IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi, I'm EJ Hassenfratz, and welcome
to Mograph Techniques: Animating with
| | 00:08 | CINEMA 4D Effectors.
| | 00:10 | In this course, we'll look at how you
can leverage MoGraph effectors to create a
| | 00:14 | complex network bumper animation
that's driven by only two keyframes.
| | 00:19 | I'll start by showing you how you
can set up your scene using cloner
| | 00:22 | and fracture objects.
| | 00:24 | Then I'll show you how you can stack
MoGraph effectors while using MoGraph
| | 00:28 | selection tags to have full control
over how your objects are manipulated
| | 00:32 | by MoGraph effectors.
| | 00:34 | We'll then see how we can create an
animation that can be quickly and easily
| | 00:38 | changed for iteration and versioning
in both CINEMA 4D and After Effects.
| | 00:43 | We'll be covering all these features
plus plenty of other tools and techniques.
| | 00:48 | Now let's get started with
Mograph Techniques: Animating with CINEMA
| | 00:52 | 4D Effectors.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com online training library or if you
| | 00:05 | are watching this tutorial on a DVD,
you have access to the exercise files used
| | 00:09 | throughout this title.
| | 00:11 | You can download your exercise files from
the Exercise Files tab on the course page.
| | 00:17 | So I've downloaded my
Exercise Files folder here.
| | 00:19 | If I double-click it, you can see we
have all of our chapters 1 through 5 laid
| | 00:24 | out here, and in each chapter you have
the correlating CINEMA 4D files, and in
| | 00:29 | the case of chapter 5, we have all of
our CINEMA 4D and After Effects files
| | 00:33 | laid out in both CS5.5 and CS6 format.
| | 00:38 | We also have in chapter 5 our
rendered assets that you'll need to follow
| | 00:42 | along in this chapter.
| | 00:44 | If you are not a Premium subscriber to
lynda.com, you don't have any access to
| | 00:48 | the exercise files, but you can follow
along from scratch with your own assets.
| | 00:52 | Let's get started.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| A preview of the finished product| 00:00 | Here's a little sneak peek of what
we're going to be creating in this course.
| | 00:04 | We're going to be making a network promo
bumper for a fake TV station named Pixel.
| | 00:11 | We're going to be creating this
cube grid with a cloner object.
| | 00:13 | We're going to be using MoGraph
effectors to motivate the transition of these
| | 00:18 | two words, and everything is just going
to be driven with only two keyframes.
| | 00:22 | We're also going to jump in to After
Effects to add some finishing touches.
| | 00:26 | So before you dive in, it's important to know
what kind of look we're going to be aiming for.
| | 00:32 | Now let's get started.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Building the Cube Grid Structure For the SceneCreating a grid of cubes using the Cloner| 00:00 | Cloners and effectors are the main
strength of CINEMA 4D, and stacking effectors
| | 00:04 | is a huge timesaver when
creating complex animations.
| | 00:07 | Let's start by designing out the
concept of our network promo bumper animation.
| | 00:12 | So you'll see I have an empty scene right now.
| | 00:14 | We're going to start by creating
that cube grid that's in our animation.
| | 00:19 | And so the first thing we need to do to
create the cube grid is to get our cube.
| | 00:23 | So we go up, get our cube, and we're
going to change the size down to 150 in each
| | 00:30 | direction here, and we're going
to add a nice rounding to it.
| | 00:34 | We're just going to do that by
selecting Fillet--and that's a little bit too
| | 00:38 | much rounding there.
| | 00:39 | Let's just bring that down to 5,
and a Subdivision of 5 is just fine.
| | 00:45 | So now we've got our cube.
| | 00:46 | Now we've got to create that grid.
| | 00:48 | And we're going to do that by
cloning it by using a MoGraph cloner.
| | 00:54 | And if we just drag our cube into
our cloner, you can see that it starts
| | 00:59 | duplicating it upwards.
| | 01:02 | And it's set to Linear mode,
and that's not what we want.
| | 01:05 | We actually need to make a grid, so
we're going to use the Grid Array.
| | 01:10 | So, remember, the cube grid that's in
the final animation is just one deep, and
| | 01:15 | it's a very tall and wide wall of cubes basically.
| | 01:18 | So we're going to need to adjust these settings.
| | 01:21 | Right now our Count is 3, 3, 3.
| | 01:23 | Let's change this to 21, 16, and if we
change that to 1 in the Z, it's just one deep.
| | 01:32 | So you can see that we now have these
little handles here that we can drag and
| | 01:37 | adjust how big our cube grid is.
| | 01:39 | Now, what we want to do is actually
make it so these cubes are just flush up
| | 01:45 | against one another.
| | 01:46 | And we can do that by dragging the handles.
| | 01:48 | It becomes a little bit meticulous.
| | 01:51 | We can get them kind of close and then zoom in.
| | 01:54 | We can get these pretty exact by actually
going into our front view here and zoom in.
| | 02:03 | We can actually adjust these
by just adjusting the size here.
| | 02:06 | So we have X, Y, Z size.
| | 02:08 | Z really doesn't matter because we
just have the one cube, but if we go and
| | 02:12 | adjust the X size here, we can get
it so we can zoom in pretty close and
| | 02:21 | get really precise.
| | 02:23 | So, that looks pretty good right
there. I'm a stickler for even numbers,
| | 02:28 | so let's just do 3010, and let's
drag this down in the Y and 2252.
| | 02:44 | That looks good enough for me.
| | 02:47 | Let's go back to our main perspective
view here, and we've got our wall of cubes here.
| | 02:54 | So, remember, we have to have our chrome
animation that has the cubes with text on them,
| | 02:59 | so we actually need to get rid of,
and make some holes to actually place
| | 03:03 | those cube text objects.
| | 03:05 | So we need to select five of these
cubes because the words that we're going to
| | 03:09 | use are NEXT and PIXEL, and PIXEL is
five letters long, so we need to get rid of
| | 03:15 | five of these cubes.
| | 03:16 | So how we're going to that is by
going up to MoGraph and by using a MoGraph
| | 03:21 | selection tag, you can see
that all these red squares pop up.
| | 03:27 | Now, if I go and I've got my cursor with
this little selection circle, if I just
| | 03:32 | click on one of these, you'll see that
it changes from red to yellow, and you'll
| | 03:36 | see on my cloner, it added
a MoGraph selection tag.
| | 03:40 | So what I need to do is select four
more of these and if I hold down Shift and
| | 03:45 | select, you can see that there's turning yellow.
| | 03:48 | We got five of these selected.
| | 03:50 | These selections are now stored
in this MoGraph selection tag.
| | 03:55 | We're going to rename this to actually
what it's doing, just to keep things straight.
| | 03:59 | And what this is going to do is
just get rid of the visibility of these
| | 04:03 | clones from our view.
So let's just rename it Cube Visibility.
| | 04:10 | So now that we have these selected and
it's stored in the MoGraph selection tag,
| | 04:14 | now we need to get rid of them.
| | 04:17 | So we can do that one of two ways.
| | 04:19 | And the first way you can do this is going
up to MoGraph, grabbing a Plain effector.
| | 04:23 | So we have our Plain effector applied.
| | 04:26 | You can see that the selection,
the MoGraph selection tag, is actually
| | 04:32 | already applied to this.
| | 04:33 | So you can see that that position in our
parameter here suggesting the clones in
| | 04:39 | the Y up 100 centimeters
on just those five clones.
| | 04:44 | So if we deselect that and go to Scale--
because remember Plain effectors just
| | 04:49 | deal with position, scale, and rotation--
| | 04:51 | if we change the scale of these cubes
to -1 in all of these parameters, or just
| | 04:59 | select Uniform Scale and hit -1,
| | 05:02 | this will scale it down uniformly on X,
Y, and Z. You can see that that is
| | 05:07 | one way to get rid of these cubes, by simply
scaling them down with a Plain effector.
| | 05:12 | So I am going to delete that
and show you the second way.
| | 05:15 | And the second way is using an effector,
but this time it's the Volume effector.
| | 05:22 | And so with this applied, Scale is
selected, nothing is happening right now.
| | 05:27 | And we're going to unselect
Scale because we don't want that.
| | 05:30 | What we do want is Visibility.
| | 05:32 | And if you check the Visibility,
right away nothing happens, because I don't
| | 05:37 | think we have it applied.
| | 05:38 | So make sure you have the Volume
effector applied and with it applied, you can
| | 05:44 | see that you can toggle this on and off.
| | 05:48 | With the Visibility selected, it totally
blows out and gets rid all of our cubes.
| | 05:54 | We don't want that.
We just want to get rid of those five cubes.
| | 05:57 | So if we go to Effector under the
Effector menu and drag our MoGraph Selection
| | 06:02 | tag, Cube Visibility, and drag that into
our selection, you can see that now that
| | 06:09 | Volume Effector Visibility option
just gets rid of those five cubes.
| | 06:14 | Now all I want to do is just go ahead
and rename our effector so we can keep
| | 06:19 | them all sorted as we progress in this project.
| | 06:22 | So I'm just going to name this
Volume effector after what it does.
| | 06:26 | So it's Volume, and it's just going to
have a dash, and then we're just going to
| | 06:31 | add Cube Visibility,
| | 06:35 | just so we have everything sorted
so our effector names reflect what they do.
| | 06:40 | So when we need to refer to them later or
apply them to other things, we know what's what.
| | 06:45 | So now we have our grid basically set up,
and now we can start adding our text cubes.
| | 06:51 | With the MoGraph selection tag, you
have precise control over which cloned
| | 06:54 | objects you want to manipulate.
| | 06:56 | Using this tag, you have the ability to
exclude or include clones to be affected
| | 07:00 | by effectors and in this case,
have them be hidden from view.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the cubes with text| 00:00 | In this animation, the cube grid has
pulsating waves that will pass through it,
| | 00:04 | and that will motivate the text transition.
| | 00:06 | The text will be on two different
faces of the cube, and the cube will rotate
| | 00:10 | to reveal each word.
| | 00:12 | So we have our cube grid here with the
holes that are going to be filled with
| | 00:16 | our cube text objects.
| | 00:17 | So we're going to create our cube text,
and we're going to do this by using the
| | 00:20 | same cube that's in the grid, so the
cube text have the same size and dimension
| | 00:25 | as the cubes in the cube grid.
| | 00:27 | We're going to just make it so
everything looks seamless in this cube grid scene.
| | 00:34 | So if I select this cube, hold Control,
click and drag, I just duplicated that
| | 00:39 | cube, and it has the same
size as the cube grid cubes.
| | 00:44 | So now what I have to do is make
sure that I position this correctly.
| | 00:48 | This will look flush and fit in
with the actual cube grid here.
| | 00:53 | So if I'm zooming in on my front view,
that looks like it's pretty flush there.
| | 01:07 | Now what I'm going to do is just move this
over, and this will be the first cube text.
| | 01:18 | So I have that positioned.
| | 01:20 | It looks like it's lined up pretty good.
| | 01:23 | So now what I'm going to do is I'm
actually going to turn off the cloner in
| | 01:27 | the cube for right now.
| | 01:28 | I have to have these cubes spell the
word PIXEL on one side on the top face and
| | 01:33 | NEXT on the other, because remember, our
animation turns from the word NEXT and
| | 01:38 | then transitions to the
PIXEL word on the other side.
| | 01:42 | So how I'm going to do this is prepare
one cube with one letter on the top and
| | 01:47 | one letter on the bottom and then I'm
just going to duplicate it and change the
| | 01:51 | letters, just to streamline
the process a little bit.
| | 01:53 | So this will be the first letter of each word.
| | 01:58 | So we're going to have P on the top
and then N on the bottom, because we have
| | 02:02 | PIXEL on the top and NEXT on the bottom.
| | 02:04 | So let's start creating our text.
| | 02:08 | Let's go up to MoGraph.
Get our MoText object.
| | 02:13 | Let's just move this over, bring it up a bit.
| | 02:17 | We're going to hit R while holding
Shift and just rotate this, and let's
| | 02:23 | just position this.
| | 02:25 | Let's go to our top view here.
| | 02:30 | So remember, we need our first letter to be P.
So let's change that to P for right now.
| | 02:39 | And we're going to change the font to
something a little bit nicer, Helvetica
| | 02:42 | Neue, and we're going to choose bold.
| | 02:45 | And we're going to change
the alignment to middle.
| | 02:48 | So let's reposition this, and we're
going to scale this down a little bit,
| | 02:52 | so let's bring the height down to say 185.
| | 02:54 | So that looks centered pretty well.
| | 03:02 | So now what I want to do, if I go
into my perspective, I want to add a nice
| | 03:06 | rounded edge to the P as
well, as we did with the cube.
| | 03:09 | What we're going to do is go into our
Caps and get Fillet Caps, and let's change
| | 03:15 | the Steps and the Radius for
each of the Start and the End.
| | 03:17 | We're going to choose 5 steps and a
radius of 3 for both the Start and the End,
| | 03:24 | so we have a nice
rounded edge to match our cube.
| | 03:28 | And we can actually adjust our Depth as well.
We don't need it that deep.
| | 03:34 | So we have our P set to the top.
| | 03:37 | Now we need to make our letter on the
bottom, and our first letter is going to
| | 03:42 | be N because of NEXT.
| | 03:44 | Let's actually make sure we're
naming things as we go along.
| | 03:47 | So that's P, drag, click, and then select
and duplicate that and change that to N
| | 03:52 | and also change the text field to letter N here.
| | 03:55 | And we're going to rotate this 180
degrees, and let's rotate here in our viewport,
| | 04:05 | and let's center this on the bottom.
| | 04:08 | Let's actually go to our top view
again, uncheck our P so we hide it in the
| | 04:13 | viewport, and let's make sure we have our N
here nice lined up and centered. That looks good.
| | 04:26 | So now what we need to do is we're going
to make these letters, select them both,
| | 04:33 | and make them a child of our cube.
| | 04:34 | We're going to name this Cube.1
because this will be our first cube.
| | 04:38 | And the reason why we make our
letters a child of our cube is because we're
| | 04:41 | going to eventually apply animation to this,
and we're going to have these cubes rotate.
| | 04:46 | And since the P and the N are a child
of that cube, once we rotate this cube,
| | 04:51 | it's going to rotate the letters along with it.
| | 04:53 | So we're going to have it so it starts
with a P and that's going to rotate and
| | 04:59 | reveal the other side.
| | 05:01 | So that's important to have
the letters child of the cube.
| | 05:04 | Let's go and and set that back to default.
| | 05:08 | And let's turn our cloner back on here.
| | 05:13 | Let's go to our front view.
| | 05:14 | We're just going to duplicate this.
| | 05:16 | So we have our cube with
our letters as the children.
| | 05:20 | We're just going to duplicate this whole
entire rig by holding Control and click-
| | 05:24 | dragging, and let's rename this to Cube.2.
| | 05:27 | So that duplicates the cube as well
as the MoText objects that are children
| | 05:32 | of that cube object.
| | 05:34 | And we're just going to drag and by
holding Shift, we can constrain that movement
| | 05:39 | in increments of 10.
| | 05:41 | So remember, our cube is 150 centimeter,
so if we go over 150 centimeters, that
| | 05:47 | should line things up pretty well.
| | 05:50 | So now let's do this three more times.
| | 05:53 | So Cube.3, holding Shift, and line that
up. And let's duplicate again, Cube.4 move
| | 06:05 | that over to the right, and
make our last Cube.5 here.
| | 06:13 | So now what we have to do is if I hide
our cloner, our cube grid, now what I have
| | 06:20 | to do is go in--go into each of these cube
objects and then just change out the letters.
| | 06:27 | In our Cube.5, we actually don't have a
letter on the bottom, so I'm just going
| | 06:32 | to delete that right now.
| | 06:36 | So we have PIXEL on the top, so we need
to change this P to an I. Let's change
| | 06:42 | that to I. And let's also remember to
change the names of our objects in the
| | 06:48 | Object Manager to reflect the change in the
text as well, just to keep things organized.
| | 06:54 | We're ready to go, and select
our letter, go to our Object tab.
| | 06:59 | This is X, P-I-X-E-L.
| | 07:02 | Make sure you double-click on the P.
You rename the object to what the letter is.
| | 07:08 | Let's go to our fourth, and that will be
E, and make sure we go down to our text
| | 07:14 | down this text field and
change that to E as well.
| | 07:17 | And then PIXEL. This last cube will
be an L. Let's rename it in the Object
| | 07:22 | Manager and change the text
field to L on this MoText object.
| | 07:27 | So we have PIXEL spelled out
on the top. That's looking good.
| | 07:30 | Let's go and rotate down to the bottom.
| | 07:33 | This is where we will have
the word NEXT. So N is fine.
| | 07:37 | Let's go to our second cube.
| | 07:40 | Select the MoText object.
| | 07:42 | Let's just rename that to E and also
change the text field to E. It'll update
| | 07:48 | it in the viewport.
| | 07:49 | Go to Cube.3 and that will be N-E-X-T,
so that will be another X. Go and change
| | 07:58 | it in the text field in our MoText object.
| | 08:01 | And then on Cube.4, we will change the
N to a T. So let's go and change it in
| | 08:08 | our text field and in our MoText object as well.
| | 08:11 | So now we have our letters all set up.
| | 08:15 | Let's actually--you don't want it poking
out too, too much because, as you can see, if
| | 08:20 | I re-enable my cloner object, you can
kind of see through the cracks there, a
| | 08:26 | little bit of the object.
| | 08:27 | So let me hide those again.
| | 08:29 | Let me select the P, the I, the X, the E, and
the L. Let me just bring this down a little bit.
| | 08:38 | That looks okay now.
| | 08:39 | Let's re-enable our cloner object.
| | 08:46 | And now what we have to do is make it
so these cube objects can be affected
| | 08:52 | by effectors, and how we're going to do that
is simply throwing them in a fracture object.
| | 08:57 | So you go up to MoGraph > Fracture,
and let's just throw all of these cubes into
| | 09:03 | the fracture object.
| | 09:06 | Straight mode is perfectly fine, and now
you see you have your Effector tab that
| | 09:10 | you can start applying effectors to.
| | 09:12 | Now just a little bit of cleanup work,
| | 09:14 | we're just going to rename these two objects.
| | 09:16 | So we're going to rename the cloner
to Cube Grid. And our Fracture object is
| | 09:21 | actually our cube text,
| | 09:23 | so we're just going to rename this Cube Text.
| | 09:25 | So now we can easily see what's what.
| | 09:28 | You now have the scene set up with all the
objects able to be affected by MoGraph effectors.
| | 09:33 | You should always work as if changes
are inevitable because they usually are.
| | 09:37 | A little preparation goes a long way
when it comes to tackling those changes
| | 09:40 | or iterations.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Setting Up the Scene with EffectorsCreating the wave animation with plain effectors| 00:00 | Using MoGraph effectors to animate
your scene can be a huge timesaver over
| | 00:04 | keyframing by hand.
| | 00:05 | Using effectors to procedurally animate objects
allows you to automate much of your animation.
| | 00:11 | In this movie, you'll begin creating
the procedural animation with effectors.
| | 00:14 | So you see we have our cube
grid cube text all set up.
| | 00:19 | Now what we need to do is start
applying effectors to create our animation.
| | 00:24 | So we're going to go up to MoGraph, go
to Effector, and the effector type that we
| | 00:29 | are going to be using specifically for
this animation are just Plain effectors.
| | 00:32 | The reason for this is, if you look
under the Parameter tab, you can see that
| | 00:37 | under Transform, you can only
transform Position, Scale, and Rotation.
| | 00:41 | Since we're only animating the object's
position and rotation, Plain effectors are
| | 00:46 | going to work just fine for what we need.
| | 00:48 | So now what we have to do is apply our
Plain effector to our cube grid and cube text.
| | 00:54 | Under Cube Grid, we already have an
effector applied. Keep that in mind.
| | 00:58 | Now if I select the cube text as well,
you can see under the effector tab that
| | 01:03 | the Volume effector is still here.
| | 01:05 | Now, watch what happens when I click and
drag the Plain effector and apply it to
| | 01:09 | both the cube grid and cube text.
| | 01:11 | You can see that our cube text just disappeared.
| | 01:14 | You can also see when I select the cube
text and look under effectors, not only
| | 01:19 | did it apply the Plain effector to the
cube text, it also applied that Volume
| | 01:23 | effector that was only
originally applied to the cube grid.
| | 01:26 | Now this is just the way that CINEMA
4D works when applying a new effector to
| | 01:31 | multiple objects where an effector is
already applied to one of the objects.
| | 01:36 | So that's just something
you have to keep in mind.
| | 01:39 | Now, to easily fix this issue, all you
have to do is delete the Volume effector
| | 01:43 | from the cube text and you can
see our cube text reappears again.
| | 01:49 | So this first Plain effector is going
to motivate the first wave, and it's going
| | 01:53 | to push the cubes forward in Z space.
| | 01:55 | So we're going to delete out the 100 in
the Y, and we're just going to scrub this
| | 02:01 | forward, scrub this in the negative Z
space, and you can see that that is pushing
| | 02:08 | all the cubes forward in Z space.
| | 02:10 | So we're just going to push
them forward 150 centimeters.
| | 02:13 | And we don't want this to be applied to
the entire cube grid at the same time.
| | 02:17 | We want it to come on in a wave.
| | 02:19 | So to do that we need to go into our
Falloff, and our Falloff Shape is set to
| | 02:23 | Infinite and that's why it's
being applied to our entire grid.
| | 02:26 | If we go for the Box, you can see that
the position value change only applies to
| | 02:33 | where our falloff is in our viewport.
| | 02:37 | So what we need to do is make sure that
this falloff area encompasses the entire
| | 02:46 | cube grid area here as well.
| | 02:49 | So now if I move this from left to
right, you can see that that is creating a
| | 02:57 | nice little wave pushing our cubes forward.
| | 03:02 | You can see that the wave
just start taking shape.
| | 03:06 | So in our original animation, we also
have that wave coming through and rotating
| | 03:11 | the cubes and revealing our first word.
| | 03:15 | So now we have to make a second Plain effector.
| | 03:18 | Before we do that, let's go ahead
and rename this Plain effector, just to
| | 03:21 | keep things organized.
| | 03:22 | So remember, this affects both the cube
grid and cube text, so let's rename this
| | 03:27 | All. And this affects the position only,
so Pos for short. And then this is part
| | 03:32 | of wave one, so we'll just
type Wave1.
| | 03:35 | So now let's create our second Plain effector.
| | 03:38 | Go up to MoGraph > Effector > Plain.
And this is going to be the Plain effector
| | 03:46 | that is going to rotate our
cubes and reveal our first word.
| | 03:49 | So we need to deselect Position and we
also need to make sure that we apply it
| | 03:54 | to both our cube grid and our cube text.
| | 04:00 | So if I go back to our Plain effector,
select Rotation, and if I go -90 in the
| | 04:07 | Pitch, you can see that
that reveals our first word.
| | 04:14 | And again, we need to change that
Falloff value from Infinite, and we're going to
| | 04:19 | change this to Linear, because we want
this to work linearly from left to right.
| | 04:23 | And right now you don't see anything
changing because if I actually get rid
| | 04:27 | of the cube grid and zoom in here,
you can see our falloff of our Plain
| | 04:34 | effector has this arrow.
| | 04:36 | What that means is that effector is
going to be applied from left to right in
| | 04:41 | this direction, in the Z. And you
can see that that's not the correct
| | 04:45 | direction we want it to go.
| | 04:47 | We're going to re-enable the cube grid.
| | 04:50 | I'm just going to rotate this 90
degrees and make sure that that arrow is now
| | 04:56 | pointing to the right.
| | 04:57 | And now as I pass this through our scene,
you can see from left to right, that's
| | 05:03 | going to reveal on and rotate our
cubes 90 degrees and reveal our first word.
| | 05:11 | Right now our falloff is a little sharp.
| | 05:14 | We just drag this handle out.
I'm going to pass this through again.
| | 05:18 | You can see it's a little bit
more softer of a transition there.
| | 05:22 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 05:23 | I'm just going to pass
this effector off right here.
| | 05:28 | So now, let's rename this again to
keep things sorted, and rename this All
| | 05:34 | because this is also applied to the
cube grid and text. And this deals with
| | 05:38 | rotation so Rot, also part of
wave one, so put in Wave1.
| | 05:43 | So now if select both of these, and pass
them through our scene, we really start
| | 05:50 | to see the animation taking shape.
| | 05:52 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 05:53 | Finally, we need to add one
last effector to complete our wave.
| | 05:59 | And that's another one to push these
cube text cubes forward a little bit more,
| | 06:05 | just to make a pop off that back cube
grid, because right now it's looking kind
| | 06:09 | of bland and boring.
| | 06:11 | So to do this again we need to
create another Plain effector.
| | 06:16 | Let's rename this again.
| | 06:18 | We're only going to apply this to the
cube text so we're not going to name it All;
| | 06:23 | we're just going to name it
Text, and this is positions.
| | 06:25 | It's going to affect the position.
| | 06:27 | It's going to position it forward
in Z space, and this is also Wave1.
| | 06:32 | Now if we go and apply this, you're
going to see, that it actually pushes it back.
| | 06:39 | And if we go, our default value is 100
in the positive Y. We know we need to
| | 06:46 | push it negative in the Z space just
like our first Plain effector here.
| | 06:50 | See how we have that -150?
| | 06:53 | We also needed -150 in this, but
you see that it's pushing it upwards;
| | 06:59 | it's pushing it in the wrong direction.
| | 07:01 | The reason for that is the way that
these effectors are being applied.
| | 07:05 | So first the position is pushed forward
by this Plain effector. Then the rotation
| | 07:10 | comes through, and because the rotation
comes through, it actually changes the
| | 07:13 | orientation of the axis of this object.
| | 07:17 | So that's why when we apply this final
position effector, it's pushing it up in
| | 07:22 | the wrong direction.
| | 07:23 | To fix this issue, we actually just need
to move our text position wave first in
| | 07:29 | our stacking order, and you can
see that we've got our desired result.
| | 07:35 | We just want the text pushed a little
bit forward to really get some contrast
| | 07:39 | and really make this look nice and
be a focal point of our grid here.
| | 07:44 | So keep in mind that effectors are
applied procedurally, so whatever is first on
| | 07:49 | the stacking order is the
first thing that gets applied.
| | 07:52 | So now if I zoom out here, I need
to change the Falloff of this text
| | 07:59 | position wave as well.
| | 08:01 | Change it from Infinite,
and we're going to change this to Box.
| | 08:04 | We're going to make sure that it
encompasses the entire word here.
| | 08:11 | So as I drag this, it comes forward.
| | 08:15 | We need to make sure that as it passes
through, the entire word comes forward.
| | 08:20 | So that's looking pretty good.
| | 08:24 | So now if I go and select all of our
effectors, and I go from left to right, you
| | 08:30 | see our wave comes through.
The cubes are getting pushed forward.
| | 08:35 | They're rotating, and then that final
text position effector is pushing that cube
| | 08:43 | text object forward even
further, and that's looking pretty good.
| | 08:46 | So you can start to see the
beginnings of the animation taking shape.
| | 08:52 | Organization is going to be key when
applying all these effectors, just in case
| | 08:55 | changes are needed down the line.
| | 08:57 | And in this industry,
changes are almost guaranteed.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the second wave animation| 00:00 | With our first wave of effectors applied,
motivating the first text transition,
| | 00:05 | you'll now begin to apply the second
wave of the animation, which will bring the
| | 00:08 | cubes back to their original state.
| | 00:10 | When working with this many effectors
it's very important to name them so you
| | 00:14 | know what each effector is affecting.
| | 00:15 | So just to review, we have our first
wave applied with these three effectors, and
| | 00:21 | you can see that the wave comes through
and motivates our first text transition.
| | 00:27 | So now we'll need a second wave that
will actually just bring these cubes
| | 00:31 | back to their original state and will
get rid of this next word and prepare
| | 00:36 | for it to transition to the next word, which is
that PIXEL, that fake name of our TV station.
| | 00:43 | So let's begin to create our Plain
effectors that will be part of this second wave.
| | 00:48 | So MoGraph Effector > Plain effector,
and let's rename this to what it's going
| | 00:53 | to do. And this is the Plain effector
that's going to create that second wave.
| | 00:57 | It's going to push the cubes
forward to create that wave effects,
| | 01:00 | so we're going to apply this to
both our cube grid and our cube text.
| | 01:04 | So, All, and it's going to affect the
position, so POS, and it's part of wave
| | 01:11 | two, so just to keep all these sorted.
| | 01:14 | So we've got to make sure that we apply
this new effector to both of our objects,
| | 01:21 | to our cube grid and cube text.
| | 01:24 | And you can see that it's moving
everything by its default value because it has
| | 01:28 | 100 in the Y by default.
| | 01:30 | We need to bring that to 0.
| | 01:31 | And we know we have to push these cubes forward.
| | 01:34 | They have to come forward
negative in the Z space.
| | 01:37 | So we know we have to change this in
the negative Z, but you can see in our
| | 01:42 | viewport, it's actually pushing the cubes upward.
| | 01:46 | And the reason we for this is, if we go
into our cube grid, these effectors are
| | 01:50 | getting applied sequentially.
| | 01:52 | So the Volume effector is being
applied first, then the position, then the
| | 01:55 | rotation of the first wave.
| | 01:58 | So by rotating the cube, it's changing
the rotation of the axis of the objects.
| | 02:03 | So when we have negative Z in this
position value, and it's pushing it actually
| | 02:08 | in the Y, that's because it's being
applied after that Rotation effector.
| | 02:13 | So we need to make sure that since the
effectors are being read sequentially,
| | 02:18 | that if we bring this before the
rotation's applied, and if we do this to both
| | 02:23 | of these cube grid and cube text, if I
go back to our position wave 2 effector
| | 02:29 | and I start scrubbing in the negative Z, you
can see that that's the look that we want.
| | 02:34 | That's behaving correctly.
| | 02:36 | So if I have 150 in the negative Z, it's
actually going 150 in the negative Z space,
| | 02:43 | coming towards our camera.
| | 02:46 | So again we have to adjust the falloff.
| | 02:48 | We don't want infinite because we don't
want all the cubes to be affected all at once.
| | 02:52 | We're actually I'm just
going to use a Box effector.
| | 02:56 | If I scale this falloff up off so it
encompasses our entire grid. Maybe just
| | 03:07 | zoom in here and drag these handles out
so it's a little bit wider of a falloff,
| | 03:15 | and scale this out so it also
encompasses our cube text here.
| | 03:20 | And as I move this from left to right,
you can see that this is going to be
| | 03:24 | our second wave here.
| | 03:27 | So again, with our waves, we have the
cubes being pushed forward, but we also
| | 03:32 | have our cubes being rotated, and we
need this cube text to be rotated back to
| | 03:38 | its original position.
| | 03:40 | So since its being rotated by this
Rotation effector in the negative 90,
| | 03:45 | we're going to need to create a second Plain
effector that will rotate it in the positive 90.
| | 03:53 | So let's make sure that we have
this Plain effector applied, and let's
| | 03:57 | actually rename it first.
| | 03:59 | It's going to effect both our
cube grid and cube test so All.
| | 04:02 | It's going to effect rotation,
and this is part of wave two.
| | 04:07 | So now we can apply this to both of our objects:
| | 04:12 | our cube grid and cube text.
| | 04:15 | And as I rotate this, remember, we're
rotating it back to where it was, so we
| | 04:19 | need a positive 90 value in the pitch.
| | 04:23 | And if I change the Falloff from
Infinite to Linear, because we want this to be
| | 04:28 | applied linearly from left to right,
so I need to rotate our falloff so it's
| | 04:33 | facing the right direction.
| | 04:34 | So you can see, as we move the
effector falloff from left to right, that it
| | 04:42 | changes our cube text back
to its original rotation.
| | 04:48 | So if I bring this back to where the
position falloff is, and I move this
| | 04:54 | first wave over it to the right here
and have our second wave pass through, you
| | 05:01 | can see that that is affecting our cube
text and our cube grid just like we want it to.
| | 05:09 | So now I'm positioning the
second wave behind the first wave of
| | 05:14 | effector falloffs here.
| | 05:16 | If I select all of these and bring
this all the way to the left and start
| | 05:23 | dragging, and get all this mess of
effector falloffs over here, and as we bring
| | 05:28 | it from left to right, you can see the
first wave pass through, bring our first
| | 05:33 | word on, followed by the second wave,
which is going to move the text cubes back
| | 05:40 | to their original state.
| | 05:42 | So that's our first and second waves.
| | 05:46 | So now that we have our second wave
of effectors applied, we're back to
| | 05:49 | this blank cube grid.
| | 05:52 | With all these effectors, you need to
make sure that you name them properly or
| | 05:56 | you can become easily confused
as to what effector does what.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the third wave animation| 00:00 | In this movie, you'll apply the third
and final wave of effectors to the scene
| | 00:04 | to complete the procedural animation.
| | 00:06 | When working with this many effectors,
it's very important to name them so you
| | 00:10 | know what each effector is doing.
| | 00:12 | So we have our first two waves of
effectors applied here, and as I just bring
| | 00:18 | these to the left and just kind of scrub
them through our scene, we have our first
| | 00:24 | wave pushing the cubes forward,
rotating them, revealing our first word, NEXT.
| | 00:31 | And then we have our second wave
passing through as well, pushing the cubes
| | 00:35 | forward, rotating them, and bringing
our cube text back to their original
| | 00:39 | position and rotation.
| | 00:42 | So let's just bring these effectors all
the way off to the right here, and we can
| | 00:46 | start applying our third wave.
| | 00:48 | So our third wave is going to have a
position effector, a rotation effector, and
| | 00:53 | then we need to have a third effector
that pushes just the text cubes forward
| | 00:58 | in Z space, just to give it a little bit of
contrast and become the focal point of our scene.
| | 01:03 | So let's create our first plain effector
for our third wave, and this is going to
| | 01:09 | be the one that pushes our cubes
forward in Z space, so this is applied to our
| | 01:14 | cube grid and cubes text.
| | 01:16 | So let's just type ALL, and this is
dealing with position, and this is part of
| | 01:22 | wave three, so All.Pos.Wave3.
| | 01:24 | So make sure that we apply this to
both our cube grid and our cube text.
| | 01:32 | So that's applied down there.
| | 01:36 | And automatically, the default is 100
centimeters in the Y. We don't want that.
| | 01:41 | We want to have them have the effector
push the cubes in -Z space, and we'll just
| | 01:48 | type in -150.
| | 01:49 | And we need to change the falloff
from infinite to something else.
| | 01:54 | We don't want all of our
cubes to be effected all at once.
| | 02:00 | And we're going to go
ahead and choose Box Falloff.
| | 02:03 | And if we scale the Box Falloff up
here and make it a little bit wider,
| | 02:10 | you could see that if I pass this through
our scene, that's creating a wave-like effect.
| | 02:16 | So let's just make sure that our
falloff is tall enough, that it's
| | 02:21 | encompassing all of our grid,
| | 02:22 | so that that is now affecting
our entire grid. So that's looking good.
| | 02:28 | And now we need to make a second plain
effector, and this is going to rotate our
| | 02:34 | cubes and reveal our second word.
| | 02:37 | So this is going to be applied to the
cube grid and cube text, so ALL, and then
| | 02:42 | rotation, ROT, and this is
part of wave three as well.
| | 02:46 | Let's make sure we apply this new
effector to both our cube grid and cube text.
| | 02:57 | Bring it all the way down here.
| | 03:00 | And we need to turn off position.
| | 03:02 | We don't want this to affect the position,
but we do want to affect the rotation.
| | 03:06 | And we want to affect to it in the
positive 90 degrees in the pitch.
| | 03:11 | And you can see as I scrub that to 90 degrees,
| | 03:15 | that's revealing our second word, PIXEL.
| | 03:18 | It's the fake name of our fake TV station.
| | 03:20 | So we need to change the
falloff of this effector.
| | 03:24 | We don't want it to affect
all of our cubes all at once.
| | 03:27 | We need to have a linear falloff here
so it's affected from left to right, and
| | 03:32 | we need to rotate this linear falloff
in the correct direction, so we just need
| | 03:37 | to rotate it 90 degrees there.
| | 03:39 | You can see as I move this through
our cube grid, that as it passes left to
| | 03:47 | right, it rotates our cubes
and reveals our second word.
| | 03:51 | If I move this effector to where our
position effector is, if I select both of
| | 03:57 | the effectors here that's in our third
wave and I move them from left to right,
| | 04:03 | we have our queues being pushed forward,
and then we have our cubes being rotated
| | 04:08 | by the second effector and
then we reveal our second word.
| | 04:13 | We're going to create third plain
effector that's going to push these cube texts
| | 04:18 | forward, just to give it a little bit of
contrast and break it out of this cube
| | 04:23 | grid, because it's looking
kind of boring right now.
| | 04:26 | So let's create our third plain effector.
| | 04:29 | This is just going to affect the cube
text so we're going to just put text.
| | 04:34 | It's going to effect position,
and this is part of wave three.
| | 04:37 | Let's name is textpositionwave3, and
let's just apply this to our cube text.
| | 04:44 | You could see right away that it's
moving it forward, but you notice it
| | 04:51 | shouldn't be affecting it like
that because the positive Y is up.
| | 04:55 | What we need to do is have it pushed in
negative Z space, but you can see that
| | 05:01 | it's not acting appropriately.
| | 05:03 | And the reason for this is because of
the stacking order of our effectors.
| | 05:07 | You can see that we have all these
rotation effectors rotating the cubes, and
| | 05:11 | that's changing the rotation of our
axis direction of our cube text here.
| | 05:17 | So we need to make sure that when we
apply this it's applied before any of the
| | 05:22 | rotation effectors are passing through.
| | 05:25 | So now if we go back, you can see
that that's acting as it should.
| | 05:30 | If we're pushing it in the negative Z space,
it's actually moving in the negative Z space.
| | 05:34 | Let's just put 150. And we
will need to change the falloff.
| | 05:40 | We don't want it to affect everything
all at once, so we're going to change
| | 05:44 | that to Box falloff.
| | 05:45 | We need to make sure that we scale up
the falloffs so it encompasses the entire
| | 05:52 | cube text objects, make sure it's wide
enough in that direction as well. Zoom
| | 06:02 | out and let's make sure it's high enough there.
| | 06:05 | So now we select all of our wave three
effectors and I move them from left to right.
| | 06:15 | We have our cubes are coming forward,
rotating, and then we have our second word
| | 06:23 | appearing on our scene.
| | 06:24 | We can actually just move these two
back so that they're all kind of being
| | 06:30 | affected all at the same time.
| | 06:36 | So that's looking pretty good.
| | 06:37 | So now if we zoom out here, if we
select all of our effectors and bring all of
| | 06:47 | them to the left, we can get a little
preview of what our animation is going to
| | 06:50 | look like. So as this pass through, our
first wave is passing through, reveals
| | 06:56 | our first word. The second wave comes
through, pushes the text back, and our third
| | 07:03 | and final wave pushes through and
reveals our second and final word.
| | 07:07 | So you can really start to see what
this final animation is going to look like.
| | 07:13 | So with all these plain effectors set
up and the animation pretty much mapped
| | 07:16 | out, you'll see that at first
glance, there's a lot of moving parts.
| | 07:20 | But by stacking all these effectors,
you can control the entire animation
| | 07:24 | with just two keyframes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Creating the Animation with Two KeyframesUsing a null object to group and keyframe multiple effectors| 00:00 | By building an animation entirely of
MoGraph effectors, you can easily apply and
| | 00:04 | adjust the animation by simply
moving the effector's falloff position.
| | 00:09 | Here I'll show you how to set up the
scene so that you can control the entire
| | 00:12 | animation with just two keyframes.
| | 00:14 | So we have all of our effectors
applied here and if I just have them all
| | 00:19 | selected and move them all over the
left here, and if I just click and drag and
| | 00:25 | have these effectors pass through our
cube grid, you could see the animation that
| | 00:29 | we're going to be going for.
| | 00:30 | We have our first wave passing through,
revealing our first word; we have the
| | 00:37 | second wave coming through and
reverting the cube text back to their original
| | 00:42 | rotation; and then we have our third
wave coming through and revealing our second
| | 00:48 | and final word, which is the
name of our fake TV station Pixel.
| | 00:52 | So now all we need to do is animate all
these effectors, and what we're going to
| | 00:58 | do is just, instead of animating each of these,
we're just going to drag them all into a null.
| | 01:03 | So let's create a null, and let's just
drag and drop all of these effectors and
| | 01:09 | make them children of the null.
| | 01:12 | And we're going to rename
this null Effector Control.
| | 01:16 | This null is where we're going to
apply all of our animation keyframes.
| | 01:21 | So now if I zoom out and just move the
null, you can see that it's just moving
| | 01:27 | all of our effectors as well.
| | 01:29 | So if I bring all these effectors off to the
left here--and I'm going to set a keyframe here.
| | 01:36 | Let's actually make our
animation a little bit longer.
| | 01:39 | Let's make it 150 frames.
| | 01:42 | And let's go out to frame 100 and just drag
and have all of our effectors pass through.
| | 01:51 | So that's completed.
| | 01:52 | They're all off the screen,
and hit another keyframe.
| | 01:56 | You can see that our last Box Falloff
here, which is our text position wave three,
| | 02:03 | is no longer affecting our cube text.
We need to make this box falloff large
| | 02:08 | enough so that when all these other
effectors pass through, the Box Falloff is
| | 02:14 | still effecting and encompassing that cube text.
| | 02:17 | So let's just adjust that a little bit.
| | 02:20 | So now if we go back to our frame 0
and hit Play, we have our animation
| | 02:29 | basically played out there.
| | 02:31 | Now, we still need to do some adjustments.
It's a pretty fast animation for my taste.
| | 02:37 | So all we need to do to adjust the
timing is by moving these falloffs.
| | 02:43 | So the way we do that is if we have
this first wave here--let's select all of
| | 02:46 | the waves, and let's just bring these
out, give it a little bit more space for
| | 02:52 | other effectors to breathe,
and let's go back to frame 0.
| | 02:56 | You can see that we have
our first wave passes through.
| | 03:02 | There's a little bit more
time for that word to breath.
| | 03:06 | You can see we still need to make our
text position wave one box falloff larger
| | 03:12 | so that it encompasses the cube text
for the entire duration, and the falloff
| | 03:18 | doesn't leave until the
second wave comes through here,
| | 03:21 | so we need to make sure that it's
kind of touching the second wave
| | 03:24 | effectors here as well.
| | 03:27 | So I think that's set up pretty nicely.
| | 03:29 | Let's go back to frame 0 and hit Play again.
| | 03:32 | So we have NEXT and a beat and
then the second word comes up.
| | 03:39 | So I think the second wave is coming
through a little fast as well, so all we
| | 03:44 | have to do to adjust that is come
in here and maybe just spread out and
| | 03:49 | adjust the falloff here so it's a little bit
smoother, maybe the position wave two here.
| | 03:56 | Let's go in here and pull these
handles. Let's actually move our--maybe a
| | 04:03 | little bit forward here, and let's
actually select all of our wave three and
| | 04:09 | have them come in a little bit later so all we
have to do is push them back to the left here.
| | 04:14 | So there's a little bit more breathing
room between when the first word comes on
| | 04:18 | and off and the second word comes on.
| | 04:23 | So let's hit Play again.
| | 04:24 | And I actually have to
adjust our effector control.
| | 04:28 | You'll see that at frame 0, since we
moved the first wave of effectors forward,
| | 04:33 | we actually need to push this null
back so none of the effectors are
| | 04:38 | effecting this grid just yet.
| | 04:39 | So let's hit another keyframe and that
replaces the old keyframe, and let's hit play again.
| | 04:47 | There, first wave, second wave, and third wave.
| | 04:51 | So let's say we want less space between
when this happens and the second word comes on.
| | 04:58 | So we want the second word to come on
a little faster. All we need to do is
| | 05:02 | select our third wave effectors and just
move them up and move them a little bit
| | 05:08 | closer to where that
second wave of effectors are.
| | 05:13 | So now if I go back to frame 0 and hit
play, we have our first wave, and then our
| | 05:21 | third wave comes through,
revealing our second word.
| | 05:26 | So I still say that we should have a little
bit more breathing room for that first word.
| | 05:31 | We need to make sure we can read that.
| | 05:33 | So again, all we have to do is
select our first wave, bring it forward.
| | 05:38 | You just make this Box Falloff bigger.
And let's go back to frame 0, again making
| | 05:46 | sure that we adjust the position of
the null so none of the effectors are
| | 05:50 | applied on frame 0. Hit another keyframe.
| | 05:53 | Let's zoom in and let's
hit Play again. NEXT PIXEL.
| | 05:58 | So there we go.
| | 06:01 | That feels a little bit better.
NEXT has a little bit more room to breathe,
| | 06:05 | and we got the second word revealed.
| | 06:08 | Setting up the animation in this way gives you
more of a visual way to create your animation.
| | 06:13 | You can physically see where the
falloffs are and how the animation is being
| | 06:17 | applied to your scene.
| | 06:18 | This allows for saving a lot of time
not having to deal with many keyframes in
| | 06:22 | case you need to change timing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the selection tag to limit the influence of an effector| 00:00 | So now that you have your animation
all laid out, you notice we have an extra
| | 00:04 | blank cube on the first word.
| | 00:06 | I'll show you how you can exclude it from
the first wave of animation in this video.
| | 00:11 | So, much like how you hid the first
cubes from the cube grid to be able to place
| | 00:15 | our cube text using a MoGraph selection
tag right here, this is how you go about
| | 00:20 | removing the extra cube in this first wave.
| | 00:23 | So if we go to frame 50 here,
you see we have this extra cube.
| | 00:28 | It doesn't really look good, so
we're just going to get rid of that.
| | 00:32 | We need to remember that this text
position Wave 1 effector is the effector
| | 00:36 | that's pushing the cube text
forward in this first wave.
| | 00:40 | So what we need to do is select our
cubes that we need to have still be effected
| | 00:46 | and exclude this one.
| | 00:48 | So let's select our cube text fracture object.
| | 00:50 | Let's go up to MoGraph > MoGraph Selection.
| | 00:54 | You can see that these red rectangles pop up.
| | 00:57 | So all you need to do is holding
Shift, select all of the cube text with
| | 01:02 | the letters on them.
| | 01:03 | You'll see that the rectangles
change from red to yellow and a MoGraph
| | 01:07 | selection tag pops up.
| | 01:10 | Let's change the name of our
MoGraph selection tag to Blank Cube.
| | 01:16 | Since we only want these four cubes to
be effected by this text position wave
| | 01:21 | effector, all we have to do is go to our
Effector tab and we have the Selection field.
| | 01:27 | If we just drag our MoGraph Selection
tag from our cube text fracture object and
| | 01:32 | drop it into that field,
| | 01:34 | you can see that it's only affecting
the clones that we highlighted in this
| | 01:39 | MoGraph selection tag.
| | 01:41 | So now, if we play through the
scene, it looks just like it should.
| | 01:47 | So depending on what words you use
for this transitions, knowing how to use
| | 01:52 | MoGraph selection tags for finer
control over what your effectors animate is
| | 01:56 | important, especially if you need
to iterate and use different words.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding finishing touches to the animation| 00:00 | By making a complex animation that is
controlled with only two keyframes, it
| | 00:04 | makes adjusting the overall animation
incredibly easier than if you keyframed it
| | 00:08 | by hand or all the falloffs individually.
| | 00:11 | Now, to adjust the pace of the animation,
you just have to adjust those two keyframes.
| | 00:17 | So let's open up our timeline by going
to Window > Timeline, and let's just zoom
| | 00:22 | out and frame up our two keyframes here.
And let's open up our Effector Control,
| | 00:28 | Position, Scale, and Rotation tracks here.
| | 00:31 | We don't need the Rotation,
so let's just delete that.
| | 00:33 | We don't need Scale either, since we're not
changing any of the rotation or scale values.
| | 00:38 | Let's twirl down our Position.
| | 00:41 | And you can see that the only track
we really need to worry about is the
| | 00:44 | position X, because that's the
only track that has any movement.
| | 00:47 | So we can get rid of the position Y and
the position Z. So now that we have our
| | 00:52 | timeline all uncluttered, we can
see that this is our animation curve.
| | 00:56 | And by default, when you just hit
keyframes in CINEMA 4D, you have an ease-in and
| | 01:02 | ease-out applied to your animation track.
| | 01:04 | Now you can simply adjust this by
just grabbing one of these keyframes and
| | 01:09 | adjusting the handles.
| | 01:11 | So by changing just this handle,
you can change the pacing of your animation
| | 01:15 | really easily, because you're only
dealing with these two keyframes.
| | 01:19 | So, say you want the animation to have a
constant speed the whole entire way through.
| | 01:24 | All you have to do is select both of
these keyframes, right-click, go from
| | 01:28 | Spline Interpolation to Linear Interpolation,
and you can see that we now have a straight line.
| | 01:35 | This means that we have a constant speed
maintained throughout the whole entire animation.
| | 01:39 | So let's close our Timeline.
| | 01:41 | I am also going to bring the
frames down to 100. Hit Play.
| | 01:46 | So you can see all of the waves pass
through our animation at an equal speed.
| | 01:51 | Let's go back to our Timeline.
| | 01:55 | Say we want our first wave to go
faster and the second and third waves to pass
| | 01:59 | through our animation slower.
| | 02:01 | We just go in, select both of our
keyframes, go from Linear Interpolation back
| | 02:06 | to Spline, and just adjust this first
keyframe so that the curve is steeper at
| | 02:12 | the beginning and shallower toward the end.
| | 02:15 | Now, if I close this Timeline again, go
to frame 0 and hit Play, you can see
| | 02:23 | that our first wave passes very quickly
and the second and the third waves pass
| | 02:27 | through a little bit slower.
| | 02:28 | So you can adjust the pacing of the
animation that way or you can just simply
| | 02:33 | zoom out and reposition your effectors.
| | 02:36 | So let's move up our first wave a
little bit closer and just adjust our
| | 02:44 | Text.Pos.Wave effector there.
| | 02:46 | So we want a little less time
between the first word and the second word.
| | 02:53 | Those are two ways to adjust our
animation's pace. I'll zoom in here.
| | 02:58 | Let's go back to frame zero. Hit Play again.
| | 03:01 | That's feeling pretty good.
| | 03:05 | So you can easily change
the way the animation flows.
| | 03:09 | We have a vertical movement to our waves.
| | 03:11 | It's just straight up and down.
Say you want to add a slight angle of this.
| | 03:15 | We can easily do this by just going to
the Effector Control and just adding a
| | 03:20 | slight rotation value, and this
rotates all of our effectors.
| | 03:25 | So let's say you change the rotation to 11 degrees.
| | 03:27 | Let's zoom out, go to frame 0,
and let's hit Play. Zoom in here.
| | 03:35 | You can see that just by adding that slight
rotation to our effectors really adds a lot.
| | 03:43 | Our animation looks a little bit more
interesting just by adding that slight rotation.
| | 03:48 | Now let's smooth out this animation and
give it a little bit more organic look.
| | 03:52 | We're going to add two Delay effectors.
| | 03:54 | Let's go to MoGraph > Effector > Delay.
| | 03:58 | And this first Delay effector is
going to add some spring to our animation.
| | 04:02 | You can see the mode is set to Blend by default.
| | 04:05 | If you go down and select Spring and
make sure you have it applied to both your
| | 04:09 | cube grid--make sure you're applying
it as the final effector in the effector
| | 04:15 | list so it effects all of
the effectors before it.
| | 04:18 | And add it to the cube text.
| | 04:22 | Also making sure it's the
last effector applied--it is.
| | 04:27 | And let's rename this Delay effector
to Delay Spring, because this is going to
| | 04:32 | add spring to our animation.
| | 04:33 | Let's zoom in here, go to
frame 0, and hit Play.
| | 04:38 | You can see how that adds a nice
dynamic look to our animation just by adding
| | 04:44 | that Delay effector set to Spring.
| | 04:46 | Let's hit Play again, and then I'm going to
bring the strength value up to say 60.
| | 04:53 | That may be a little bit too much
spring, but what I'm going to do is add a
| | 04:56 | second Delay effector.
| | 04:57 | Let's go up to MoGraph > Effector > Delay,
and this one is actually going to smooth
| | 05:04 | the entire animation out.
| | 05:05 | We're going to set it to Blend Mode.
| | 05:08 | It is by default. And then I'm
going to rename this to Delay Blend.
| | 05:11 | I'm going to make sure I apply this to
both the cube grid and the cube text,
| | 05:18 | making sure that's the last
effector applied in the effectors list.
| | 05:22 | Apply it to Cube Text. There it is.
| | 05:29 | Let's go to frame 0 again,
and let's see how this looks.
| | 05:34 | You can see that it smoothed out that
springiness and smoothed out the animation overall.
| | 05:38 | Now let's adjust the
strength, change to say 75.
| | 05:44 | Now you can see by adding that Delay
Blend effector, it blended and smoothed out
| | 05:51 | the spring effect and also the entire animation.
| | 05:55 | So that the transition is a lot more
smooth than natural, and the animation has a
| | 05:58 | lot more energy to it.
| | 06:00 | So by fine-tuning keyframes and
applying subtle easing effect using Delay
| | 06:04 | effectors can add a lot to the final animation.
| | 06:07 | Focusing on these details can be
the difference between making a good
| | 06:11 | animation or a great one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Preparing a Scene for Composite in After EffectsAdding textures and using an HDRI map for reflections| 00:00 | In this movie you will be adding textures
to your scene to give it a high-end look.
| | 00:05 | Using a Sky Object and an HDRI map,
you'll give a polished look to the objects.
| | 00:10 | So let's just go ahead and
start creating our materials.
| | 00:13 | I just double-click in the Material
Manager to bring up a new material.
| | 00:18 | I am going to name this White.
| | 00:19 | This is going to be a white material
that we will apply to our cubes.
| | 00:24 | So the color is fine.
| | 00:26 | Let's enable the Reflection channel
and just give it a Fresnel shader.
| | 00:31 | And let's switch on Additive, and that
will just brighten up our reflections
| | 00:35 | onto our material here.
| | 00:38 | And let's change this Specular to
Metal, and this will give a nice sharp
| | 00:43 | specular onto our objects.
| | 00:46 | Bring the height up.
| | 00:47 | You can see it update in
this Material Manager here.
| | 00:51 | Give it a nice hot specular highlight
there, and that's looking pretty good.
| | 00:56 | So we can close that.
| | 00:58 | Now we can apply this to our cubes.
| | 01:01 | Let's go drag and drop onto our cube there.
| | 01:06 | If we hold down Ctrl and click and
drag, we can duplicate this and add it to
| | 01:11 | our other cube objects.
| | 01:13 | So now we have to create our second
material that will go onto our letters up here.
| | 01:20 | So let's just Ctrl+Click and drag
and duplicate that material, and let's
| | 01:25 | double-click and open it.
| | 01:26 | We're just going to name this Blue because
we're going to add a blue texture to our text.
| | 01:31 | So let's just go over and choose a nice
blue hue over here, and that's looking good.
| | 01:38 | And go to our Reflection. We're going to
change the Mix mode on this to Multiply.
| | 01:43 | This will help the highlights not be
so blown out on our blue material here.
| | 01:49 | So let's close out, and
let's add this to our letters.
| | 01:54 | So let's select all of our MoText
objects and just go over to our blue
| | 02:01 | material, right-click, and just choose
Apply. And that will apply that blue
| | 02:06 | texture to our letters.
| | 02:08 | Now, if we hit Render, you can see that
there's a little bit of reflection here,
| | 02:13 | but it looks rather bland.
| | 02:14 | The reason for this is we have
nothing for the scene to reflect.
| | 02:18 | So we're going to take care of
that by creating a Sky Object.
| | 02:23 | We're going to go up here and choose
a Sky Object, and we need a material to
| | 02:28 | apply to the sky that can
be reflected onto the scene.
| | 02:33 | So there's a lot of places on the
Internet where you can find free or pay for
| | 02:37 | HDRI images, but there's actually a
good selection in CINEMA 4D's Content
| | 02:43 | Browser that is built into CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:47 | So if you actually navigate to your
presets and choose Prime, and under Prime, if
| | 02:52 | you choose Example Scenes,
twirl that down, go to HDRI,
| | 02:56 | and if you double-click on this texture, you
can see there is this nice studio HDRI file.
| | 03:02 | Keep the Content Browser open,
and we can create a new material.
| | 03:06 | Double-click on it. And we're going to
turn off our Color and our Specular, and
| | 03:11 | we're just going to enable all
Luminance, and all we need to do is click and
| | 03:15 | drag our studio HDRI file into the
texture, and that will apply that HDRI
| | 03:22 | texture to our material.
| | 03:23 | Now we can close out both the Material
Editor and the Content Browser, and we can
| | 03:29 | just go ahead and double-
click and rename this to HDRI.
| | 03:32 | We can also fold up our Cube Grid and Cube Text.
| | 03:37 | Now, all we have to do is go and
apply this HDRI texture to our sky.
| | 03:40 | Now let's hit Render
again and see what that does.
| | 03:45 | You can see that the HDRI material
is being reflected onto the cubes.
| | 03:50 | So if you're not happy with the amount
of reflection, you can always go to the
| | 03:54 | Material tag and change the Offset.
| | 03:58 | Changing the Offset of the material
changes how the HDRI is mapped onto the sky
| | 04:02 | object and how it is reflected onto the objects.
| | 04:05 | So if we just change the Offset
here to 35, let's see what that does.
| | 04:11 | So now you see you have more of that
HDRI texture being reflected into our scene.
| | 04:18 | So depending on how you texture your
scene, it can make a big difference to the
| | 04:22 | look and feel of the animation.
| | 04:23 | With all the rounded edges on the
cubes and the text, the materials and
| | 04:27 | reflections give it a high-end look.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting the scene| 00:00 | Lighting is a very important element in
real-world studio scenes as well as 3D scenes.
| | 00:06 | A good animation can be ruined
by not having proper lightning.
| | 00:10 | So let's add our first light.
| | 00:12 | Go up to Lights > Area Light.
| | 00:14 | And Area Lights are the more
accurate realistic-looking lights.
| | 00:18 | They take longer to render, but
I think they also look the best.
| | 00:21 | So this will be our main light.
| | 00:23 | Let's rename it Main.
| | 00:27 | Let's go the Details and give it a
falloff so the light actually acts as it
| | 00:32 | would in real life--
| | 00:33 | it actually trails off as objects
are further away from the light.
| | 00:37 | So let's just hit Render.
| | 00:40 | That's looking pretty good so far.
| | 00:42 | Let's actually change the Intensity to
55. So we're actually we're going to add
| | 00:49 | other lights that will help
fill out the lighting in the scene.
| | 00:52 | So let's create our second
light, and this will be a Spot light.
| | 00:56 | And we're just going to zoom out, and we're
going to position this light at the bottom right.
| | 01:03 | It's going to be more of
an accent light down here.
| | 01:09 | And I can adjust the angle of the
spot light by just dragging these handles.
| | 01:14 | And I'm also going to set the falloff on
this light as well to the Inverse Square
| | 01:19 | Physically Accurate.
| | 01:20 | And you can see that the light will
stop here, but we actually need to stretch
| | 01:24 | this cone out so it meets the actual grid.
| | 01:28 | So, that's good so far.
| | 01:30 | If I move this over a little bit and
maybe adjust the angle a little bit wider.
| | 01:39 | So I want to change the color of
this light to a more bluish hue.
| | 01:43 | I don't want all of the lights to be
white, considering most of the scene
| | 01:46 | is white materials.
| | 01:47 | So I am going to change the color of
the light to a little bit more bluish hue,
| | 01:53 | hit OK, and I'm going to bring the
intensity down to 90, reposition here.
| | 01:58 | Now let's see how this looks.
| | 02:01 | So we've got a nice little bluish accent.
| | 02:05 | We need to adjust the light a
little bit here and adjust the rotation.
| | 02:12 | A little bit too sharp of a falloff over
here. It gets a little bit dark too fast.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to adjust the length of this as well to
brighten it up, move the falloff so more of
| | 02:24 | the light's hitting the scene.
| | 02:27 | That's looking a lot better.
We have this nice blue accent light over here.
| | 02:32 | So let's create our third and final
light, and this will be a light that will
| | 02:36 | come from overhead and then
we'll make another Area Light.
| | 02:39 | We'll position this to the top of our cube grid.
| | 02:44 | And this will actually be the light
that will create our shadows that will kind
| | 02:50 | of give some depth and mood to the scene.
| | 02:53 | So I'm going to position the Area Light
up at the top here, just rename our lights.
| | 02:59 | So this is the fill, the color is blue,
and this is more of our like rim light
| | 03:05 | with shadow, rim shadow.
| | 03:08 | So we have to enable the shadow,
and we'll choose an area shadow.
| | 03:12 | This is also the highest-quality
shadow you can choose. It also looks the
| | 03:17 | most realistic and looks the best, in my opinion.
| | 03:20 | We've got that adjusted.
| | 03:22 | Also, go to Details, and we want
to have a falloff on this as well,
| | 03:28 | Inverse Square again.
| | 03:30 | Let's drag the handles out so we have
our text illuminated by this light up
| | 03:35 | here. Reposition here and let's go
and zoom in here and see how that looks.
| | 03:42 | So there's a little bit too
much of a highlight up here,
| | 03:47 | but I like this nice shadow;
| | 03:48 | it really gives it a nice mood to the scene.
| | 03:51 | So I think all we have to really do is
move this light up a little bit and bring
| | 03:56 | it out so it's not so close and making
that really hot specular right there.
| | 04:00 | We will bring it up a little bit more.
| | 04:03 | We can adjust the falloff just a
tiny bit. And let's hit Render again.
| | 04:09 | I think that looks pretty nice.
| | 04:12 | We got this nice rim light up
here creating this nice shadow.
| | 04:16 | We have our nice fill light that's set
to blue hue, and then we have one of our
| | 04:21 | main lights here lighting the
front of the text so you can read it.
| | 04:25 | So one more thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to go to my Render settings
| | 04:29 | here and I'm going to add an effect.
| | 04:31 | I'm going to add ambient occlusion.
| | 04:34 | What ambient occlusion is is the effect
of how real objects are shaded in real life.
| | 04:39 | So when two objects are close together they
naturally have a shadow in between the crack.
| | 04:44 | So let me go ahead and render and
I'll show you what I'm talking about.
| | 04:46 | You can see that this added a little
bit of shadow in between the cracks of
| | 04:52 | these cubes and it looks a
little bit more realistic.
| | 04:55 | Let me show you what it
looks like when it's turned off.
| | 04:58 | So it's very subtle.
| | 04:59 | And you actually go to Interactive
Render Region here and turn it on again.
| | 05:06 | You can see it adds that slight light shadow there.
| | 05:08 | It's very slight and subtle, but I think
it adds a little bit more to the scene.
| | 05:13 | So let's keep that on.
| | 05:14 | Let's turn off the Interactive Render
Region and close out our Render settings.
| | 05:19 | You can see how adding lighting
can bring a certain mood to a scene.
| | 05:22 | The practice of using the traditional
three-point lighting technique in real-
| | 05:26 | life movie sets definitely
translates into the 3D scenes as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Morph Camera to create a smooth camera move| 00:00 | Adding a dynamic camera move can bring some
extra energy and life to even still objects.
| | 00:05 | In this movie, you'll add a quick
camera move to this promo animation.
| | 00:09 | So, we'll create our first camera here,
and let's rename it Camera 1, and make
| | 00:14 | sure that we click on this so we're
seeing the pointer view of the camera.
| | 00:19 | Now, we just need to frame this to frame
our first word here at the beginning of
| | 00:23 | our camera animation here.
| | 00:24 | And we can also adjust this Focal Length here.
| | 00:27 | Let's bring it down to, say, 22.
| | 00:30 | If I zoom in, it gives a really
nice perspective and depth to the scene.
| | 00:36 | We are actually going to use a new R14
feature called the Morph Camera, and what
| | 00:42 | the Morph Camera does is basically
morphs between two camera views, or more if
| | 00:47 | you have more than just two cameras.
| | 00:49 | So for right now we are
going to create two cameras.
| | 00:51 | The first one is going to have the view
at this angle and our second camera, if
| | 00:56 | we just go and Ctrl+Click and drag
and rename this Camera 2. And then we are
| | 01:02 | going to click on this so we're
looking through the view of this camera.
| | 01:05 | We're going to move our camera over
here, and we can see our Camera 1 right here.
| | 01:10 | We're going to scrub ahead in our
Timeline to where the second word PIXEL
| | 01:16 | shows up, and we are just going to frame
this up with our second camera, have a
| | 01:20 | nice dynamic angle here.
| | 01:22 | We need to keep in mind that for this
promo animation, we are going to have
| | 01:26 | some retail information, some extra
text down here that we are going to add in
| | 01:29 | After Effects, so we need to be mindful of
that whenever we are framing this shot right here.
| | 01:35 | We also need to make sure that we
are not seeing the edge of these cubes.
| | 01:40 | So now that we have our Camera 1 and
Camera 2, we are going to create a new
| | 01:41 | camera, and this is going to be our Morph Camera.
| | 01:46 | Now I'm going to look
through the view of this camera.
| | 01:49 | Now to make this a Morph Camera I have
to add the Morph Camera tag, so go to
| | 01:54 | Motion Camera Tags and choose Camera Morph.
| | 01:57 | And you can see, when I add that tag, I have
Camera 1 field and the Camera 2 field.
| | 02:03 | I also have this Blend property.
| | 02:05 | In Camera 1, I am going to place
Camera 1, and in the Camera 2 field, I am
| | 02:11 | going to place Camera 2.
| | 02:12 | And you see that this Morph Camera,
we are looking through this view, it
| | 02:15 | automatically gets defaulted to the
Camera 1 view, because we're set at blend 0.
| | 02:20 | But let's see what happens when
we drag this Blend over to 100%.
| | 02:26 | So we are now looking
through the view of Camera 2 here.
| | 02:29 | So you can see if we animate this Blend,
we are blending through the two camera
| | 02:34 | angles of Camera 1 and Camera 2.
| | 02:37 | So now all we have to do is go to frame
0 and make sure our Blend is at 0, hit a
| | 02:43 | keyframe, and let's go down to frame
70 and make this blend to, let's say 90.
| | 02:54 | And why I choose it at 90 is I'm
going to go ahead to frame 100 and
| | 02:58 | bring that to 100%.
| | 03:00 | So we're going to have a
nice drift by doing that.
| | 03:03 | We have some constant camera motion
throughout the whole entire duration of the scene.
| | 03:09 | So let's actually play
the entire animation here.
| | 03:11 | So the camera move is actually kind of slow
for my taste, so let's go into our timeline.
| | 03:19 | Let's adjust that Camera Morph Blend here.
| | 03:23 | So, you see it's starting
off slow with this curve.
| | 03:26 | Let's actually start it off fast by
making this curve a little bit steeper.
| | 03:30 | We can go in here and kind of straighten
this curve out and adjust this curve here.
| | 03:38 | Let's kind of smooth this curve out all over.
| | 03:44 | And let's actually move this
keyframe up, so we want the camera move to be
| | 03:48 | a little bit faster.
| | 03:49 | So by moving this up, we'll get to the
Camera 2 view a little bit faster as well.
| | 03:54 | Let's close the Timeline.
| | 03:55 | Let's go to frame 0 and hit Play.
| | 03:57 | That's a little bit better.
| | 04:02 | Let's go back to our Timeline, make
it just a little bit faster though.
| | 04:09 | Close the timeline. Let's hit Play.
| | 04:11 | That looks a lot better.
| | 04:14 | I think what I'd like to do--we start
off Camera 1 at more of a dramatic angle,
| | 04:20 | so let's go up even higher here, making sure
we don't see any edges of the cube grid here.
| | 04:28 | Move this a little bit higher.
| | 04:29 | And now we don't have to set any new
keyframes. Because we're using that Morph Camera,
| | 04:35 | all we have to do is go to that
view again and let's hit Play again.
| | 04:40 | You can see that that camera move is a
lot more dynamic because we have that
| | 04:43 | extra angle of the top there.
| | 04:45 | So we can even speed that up a little
bit more, go back into our Timeline.
| | 04:49 | Let's make this even sharper.
Now let's see what that does.
| | 04:55 | The animation has a lot more energy to it.
| | 04:58 | Right off the top, it gets to this
Camera 2 view a little bit faster.
| | 05:02 | It looks a little bit nicer. Go back into
our Timeline, tweak it so it's not so fast.
| | 05:10 | Close this timeline again,
go to frame 0, and hit Play.
| | 05:13 | That looks a lot better.
| | 05:17 | So with adding that Camera Move,
our animation is basically done.
| | 05:20 | You can see how adding a fast camera
move can bring a lot of energy to a scene.
| | 05:25 | The Morph Camera feature in R14
makes it easy to animate even the most
| | 05:28 | complex camera moves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up to render for After Effects (AE)| 00:00 | Since you can bring CINEMA 4D camera
data into After Effects, you want to plan
| | 00:05 | ahead on what kind of effects and 3D
scene data you will need for finishing
| | 00:09 | inside of After Effects.
| | 00:10 | You also want to take stock of all the
render passes needed to ensure that you
| | 00:14 | only need to be rendering out of CINEMA 4D once.
| | 00:18 | So the first thing we are going to need
to do is you're going to need to place
| | 00:22 | a null object in our scene in this 3D
space that can be used inside of After
| | 00:26 | Effects to place our 2D text that will
have all the retail information on shows
| | 00:31 | and times for our fake PIXEL TV network.
| | 00:34 | So to do this we're going to add a
null, and we're going to get out of this
| | 00:40 | Morph Camera view by just unchecking
the view button, and I can move around
| | 00:44 | freely in the viewport.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to position this null so it's
just a little bit in front of the cube grid.
| | 00:51 | I'm just going to move it over here.
| | 00:53 | It doesn't really matter so much as
where it is in X and Y space, but just
| | 00:58 | making sure that it's placed correctly
in Z space, because I can easily change
| | 01:02 | it inside of After Effects if needed.
| | 01:06 | So I think that's good enough.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to rename this null Text Null,
just so we know that that's for our text.
| | 01:15 | So we need a way to export this 3D
position of this null and have it be
| | 01:20 | brought into After Effects.
| | 01:21 | The way we're going to do that is by
right-clicking and adding a CINEMA 4D
| | 01:26 | External Compositing tag.
| | 01:28 | And what this tag is going to do is I
can export all the 3D data and this will
| | 01:33 | export out and bring a null into an
After Effects project file just exactly as
| | 01:38 | it is in 3D space here.
| | 01:41 | So the next thing we need to do is add
compositing tags to just our text objects
| | 01:46 | here, just in case we need to
change anything inside of After Effects.
| | 01:50 | By isolating the text with comp tags,
you can change the color of them without
| | 01:55 | having to re-render inside of
CINEMA 4D, in case the client requests for
| | 01:59 | something like that.
| | 02:00 | So let's go into our cube text, and
let's select all of our text objects here.
| | 02:07 | And I'm going to right-click, go
to CINEMA 4D tags > Compositing tags.
| | 02:16 | So we need to enable an object buffer,
so we'll just enable this first one and
| | 02:20 | set all of these object
buffers to buffer number 1.
| | 02:23 | Now, we need to jump into our Render
Settings here and make sure, under Multi-Pass,
| | 02:28 | that first it's selected and then
enabled so you can now render out multipasses.
| | 02:32 | Now, you have to go into Multi-Pass
and make sure you add an Object Buffer.
| | 02:38 | And by default, it's set to 1, which is
just fine because our object buffer is
| | 02:43 | set to 1 here. The other multipass
objects you'll need to start creating can be
| | 02:48 | added by going up to Multi-Pass
and selecting Add Image Layers.
| | 02:53 | So this adds a whole mess of multipass layers.
| | 02:56 | We don't really need all of them right now.
| | 02:58 | So right now I'm just going to
delete the ones that we don't need.
| | 03:01 | So I'm just going to go into
Global Illumination and hit Delete.
| | 03:06 | And we don't need Caustics,
Atmosphere, or Post-Effects.
| | 03:11 | We don't even need Refraction because we
don't have any glass objects to refract
| | 03:15 | anything, so we'll get rid of that.
| | 03:18 | So rendering out all these different
passes allows you to have a lot of control
| | 03:22 | over how you can tweak things.
Like say you want to adjust the amount of
| | 03:26 | specular to your scene with the
amount of shadows or reflections.
| | 03:30 | You can do this all in After Effects
if you render out all these passes.
| | 03:35 | So the next thing you need to do is go
into your Anti-Aliasing. And right now
| | 03:39 | it's set to the lowest setting of
Geometry. I just need to change that to Best.
| | 03:43 | We also need to go to Filter, and
it's set to Still Image right now.
| | 03:47 | We need to change that to Animation.
| | 03:50 | Now we'll go to our Save options, and
we'll just render out a QuickTime movie
| | 03:55 | format for each of these.
| | 03:58 | And what we'll need to do now is save to a path.
| | 04:01 | So right now I'm just going to
navigate to my desktop and just create a new
| | 04:06 | render folder and name this pixel.
And we'll just copy and paste this into the
| | 04:14 | Multi-Pass Image as well.
| | 04:15 | So this will save
everything to one render folder.
| | 04:20 | We also have to make sure that our
compositing project file is enabled.
| | 04:25 | So to do this, we need to enable Save.
Target Application will be After Effects
| | 04:29 | so that's fine. And we need to check
on Relative and Include 3D Data.
| | 04:34 | That's going to be the biggie.
| | 04:35 | Since we set up this text null, we need
to make sure that that text null 3D data
| | 04:40 | information is saved out
into this After Effects file.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to save this out and just
save it to my render folder on my desktop.
| | 04:49 | I'll just name it pixel.
| | 04:50 | But you can see in your exercise files,
in chapter 5, you already have an After
| | 04:57 | Effects compositing file inside there already.
| | 05:01 | So the last thing we need
to do is check our output.
| | 05:04 | We're going to be rendering out at
1280x720, so we need to come down here to
| | 05:09 | Film/Video, and we'll just choose
HDTV 720 and that will give us 1280x720 at
| | 05:16 | 29.97, which is fine.
| | 05:19 | Then in Frame Range, we'll go from
Current Frame to All Frames because we want to
| | 05:23 | render out the whole Timeline,
from 0-100, and that's basically it.
| | 05:28 | You're all set to render.
| | 05:30 | So in setting up a CINEMA 4D scene for
rendering, you want to plan ahead and set
| | 05:34 | it up so that you only need to render out once.
| | 05:37 | So if the client requests a minor
change, such as the color of text or the
| | 05:42 | amount of shadow or reflection in a scene, you
can easily modify it inside of After Effects.
| | 05:47 | Time is always of the essence in this industry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Finishing inside After EffectsImporting the project into AE and adjusting multipass composite settings| 00:00 | The integration with After Effects
is one of the strengths of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:04 | You can quickly and easily import your
3D camera data, lights, and render passes
| | 00:08 | to add the finishing touches to
your animation inside of After Effects.
| | 00:12 | So I have After Effects open here.
I'm going to import our footage in our saved
| | 00:17 | 3D data that we saved out as CINEMA 4D.
I'm just going to go to File > Import > File
| | 00:23 | and navigate to your AEC file that we saved.
| | 00:26 | This is going to have all of
our 3D information from CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to click Open.
| | 00:32 | If I go to our Project window, if I
twirl down this main pixel folder, you see
| | 00:38 | that there is a comp in here
and all of our render passes.
| | 00:41 | Now, if I double-click on this comp,
you can see that this has all of our
| | 00:45 | cameras, lights, our 3D null that we
had in external compositing tag added to
| | 00:50 | in CINEMA 4D, all of our individual
passes, reflection, ambient occlusion,
| | 00:55 | shadow, specular, all of this stuff, and
you can see that they also have all of
| | 01:00 | their blending modes added as they
should be added to re-create our composition
| | 01:06 | inside of After Effects.
| | 01:08 | So if I go ahead and solo each of these
layers, you can see this reflection pass
| | 01:13 | just has a reflection from CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:15 | Ambient occlusion just has our
ambient occlusion from the CINEMA 4D scene.
| | 01:23 | Shadow, specular and our main diffuse pass.
| | 01:28 | And once you have all of these together,
you create your scene as you would have
| | 01:32 | seen it inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:34 | Then there is our 3D null as well.
| | 01:37 | So since you have all of these passes
separate, you can now adjust each of
| | 01:41 | these individual passes.
| | 01:42 | So say I want more reflection.
| | 01:44 | I'll just go ahead and duplicate this
reflection pass and if I toggle this on
| | 01:49 | and off, you can see that it
adds a lot more reflection.
| | 01:55 | Say you wanted to have less shadow.
| | 01:58 | I can go in here and just adjust the
Opacity of our shadow pass, and you can see
| | 02:03 | that that's adjusting
the shadow in our viewport.
| | 02:05 | That's a huge thing to be able to make
these slight adjustments without having
| | 02:09 | to re-render out of CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:11 | It's always an important practice to
render out all of these passes separate so
| | 02:16 | you can do all of these
changes inside of After Effects.
| | 02:19 | So the first thing I'd like to do when
I bring in footage into After Effects is
| | 02:23 | do just a little bit of color correcting.
| | 02:25 | So I'm just going to
create a new Adjustment layer.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to go to Effects > Color
Correction, and I'm just going to add curves.
| | 02:35 | I'm just going to add a little bit of
contrast by jacking up the highlights and
| | 02:39 | making the shadows a little bit darker.
| | 02:41 | So you can see when I turn this on and off,
it adds a nice little contrast, brightens
| | 02:47 | up the brighter areas.
| | 02:48 | You can also go and adjust each
individual color pass. Say I wanted to add a
| | 02:52 | little bit more blue to
our scene, some blue hue.
| | 02:56 | All I have to do is just
adjust the Blue curve here.
| | 02:59 | You can see we have more blue hue being
added to more of our scene, even getting
| | 03:04 | these darker areas a
little bit of blue tint to it.
| | 03:08 | I can actually bring that back to
not have these darker areas so blue.
| | 03:13 | That adds some nice color into our scene.
| | 03:17 | So if I turn this on and off,
you can see that just adding a slight curve
| | 03:21 | adjustment can really brighten things up,
make your scene a little bit more interesting.
| | 03:25 | So having all these passes brought in
as separate layers is a smart workflow,
| | 03:29 | because that enables you to quickly
adjust each pass inside of After Effects and
| | 03:33 | saving you from having to render out
the entire animation all over again for
| | 03:37 | just small adjustments.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking text to a 3D null object| 00:00 | In this movie you'll use the 3D
camera data we saved out of CINEMA 4D to
| | 00:04 | composite show name and time text
seamlessly into our scene inside of After Effects.
| | 00:10 | So again, we have our 3D cameras, our 3D
lights, and our 3D null that's brought in
| | 00:16 | that's tracked into our scene.
| | 00:19 | So what we want to do is place text that
will be tracked to that position of our null.
| | 00:24 | So let's go ahead and create a new composition.
| | 00:26 | We'll name this Text.
| | 00:29 | This is where we'll make our text, and
let's start creating some text here.
| | 00:34 | So let's say the name of our fictitious
show is going to be Mograph Madness. Why not?
| | 00:40 | So let's go ahead and reposition this
in the center here. And let's say this
| | 00:47 | will be on at 8 pm.
| | 00:50 | Let's just write 8 pm, let's move this
up here, and let's just scale that down.
| | 00:57 | We want this to be a little bit smaller.
| | 01:02 | Let's change the color to be orange.
It complements the blue in our main scene.
| | 01:11 | And let's change the weight to bold
so it's a little bit more readable.
| | 01:16 | And I'm just going to add a tiny
element here, just a little graphical element.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to create a solid.
I'm just going to name this Block.
| | 01:26 | It's going to be a block of color.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to go to our Masks,
get a Rectangular Mask tool.
| | 01:32 | Just draw a mask here. And I'm just
going to create a little rectangle, just a
| | 01:38 | little graphical element to add to
our retail font information here.
| | 01:44 | Zoom in and make sure it's
lined up properly. That looks good.
| | 01:54 | So since we're going to have these in a
3D scene, I'm just going to turn the 3D
| | 02:00 | option on on these layers.
| | 02:02 | So we can close out. We're done with our text.
| | 02:06 | Now to position this in our 3D scene.
| | 02:09 | So we've got our text comp here. I am
just going to drag it into our scene.
| | 02:13 | And right now it doesn't move with our scene at all.
| | 02:17 | It's because we need to connect it to
follow the position of this null here.
| | 02:21 | So if we twirl this down, you can see
it has all of this keyframe information
| | 02:26 | here. And it's actually following the 3D
camera data right here, so let's close that down.
| | 02:37 | So all we need to do to track this
text comp to our null is just go to our text
| | 02:43 | comp and pick whip and make it
a child of the text null here.
| | 02:49 | So now if I scrub through--I missed a
step. I have to go back and make sure that
| | 02:56 | your text comp has the 3D switch turned on.
| | 03:00 | And when I turned that on,
you can see that it just disappears.
| | 03:03 | What we need to do to make sure that it
goes to the position of our null is go
| | 03:07 | to our position on our text comp
and just zero these fields out.
| | 03:11 | So you can see that now it went to the
anchor point position of our 3D null.
| | 03:18 | So as I scrub through, you can see
that it's tracking right as it should,
| | 03:24 | following that 3D null position.
| | 03:26 | So let's just scale this down, and we
can position this over a little bit.
| | 03:33 | Let me scale it up a little
bit more and move it down.
| | 03:40 | And let's just add a nice drop
shadow so it pops off the cube grid there.
| | 03:48 | Let's go to Perspective > Drop Shadow.
Let's up the Distance, add a little more
| | 03:55 | Softness, and bring it down a little bit, so
just a little bit of a subtle shadow there.
| | 04:04 | So it looks like it's casting a shadow
on our cube grid there. Let's bring this
| | 04:09 | down a little bit more.
| | 04:13 | So we don't want our text up the whole time.
| | 04:16 | We actually want to just wipe this
on with that last wave of animation
| | 04:19 | that's coming through.
| | 04:20 | So we're just going to add a
simple linear wipe to our text.
| | 04:24 | I'm going to do this by going to
Effect > Transition > Linear Wipe.
| | 04:31 | And if I scrub through this, you can
see that this will wipe on our text, but
| | 04:36 | it's going in the opposite direction.
| | 04:38 | We want it to wipe on from left to right,
so we're just going to change this to -90.
| | 04:45 | You can see that this going to
wipe on the way we want it to now.
| | 04:49 | We can add a little bit of feather, so
it's not so sharp of a transition, say 50.
| | 04:57 | So let's scrub to where the wave comes in.
| | 05:01 | We can go ahead and scrub so our text
is completely wiped off, hit a keyframe,
| | 05:11 | and let's scrub ahead to where the
wave completely passes through, say about
| | 05:15 | there, and let's make our
text completely wipe on.
| | 05:19 | It's wiped on at about 10%.
| | 05:23 | So let's hit 0 and RAM Preview this.
| | 05:33 | So that's looking pretty good.
| | 05:35 | Let's make sure that it's coming on.
| | 05:38 | It looks like it's coming on a little
bit too early, so let's go ahead and
| | 05:43 | adjust this so it's coming on after this last
cube is almost fully rotated back into place.
| | 05:51 | That's looking a little bit better.
| | 05:53 | Let's RAM Preview that one last
time. It may be a little bit too slow.
| | 06:07 | Let's just bring that back.
And that looks pretty good.
| | 06:12 | So it looks like that third wave is
motivating the text to come on as well.
| | 06:22 | So bringing the 3D camera
information with nulls allows you to seamlessly
| | 06:26 | composite 2D elements into
your 3D space of After Effects.
| | 06:30 | It always helps to have a clear plan
of attack when building your animation
| | 06:33 | inside of CINEMA 4D so you know what
three position data you'll need and where
| | 06:38 | you want elements placed
inside of After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using object buffers to isolate and change text color| 00:00 | Setting up your object buffers in
CINEMA 4D is very important for when you need
| | 00:04 | to isolate certain objects
in the scene for any reason.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, I'll show you how you
can use the object buffers to isolate the
| | 00:11 | cube text so you can change its color.
| | 00:13 | So in our project window here, if you go
look under Special Passes, you can see
| | 00:18 | we have our object buffer 1
that we rendered out of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:22 | Let's double-click this
and see what it looks like.
| | 00:24 | You can see that this is basically
just a black-and-white matte that just has
| | 00:29 | our cube text on it.
| | 00:31 | So we'll be using this as a matte to
cut out the text from our main scene and
| | 00:36 | isolate it so we can just change the color.
| | 00:38 | So let's close this window.
| | 00:40 | So the main two passes that we'll have
to deal with are Specular and Diffuse,
| | 00:44 | because this contains most
of our color information.
| | 00:47 | These other passes are just overlays
that just have reflection and shadow.
| | 00:51 | We really don't need to worry about those.
| | 00:53 | Let's unsolo those.
| | 00:55 | What we're going to need to do is
just select both of these and make them a
| | 00:58 | Precomp, and I'll do this by holding
Shift+Command+C. I'm just going to name
| | 01:03 | this pixel_precomp.
| | 01:05 | And so you see we have just these two
passes as its own comp now. And I am going
| | 01:13 | to duplicate this because I'm going
to use one that's going to have a whole
| | 01:17 | cut out so we just have our text.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to bring in our object
buffer 1 pass, bring into our scene, and I'm
| | 01:23 | going to use a track matte on our
pixel precomp so it's going to refer to, and
| | 01:29 | use, this object_1 layer as a matte.
| | 01:33 | I'm just going to use a Luma matte.
| | 01:36 | Now if I solo just this layer then
we just have our cube text, and that's
| | 01:41 | exactly what we want.
| | 01:43 | So to change the color, we need to first
precomp both the matte here and the comp.
| | 01:50 | We'll just name this text_matte.
| | 01:53 | And if I solo this again, we have our text here.
| | 01:56 | So we're just going to change the
color on this, and we're just going to use a
| | 02:01 | Hue and Saturation effect.
| | 02:03 | So we're going to go under
Color Correction > Hue/Saturation.
| | 02:05 | Now all I have to do to change the
color is since I have the Hue and Saturation
| | 02:11 | on this text_matte, what I'll have to
do is scrub this Hue wheel and you see we
| | 02:16 | can easily just change
the color on just our text.
| | 02:20 | So, say the client says that they want a
different color, like orange, to use for the text.
| | 02:26 | You can simply and easily just do
that all inside of After Effects.
| | 02:30 | You don't need to go back into CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:32 | So you can see how important it is to
render out object buffers, just in case you
| | 02:37 | need to make a simple color
change like this on a certain object.
| | 02:40 | This saves you from having to change
the color in CINEMA 4D and having to
| | 02:43 | re-render the entire project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Returning to CINEMA 4D for quick revisions| 00:00 | So you're done, or are you?
| | 00:02 | The client makes an 11th hour
change, but no sweat. Since you set up
| | 00:06 | your scene's animation with stacked
effectors, making changes is going to be a breeze.
| | 00:11 | So your client loves the animation,
but they need another version that uses a
| | 00:14 | different word and they also want the
entire animation to be 20 frames longer.
| | 00:18 | So we can jump back into our CINEMA 4D file.
| | 00:22 | So, the client wants you to make a
second version, but instead of NEXT, they
| | 00:25 | want the word COMING UP.
| | 00:27 | So the first thing we're going to do is
disable our Delay effectors because if
| | 00:31 | you can see, as I move around in the
viewport, the Delay effectors are just
| | 00:35 | affecting the viewport kind of weirdly,
so we're just going to disable those.
| | 00:39 | Then we're going to scrub to where we
have our word NEXT, and we're going to have
| | 00:45 | to jump back into our cube grid here
and make some more holes to replace with
| | 00:49 | more Cube Text objects.
| | 00:51 | So, I'm going to hide the cube text
right now, so you can the holes in our cube
| | 00:55 | grid. And I'm going to reselect our
MoGraph selection tag and I'm just going to
| | 01:00 | add a few more cubes to this selection.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to need to add an
extra cube up here and two down here for
| | 01:07 | COMING and then UP, U-P.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to MoGraph > MoGraph
Selection, and all I'm going to do is hold
| | 01:14 | Shift and add another cube to the
selection here by clicking and then holding
| | 01:19 | Shift and clicking these bottom two here.
| | 01:21 | Now we have enough holes to put in our
new letters to create our new version.
| | 01:26 | So let's re-enable our cube text visibility.
| | 01:28 | Now let's start filling in these
holes with new cube text objects.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to close these down, and I'm just
going to take this first cube and duplicate it.
| | 01:40 | I'm just going to move it over 150 centimeters.
| | 01:45 | Remember, our cubes are 150 centimeters wide.
| | 01:53 | And I'm also going to get rid of
this Cube Text MoGraph effector.
| | 01:56 | This is the one that just has our
information stored for our first four letters.
| | 02:00 | Since we're using a different
letter, we no longer need it.
| | 02:03 | So that'll pop those
two cubes back into place.
| | 02:08 | We're going to get rid of this fifth
cube, because it has a blank side to it.
| | 02:12 | We'll need to fill that up with a word,
| | 02:13 | so we'll just go ahead and duplicate this
Cube.4 and move it over 150 centimeters.
| | 02:19 | We have our Cube.5 down here.
| | 02:24 | Last two cubes, duplicate them, and
just move them both down 150 centimeters to
| | 02:30 | fill in that last gap.
| | 02:32 | I'm going to come out of my Morph
Camera view so I have free movement in my
| | 02:37 | viewport, make sure everything
is lined up okay. It looks good.
| | 02:42 | So now I'm going to go and change all these
letters to have our new words COMING UP applied.
| | 02:49 | So let's go into our first cube.
| | 02:52 | Now, we know that our bottom letter is
going to be the letters we need to change.
| | 02:56 | The top letters are the letters that
spell out PIXEL on that second word.
| | 03:00 | Let's go into our Text object and
change the N to C, change it in our Object
| | 03:08 | Manager here as well, and this T to a P.
So now we have our new word COMING
| | 03:19 | UP all spelled out,
| | 03:20 | so let's go ahead and scrub down our
timeline and see that we kind of messed up
| | 03:27 | our PIXEL word being spelled out when
the third wave of effectors come through.
| | 03:32 | So the first thing we need to do is
delete the extra letters that we don't need.
| | 03:35 | So we don't need this E here.
| | 03:38 | Our top letters here are the ones
that are on these faces of the cubes, so
| | 03:43 | delete that extra E, and we'll delete
this off the first cube, this extra P.
| | 03:50 | And then, since we duplicated cubes, we
actually need to change this E to an L
| | 03:57 | on this fifth cube.
| | 03:58 | So let's select that and make an L
to spell out our word PIXEL again.
| | 04:03 | So now we still have these blank
cubes there being pushed forward.
| | 04:07 | And they're being pushed forward by
our Text.Pos.Wave3 effector that's moving
| | 04:13 | the position forward 150 centimeters
in the Z. So we need to exclude these
| | 04:19 | cubes from that effector.
| | 04:22 | So how we're going to do this is using
a MoGraph selection tag again, and we're
| | 04:26 | going to select our cube text.
| | 04:27 | We're just going to select these cubes
that we want to still be affected by that
| | 04:32 | Text.Pos.Wave3 effector.
| | 04:33 | Let's go to MoGraph > MoGraph
Selection, and I'm going to select those five
| | 04:39 | cubes with the P-I-X-E-L on them, and
then I'm just going to use this MoGraph
| | 04:45 | selection and under the Text.Pos.Wave3,
drag this into our selection field.
| | 04:53 | And you will see that those get rid of those
blank cubes, and that's exactly what we want.
| | 04:59 | So finally, we need to make this
entire animation 20 frames longer.
| | 05:04 | So what we have to do is make
our timeline 20 frames longer.
| | 05:09 | Go to our Timeline.
| | 05:11 | And since we're only using a few
keyframes for this, we can easily just grab
| | 05:16 | this last keyframe and
just pull it to the right.
| | 05:20 | Now we have the extra
animation 120 frames longer.
| | 05:24 | So let's scrub through this, go back to
our Morph Camera view, and see how this looks.
| | 05:35 | So that looks good, but you can see
that when we have our bigger word here, the
| | 05:39 | framing is a little off. So this will
be cut off when we actually render this
| | 05:44 | and air this on broadcast.
| | 05:46 | So we need to change our camera views,
and we can do this using the Morph Camera.
| | 05:50 | There are two modes to the Camera Morph tag:
| | 05:54 | Simple Morph, which is just two cameras,
or Multi Morph, which is as many cameras
| | 05:59 | as you want. So you can see this
is the whole entire list view.
| | 06:03 | So all we're going to do is create a
third camera and frame this word up properly.
| | 06:08 | So let's just take one of these
cameras and duplicate it. And let's rename
| | 06:12 | because this will be our second camera view,
and our camera two will be our last camera view.
| | 06:17 | So let's go into the view of our
second new camera, and let's just frame
| | 06:21 | this word properly here.
| | 06:24 | Now what we have to do is go to our
Morph Camera tag, select this arrow, and
| | 06:29 | this is going to start selecting and
adding our cameras to the camera list.
| | 06:35 | So I just added these three cameras.
| | 06:39 | So if I go back to our Morph Camera
view, go to frame 0, and hit Play, you can
| | 06:46 | see that it took into account that
new camera angle from Camera 2.
| | 06:52 | So now everything is framed nice and
properly, and we didn't have to add any new
| | 06:56 | keyframes since we're
using the Morph Camera tag.
| | 07:00 | So now all we have to do is reenable
our Delay effectors, re-render, reimport
| | 07:06 | in After Effects, and you're done.
| | 07:08 | So in situations like this where you
need to make iterations or make changes at
| | 07:12 | the last minute, that utilizing the
power of using multiple effectors to handle
| | 07:16 | your animation, pays off in the long run.
| | 07:19 | Since you're working with only a few
keyframes, retiming the entire animation
| | 07:23 | is a breeze.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Thanks for following
along and viewing my course.
| | 00:02 | Before I close, I want to pass along
some useful resource links that have helped
| | 00:07 | me in my career in motion graphics.
| | 00:09 | First, there's a ton of great CINEMA
4D courses done by my fellow authors on
| | 00:13 | lynda.com, including Rob Garrott, who
has a CINEMA 4D Essentials and Design in
| | 00:18 | Motion Series that will help you get up
to speed on all the basics of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:24 | Second, here is the very popular
greyscalegorilla.com that breaks down a lot of
| | 00:29 | popular motion graphic styles
used in broadcast and movies.
| | 00:34 | Next up is motioneers.net,
who have their own MoGraph section for
| | 00:38 | specific MoGraph techniques.
| | 00:41 | You also want to check out
motionworks.net, hosted by John Dickinson, who breaks
| | 00:46 | down his own network bumpers he's made
of his day job, and also has a bunch of
| | 00:51 | CINEMA 4D and After
Effects training and resources.
| | 00:54 | Helloluxx.com is another great site that
has a lot of advance MoGraph techniques
| | 00:59 | and his own training series.
| | 01:01 | Lastly, I have my own motion graphics blog,
eyedesyn.com, that I'd be honored for you to visit.
| | 01:07 | Here I host my own CINEMA 4D
quick tips, and that's all free.
| | 01:11 | So I hope you have found this course
useful and that you can apply these
| | 01:14 | techniques into your own MoGraph work.
| | 01:16 | Thanks for watching.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
