1. Interface and NavigationThe CINEMA 4D workflow| 00:00 | The process of creating 3D animation can
really be quite complex, but if you break it down
| | 00:04 | into manageable chunks, you can
get some really great results.
| | 00:08 | First up in the process is the modeling phase.
| | 00:11 | That's the creation of 3D
objects in your scene.
| | 00:14 | You'll create things called points, edges, and
polygons and manipulate those to create the 3D shapes.
| | 00:21 | Lighting is the process of
illuminating objects in your scene.
| | 00:24 | You'll use special objects called lights and you'll
use those light objects to illuminate your scene.
| | 00:32 | Texturing is a process of adding color
and surface to the objects in your scene.
| | 00:36 | When you first create them, they'll be a gray,
dull color, and the texturing and surfacing
| | 00:41 | is where you determine what your
objects look like to the viewer.
| | 00:46 | Animation is the process of giving movement to
your objects using a technique called keyframing.
| | 00:52 | Keyframing is an idea that really spans
across all animation packages, whether they're 2D
| | 00:56 | or 3D, and CINEMA 4D has some
very robust keyframing tools.
| | 01:01 | Rendering is where you create pixels from the
objects and textures and lights in your scene.
| | 01:06 | Those pixels can then be saved out in a variety
of formats that can be used in other programs
| | 01:11 | as part of a compositing workflow.
| | 01:14 | The compositing phase is where you manipulate
your renderings that you produce from CINEMA
| | 01:18 | 4D in another package like
Photoshop or After Effects, or even Nuke.
| | 01:22 | And this is where your
images will really come to life.
| | 01:25 | As awesome as CINEMA 4D is, it's really just
the step in the process, and the renderings
| | 01:30 | that you get will almost always be
manipulated further in a compositing package.
| | 01:35 | So these are the very basics
steps in the 3D animation process.
| | 01:38 | Sometimes you'll take them out of order,
sometimes you'll add steps in between, but the key is
| | 01:42 | breaking it down into manageable chunks, and
this will always help get you to your goal.
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| How does 3D software work?| 00:00 | The process of creating 3D animation with any type
of computer is really computationally intensive.
| | 00:07 | Back in the day when the programmers first
created 3D animation software, the computers
| | 00:12 | worked very, very slow and the
software was extremely primitive.
| | 00:16 | So what the programmers had to do was to
really cheat what was happening in the real world
| | 00:21 | all around them and
translate that into computer code.
| | 00:26 | That simulation of what is going on around us in
the world dominates all 3D software to this day.
| | 00:32 | The way your eye sees the world is by photons
bouncing around from a light source, and you
| | 00:37 | don't actually perceive the object itself; you
perceive the photons that are bouncing off that object.
| | 00:42 | 3D software works in a very similar way,
except there aren't nearly as many photons.
| | 00:47 | 3D programmers created an idea called a ray,
and that ray extends outward from the point
| | 00:54 | of view of the camera or a light
source and strikes your object.
| | 00:57 | I have a very simple scene
here with a camera and a light,
| | 01:00 | and the light has a green color to
it and it's tinting this ball green.
| | 01:04 | When I hit play here,
| | 01:05 | you'll see a representation of
those rays. And I'll hit Stop.
| | 01:10 | Now, these are not exactly how many rays there
are, and the rays don't actually look like that.
| | 01:15 | You don't see the rays.
| | 01:16 | But this is the idea.
| | 01:17 | The ray spread outward from the point of origin of
that object, and they look for objects in the scene.
| | 01:24 | And when they strike an object they register
to the software, hey, I found an object, and
| | 01:30 | they tell the software things about that object,
and that information is what determines what
| | 01:35 | pixels are drawn on the screen.
| | 01:36 | So I'm going to look through the camera
now so you can see what's going on here.
| | 01:40 | If I click this icon, this is the active camera
icon, and when I select that, I get this cute
| | 01:45 | little zoom in to my camera
object that I'm looking through.
| | 01:48 | And you could see all these little white specs
here are the rays from the camera, and these
| | 01:53 | are just a representation of that.
| | 01:55 | Now, those rays are traveling from the point
of view that we're looking at, and some of
| | 01:59 | them are traveling off to infinity--
| | 02:01 | that's these rays over in this area here--
and some of them are striking the ball.
| | 02:05 | Now when I hit the Render Active View icon
it renders the scene, and you can see that
| | 02:10 | some of my scene is black and some
of my scene has the ball visible.
| | 02:14 | Now the areas of the scene that are black
are where the rays traveled off to infinity
| | 02:19 | and didn't report back.
| | 02:21 | Now, the parts of the ball that are being
illuminated green are based on the rays that are coming
| | 02:25 | from the light and striking
the surface of the ball.
| | 02:29 | Those light rays are colored green and
they're telling the gray surface of the ball to be
| | 02:34 | tinted green based on the light color.
| | 02:37 | So you can see that these objects are doing
a great job of simulating the way that our
| | 02:42 | eye works and the way that lights work in the
real world, and there are some very important
| | 02:45 | differences between those.
| | 02:47 | First of all, lights in CINEMA 4D and other 3D
packages don't bounce by default, and that's on purpose.
| | 02:54 | In the real world, light photons travel from
a light source and they strike a surface and
| | 02:58 | they rebound and they travel
off in a different direction.
| | 03:01 | It's that bouncing of light that determines
what the color of the object you perceive is.
| | 03:07 | The wavelength of light that bounces off of
it is what your eye will perceive, and in
| | 03:11 | a 3D world that bouncing of light is way
too intensive to be calculated accurately.
| | 03:16 | So the software programmers
have simulated that light bounce.
| | 03:20 | The lights start off by not bouncing at all
and then you can activate something called
| | 03:23 | global illumination, and that process gives
you a limited kind of light bounce that looks
| | 03:28 | very realistic but is much
easier for the computer to handle.
| | 03:32 | This basic understanding of how 3D software
works will really help you to move forward
| | 03:36 | with CINEMA 4D.
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| Looking at navigation and mouse setup| 00:00 | Moving around at CINEMA 4D is
really a two-handed operation.
| | 00:03 | You have to be very active when you're
working with a 3D application like this.
| | 00:09 | And there are some really great shortcuts
that we're going to talk about and some ways
| | 00:12 | of moving around inside the viewport that
are going to help you with your experience.
| | 00:17 | Now, the CINEMA 4D interface has this
large gray area in the center.
| | 00:21 | This is called the viewport, and you'll notice
that the viewport has a grid and that grid
| | 00:26 | has some colors associated with it.
| | 00:28 | Those colors are extremely important.
| | 00:30 | They're red, green, and blue, and they correspond with
different axes. And the rule of thumb is X, Y, Z; RGB.
| | 00:38 | The X axis is always red, the Y axis is always
green, the Z axis is always blue. And these
| | 00:45 | arrows that you see down here indicate the
positive direction, so the negative direction
| | 00:51 | is on this opposite side of that arrow.
| | 00:54 | You'll also notice that down in the
bottom-left of the viewport is a little heads-up
| | 00:58 | display, and this little guy tells
you exactly where the axis is facing.
| | 01:03 | You can see there's X, Y, Z; RGB again.
| | 01:07 | Now that we're ready to navigate inside of CINEMA
4D, let's talk about this two-handed approach.
| | 01:11 | In my right-hand I've got my mouse.
My left-hand is hovering over the keyboard.
| | 01:16 | Now I'm going to use the 1, 2, and 3 keys
underneath my left hand to do some navigation here.
| | 01:21 | And if I move my cursor over the viewport
and hold down the 1 key and I'll drag left
| | 01:26 | and right, and I'm doing
something called a pan.
| | 01:29 | You could see that I'm
panning around the window.
| | 01:32 | Now, if I hold down the 2 key and use my left
mouse button, I can dolly in or out, and I
| | 01:38 | can do that whether I'm
dragging up or down or left or right.
| | 01:42 | Now if I hold down the 3 key, I can do something
called an orbit. And the orbit has an interesting
| | 01:46 | behavior, in that it will either orbit around the
center of the view or around a point on an object.
| | 01:52 | So let's see what that means.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to add a cube to the scene and
that cube now is at the center of the world.
| | 01:58 | Now if I have that cube selected and I just
click anywhere in the gray area, holding the
| | 02:02 | 3 key down and navigate, you can see that it
navigates around the center of the viewport.
| | 02:08 | But if I hold my cursor over the cube--let's
say that upper-left corner and I hold down
| | 02:13 | the 3 key click and drag--
| | 02:15 | you can see that the orbit has now jumped
onto or latched onto the upper left-hand
| | 02:21 | corner of that cube, and it's
now rotating around that spot.
| | 02:24 | Now that's a behavior that can be changed in the
preferences, but that's the default for CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:29 | The next thing I want to talk
about is the middle mouse button.
| | 02:32 | The middle mouse button allows you to
navigate between viewports in C4D.
| | 02:37 | Now if I click anywhere in the interface with the
middle mouse button, I now get a four-way split screen.
| | 02:42 | I have the perspective view in the upper-left
and then I have the three orthographic views--
| | 02:47 | top, front, and right--going around clockwise.
| | 02:50 | Any one of these I want to make full screen
I can click in with the middle mouse button.
| | 02:54 | So I just middle-mouse-click in the top and
I'll middle-mouse-click to get back, and then
| | 02:59 | middle-mouse-click in the front, back, and
then I'll go to the right-hand side and middle-
| | 03:03 | mouse-click to get back again.
| | 03:04 | Let's go back to perspective
by middle-mouse-clicking.
| | 03:07 | So you can see, that's really important.
| | 03:08 | It's very fast to get through those.
| | 03:10 | There's also F keys.
| | 03:12 | You can hit the F1 key on the
keyboard to get to the perspective view.
| | 03:15 | You can hit F5 on the keyboard
to get to the four-way split.
| | 03:21 | Then F1 will take you back to the perspective, and then
F2 is the top, F3 is the right, and F4 is the front.
| | 03:31 | Remember, F5 is the four-way split.
| | 03:34 | But I don't use those F keys too much.
| | 03:35 | I mostly just use the middle-mouse-click, and I just
middle-mouse-click to get back to that window.
| | 03:40 | Let's talk about some very
important tools and the way they look.
| | 03:44 | You'll notice that on my object I have these
access handles highlighted when I have the
| | 03:48 | object selected in the Object Manager.
| | 03:51 | These access handles show me where the object
is facing and also, they allow me to move the
| | 03:55 | object along the given axis.
| | 03:57 | So let's select the red
axis band and I can drag it.
| | 04:00 | You can see that motion is constrained.
| | 04:02 | It only moves along the cube's X axis.
| | 04:05 | I can also do the Z axis,
or I can do the Y axis.
| | 04:09 | Now, let's undo that.
| | 04:11 | The undo buffer in
CINEMA 4D is Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
| | 04:16 | I'll undo to get that back
to the center of the world.
| | 04:18 | Now if I want to redo, that
it's Command+Y or Ctrl+Y.
| | 04:22 | I'll Command+Z or Ctrl+Z to get
back to the center of the world.
| | 04:26 | So these axis handles allow you to
constrain the movement along an axis.
| | 04:31 | Now the little triangles that you see that
are in between the axis handles are called
| | 04:35 | axis bands, and they constrain the movement of the
object to a plane that's defined by two axes.
| | 04:42 | So for example, if I click on this blue
handle, it's going to move along the plane that's
| | 04:47 | defined by the red and green handles.
| | 04:50 | So if I drag that around, you can see
that it's only moving along that axis.
| | 04:55 | No matter what direction I drag,
it is only moving along that plane.
| | 05:00 | If I grab the green axis band, I can now move
that along on a plane that's defined by the
| | 05:05 | X and Z axis handles.
| | 05:07 | Across the top of the interface is the toolbar,
and the toolbar has some very important tools
| | 05:11 | on the left-hand side.
| | 05:13 | We've got the Undo and Redo buttons here.
| | 05:15 | If I click on Undo,
you could see I can redo it again.
| | 05:18 | Now there's also the Select, Move, Scale, and
Rotate, and this is the most recent tool icon.
| | 05:23 | So the next keyword shortcut is the spacebar.
| | 05:26 | If I hit the spacebar that takes me to the
Selection tool from whatever tool I had, and
| | 05:31 | I can also go back the other way.
| | 05:32 | If I hit the spacebar, it toggles between that most
recent tool that I had and the Selection tool.
| | 05:40 | Now to activate the tools individually
there are some great keyboard shortcuts.
| | 05:44 | The Move tool is letter E on the keyboard, so
I'll hit E and that brings me into the Move tool.
| | 05:49 | The Rotate tool is R,
and letter T is the Scale tool.
| | 05:53 | You can see I have Move,
Rotate, and Scale: E, R, and T.
| | 05:57 | Let's grab the Rotate tool and
take a look at how that behaves.
| | 05:59 | The Rotate tool has some
different-looking bands.
| | 06:02 | These are called rotation bands or axis bands
for the Rotate tool, and you could see there's
| | 06:06 | one for each color.
| | 06:08 | Now if I grab the green axis band, it's only going
to rotate the cube around the cube's green axis.
| | 06:13 | I can do the same thing with the red band.
| | 06:15 | It's going to rotate around the cube's red axis, or X
and blue rotates it around the cube's Z axis.
| | 06:21 | So let's undo that, Command+Z or Ctrl+Z, until we
get back to our cube at the center of the world.
| | 06:27 | Now let's do a little bit of navigation.
| | 06:28 | Let's orbit around on our object. Here we go.
| | 06:31 | And let's also do a
little bit of a dolly move.
| | 06:33 | So let's say I don't like that position I've
just changed my camera to, and there's a great
| | 06:38 | secondary undo buffer inside the CINEMA 4D.
| | 06:40 | Command+Z or Ctrl+Z and Command+Y or Ctrl+Y
control all the mouse clicks and object changes
| | 06:46 | that you do in CINEMA 4D.
| | 06:48 | Shift+Command or Shift+Ctrl+Z, or Shift+Command or
Shift+Ctrl+Y control the undo buffer for the viewport.
| | 06:54 | So if I go Shift+Command+Z or Shift+Ctrl+Z,
it will undo the viewport changes that I did.
| | 07:00 | And if I hold Shift+Command or Shift+Ctrl+Y
down, it will redo those viewport changes.
| | 07:05 | Now, those are the most important things to
remember about working inside the interface.
| | 07:09 | There's a lot more to it, but this will get
you started just getting around inside the space.
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| Understanding the interface| 00:00 | The CINEMA 4D interface can seem a little
bit daunting when you first open it up, but
| | 00:04 | it's divided into some logical
segments that we'll talk about now.
| | 00:08 | The first thing you should notice about
CINEMA 4D is that it is contained entirely inside
| | 00:13 | of a shell window.
| | 00:15 | That window allows the programmers to make the
application nearly identical between Mac and PC.
| | 00:20 | If you walk into a situation and you find yourself,
as a Mac user, having to work on a PC, CINEMA
| | 00:25 | 4D behaves exactly the same, except for the Command
or Ctrl key, and the same holds true for the PC.
| | 00:31 | This makes things much easier for
both the programmers and for the users.
| | 00:34 | So right across the top of this shell window
is something called the main menu bar, and
| | 00:39 | you'll notice that in all of the windows in
CINEMA 4D they all have their own menu bar.
| | 00:44 | I'm going to be very specific when I talk
about which menu bar I want you to click on.
| | 00:48 | For example, if I say click on the main file menu,
that's this File menu in the upper left-hand corner.
| | 00:54 | When I click on it, I see all of the options
related to opening and saving and merging files.
| | 00:59 | If I say click on the File menu in the Object
Manager, that is this File menu right here.
| | 01:04 | If I say click on the viewport view
menu, that's this menu right here.
| | 01:08 | So you could see I'm going to be very specific
about which menu that I tell you to click on.
| | 01:13 | So right below the main menu bar is the main
toolbar and the toolbar contains tools and
| | 01:19 | also undo buttons, elements for changing the
viewport, render buttons, and then icons for
| | 01:24 | creating objects inside of C4D.
| | 01:27 | Now these are not all the objects.
| | 01:28 | These are just the most important
ones that you can see listed here.
| | 01:32 | Now if I click and hold on an icon that has a
black triangle, you can see that below that
| | 01:37 | black triangle are a whole
bunch of additional objects.
| | 01:40 | Any place you see a black triangle in C4D,
that means if you click-and-hold on it, there's
| | 01:43 | additional elements that
are listed underneath that.
| | 01:47 | Going clockwise around the interface,
next up is the Object Manager.
| | 01:50 | The Object Manager is where you're going to be
manipulating and observing all of the objects in your scene.
| | 01:55 | As a good general rule, if it doesn't show up in the
Object Manager, it doesn't exist in your scene.
| | 02:00 | Now there are some
important exceptions to that.
| | 02:02 | For example, the Layer Manager allows you to
control what elements are showing up in the
| | 02:06 | Object Manager, but for the most part, if it's not in
the Object Manager, it doesn't exist in your scene.
| | 02:11 | To the upper-right of the Object
Manager is the Layout pull down.
| | 02:14 | If I click and hold on that, I've got a
variety of different layouts that I can choose from.
| | 02:18 | And we'll be switching through these in
different parts of the course, but for now we're going
| | 02:23 | to leave it set on Startup.
| | 02:25 | Just to the right of the Object Manager are
some tabs, and these tabs allow us to click
| | 02:29 | between managers.
| | 02:30 | It's right now set on the Object Manager.
| | 02:32 | I can also switch to the Content
Browser or the Structure Manager.
| | 02:36 | We'll leave it set on the Object Manager.
| | 02:37 | Now right below the Object
Manager is the Attribute Manager.
| | 02:41 | The Attribute Manager is probably the most
important window next to the Object Manager.
| | 02:46 | The Attribute Manager shows you the properties
that can be changed for just about everything
| | 02:50 | that you have selected in CINEMA 4D, and the
Attribute Manager will change constantly throughout
| | 02:55 | your working experience in CINEMA 4D.
| | 02:57 | What I mean by that is right now, because I
don't have anything in my scene and I've just
| | 03:01 | opened a brand-new project,
| | 03:02 | it's showing me the project settings.
| | 03:04 | There's a lot of different properties
I can change in the project settings.
| | 03:07 | If I add a cube to the scene by clicking on
the Cube icon, you could see that now the
| | 03:12 | Attribute Manager shows me the modifiable
properties of the cube that I have selected.
| | 03:16 | If I click on the Move tool, I now
see the properties for the Move tool.
| | 03:20 | So as you could see,
the Attribute Manager changes all the time.
| | 03:24 | It's really important that you get used to
looking at that, to understand what it is that
| | 03:27 | you're manipulating.
| | 03:29 | Right next to the Attribute
Manager is the Coordinate Manager.
| | 03:32 | The Coordinate Manager allows you to
manipulate the coordinates not only of the object, but
| | 03:36 | of the actual elements that make
up your object in some cases.
| | 03:40 | It's very important in the modeling process.
| | 03:43 | Right above the Coordinate Manager is the Time
area, and the Time area has two main components.
| | 03:47 | It's got the Time slider and then it's got
the Time bar, and the Time bar has the preview
| | 03:54 | range, the VCR controls, the record controls,
the record categories here, as well as some
| | 04:00 | settings for the project frame rate.
| | 04:03 | Now right below the Time
area is the Material Manager.
| | 04:06 | The Material Manager is where you'll create
and manipulate the materials that you'll be
| | 04:11 | applying to your objects,
to give them color and texture.
| | 04:14 | On the left-hand side of the
interface are the Modes icons.
| | 04:17 | The Modes icons change how you
interact with the objects in your scene.
| | 04:21 | The default mode is something called Model
mode; and right below that is Texture mode,
| | 04:25 | which allows you to manipulate the textures
on your object; and the Workplane mode and
| | 04:30 | Point, Edge and Polygon mode, as well as Axis mode,
and then the Snapping tool is right below that.
| | 04:35 | You notice that when I hover over the Snap,
for example, you see a little pop-up help
| | 04:39 | shows up and that pop-up help will be
throughout the interface, and you can use it to remind
| | 04:44 | yourself of what these icons mean.
| | 04:46 | There's another very important section of
the interface that I want to talk about, which
| | 04:49 | is the Help window, and the Help window is
down at the very bottom of the interface.
| | 04:55 | Right now it says Enable component snapping.
| | 04:57 | This area right here at the bottom of the
interface, as I move over icons, it will show
| | 05:01 | you what the name of that icon is.
| | 05:04 | So it's an additional place that you can
look for for information in the interface.
| | 05:08 | Next up are some important keyboard shortcuts.
| | 05:10 | CINEMA 4D has a lot of them,
but I don't know them all.
| | 05:14 | The ones I do know I use all the time.
| | 05:16 | The most important one is the spacebar.
| | 05:19 | The spacebar allows you to move between the
Selection tool and the last tool you had selected.
| | 05:25 | Now if I hit the spacebar,
it moves me to the Selection tool.
| | 05:28 | I had the Move tool selected before.
| | 05:30 | If I hit the spacebar again,
it takes me back to the Move tool.
| | 05:33 | If I click on the Scale tool and hit the
spacebar, it takes me back to the Selection tool.
| | 05:37 | If I hit the spacebar one more time,
it takes me back to the Scale tool.
| | 05:41 | Now the Move, Scale, and Rotate tools have some
important keyboard shortcuts, and they are E, R, and T.
| | 05:47 | E is for the Move tool, R is for the Rotate tool,
and T is for the Scale tool. So, E, R, and T.
| | 05:57 | And then when you hit the spacebar,
you can always get back to the Selection tool.
| | 06:01 | Now if I hit the spacebar and go back to the
Scale tool, if I click and drag in the interface,
| | 06:06 | I can make my cube larger or smaller.
| | 06:08 | And I can tell it's getting larger or smaller
because the grid around it is not changing.
| | 06:13 | That's very important to understand the
viewport and what you're seeing there.
| | 06:16 | That grid really helps to ground you in the scene and
understand the relationship between your objects.
| | 06:22 | Now that you have a basic understanding of
the CINEMA 4D interface, we can move on to
| | 06:26 | some key application preferences.
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| Some important project settings| 00:00 | When you first open up a project in CINEMA 4D,
the interface will default to the standard
| | 00:05 | layout with the Project Settings
visible in the Attribute Manager.
| | 00:09 | In CINEMA 4D, you can have multiple projects
open, but you can't have no projects open,
| | 00:14 | and so because I have just a blank project
opened, it defaults to show me the Project
| | 00:18 | Settings in the Attribute Manager.
| | 00:20 | Now over here on the right
is the Attribute Manager.
| | 00:23 | This Attribute Manager will change
depending on what I have selected.
| | 00:26 | So for example, if I click on the Move tool, now the
Attribute Manager shows me the Move tool settings.
| | 00:33 | If I want to get back to the Project Settings,
I can click on this back arrow or I could
| | 00:38 | go to the Main Edit menu
and select Project Settings.
| | 00:41 | I could also hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on the
keyboard to get to the Project Settings.
| | 00:46 | The Project Settings window shows me several
different sections: Project Settings, Info,
| | 00:51 | Dynamics, et cetera.
| | 00:53 | These sections I can click through by
highlighting the different section name.
| | 00:57 | If I click on Project Settings, I can't see
everything. I'm going to enlarge this window
| | 01:02 | by hovering over this
dividing line and raising it up.
| | 01:06 | And then I'm going to hover over this dividing line
and dragging it to the left just a little bit.
| | 01:10 | Now that I can see everything, the Project
Settings are where you control the global values
| | 01:14 | for your project.
| | 01:16 | Project Settings should
generally always be set to 1.
| | 01:18 | There may be an occasion where you need to
scale up a project to match some other project
| | 01:21 | that you're working with, but generally
speaking, it should always be set to 1.
| | 01:25 | The Centimeters are the working
units that you're using for CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:30 | They default to centimeters, but they
can be made to show any value at all.
| | 01:33 | And really, the important thing to remember
about the units is that they are relative values.
| | 01:37 | They really don't mean anything,
except for being units of measurement.
| | 01:41 | And you can change them to be anything you want:
Feet and Inches, Centimeters, Kilometers.
| | 01:46 | It doesn't matter.
| | 01:48 | Right below the Project Scale is the frame
per second (FPS) and the Minimum and Maximum
| | 01:53 | Preview Times, and these can be
changed here in the Time slider as well.
| | 01:57 | I'm going to leave them alone for now.
| | 01:58 | They default to 30 frames per second, which is
great for most of the things we'll be working on.
| | 02:03 | The Project Time shows you the
current time that you're parked on.
| | 02:07 | The Minimum and Maximum Times show
you the values that are changed here.
| | 02:11 | So for example, if I change the Preview
Range to be 600, you could see that the Maximum
| | 02:17 | Time has changed to 600. But it also shows you that
the Preview Range is only showing me 90 frames.
| | 02:23 | If I enlarge this slider here,
then the Preview Maximum Times matches that.
| | 02:28 | Level of Detail refers to how CINEMA 4D
displays objects in the scene, and the Level of Detail
| | 02:34 | can be changed up or down.
| | 02:37 | This should normally be left at 100%,
until you get into a very heavy project that has
| | 02:42 | lots and lots of polygons. Then you can dial the
setting down to give you a better working experience.
| | 02:48 | These Use checkboxes here
should almost always be left on.
| | 02:52 | There may be a time where you want to turn one
off in order to get a better working experience
| | 02:56 | while you're working on a very heavy project,
but most of the time you want to leave those
| | 02:59 | on, and these are also a big
gotcha for a lot of folks.
| | 03:02 | Sometimes they accidentally turn them off
and they don't understand why, for example,
| | 03:06 | animation isn't showing up in their scene.
| | 03:07 | That's because that checkbox is turned off.
| | 03:10 | So we want to leave these on.
| | 03:12 | Right below that, the Default Object Color,
Gray-Blue, is what the objects will appear
| | 03:16 | as when you first add them to the scene.
| | 03:18 | So for example, if I add a cube to the scene,
that cube shows up as that color that we had
| | 03:23 | selected in the Project Settings.
| | 03:24 | I can hit Command+D or Ctrl+D on
the keyboard to get back to them.
| | 03:28 | You can see that color there
matches that object color.
| | 03:30 | Now View Clipping, again, relates to how
CINEMA 4D handles information in the scene.
| | 03:35 | Generally speaking, you can leave it on Medium,
but there may be a time where you'll need
| | 03:38 | to change it to one of the larger sizes, and that
will become apparent if an object gets cut off.
| | 03:44 | And what I mean by that--let's
change this to Tiny for example.
| | 03:49 | And then when I zoom in on my cube and then
change that back to Huge, you can see that
| | 03:58 | my object is now being cut off.
| | 04:00 | And as I back out, there is
actually a clipping plane.
| | 04:05 | You could see that clipping plane changing.
| | 04:07 | And I'm navigating through the scene by
holding down the number 2 and dragging left with my
| | 04:11 | left mouse button.
| | 04:14 | So that is the View Clipping.
| | 04:15 | I'm going to change that back to Medium,
and that will work for most purposes.
| | 04:22 | The next button, Linear Workflow, is something that
will come into play when we talk about rendering.
| | 04:28 | It's very important though--and I normally
work with Linear Workflow off, but unfortunately,
| | 04:32 | it defaults to on, and this is a big
gotcha for a lot of C4D artists these days.
| | 04:38 | When we went from version 11 to version 12,
Linear Workflow came into play, and it became
| | 04:43 | a really big sticking
point for a lot of folks.
| | 04:47 | I normally work with it off,
but it defaults to on.
| | 04:49 | We're going to leave it on for now.
| | 04:52 | The Color Profile relates to how
Linear Workflow is expressed.
| | 04:55 | Next up is the Info window, and the Info
window allows you to put in information about what
| | 05:00 | version of the project is created in, who is the
author of the project, copyright information.
| | 05:05 | You can also leave notes for other artists.
| | 05:07 | For example, if you're sharing a
collaborative workflow with someone, you can leave notes
| | 05:10 | in the Info field about what you did in the
last version of that project, and you can remind
| | 05:15 | people to check that Info field.
| | 05:17 | The Dynamics, if you have the studio version
or if you have the broadcast version of CINEMA
| | 05:22 | 4D, then you'll see this Dynamics tab.
| | 05:24 | Referencing allows you to reference
different types of objects in the project.
| | 05:28 | The To Do is a great way for listing changes
that need to be made. If you're an art director
| | 05:33 | and you want to have an artist work on a different
aspect of the project, then you can use the To Do window.
| | 05:39 | The Key Frame Interpolation settings
should always be left at their defaults.
| | 05:43 | These change how CINEMA 4D behaves when it's
making keyframes, and you never want to change
| | 05:47 | that unless you know
exactly what you're doing.
| | 05:50 | The Project Settings are really important
to managing your experiences inside of C4D.
| | 05:55 | Another component of managing the experience
are the Preferences, and we'll talk about those next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring key application preferences| 00:00 | The Preferences menu in CINEMA 4D allows you
to change a whole variety of settings.
| | 00:04 | Rather than trying to explain what it is,
let's just dive in.
| | 00:08 | The way you access the
Preferences is under the Main Edit menu.
| | 00:12 | At the very bottom is Preferences.
| | 00:13 | You could also get there by hitting
Command+E or Ctrl+E on the keyboard.
| | 00:17 | Now, there are a lot of options here, so rather
than cover them all, I'm going to cover the
| | 00:21 | ones that I think are the
most important for now.
| | 00:23 | The Preferences window is
divided into two primary sections.
| | 00:26 | You have the left-hand side, which lists the
categories of preferences, and then the right-hand
| | 00:30 | side, which shows you those
categories. It defaults to Interface,
| | 00:34 | and the Interface section tells us what kind
of language you're using, what's the scheme,
| | 00:40 | how does the interface look?
| | 00:41 | For example, I only have the English version
installed, but you can work in a variety of
| | 00:45 | languages: Chinese, German,
Russian, French--you name it.
| | 00:50 | The Scheme is how the interface looks.
| | 00:52 | And if I click and hold on that, we
can see have two choices: Light and Dark.
| | 00:56 | So I'll switch over to Light version, and you
could see that all of the menus have now changed
| | 01:00 | to their light component.
| | 01:01 | And I personally don't like this.
| | 01:03 | It's very hard in the eyes, especially when you're
going to be working in CINEMA for hours at the time.
| | 01:08 | So let's switch that back to Dark.
| | 01:09 | And then you can change the font that's used in
the user interface, change what that font is.
| | 01:16 | The Bubble Help you can turn on and off.
| | 01:19 | That's when you hover over
something and it shows you that.
| | 01:21 | Now one important item I am going to
change is the Show Shortcuts in Menu option.
| | 01:25 | Let's turn that on.
| | 01:26 | Now when I go back to the Edit menu for example,
I now see on the right-hand side of that, all
| | 01:32 | of the shortcuts that weren't listed before.
| | 01:34 | Let's turn that off so you
can see the difference.
| | 01:36 | I'll go back to that, and you can see now I
don't see any of the shortcuts. And having
| | 01:40 | that on is a great reminder for how
you can get to things more quickly.
| | 01:44 | So I'll turn that on.
| | 01:46 | Next up are the Input Devices, and the Input
Device is related to how you navigate an interface
| | 01:51 | with the software.
| | 01:53 | By default, it's expecting for
a mouse with three buttons.
| | 01:56 | If you don't have a mouse with three buttons--
you're working on a laptop, for example--you
| | 02:00 | can activate Control-Click for the right-click
so that you can access the contextual menus.
| | 02:04 | I'm working with a three-button
mouse so I'll leave that off.
| | 02:07 | Navigation is how you're navigating inside
the editor window, inside the viewport here.
| | 02:14 | And Reverse Orbit is an option
that a lot of folks like to turn on.
| | 02:18 | Let's check out the Units option next.
| | 02:20 | The Units allow you to change what type
of units are showing in the interface.
| | 02:24 | So for example if I change my Unit Display
from Centimeters to, say, Kilometers, when
| | 02:30 | I make a new cube, you notice that the cube
is still the same size, but CINEMA 4D looks
| | 02:36 | at it in terms of how big it
is relative to a kilometer.
| | 02:39 | So you could see that
it's 0.002 kilometers big.
| | 02:44 | Let's change that back to default,
which is Centimeters, and that's 200 cm.
| | 02:48 | Really though, I think of
them in terms of units.
| | 02:50 | There have been projects in the past where
I've worked on a floor plan, for example.
| | 02:54 | I was working on a set replacement, and I
had to match a floor plan exactly, and so I
| | 02:58 | did work in feet and inches for that project.
| | 03:01 | But most of the time I just
leave it at centimeters.
| | 03:04 | The last element I want to talk about
for now is the Import/Export options.
| | 03:08 | If I twirl that open and scroll down,
these show me all of the different types of formats
| | 03:14 | CINEMA 4D can interface with,
both on import and export.
| | 03:18 | And there is different settings I can change.
| | 03:19 | For example, if I go to Illustrator Import,
which is right down here, and I'll select that,
| | 03:25 | there are some options here.
| | 03:26 | Now I don't want to change them.
| | 03:27 | I just want to make note of them right now.
| | 03:29 | I could change the Scale that
CINEMA 4D imports Illustrator files at.
| | 03:33 | I normally always leave it on one.
| | 03:35 | And I can also leave Connect Splines on.
| | 03:37 | In later modules of the CINEMA 4D Essentials,
we'll talk about Illustrator Import more specifically,
| | 03:42 | and we'll come back to this setting.
| | 03:44 | The very last thing I want to talk about in the
Preferences folder is this Open Preferences Folder option.
| | 03:49 | As you can see, this button shows you where
your Preferences folder is installed, and that's
| | 03:54 | really important because there may be times
where you want to delete your preferences
| | 03:58 | to get back to the factory defaults.
| | 04:00 | So if you click on this Open Preferences Folder
button then that will open up your Preferences window.
| | 04:06 | Now, I'm on a dual-monitor system and my
Preferences window opened on the other monitor, so I'm
| | 04:10 | going to go over here and drag it
across so you can see where that's located.
| | 04:14 | Now I have multiple versions of CINEMA 4D
installed on this system, and so I've got different
| | 04:19 | Preferences folders.
| | 04:20 | Now, I'm working in the Preferences folder
for CINEMA 4D 14 right now, and that's the
| | 04:24 | version that I'm working in.
| | 04:25 | If I twirl that open, I could see that I've got
a prefs subfolder, and in that prefs subfolder
| | 04:31 | are all my preferences.
| | 04:33 | Now, if I want to get back to the factory
defaults, I can delete this entire prefs folder and
| | 04:37 | then relaunch CINEMA 4D, and I'll be back
right to the factory default settings.
| | 04:43 | So those are the main application preferences.
| | 04:45 | Remember, there's a lot of preferences there.
| | 04:47 | The most important thing to remember about
them is, don't change anything unless you know
| | 04:51 | exactly what it does.
| | 04:53 | And if you do change something, only change
one thing at a time, and make careful note
| | 04:57 | of what the original setting was.
| | 04:59 | That way you can get back
to where it was before.
| | 05:01 | Of course, if you do mess something up,
you can always take the nuclear option and blow
| | 05:06 | your preferences out by deleting the
Preferences folder on your computer.
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|
|
2. Objects and HierarchiesUnderstanding the importance of object hierarchy| 00:00 | CINEMA 4D, more than any other application,
is entirely dependent on the relationships
| | 00:06 | between objects in order for it to function.
| | 00:09 | It's absolutely crucial that you understand those
relationships before moving on with CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:15 | There are three primary relationships in CINEMA 4D
between objects and it's parent, peer, and child.
| | 00:20 | And there really is no better
example than our own solar system.
| | 00:23 | Now, in this animation you can see we've
got a sun, each of the planets lined up in
| | 00:29 | rings outward from the center.
| | 00:31 | The sun is the parent of the entire solar
system, and each of the planets are children
| | 00:37 | of that sun object. And then each of the
planets in turn are peers of one another.
| | 00:42 | Some of the planets have moons.
| | 00:44 | The moons are children of the planets,
and the moons are peers of one another underneath
| | 00:49 | each of those planets.
| | 00:51 | That really is a great illustration of how the
parenting relationships behave inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:57 | The sun moves around the galaxy, towing along
all the planets, but the planets themselves
| | 01:01 | can move independently of the sun as
long as they travel with the sun.
| | 01:07 | The same goes true for the
moons surrounding the planets.
| | 01:09 | The planets themselves circle the sun.
The moons travel along with them in their own
| | 01:14 | orbits as children of those planets.
| | 01:16 | And yes, I do believe Pluto is a planet,
contrary to the scientific community.
| | 01:21 | I have no basis for that.
| | 01:23 | It's simply belief in Pluto.
| | 01:25 | So, let's move over to CINEMA 4D and take a look
at this relationship in a little more detail.
| | 01:30 | It's not important how I
created these objects right now.
| | 01:33 | What I want you to focus on is
the relationship to one another.
| | 01:37 | Here in the Object Manager, I've
got a whole bunch of things listed.
| | 01:40 | Let's twirl close the Camera Parent.
| | 01:41 | And right now we're
looking through the camera.
| | 01:43 | If I hit play in the interface right here,
you can see the exact same animation with
| | 01:48 | all the text elements that
we saw in the movie example.
| | 01:53 | Now, let's zoom in a little bit closer here.
| | 01:57 | You can see, as we pull out, the planets themselves
are orbiting around this central figure of the sun.
| | 02:04 | Now, in our hierarchy here, in the Object Manager,
we've got some very important lines here that
| | 02:09 | describe the relationship
between these objects.
| | 02:12 | So over here on the left is
the object hierarchy line.
| | 02:16 | It goes off the very top of the Object Manager,
and this indicates the root level of the hierarchy.
| | 02:20 | Now, below these objects are their children.
| | 02:23 | So for example, if I twirl close the Solar Parent,
I've just hidden all the children below it.
| | 02:28 | If I twirl it open again,
I've revealed all those children.
| | 02:32 | Now, the sun is a child of the Solar Parent.
| | 02:34 | The Solar Parent is at the very center of
the solar system, and the sun is a child at
| | 02:39 | the very center of that Solar Parent.
| | 02:42 | The Mercury Parent is at the
center of the world as well.
| | 02:46 | However, Mercury is offset from that Solar Parent,
and it's offset the distance of its orbit.
| | 02:53 | Let's scrub to the point
where they're all lined up.
| | 02:55 | And so you can see that the object that is
moving Mercury is this Mercury Parent, and
| | 03:00 | it orbits around the center of the sun the same way
that Mercury orbits around the center of the sun.
| | 03:05 | So in order to establish this relationship,
I had to create a parent-child relationship
| | 03:09 | between Mercury and this null
object that is Mercury's parent.
| | 03:13 | And I did the exact same
thing for each of the planets.
| | 03:16 | This object called a Sweep NURBS is what's
creating the white line that's surrounding
| | 03:20 | the sun in the orbits of each of the planets.
| | 03:22 | So, let's take a look at the Earth system.
| | 03:26 | If I scroll down here, you can
see that I have an Earth Parent.
| | 03:30 | It's at the center of the solar
system, right in the middle of the Sun.
| | 03:34 | The Earth local parent is at the center of the
Earth, but it's offset relative to its parent.
| | 03:40 | And then the Moon Parent is at the center
of the Earth as well, but the moon itself
| | 03:45 | is offset, and so I have the
ability to rotate that Moon Parent.
| | 03:49 | So, I will hit the letter R on the keyboard.
| | 03:52 | I can now grab the Rotate tool, and I can
use these things called Axis Bands to rotate
| | 03:57 | the moon around the Earth.
| | 03:59 | So, you can see that the orbit is
determined by its relationship to its parent.
| | 04:05 | Let's take a look at one more example.
| | 04:08 | Underneath the Mars
Parent, Mars has two moons.
| | 04:11 | I think they're called
Phobos and Deimos, I believe.
| | 04:14 | And they are two little potato-shaped moons
that are orbiting right around the planet.
| | 04:19 | Let's uncheck the Active Camera icon.
| | 04:21 | Let's twirl open the Camera Parent
and uncheck the Active Camera icon.
| | 04:25 | You get this little swoopy animation.
| | 04:27 | Now we're looking through the editor camera,
and I can zoom in on that without messing
| | 04:31 | up my camera animation.
| | 04:33 | Let's zoom in on Mars, which is
this little red planet right here.
| | 04:37 | And now I can orbit around.
| | 04:38 | I'm using the 1, 2, and 3
keys to do my navigation.
| | 04:41 | So within the Mars Parent, the Mars
Parent is at the center of the world.
| | 04:46 | It's off camera right now.
| | 04:47 | And you can actually see, this little blue
indicator tells me that the thing I have selected
| | 04:51 | is off camera in that direction.
| | 04:53 | Now, the Mars null object is the parent
of both the Mars planet and the moons.
| | 05:00 | Now, underneath that Mars planet parent is
the moon parents, and the moon parents are
| | 05:06 | at the center of the world as well.
| | 05:07 | And these two moon parents are
peers of one another underneath Mars.
| | 05:13 | They're also children of the Mars object.
| | 05:16 | So they're peers of one
another, and they're children of Mars.
| | 05:19 | The same thing goes for the Mars planet.
| | 05:21 | It's a peer of these guys.
| | 05:22 | They're at the same level of the hierarchy.
| | 05:24 | Now, if I twirl them open, each of these
Mars moon parents has its own moon--Phobos and
| | 05:30 | Deimos, unless I got that backwards.
| | 05:33 | And as I rotate the Mars moon 1 Parent,
I can grab the Rotate tool by hitting R on the
| | 05:39 | keyboard, and I can grab that Y-axis band and I
can rotate that around the center of Mars.
| | 05:46 | Why does this all work?
| | 05:47 | This all works because of a very important
concept, and that's the concept of relativity.
| | 05:52 | Now, let's make a new document--Command+N
or Ctrl+N on the keyboard--and talk about
| | 05:56 | that concept of relativity.
| | 05:58 | It's very, very important, and directly related
to those parent, peer, and child relationships.
| | 06:02 | I'm going to add a new object to the scene.
| | 06:04 | Let's add a cube.
| | 06:06 | Then I'm going to add a second object.
Let's add a sphere.
| | 06:08 | So, I click and hold on the cube and drag to the
right until I find the sphere, and I let go.
| | 06:15 | Now, when you add objects to CINEMA 4D, they
show up in exactly in the center of the world.
| | 06:19 | Now these two objects are
right inside of one another.
| | 06:21 | You can see, as I hover around, it's trying to
decide which one I want to try and select.
| | 06:26 | I normally select objects inside of the Object
Manager so I know exactly which one I'm getting.
| | 06:31 | So, I'm going to click on the sphere, and
let's move the sphere outward away from the
| | 06:37 | cube and just grab the
red axis handle for that.
| | 06:41 | This red axis handle allows me to
move the sphere along the X axis.
| | 06:46 | In order to parent these objects up, I'm going to
take the sphere and drag it on top of the cube.
| | 06:51 | You see how the icon changes.
| | 06:53 | When I let go, the sphere is now a child of
the cube, and you can see that it's indented.
| | 06:58 | They are no longer at the
same level of the hierarchy.
| | 07:01 | Now, if I select the cube and hit R on the
keyboard to bring up the Rotate tool, I can
| | 07:06 | grab that rotate axis band and drag them.
| | 07:09 | You can see that the sphere now orbits
around the center of that cube along with it.
| | 07:14 | And if I grab the sphere, I can
still orbit the sphere independently.
| | 07:18 | I can also move the sphere around.
| | 07:21 | I'll undo that: Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
| | 07:24 | Now, there's a very
important concept about relativity.
| | 07:28 | Let's take a look at the
properties for the spheres.
| | 07:29 | Let's select the sphere.
| | 07:31 | Let's raise this up just a bit.
| | 07:33 | The Attribute Manager shows me the
properties for the sphere itself.
| | 07:37 | We've got Basic, Coordinate,
Object, and something called Phong.
| | 07:40 | Let's look at the Coordinate
properties for the sphere.
| | 07:43 | The Coordinate properties of a sphere show
me the location of the sphere relative to
| | 07:49 | either the parent or the center of the world.
| | 07:53 | Right now, the parent for the sphere is the cube,
and it happens to be at the center of the world.
| | 07:58 | So, the value that I'm seeing here, -432, is
exactly where the sphere is. Watch this.
| | 08:04 | I'm going to take the cube and move it on
its X axis away from the center of the world.
| | 08:10 | Now, I can see that the X axis
value for the cube is set to -300.
| | 08:16 | Let's make the math easy.
| | 08:17 | Let's make it -300 exactly.
| | 08:20 | Now I just highlighted that text
and then typed in the values.
| | 08:23 | On the sphere--let's select that--
| | 08:26 | you can see it still shows us the exact same
value that we had in there before, -432, even
| | 08:31 | though I know that it's moved over.
| | 08:33 | That's because this value
is relative to the parent.
| | 08:36 | If I take the sphere out of the hierarchy
by clicking on it and dragging down in the
| | 08:40 | Object Manager, now they're at the same level.
| | 08:43 | Look what happened to
the value for the sphere.
| | 08:46 | It inherited that additional 300 units
on the X axis, and now its value is -732.
| | 08:54 | That's because it took the 300 distance from
the center of the world to the center of the
| | 08:58 | cube, plus the distance from the
sphere to the center of the cube.
| | 09:01 | So, it inherited that value.
| | 09:03 | That's really important to understand,
that objects inherit values from their parents.
| | 09:08 | Let's see what that means for scale.
| | 09:09 | I'm going to delete these two objects,
and then I am going to add a cube again.
| | 09:13 | And let's add this time a pyramid.
| | 09:17 | So, the pyramid object is right
down here. I will add that.
| | 09:21 | And you notice they show up in
the center of the world again.
| | 09:23 | Let's take that pyramid, and I'm going to
drag it on the positive X axis this time.
| | 09:28 | So now they're side by side.
| | 09:29 | Let's take the pyramid and
parent it to the cube. Oops!
| | 09:32 | I missed that time.
You can drag it right onto there.
| | 09:35 | Now, you can see that it's indented.
| | 09:37 | Scale is a really important thing to keep in mind
when you're working with parents and children.
| | 09:43 | And remember, they inherit their values from the
parent. And Scale can be a really tricky thing.
| | 09:48 | As a general rule, I only ever change the
Scale value here in the Coordinate properties
| | 09:54 | when I'm animating.
I never use that to model.
| | 09:57 | And the reason is that let's say, for
example, I want to make this cube taller.
| | 10:02 | I'm going to take my pyramid out of the
hierarchy, and I make the cube taller by changing the
| | 10:06 | Y value here from 1 to 2.
| | 10:09 | Now, my cube got taller, and I can put my
pyramid back into the cube hierarchy.
| | 10:13 | Now, when I select the cube and look
at it, its value says 1 by 2 by 1.
| | 10:18 | When I select the pyramid and look at its
scale value, it's set to 1 by 0.5 by 1.
| | 10:24 | That's because it is roughly half the size of
this pyramid based on the scale relativity.
| | 10:30 | Let's grab the Rotation tool
by hitting R on the keyboard.
| | 10:33 | If I rotate this pyramid--I'm going to grab
the Y axis band and rotate the pyramid around
| | 10:39 | its Y axis--everything looks normal.
| | 10:41 | Now, watch what happens when I grab the X axis
band and rotate the pyramid around the X axis. Whoa!
| | 10:50 | My pyramid has become distorted.
| | 10:52 | That's because it's trying to rotate through
the Y value scale that it's inheriting from
| | 10:57 | its parent, and so it's being distorted
along the Y axis relative to the parent.
| | 11:04 | Now, it's very important that you keep that in mind
as you're working with your object relationships.
| | 11:10 | Children inherit the Scale value from their
parent, and that Scale value gets translated
| | 11:15 | down through the hierarchy and can cause weird
distortions in your objects when they animate.
| | 11:20 | Object relationships really drive all of the
functionality inside of CINEMA 4D, and it's
| | 11:25 | really important to get a handle on
understanding them before you move on.
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| Creating objects and changing parameters| 00:00 | The Attribute Manager is really the central
clearinghouse for information about the objects
| | 00:04 | and tools that you're using
during your working process.
| | 00:07 | It's really important to get comfortable
with understanding how it functions and how to
| | 00:11 | move around in it.
| | 00:13 | Let's add a cube to the scene.
| | 00:15 | And when I add a cube, you could see the
Attribute Manager immediately changes from the project
| | 00:18 | settings to the cube properties.
| | 00:21 | And let's raise this up here a
little bit so we can see it better.
| | 00:24 | Now, the Attribute Manager has some sections.
| | 00:27 | We've got Basic, Coordinate, Object, and Phong.
| | 00:30 | The Basic property show us the name of the
cube, and you could see it's a cube there.
| | 00:34 | And I can change the name of that cube here by
highlighting the text and calling it something different.
| | 00:40 | And when I hit Return, you could see that the name
has now changed in the Object Manager as well.
| | 00:45 | I can also change it here in the Object Manager by
double-clicking on the cube, and I'll change it back to Cube.
| | 00:50 | And you can see it
changes and updates down here.
| | 00:54 | The Visible in Editor and Visible in Renderer
pulldowns relate to this middle column of
| | 00:58 | the Object Manager and these
two gray dots right here.
| | 01:01 | We'll talk more about those in just a moment.
| | 01:03 | Use Color allows you to
override the default color here.
| | 01:06 | It's not the same as adding material;
| | 01:08 | it's just the way of changing the
display color here in the Editor window.
| | 01:11 | And you can tell it to Use Color Automatic,
which if it has a material, it'll use the material
| | 01:17 | as opposed to the color set here.
| | 01:18 | You can have it on all the time.
| | 01:20 | And now this cube will be
white, even if I render it.
| | 01:22 | If I hit the Render in active view button,
you could see that the cube is now white.
| | 01:27 | I'll hit the letter A on the
keyboard to redraw the window.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to change that back to Off
to get it back to the default color.
| | 01:35 | And the Enabled checkbox relates
to this little guy right here.
| | 01:39 | If I turn this off down here in the Attribute
Manager, the cube is now gone from the scene.
| | 01:43 | It's not deleted;
| | 01:44 | it's just disabled, and you could see
that that green checkbox is not active.
| | 01:49 | If I turn that back on, now my cube reappears.
| | 01:51 | Now this only exists for what
are called parametric objects.
| | 01:56 | Next up is something called X-Ray mode, which
is really important for the modeling process.
| | 01:59 | If I turn that on,
my object becomes translucent.
| | 02:02 | It's not translucent in the
rendering, only here in the Editor window.
| | 02:05 | Let's turn that back off.
| | 02:07 | Next up is the Coordinate properties.
| | 02:08 | We talked a lot about that earlier.
| | 02:10 | This shows us the relative values for
our object's location in the world.
| | 02:15 | So it's either relative to the
parent or to the center of the world.
| | 02:19 | The Object property show us the modifiable
properties of the object that we have selected.
| | 02:23 | Now, in the case of the cube, we can see that we can
change the size and something called segments.
| | 02:28 | We can also activate
Separate Surfaces and Fillet.
| | 02:31 | Now, these values are what define the shape of
the cube, and they're preprogrammed to have
| | 02:35 | the cube show up this way.
| | 02:36 | Let's add a cone to the scene.
| | 02:38 | Now, I can't see my cone
because it's inside the cube.
| | 02:40 | Remember, they all show up
at the center of the world.
| | 02:42 | So let's turn the cube off by
disabling its green checkbox.
| | 02:46 | Now I can see this cone here
in the center of the world.
| | 02:49 | Now, the cone has a very different
set of properties than the cube did.
| | 02:52 | You notice if I click on the cube,
it only has basic coordinate and object.
| | 02:56 | The cone has those three plus some others, and
the object properties are different because
| | 03:01 | a cone is defined differently geometrically.
| | 03:04 | It has a top radius, which controls the points
on the cone, and I can change the value here.
| | 03:08 | I could make that five. I can input numbers or I can
use the scrubber to click and drag and then change that radius.
| | 03:15 | You can also change the bottom radius
and make the cone fatter or skinnier.
| | 03:19 | I could change the height of
the cone to make it taller.
| | 03:22 | I can also change something called the
Segments, and we'll talk more about the segments when
| | 03:25 | we get down to modeling in points, edges, and
polygons, which are the building blocks of objects.
| | 03:30 | The Caps control whether or
not the object has a cap on it.
| | 03:33 | If I used the 3 key and orbit around,
you can see I've got a cap on the bottom.
| | 03:37 | If I uncheck Caps, you can see now I have
a hollow cone as opposed to a solid cone.
| | 03:42 | And if I go to the Object properties and
adjust the Top Radius outward, you can see that my
| | 03:46 | cone is now a tunnel.
| | 03:48 | It goes all the way through. It's a tube.
| | 03:50 | So let's Shift+Command+Z or
Shift+Ctrl+Z to get our view back to the default.
| | 03:55 | I could also go to the View option and
change to Frame Default to get our viewport back
| | 04:00 | to its default orientation.
| | 04:02 | Now, the last thing that's common to both the cube
and the cone is this little word here, Phong.
| | 04:07 | And the Phong option refers to this tag here.
| | 04:11 | Now, the Object Manager is divided into three
columns: you've got the Object column, the
| | 04:15 | Status column, and the Tag column.
| | 04:18 | The tag column shows us the tags
that are applied to our object.
| | 04:21 | Tags are used to modify objects in a variety of ways,
and there are dozens and dozens of different tags.
| | 04:27 | The Phong tag controls the smoothing, or how
light falls across the surface of an object.
| | 04:32 | Generally speaking, it's on
for all parametric objects.
| | 04:35 | Now, across the top of the Attribute Manager
are the modes, and we can select different
| | 04:40 | modes for our Attribute Manager.
| | 04:41 | Right now, we're in Object mode.
| | 04:42 | I can switch it to Tool mode and it's going to show
me the tool that I currently have selected here.
| | 04:47 | This is just sort of a manual way of doing
something the Attribute Manager does automatically.
| | 04:52 | If I click on the object, you can
see it jumps back to Object mode.
| | 04:55 | If I click on the tool, it jumps to Tool mode.
| | 04:57 | So I generally never use that Mode pulldown.
| | 04:59 | The User Data option is an advanced feature that
allows you to add your own custom information to objects.
| | 05:05 | Now next to the User Data is this black arrow.
| | 05:07 | These black arrows are navigation arrows.
| | 05:09 | So, if I click it, I can navigate back to
the most recent thing that I had selected.
| | 05:14 | I can also go up.
| | 05:16 | And from the level that this object was in
the scene, the only place to go up from there
| | 05:21 | is the project level, and you can see
it's taken me to the Project Settings.
| | 05:24 | So if I hit back, it takes me
back to the selected object.
| | 05:28 | The search field allows you to search for
strings of information, either in the objects
| | 05:33 | or in your parameters.
Uncheck that and click back on the cube.
| | 05:38 | The Lock option allows you to lock the
Attribute Manager, so I can click on that Lock option
| | 05:42 | and now I can select the cone.
| | 05:44 | That becomes very important for
certain types of modeling objects.
| | 05:47 | I'll unlock that.
| | 05:48 | Don't forget to unlock
that; that's a big gotcha.
| | 05:50 | A lot of people will lock the Attribute Manager
and then not understand why they're not able
| | 05:54 | to see the properties for their objects.
| | 05:56 | And you've got to remember to unlock that again.
| | 05:59 | And you can also grab a new Attribute Manager
by clicking on this and if I click on that,
| | 06:04 | that pops open a new Attribute Manager window.
| | 06:06 | And now I have an Attribute Manager that's
locked to the cube, and so I can click on the
| | 06:10 | cone and I can compare the
options between the two.
| | 06:13 | You can see that I only have these four
options, and I have one, two, three, four, five, six
| | 06:18 | options for the cone.
| | 06:20 | I can always close that Attribute Manager up,
and there's no limit to how many Attribute
| | 06:24 | Managers you can have open at a time.
| | 06:26 | So the most important thing to remember about the
Attribute Manager is that it is a modal manager.
| | 06:31 | It changes modes depending
on what you have selected.
| | 06:33 | So if you get lost, you can always just click on
the thing that you want to see the properties
| | 06:37 | for and the Attribute
Manager will change right back.
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| Object categories: Comparing active and passive objects| 00:00 | There are a wide array of objects that can
be created with CINEMA 4D, but regardless
| | 00:05 | of what they do, objects all fall into two
broad categories in CINEMA 4D: passive objects
| | 00:10 | and active objects.
| | 00:12 | Passive objects--cubes and null objects and that sort
of thing--don't do anything when we add them to the scene.
| | 00:18 | They just sit there.
| | 00:19 | No animation is created, no
magical powers, nothing like that.
| | 00:23 | They simply sit there doing what
they do, which is being passive.
| | 00:27 | Active objects, on the other hand, create
something when they're added to the scene.
| | 00:31 | Now, usually that's in conjunction with a passive
object, but sometimes that's not the case as well.
| | 00:36 | Active objects will almost always utilize some sort
of passive object to generate some sort of effect.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to add a cube to the scene, and a
cube is a prime example of a passive object.
| | 00:47 | When I add it to the scene, it doesn't do
anything; it just sits there being a cube.
| | 00:51 | Now if I click and hold on this, the most
important passive object is something called a null.
| | 00:56 | Just because an object is passive
does not mean that it's not powerful.
| | 01:00 | One of the awesome things about a null object
is that it can be used to organize your scene,
| | 01:04 | but also to do generate animation effects,
and to create special types of relationships.
| | 01:09 | So what I mean by that is let's say for
example, I wanted to have this cube orbit around a
| | 01:14 | central location.
| | 01:15 | I could take the cube and move it on its
positive X axis and then I can parent it to the null.
| | 01:21 | When I do that, if I select the null object
now and hit R on the keyboard to bring up
| | 01:24 | the Rotation tool, I can now see that the
cube orbits around that central location.
| | 01:30 | Now, that's something that wouldn't be
possible without that null object.
| | 01:34 | And that's really the power of all of the objects in
CINEMA 4D is that they can be combined together.
| | 01:39 | Let's delete these two objects and start over.
| | 01:41 | Now I'm going to add an
active object to the scene.
| | 01:43 | So let's go to the Simulate menu and go to
Particles and add something called an Emitter object.
| | 01:49 | Now the Emitter object has a
green icon associated with it.
| | 01:52 | There is a little patch of green right there.
| | 01:54 | That indicates that the emitter object is
a generator object, and the generators are
| | 01:57 | all active objects.
| | 01:59 | If I hit play, you can see that now it is without
any modification from me, spitting out particles.
| | 02:06 | I'm going to stop playback by
hitting F8 on the keyboard.
| | 02:10 | That's really the magic of the Emitter and
a lot of the active objects is that they do
| | 02:13 | things automatically on their own.
| | 02:16 | But one of the things you'll notice about
the Emitter, if I orbit around here a little
| | 02:19 | bit so I can see the particles, I'm using the 1, 2,
and 3 keys on the keyboard to navigate around.
| | 02:25 | Now the thing you'll notice about the Emitter
object, if I click the Render in Active View
| | 02:28 | button, you'll notice that I am not seeing
any particles; even though this shows that
| | 02:31 | they're there in the scene, I don't see them.
| | 02:33 | That's because even though the Emitter is
an active object, it still need some passive
| | 02:38 | objects to spit out in
order for it to be effective.
| | 02:40 | So let's add a passive object to the scene.
| | 02:42 | I'll click and add a pyramid; that sounds good.
| | 02:45 | It's kind of big right now
compared to the size of the emitter,
| | 02:48 | so let's hit T on the keyboard to use the
Scale tool. And I'm going to click anyplace
| | 02:52 | in the gray area and drag down to the left and make
that pyramid nice and small compared to the emitter.
| | 02:59 | Now that I've got that pyramid nice and
small, let's make it a child of the emitter.
| | 03:03 | I'll click and drag the pyramid
on top of the Emitter object.
| | 03:06 | Now when I hit play, it looks like nothing has
changed. That's because there is a very important
| | 03:11 | setting on the Emitter object, and that's
the case for a lot of the active objects.
| | 03:15 | Oftentimes there is a setting that you need
to change in order to make the properties
| | 03:21 | that it's generating visible.
| | 03:22 | In the case of the emitter, when I select
it, underneath the Particle Options at the
| | 03:27 | very bottom is Show Objects. When I turn
that on now I suddenly see the objects that
| | 03:33 | the emitter is spitting out.
| | 03:34 | When I hit play, you can see that those
objects are being spat out of the emitter.
| | 03:41 | So active objects and passive objects are
the two broad categories in CINEMA 4D, but
| | 03:45 | they really don't exist in a vacuum.
| | 03:47 | Many times you'll be combining them
together to get the results you're looking for.
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| Object subcategories: Explaining object types| 00:00 | CINEMA 4D has two broad categories
of objects: passive and active.
| | 00:05 | Within those categories are a whole bunch of
subcategories that really make up the body
| | 00:10 | of objects that you're going to be using
on a regular basis inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 00:15 | First up is the most important object, which
I think is the null object. And I'll click
| | 00:19 | and hold on the Primitive Objects, and you can
see there's the null right up there at the top.
| | 00:23 | And when I add that to the scene, a null object
is simply a location in space, an axis point,
| | 00:29 | and there's no geometry
associated with it at all.
| | 00:32 | It's just an empty axis, and that really is
the most powerful thing in the application
| | 00:37 | because it can be used for a whole bunch of
different purposes, as you'll see throughout the course.
| | 00:42 | Next up are the primitive icons, and if I click
and hold on the cube, you can see all these
| | 00:45 | other light-blue icons here.
| | 00:48 | The Primitive Objects are all light blue, and
Primitive Objects are also known as parametric objects.
| | 00:54 | Let's add a disc to the scene for example.
| | 00:57 | And the reason they are called parametric
objects is because the parameters have been
| | 01:01 | predefined by the software
makers and they can be changed.
| | 01:05 | If I click on the disc and go to the Object
Properties, you can see that there is properties
| | 01:09 | that can be changed by sliders. And these are
parameters, and that's why they call it a
| | 01:13 | parametric object.
| | 01:14 | And so for example, I can adjust the Inner Radius
and expand it, instead of a disc, make it a hoop.
| | 01:20 | I can expand the Outer Radius.
| | 01:22 | I can also change the segments.
| | 01:24 | I can also change the orientation.
| | 01:26 | So there are properties, or parameters, that
you can change, and these are defined by the
| | 01:30 | software and they are parametric objects.
| | 01:33 | Next up are Polygonal Objects, and Polygonal
Objects can be generated from parametric objects
| | 01:38 | or they can be manufactured on their own.
| | 01:41 | For example, to turn this disc from a
parametric object into a polygonal object, all I need
| | 01:46 | to do is to click this icon right
here, which is the Make Editable button.
| | 01:51 | I can also hit the letter C on the keyboard.
| | 01:53 | If I click this, the icon
for my disc is changed.
| | 01:56 | The other thing you'll notice is
that I've lost the parameters for it.
| | 02:00 | I now only see the Basic,
Coordinate, and Phong.
| | 02:02 | My Object Properties are gone. The parameters
can no longer be changed, and you'll notice
| | 02:07 | also that the icon for the disc is changed.
| | 02:09 | It now shows a little blue triangle, and
that indicates that it's a polygon object.
| | 02:14 | It's made up of polygons.
| | 02:15 | The parameters can no longer be changed.
| | 02:17 | That's not to say you can't do things with it,
and you can't model it and you can't change it;
| | 02:20 | you just can't do it with sliders.
| | 02:23 | Next up are Spline Objects.
| | 02:24 | Let's delete both the null
and the disc from the scene.
| | 02:27 | And the Spline Objects are a special type of
object that are both primitive and free-form.
| | 02:34 | So for example, I can make a
spline that is shaped like star.
| | 02:37 | When I add that to the scene,
I get a star-based spline.
| | 02:41 | Now splines are not polygons
and so they cannot render.
| | 02:45 | The Spline Objects exist to
create shapes, and also animation.
| | 02:50 | But this star is a parametric object
in that I can change the parameters.
| | 02:54 | For example, I can change
the Inner and Outer Radius.
| | 02:59 | I can also change the Twist.
| | 03:01 | I can adjust the number of points on it.
| | 03:03 | So there's a wide variety of things I can do.
I can adjust the Plane and change it so
| | 03:07 | it's going along the floor.
| | 03:09 | So that's a spline
primitive object, or a parametric.
| | 03:12 | Le's delete that star and take a
look at the free-form splines.
| | 03:15 | If I grab a B-Spline for example, I'm going to
switch to the top view by middle-mouse-clicking.
| | 03:21 | And I middle-mouse-clicked once and then
I middle-mouse-clicked in the top view.
| | 03:26 | Now in order to draw out a B-Spline, I'm going to click
once over here and then click again and click again.
| | 03:30 | You can see that a B-Spline starts to draw
a path based on the points that I click.
| | 03:35 | And it's different than a Bezier Spline, and we'll get
more into that in the spline portion of the course.
| | 03:41 | Next up are the Operator Objects.
| | 03:43 | And let's delete this spline, go back to the
perspective view, and take a look at the Operator Objects.
| | 03:49 | If I click and hold on this purple icon here,
these are a bunch of different Operator Objects.
| | 03:54 | Now, Operators work on their parent or their
peer, and deformers are the prime example of
| | 03:59 | Operator Objects.
| | 04:00 | The Operator Objects will take a primitive
object or a polygon object or some other type
| | 04:05 | of passive object and then
modify it nondestructively.
| | 04:09 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 04:10 | With the Bend object--I'll
add a bend to the scene.
| | 04:12 | Now the Bend object is a deformer, and it
doesn't do anything in the scene until it encounters
| | 04:16 | another passive object,
like a cube for example.
| | 04:19 | So let's add a cube to the scene.
| | 04:22 | Because the Bend object is an operator,
it works on its parent or its peer.
| | 04:26 | So let's take the Bend
and parent it to the cube.
| | 04:30 | Now when we take the Bend deformer and
adjust its Strength under its Object Properties,
| | 04:35 | you'll see that it starts to bend.
| | 04:37 | I'm scrubbing back and forth between those.
| | 04:39 | One of the things you'll notice
is that the cube isn't bending.
| | 04:42 | That's because of a very simple rule that
you have to remember when you're working with
| | 04:45 | polygonal objects or objects that are made up of
polygons. Even though the cube is parametric,
| | 04:49 | it still has polygons.
| | 04:51 | That rule is that a single
polygon cannot be bent.
| | 04:54 | It can be twisted, but it can't be bent,
meaning that the edges of the polygon can't deform.
| | 05:00 | So in order to get this cube to look like
it's bending, I have to add more polygons
| | 05:04 | along its Y axis.
| | 05:06 | So if I click on the cube and go to the Y
Segments and adjust it to say 20, now suddenly
| | 05:12 | I've got a cube that is much more flexible.
| | 05:14 | So if I go to the Bend deformer and adjust
the Strength, you can see that I've got a
| | 05:19 | great deal of flexibility in that cube now.
| | 05:21 | I can adjust the Angle on the Bend deformer
and have it do some really interesting things.
| | 05:27 | Next up are the Generator Objects.
| | 05:28 | Let's delete the cube and take a
look at the Generator Objects.
| | 05:32 | Generator Objects have green icons.
| | 05:34 | There's a bunch of
different types of generators.
| | 05:36 | The one we're going to take a look at
now is something called an Extrude NURB.
| | 05:39 | If I let go on the Extrude NURB
object, it doesn't do anything.
| | 05:42 | A Generator Object needs to have a child or
multiple children to generate some sort of result.
| | 05:48 | So in the case of the Extrude NURB,
the icon tells you what it needs.
| | 05:53 | It actually has a little white line there
indicating that it needs a spline in order to extrude.
| | 05:58 | So let's go to the Spline primitives, and
let's add that star again that we had before.
| | 06:03 | Now the Extrude NURB is a generator, so it needs a
child in order to generate some sort of results
| | 06:07 | So let's take the star and drag
it on top of the Extrude NURB.
| | 06:11 | Instantly, you'll see that the star has now
been extruded, or thickened, along the Z axis,
| | 06:16 | and that's really what the Extrude NURB does,
is it takes pads and extrudes them, creates
| | 06:20 | polygons based on their shape.
| | 06:23 | Let's delete that Extrude NURB and talk about
another very important type of operator object,
| | 06:28 | and that's called the effector.
| | 06:30 | Now if you have the MoGraph module, which is
part of the CINEMA 4D Studio bundle or Broadcast
| | 06:35 | bundles, then you'll be able to follow along.
| | 06:37 | If not, just try and
comprehend what's going on here.
| | 06:40 | I'm going to add a cube to the scene and the
MoGraph module has a series of effectors.
| | 06:45 | If I go down to the Effectors submenu, I can go to, say,
the Formal Effector and add that to the scene.
| | 06:51 | Now, nothing is happening.
| | 06:53 | The Formal object has a purple icon.
| | 06:55 | That tells me that it's an operator.
| | 06:57 | That means that I have to either use it as
a peer of another object or as a child of
| | 07:01 | another object in order to get it to work.
| | 07:03 | So let's take the Formula and drag it
on top of the cube to make it a child.
| | 07:08 | Now if I hit play, nothing really happens.
| | 07:10 | That's because on the Formula Effector, there's a very
important attribute under the Deformer properties.
| | 07:16 | We have to change the Deformation from Off
to Object and when I do that, now suddenly
| | 07:22 | the Formula Effector is modifying the cube.
| | 07:25 | What it's doing is it's animating the scale
of the cube over time. Let's hit pause.
| | 07:32 | So now under the Properties for the Formula
Effector, if I click on the Effector property,
| | 07:37 | you can see that there is the formula being
used to modify the cube, and if I go to the
| | 07:41 | Parameter, these are the
parameters that are being modified.
| | 07:44 | Now if I turn off Scale, I can
have it just move on the X axis.
| | 07:48 | So let's crank that up so
you can really see that.
| | 07:50 | So now when I hit play, you'll see that
it's going to oscillate along that X axis.
| | 07:54 | And so those effectors can be
used to modify regular objects.
| | 07:57 | They can also be used to modify MoGraph objects as
well, and that's really where their power comes from.
| | 08:02 | So let's delete that cube
and talk about Scene Objects,
| | 08:05 | and Scene Objects are things like lights and
cameras and floors and the kinds of things
| | 08:11 | that make up the scene
that your objects exist in.
| | 08:14 | And so their icons are pale blue, and they are divided
into three icons here with subicons underneath.
| | 08:21 | If I click and hold on the Floor
Object, there's a bunch of things.
| | 08:24 | These are all environmental objects, things
like skies and actual Environment, a Physical
| | 08:29 | Sky, which is a special sky generator.
| | 08:31 | Each of these serves a different purpose,
but I'm going to add a Floor Object for now,
| | 08:35 | and you'll see that the Floor Object
doesn't look all that impressive.
| | 08:38 | It's just a plane that seems to
end right here in the Camera view.
| | 08:41 | But when I render--I'll click the Render
Inactive View button--and it goes off to infinity.
| | 08:46 | That's the power of the Floor.
| | 08:48 | It's a procedural object that generates
polygons infinitely in two directions.
| | 08:51 | I'm going to hit A on the keyboard to redraw
the screen, and I'll delete the Floor Object.
| | 08:58 | Next up are the Materials, and that's a
very special type of object in C4D.
| | 09:02 | I'll add a cube to the scene, and the cube
renders as just the default gray because it
| | 09:06 | has no material applied to it.
| | 09:08 | If I go to the Material Manager, I go to Create
and then New Material, what I get is a Material
| | 09:15 | icon, and that Material icon
has its own set of parameters.
| | 09:17 | And I can change the color of those, but
before we do that, let's take it and drag it from
| | 09:22 | the Material Editor onto the cube.
| | 09:24 | And that Material icon now affects the cube.
| | 09:28 | If I select that and I can change the colors,
you'll see the colors of the cube change as well.
| | 09:33 | So that's a very quick overview of the
different types of subobjects in CINEMA 4D.
| | 09:38 | The most important thing to remember about
them is that they don't exist alone, generally speaking.
| | 09:43 | They are designed to be used in concert
with one another to produce amazing results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting objects with the Selection tool| 00:00 | Before you can get started creating and
modeling objects in CINEMA 4D, you really have to get
| | 00:05 | hold of the Selection tool.
| | 00:07 | The Selection tool is the counterpoint to the
Move, Scale, and Rotate tools, and it allows
| | 00:12 | you basically to select objects.
| | 00:14 | That seems like a simple and obvious thing,
but there are some subtleties to it.
| | 00:18 | I have here a scene full of a whole of bunch
of cubes, and they're just kind of arranged
| | 00:22 | around. And I'm using the 3 key to orbit around my
scene to show you kind of what's going on here.
| | 00:28 | I'm in the Selection tool now, and it defaults
to something called the Live Selection tool.
| | 00:33 | If I click and hold on that, there are
three other Selection tools as well.
| | 00:36 | I'm going to highlight this double line here
and then when I let go, I now have all my
| | 00:41 | selection tools visible on
one little floating palette.
| | 00:44 | I can always close that up at any time and
get back to it by clicking and holding and
| | 00:48 | highlighting that double line again.
| | 00:49 | So let's leave that palette right there.
| | 00:52 | The Selection tool allows you to
select objects in the Editor window.
| | 00:56 | What I mean by that is if I click
on a cube, I've just selected it.
| | 01:01 | Now if I click and drag, I'm selecting multiple cubes,
lots of cubes. This is called painting a selection.
| | 01:06 | And you can see that I've
selected a whole variety of cubes.
| | 01:09 | In fact, let's back out a bit and take a
look at the cubes that we have selected.
| | 01:14 | You can see that we've selected
all through the scene cubes.
| | 01:18 | This is based on the Selection tool passing
across the objects as I was painting with it.
| | 01:23 | That is the Live Selection tool.
It allows you to paint a selection.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to switch to the Rectangular Selection
tool, and the Rectangular Selection tool allows
| | 01:31 | you to click and drag to draw a selection.
| | 01:33 | And every time I do that, I end up with a new
selection of objects based on where my rectangle covers.
| | 01:41 | The Lasso Selection allows you to draw a lasso much like
you would in Photoshop; it's a free-form lasso tool.
| | 01:48 | And you can see it gives me this great little
overlay to show me where my lasso is going.
| | 01:52 | So I can see what sorts of
objects fall within it.
| | 01:56 | I can grab that one right there.
| | 01:58 | I'll deselect by drawing
the lasso anywhere else.
| | 02:02 | If I grab just that one object, you'll
see that now it selected that one cube.
| | 02:07 | I am going to click and drag over that guy
and let go and you can see, as I let go, it
| | 02:12 | selects both of those cubes.
| | 02:14 | The Polygon Selection tool is like the Lasso
tool except that instead of drawing a free-form
| | 02:19 | hand, it draws in straight line.
| | 02:21 | So I click once and each time I click,
it's going to create another side to that polygon,
| | 02:25 | which simply means a
shape with multiple sides.
| | 02:28 | When I let go, it ends up drawing
a selection around those objects.
| | 02:33 | So I can click and make
multiple selections like that.
| | 02:37 | Now one of the cool things about the Selection
tool is let's say you get a cube in there that
| | 02:40 | you know you don't want.
| | 02:41 | If I click on the Live Selection tool and I
realize I don't want this particular cube,
| | 02:46 | I can hold down the Ctrl key to
remove objects from the selection.
| | 02:50 | The rule is, Shift adds to the
selection; Ctrl removes from the selection.
| | 02:55 | The last thing I want to talk about is
something called Only Select Visible Elements.
| | 02:59 | That's going to be really
important when you're modeling.
| | 03:01 | Let's make a new scene: Command+N or Ctrl+N.
| | 03:04 | And I'm going to add a sphere to the scene.
| | 03:07 | And I'm going to make that sphere editable
by clicking on the Make Editable button.
| | 03:13 | I can't see the polygons yet that make up that
sphere because I need to go into Polygon mode.
| | 03:17 | So if I click on the Polygon mode button, I
now see the polygons that make up that cube.
| | 03:21 | If I switch to the Live Selection tool,
I can paint a selection across the surface of
| | 03:26 | that cube, make it any shape I want.
| | 03:29 | Now, the thing you'll notice is that when I
painted that selection, if I orbit around
| | 03:33 | my sphere, you see that it did not select
anything on the backside, and that's where
| | 03:38 | Only Select Visible Elements comes in.
| | 03:40 | If I turn that off, now when I paint a selection,
if I orbit around, you can see that it's selected
| | 03:46 | corresponding polygons that were
directly opposite the field of view.
| | 03:50 | So if I click in this view right here,
it's like it's drawing a straight line down through
| | 03:54 | the sphere from the point of view of the camera, and you
can actually see that line going right down through.
| | 03:59 | So Only Select Visible Elements is an incredibly
important tool when it comes down to modeling.
| | 04:04 | So those are the basics of the Selection tool.
| | 04:07 | It's got a lot of other options that will
make your modeling process that much easier.
| | 04:11 | Take some time and study it before
moving on with CINEMA 4D practice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a model with primitives and nulls| 00:00 | The process of creating models in CINEMA 4D
can be incredibly complex or amazingly simple.
| | 00:06 | It really depends on the type of object and how
much detail or realism that you're going for.
| | 00:11 | Normally, I'd be starting this process with a
sketch, but I'm actually starting off with
| | 00:15 | the finished model, because I want you all
to understand and see the type of hierarchy we're going to be building.
| | 00:21 | I think it's going to be easier to understand where
we're going for if you can see the objects themselves.
| | 00:24 | So what I've got here is a very simple flying
saucer and I've got two null objects as parents:
| | 00:31 | one that's at the ground level and one
that's in the center of gravity of the saucer.
| | 00:35 | And then I've got something called an Array
Object for the legs; and then I've got the
| | 00:40 | antenna, which is sticking out at the top; and
then I've got the cockpit, which is a sphere
| | 00:45 | and another object underneath
it; and I've got the body.
| | 00:48 | And when I twirl open the body,
the body contains all those other components.
| | 00:52 | Now the way I've organized this hierarchy is based
on my idea of how I'm going to be animating it.
| | 00:57 | And we'll talk more about that at the end
of this movie, organizing the hierarchy.
| | 01:00 | But really the important thing to
understand is what we're going for.
| | 01:03 | So let's start off with the Body object.
| | 01:05 | We're going to be creating a body
out of something called an oil tank.
| | 01:08 | So let's make a new scene and let's
start off by making an oil tank.
| | 01:13 | If we click and hold on the primitive object,
you'll see there is the Oil Tank. And the Radius
| | 01:18 | I'll leave at 100 and I'll
change the Height to be 50.
| | 01:24 | And what that does for me is that gives
me an object that is much flatter, like the
| | 01:28 | body of a flying saucer.
| | 01:30 | So let's zoom in here just a bit.
| | 01:32 | Now the Oil Tank is going to become the body
of our ship, and you'll see that the edges
| | 01:37 | are really sharp, and so I wanted a little
bit more of a twilight feel to it, so we
| | 01:41 | need to round off this edge.
| | 01:42 | But rather than try and model this in,
we're going to use another object to create a rounded
| | 01:47 | bead around the edge of this ship.
| | 01:49 | So if I click and hold on these
guys, a Torus object will do nicely.
| | 01:52 | A torus is a fancy way of saying a donut.
| | 01:54 | And so when I first add that to the scene,
if I back out a little bit, you can see that
| | 02:00 | the donut is much larger than
my Oil Tank originally was.
| | 02:03 | So what I need to do is use the Scale tool.
| | 02:05 | So if I hit the letter T on the
keyboard, I get the Scale tool.
| | 02:09 | Now I can scale that down until
it's just touching the outer edge.
| | 02:13 | Now, these little handles here can be used
to change the shape and if I click and drag
| | 02:18 | those, even if I have the Scale tool, when
I click and drag those handles, I can grab
| | 02:23 | that and make it much, much smaller.
| | 02:25 | I think that's looking
pretty good right there.
| | 02:27 | Now I can use the Scale tool again to scale
it down till it matches up with the edge.
| | 02:32 | If I zoom in a bit, you can
see what's going on here.
| | 02:36 | Now, a lot of times it's very important to
look at your object from other angles.
| | 02:39 | And so I'll middle-mouse-click and look
at it from the top view, and I'll zoom in.
| | 02:44 | I'll click and drag right
there and drag right there.
| | 02:47 | And if I deselect, you can see that I've got
little bit of a gap between there. And so I'll
| | 02:52 | take that torus, hit T on the keyboard again
to get the Scale tool, and scale it down until
| | 02:56 | there's just a little bit of overlap.
| | 02:58 | I don't want to go in too far. I want to have it
just be overlapping just a bit. And now
| | 03:02 | I've got that lined up nicely.
| | 03:04 | Now that I've got the Oil Tank and the torus
lined up, I can parent those two together.
| | 03:09 | Let's do a quick save.
| | 03:10 | I'll go to the File menu and do a Save As.
And in the project files, in ch02, I'm going
| | 03:17 | to call this one flying saucer working.
| | 03:22 | So now that I've saved that file out and I
can move on to adding the extra details on
| | 03:27 | the saucer. So the next thing I want to add,
if we go back to our reference model, are the
| | 03:32 | little bits that go around here, these
little guys that are highlighting white.
| | 03:36 | And these are just simple capsules that are
being arranged around the body using the Array
| | 03:40 | Object, and that's what
this thingy array does.
| | 03:43 | I've changed the name of it and called it
thingy array, but it's really an Array Object.
| | 03:47 | And we can use the array to create a
circular arrangement of objects around the ship.
| | 03:53 | So let's switch back to our scene.
| | 03:54 | Go to Window and then go
to flying saucer working.
| | 03:58 | And I'm going to middle-mouse-click
again to get back to the Perspective view.
| | 04:03 | Now let's add a capsule to the scene, and the
capsule is a little bit too big, so let's
| | 04:07 | scale it down. Again, T on the keyboard to
bring up the Scale tool and then scale it way down.
| | 04:12 | Now, I know from experience that I want to be
able to rotate this capsule underneath the array.
| | 04:18 | In order to do that, I need to have the
capsule as a child of a null object.
| | 04:22 | So let's add a null object and parent the
capsule to the null, and then let's add an
| | 04:28 | Array Object and parent the null to the Array.
| | 04:31 | When we do that we end up with an array of
these little capsules all around our ship,
| | 04:37 | and that's being controlled by the Array Object.
The number of copies controls how many there
| | 04:43 | are, and the Radius controls
where they are spread to.
| | 04:46 | So let's create about 23 copies,
| | 04:48 | sounds about right.
That will give us 24 total items.
| | 04:53 | And now we can use the Radius.
| | 04:55 | Let's drag that in, go in to right about that
far, and now I want to take the Array Object
| | 05:02 | and raise it up. And I want to raise it up
until those guys are about halfway out of
| | 05:06 | the surface of the ship.
| | 05:09 | Now what I can do is take the Capsule, select
it, and use the Coordinate Properties in the
| | 05:14 | Capsule and adjust the Pitch.
| | 05:16 | And I can change that Pitch
to about 75 degrees or so.
| | 05:22 | Let's call it yes, 75; I
think that will look good.
| | 05:25 | And what that does, as you can see, is that
aligns those little capsules up around the
| | 05:30 | edges of the flying saucer.
| | 05:32 | And now we've got a great little
surface detail with not a lot of effort.
| | 05:37 | So let's take this array and parent it under
the Oil Tank, and our body is just about done.
| | 05:42 | Now, what we need to do is make the cockpit
that's going to be on top of the saucer, and
| | 05:46 | that's going to be a simple sphere object.
| | 05:47 | So if we go to the Primitives and grab a
Sphere--and it's going to start out really big, so
| | 05:53 | we need to make it smaller, so let's get the
Scale tool out again, T on the keyboard, and
| | 05:57 | scale it way down.
| | 05:58 | It seems to be about right.
| | 06:02 | And then let's raise it up on the Y axis.
| | 06:05 | Now, this is a situation where I need to
middle-mouse-click and switch over to one of the
| | 06:09 | other orthographic views.
| | 06:10 | I want to look at it from approximately
the side, so let's zoom in. There we go.
| | 06:16 | And now I'm going to scale down again.
| | 06:17 | Hit T on the keyboard and drag to get that scale
down, and that's pretty good right about there.
| | 06:22 | Now I can take it and drag it up until it's
about halfway exposed out of the top of the ship.
| | 06:30 | Now this is going to be the cockpit, but if you
switch back, we can see that on the sides of the ship--
| | 06:35 | let's deselect that--
| | 06:36 | you notice that there is a little bit of a
straight edge where that cockpit meets the ship.
| | 06:41 | It will look a lot more interesting if we
had a little bead that would show up right
| | 06:45 | there on the edge.
| | 06:46 | So let's grab the torus that we had made from
before--rather than starting with a new torus
| | 06:50 | it's easier to grab this one and change it.
| | 06:52 | So let's select that, hold down the Ctrl key,
and then click and drag a copy of that torus
| | 06:58 | up near the Sphere.
| | 07:00 | Now what we've got is a second torus in the
scene and if we drag that up, you can see that
| | 07:05 | there is our old torus there
and here's our new torus.
| | 07:07 | So let's switch again to the orthographics
and bring the right-hand view full screen.
| | 07:12 | And let's raise that up until it lines up roughly
with the intersection of the sphere and the ship.
| | 07:19 | Now, we can use the Scale tool, select the
letter T, click and drag any place in the
| | 07:23 | gray area to scale that thing down.
| | 07:26 | Now when you get in a little bit smaller,
let's go back to the Perspective view and
| | 07:31 | then take a look at how big that is.
| | 07:33 | Now, sometimes it's hard with this little
overlay, the selection overlay that appears,
| | 07:37 | if we deselect that, you can see that
we've got it a little too big still.
| | 07:42 | And so let's take the
torus--sorry, wrong torus.
| | 07:45 | Let's grab that torus and go to the Object
Properties, and let's adjust the Ring Radius.
| | 07:51 | The Ring Radius controls
how big the whole thing is.
| | 07:54 | The Pipe Radius controls how
thick the pipe is that surrounds it.
| | 07:59 | So let's go to the Pipe Radius and
now I'll make that just a--oops!
| | 08:01 | That's a little too big.
I accidentally click and held.
| | 08:03 | So I'll hit Command+Z or Ctrl+Z,
and now we can just use that to arrow up.
| | 08:08 | And that's a little too thick, so let's take
that slider right there and just drag it down
| | 08:13 | just a bit, and that looks
pretty good right about there.
| | 08:16 | You notice I'm not using numbers for this
process, and that's because I'm really trying
| | 08:20 | to get you into the idea of just
eyeballing things at this point.
| | 08:24 | There's times to be numerically precise,
and there's times where you can just free-form
| | 08:28 | and really have fun with it,
and that's what this process is all about.
| | 08:31 | So there's the cockpit.
| | 08:32 | Let's take the Torus and
parent it to the Sphere.
| | 08:35 | Now we can make our antenna. The antenna
is going to be simply just another sphere.
| | 08:39 | So let's take this existing sphere, hold
down the Ctrl key, and drag a copy up.
| | 08:45 | Now the Torus that's there we don't need
anymore, so let's select that and delete it.
| | 08:48 | And this is going to be our antenna base.
| | 08:50 | Now so that we don't get it
confused with the other sphere,
| | 08:53 | let's double-click on it
and call it Antenna base.
| | 08:57 | Now the Antenna base is going to be in the
same location but just above, so let's raise
| | 09:01 | it up and in the side view,
| | 09:05 | let's get it so that it intersects
with the top of the other sphere.
| | 09:10 | Now we can use our Scale tool and
scale it way down again. There we go.
| | 09:15 | And now we've got this nice little dot
sticking out at the top of our cockpit, and I think
| | 09:20 | that's pretty good.
| | 09:22 | Now we can make the antenna itself, and the
way we'll do that is by using a Cone Object.
| | 09:27 | So let's click and hold on the cube and select
the cone, and the cone now is going to become
| | 09:32 | our antenna. So it's too big of course.
| | 09:34 | So let's start off by making it smaller.
Click and drag with the Scale tool and now we can
| | 09:41 | raise it up on the Y axis.
| | 09:43 | I just hit E on the keyboard to bring up the
Move tool, and we can drag it straight on up.
| | 09:49 | That's pretty good right there. And I'm going to
middle-mouse-click again to get to the side view.
| | 09:55 | Let's take an opportunity to save--Command+S
or Ctrl+S--and now we can go to the cone and
| | 10:00 | we can go to the Bottom Radius and scrub that
in until it's very, very thin. There we go.
| | 10:05 | And now we could take that and move it down.
Hit E on the keyboard to get the Move tool
| | 10:10 | and now we can insert that in right there.
| | 10:13 | You can see now we've got that
antenna sticking out of the top.
| | 10:16 | Now what we want to do is have an
antenna top, so let's take the antenna base.
| | 10:20 | Let's drag it right up here above
the cone and call it Antenna tip.
| | 10:24 | So now the Antenna tip needs to be at the
top of the Antenna and much smaller, so let's
| | 10:29 | switch back to the Side view and middle-mouse-
click again and drag that straight up on the Y axis.
| | 10:35 | Now you notice I'm being very
careful about which axis I do that on.
| | 10:38 | Let's drag it up there, and let's hit the T on the
keyboard and scale it way, way down. There we go.
| | 10:44 | And now we've got our antenna tip
right there at the top. Looking good.
| | 10:50 | Let's take those guys and parent the Cone
to the Antenna base and the Antenna tip to
| | 10:53 | the tip of the cone so we've got
that kind of hierarchy going on.
| | 10:56 | Now we can close that up and close that up.
| | 10:58 | Let's rename the Sphere and call it Cockpit,
and let's rename the Oil Tank and call it Body.
| | 11:07 | Now the last thing we need to do are the legs, and so
the legs are going to be a combination of objects.
| | 11:12 | So before we do that, let's add a new null
object to the scene, and that null object is
| | 11:16 | going to become our Ship Parent.
| | 11:18 | And that Ship Parent if I select all of these
objects and drop it underneath there, that
| | 11:23 | Ship Parent is at the center of gravity of
where the flying saucer needs to spin from.
| | 11:27 | So now when we take that Ship Parent and move
it around--I'll hit E on the keyboard--you can
| | 11:32 | see that the whole flying saucer
moves together. Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
| | 11:36 | Now, we don't want to be able to
see this for this next process.
| | 11:39 | We want to hide this in the scene, and that's
where this middle status column comes in.
| | 11:43 | These two gray dots in the middle column
of the Object Manager are the Visible in
| | 11:47 | Renderer and Visible in Editor icons, and if I
click twice on the top one, my ship disappears.
| | 11:54 | It's still there in the scene; all
I've done is hidden it from view.
| | 11:58 | So now we can draw our leg out.
| | 12:00 | So let's start off by making a nice
cylinder, and let's grab a cylinder.
| | 12:04 | It's going to be a little too big. So let's
use the Scale tool and scale it way down, and
| | 12:08 | then let's make it really thin.
| | 12:10 | Let's make the Radius of it about 1.
| | 12:14 | That's pretty good, and now we can
go back and grab another sphere.
| | 12:19 | So this sphere, now we are going to make the
little foot that's on the end of the cylinder.
| | 12:24 | But we don't need a whole sphere; all we
really need is a hemisphere. And so if we go to the
| | 12:28 | type under the Sphere Object Properties,
we can select Hemisphere and that gives us a
| | 12:32 | perfectly flat sphere.
| | 12:33 | Now, don't worry that the Sphere is hollow
underneath. We're not going to be seeing that
| | 12:36 | in our ship, so we're going
to just leave it as is.
| | 12:39 | So now if we take that Sphere and hit T on the
keyboard and use the Scale tool and scale it way down,
| | 12:44 | we end up with a nice little foot.
| | 12:46 | We could take that Cylinder, raise it up on Y,
just hit E on the keyboard and raise it
| | 12:52 | up, and now that becomes our leg.
| | 12:55 | Now we can add another null object to the scene,
and this is going to become our Leg Parent.
| | 13:02 | Let's rename that Leg Parent.
| | 13:06 | Now we could take the sphere and the cylinder
and parent them up, and now with our Leg Parent,
| | 13:11 | we've got a solid object
that we can move around.
| | 13:15 | Let's make our ship visible again by clicking
once on that gray dot, and now we've got our
| | 13:21 | ship ready to go.
| | 13:23 | In order to make copies of this Leg Parent,
we're going to use another array object and
| | 13:26 | so if we click on the Array Object--and let's take
the Leg Parent and parent it right up there.
| | 13:32 | And you see that we instantly get a
whole bunch of copies of that leg.
| | 13:36 | We really only need two other copies, so if we
go to the array object and change the number
| | 13:39 | of copies from 7 to 2, we end up with three legs.
And every great flying saucer only has three legs.
| | 13:46 | Now that's the awesome thing about them.
| | 13:48 | So now we could take the array and change
the Radius down until the legs are inside
| | 13:53 | the flying saucer, and that's a
pretty good range right there.
| | 13:56 | Now what we can do is take the whole flying
saucer and raise it up. So before we parent
| | 14:01 | the array up, let's take the ship parent and raise
it up on Y until the legs are inside the body.
| | 14:09 | Now you can see that our saucer is sitting on the
ground plane with our legs firmly embedded in it.
| | 14:14 | We can add one more null object and then we
can call that one ship uber. I like to call
| | 14:20 | things at the very top of the hierarchy uber,
which is part of my CINEMA 4D German heritage.
| | 14:26 | And I'll call the Ship and then I'll hit the
Option+U, in particular, an umlaut, and then u-b-e-r.
| | 14:31 | Now we can take this array, put it inside
the Ship Parent, and call it Leg Array,
| | 14:39 | and then take the Ship Parent
and put it inside the Ship uber.
| | 14:42 | And now we've got a way to make
our ship stand on the ground.
| | 14:45 | So now matter where we move that ship, we can
have it land on the ground firmly by just
| | 14:49 | changing the Y value of that
null object when we animate.
| | 14:54 | Let's save this, Command+S or Ctrl+S.
| | 14:56 | So that's really great look at the process for
creating a very simple model out of primitive objects.
| | 15:01 | As you can see, it wasn't that
difficult and really, it was a lot of fun.
| | 15:05 | The important thing is to have a clear
vision of what it is you're trying to create.
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