helloluxx » cinema4d

Cinema4D R12

Tim — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:38:04 +0000

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.

Two Texture Tips

Tim — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:15:25 +0000

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…

Modify Clone

Tim — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:39:46 +0000

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.

In this simple example scene, the Shader Effector is set to modify clone at 100%. I have animated the colour brightness so it starts black and ends white. As it changes colour it ‘Modifies’ the Clone being shown.

Thinking Particles and Proximal

Tim — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:54:35 +0000

Here we go with another Thinking Particles example…

This scene also makes use of the Proximal shader. As you may have guessed from the name, the Proximal shader works based on the proximity of objects. In other words you can use it to control a material when it is near another object, edge, vertex, etc.

Thinking Particles and Proximal

Take for instance a hot iron branding some skin. You could use proximal in the skin luminance channel, place it in a layer shader as a layer mask to reveal a glowing red colour. Point Proximal at the Branding Iron object and set the Start / End Distance and the Intensity. As the branding iron object moves towards the skin object, the proximal shader will get whiter. As it is used as a mask, it will reveal red coloured shader.

The Proximal Shader

As for the TP side of things, I’ve created a simple Surface Emitter and then dropped all the particles down using PGravity. The particles bounce off the surface using the PDeflector node. The surface that they bounce off has the proximal shader. I’ve used it in the displacement channel and also in a layer shader in the colour channel. So as the particles get close to the surface, they make dents and they also change the colour.

TP Xpresso Setup

Of course there are a lot more creative uses for this technique, but hopefully this simple example will whet your appetite and you will put it to a more suitable usage! How about emitting particles from the rear of a boat to stir up some wake. I remember JeremyW had a superb example of just that a few years back.

For those of you who don’t have Thinking Particles or just like to experiment. This type of technique is certainly possible using MoGraph too. You can use TP particles as the source for falloff on the Shader Effector and the Displace Deformer. If you don’t have TP then why not use MoDynamics to drop the clones down onto the surface?

I hope you find this useful and you are inspired to use the Proximal shader in your own projects.

You can download the Cinema4D scene file here.

Thinking Particles : Basic Flocking

Tim — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:02:02 +0000

I’m sure a lot of you remember the blog that I used to have, the original pages hosted on the HYPA server. It wasn’t really a blog, but more of a mish-mash of my experiments, downloads etc.

I often get requests for the downloads, so I do intend to repost them all eventually. I posted the light presets a while back and now I am going to repost the Thinking Particles presets.

The first offering is my TP Basic Flocking example. This is a really simple setup that shows you how you can create a flocking or swarming type effect using Thinking Particles.

Basic Flocking Xpresso

As you can see from the Xpresso, there is not a lot to it. The particles are all in the same default All group. I’ve added a null which is then animated along a spline. This null is used as a Follow Position for the particles. As the particles try to follow the nulls position, there is some hidden geometry that is used as a Deflector, this helps to add a little chaos to the motion. I’ve used the Particle Collision preset to stop the particles colliding with each other too.

I hope you find this useful. Don’t forget that you can also clone onto the Thinking Particles using MoGraph if you want to start mixing up some MoGraph and TP techniques. Lots of fun to be had for sure.

You can download the scene file here

ENVY: C4D Interiors for VRAY & Advanced Render.

Tim — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:03:50 +0000

I was recently contacted by Envy Studio who asked if I’d make a blog post regarding a new product they’d released for Cinema4D. Being the charitable type and always looking to support independent entrepreneurs, I agreed. Plus it looks like a pretty good deal to me. So here it is…

ENVY: C4D INTERIORS FOR ADVANCED RENDER 3 AND VRAY – volume 1.

These products are available as a downloadable version on the ENVY website.

- 10 professional interior scenes
- various light setups
- incorporates Linear Workflow for gamma correct results
- high quality lighting and render settings for optimum results
- 10 scenes for only 40 euros

ENVY: C4D Interiors for VRAY & Advanced Render.

Tim — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:03:50 +0000

ENVY: C4D INTERIORS FOR ADVANCED RENDER 3 AND VRAY – volume 1.

These products are available as a downloadable version on the ENVY website.

Slo-Mo with Cinema4D Cloth

Tim — Wed, 26 May 2010 01:06:46 +0000

Here’s another quick tip that demonstrates how to slow down your cloth simulations. This technique can be used with any animation that involves deformation at a point level. Have fun!

For those of you that are wondering about the mesh I used for the Luxx logo, here is an editor view (unsmoothed). You can see that I have modelled the shape quite evenly and not taken an extrudeNURBS made editable (click on the image to see full size). When working with cloth you should always model with this in mind and try to keep your mesh nice and evenly balanced. The cloth will tend to react more naturally that way.

Luxx Logo Wireframe

3 Day SALE!

Tim — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:14:36 +0000

Making It Look Great 7 and HDRI Light Kit Pro are now available in a THREE day sale.

For only 3 days, Motionworks and Greyscalegorilla are getting together to bring you a bundle designed to help you get the most out of Cinema 4D. Learn real-world Cinema 4D MoGraph techniques and workflows with MILG07 and light your scene with realistic lights and studios with the HDRI LightKitPro.

Get both of these products for only $129 which is over 20% off. This bundle will expire this Wednesday, April 28th. Watch your mograph skill set jump and your lighting shine with the Making It Look Great 7 and HDRI LightKitPro Bundle.

Buy The Bundle Now

Learn More about HDRI LightKitPro

Learn More about MILG7

Straight vs Premultiplied : Understanding Alpha Channels

Tim — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:29:58 +0000

I am often asked the question “What is the difference between a Straight and a Premultiplied Alpha Channel?”

In this tutorial I discuss the differences between a Straight and a Premultiplied Alpha channel. How to spot the difference and ensure you interpret your files correctly when setting up your composite.

I also cover the Straight Alpha parameter that is offered when rendering Cinema4D Multipass renders.

Head on over to Vimeo to watch the tutorial in HD.