settings and the other excluding tool settings.
R12 Splash Screen
Well it’s that time of year again. The new release of Cinema4D has been announced. What an amazing release it is too. I have been fortunate enough to be part of the beta team and have been testing the new features for a while now. It is difficult to know where to start, but the most important update for me has to be the new dynamics module.
Restructured GUI - Dynamics Menu
Dynamics is incredible! The old dynamics module was slow, unreliable and quite honestly an unpleasant experience to work with. The new dynamics is an absolute joy to work with. In fact work can quite easily become play!
Those of you familiar with MoDynamics, introduced with r11, will be pleased to hear that the new dynamics is a huge extension beyond this. Maxon have taken Dynamics to a whole new level. Instead of being restricted to rigid bodies that only will work with MoGraph objects, we now have have the addition of Soft Bodies, Springs, Joints (hinges, etc) and Motors. They all work together, and even better they all work with or without the MoGraph module. If you want a stand alone dynamics simulation you can easily create this, but if you want to then duplicate it 500 times, drop it in a Cloner and away you go.
Rigid and Soft Bodies working together - click for movie
Dynamics will function as a fantastic feature in it’s own right, it will also work with MoGraph if you desire. For instance you can create a Soft Body, but you can also create a Soft Body of clones. Imagine virtual springs between all your cloned objects. You can link Soft and Rigid bodies together with the huge number of connector objects, these allow you to create hinges, cardon joints, ragdoll, sliders, the list goes on. Springs can be linear, radial or both, expect to see a lot of bouncing around in your scenes when you get hold of this.
Rigid Bodies, Soft Bodies and Hinges in action - click for movie
All you Xpresso heads will be pleased to hear that Dynamics comes with some new Xpresso nodes, so you can link Dynamics to other elements in your scene, such as Thinking Particles, allowing you to create particles upon collision and plenty more besides.
All in all Dynamics has finally received the upgrade we have all been waiting for. To be honest, I’ve just touched upon the features, you should really check out the Maxon webpage for full details of the new featureset.
Alongside Dynamics there are plenty of other improvements to be in awe of. We have now got a bundle of new deformers and a new morphing system. The new Pose Morph is a hybrid of Pose to Pose and Morph. So you can mix and match between position, scale, rotation and point level morphing. On top of the obvious morph parameters, Pose Morph supports UVs, Maps, Hierarchy, Parameters and User Data. Yes! I did say UVs, now you can morph your UV maps as well as geometry. How awesome is that?
New Deformers
The Camera Deformer allows you to deform objects from the Camera viewpoint, some crazy stuff is going to come from this deformer alone. You set the grid resolution and then you can drag and keyframe points on the grid looking straight out onto your scene (and it has falloff built in too). If you link Pose Morph up to Camera Deformer with some Displacement and Cloth in between, then you can start to understand the power that can be harnessed.
Mesh Deformer is another new deformer. Take a low poly cage and use it control a high poly version. Something I know a lot of users have been asking for. You can even set your low poly mesh deformer work as a Dynamic Soft Body and as the low poly cage deforms, it then passes that deformation on to the high poly mesh.
I cannot finish this without mentioning Linear Workflow. Cinema4D now has the option to include Linear Workflow in your projects. Those of you who have been using DeGamma will be glad to see LWF as part of the core application. The new openGL (which is a fantastic improvement) supports Linear Workflow, so you see an accurate preview of your lighting and materials in the editor. We can use Colour Profiles for input and output now. This means we finally have the ability to work in Linear, and use Colour Management.
An alternative use for the new MoSpline L-System - click for movie
Well I really have only touched on the new features. I haven’t mentioned the new Render Queue, Smoothing Deformer, Correction Deformer, Surface Deformer, GUI enhancements, Freeze Transformations, IES lighting, Weight Manager, L-System (OMG!), Python…
I love this release, it is huge and I am sure you will all love it too. Check out the Maxon website for the full details and visit Cineversity for all the video highlights.
As for learning those new features. Watch this space, helloluxx will soon be updating our tutorials, to offer you an intensive and comprehensive collection of training that will cover many of the new features in depth. Something you definitely won’t want to miss out on.
A couple of quick tips when working with materials and textures in Cinema4D.
How to replace all instances of either missing textures, or simply swap an existing texture in your materials.
How to change the material that is referenced in multiple tags.
Enjoy…
I was asked about the Modify Clone parameter that is available on many of the effectors. I made a real simple file that shows the parameter in use and thought I’d share it here.
The Modify Clone parameter
If you have several objects under a cloner and the cloner is set to something other than cluster, then the modify clone parameter will determine which clones are displayed in the editor and rendered.
