IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Rob Garott.
| | 00:05 | Welcome to CINEMA 4D Essentials:
Points, Edges, Polygons and Splines.
| | 00:09 | They are fundamental building
blocks that make up all 3D objects.
| | 00:12 | And understanding how they work will help create
just about any kind of object you could imagine.
| | 00:18 | First off, we'll look at the basic elements;
points, edges, and polygons, and some of the
| | 00:22 | key tools for creating and
manipulating models at the component level.
| | 00:26 | Next, we'll work with splines which are a lot
like the paths in programs like Photoshop,
| | 00:30 | Illustrator, and After Effects.
| | 00:32 | Then, we'll put all of those concepts to
work creating a 3D model of an audio speaker.
| | 00:36 | So let's get started with CINEMA 4D
Essentials: Polygons and Splines.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of lynda.com, then you've
got access to the exercise files for this course.
| | 00:05 | I'm working with them on my desktop and the
files are organized in the subfolders that
| | 00:08 | go with each chapter.
| | 00:10 | Inside each subfolder will be
the files used in that chapter.
| | 00:13 | You'll notice that the files in each chapter's
folder will be different based on the needs
| | 00:16 | of that chapter.
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1. The Basic Building Blocks of 3DUnderstanding points, edges, and polygons| 00:00 | All 3D objects, that is, objects that appear
to have dimension in a 3D application, at
| | 00:05 | their most fundamental level are made up of
something called points, edges, and polygons;
| | 00:11 | even parametric ones.
| | 00:12 | For example, I'll add a cube to the scene.
| | 00:15 | This cube is a parametric object, meaning
its code has been defined by the software
| | 00:19 | makers, and its parameters can be
changed via sliders and fields.
| | 00:23 | Even though this object is parametric, it's
still made up of polygons, points, and edges.
| | 00:28 | That's because the programmers have
customized these particular polygons, and points, and
| | 00:32 | edges to behave in
accordance with these sliders.
| | 00:35 | Now, I can convert the object from a
parametric object into a polygon object by clicking on
| | 00:41 | the Make Editable button.
| | 00:42 | And this is a lot like the
rasterizing process in Photoshop.
| | 00:45 | Take a type layer in Photoshop, you can
change the type, and the font, and the color, and
| | 00:49 | the size, and it's all resolution-
independent until you rasterize it.
| | 00:53 | When you convert it into pixels, then it opens
you up to a whole another range of possibilities
| | 00:58 | for filters, but you lose the
ability to change the font.
| | 01:02 | That's very much the same way it is
with parametric objects to CINEMA 4D.
| | 01:05 | When you make it editable, you gain the
ability to make a lot of modeling changes but you
| | 01:09 | lose the ability to make
those parametric changes.
| | 01:12 | So, let's make this object editable.
| | 01:14 | I just clicked on that, I could have also
hit the letter C on the keyboard, and you
| | 01:18 | can see the icon has changed from
a cube icon to a little polygon.
| | 01:22 | Now, that opens me up to being able to click
on these mode icons here and we've got Points,
| | 01:28 | Edges and Polygons as our available modes.
| | 01:31 | So, let's start off with the Points
which are the most basic element.
| | 01:35 | If I click on that, I now can see
points that make up my object.
| | 01:39 | Let's zoom in on that.
| | 01:40 | I'll hold down the 2 on the
keyboard, and zoom in a bit here.
| | 01:44 | Let's grab one of those points and just orbit
around it so we can see it a little bit better.
| | 01:48 | Now, the points are very, very small, and
I like to make them a little bit bigger.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to turn on a very important option.
| | 01:54 | I'm going to go to the Viewport
Options menu, and go to Configure All.
| | 02:00 | Now, in the Attribute Manager,
I see my Viewport Options.
| | 02:04 | Under the View panel, I'm going to go to the
Point Handle Size, and I'm going to change
| | 02:08 | the Point Handle Size from 3 to 9, and then I'll
change the Select Point Handle Size from 5 to 9.
| | 02:16 | What that does for me is that makes the Point
Handles very large, and you can see they're
| | 02:20 | much easier to see now.
| | 02:22 | The definition of a point is that it's
a location in space with no dimension.
| | 02:27 | Points themselves have no
dimension, but groups of points do.
| | 02:30 | So, for example, if I select this point, let's
grab the Selection tool and click on a single
| | 02:35 | point, that single point now, I can orbit
around that and I can move it with the sliders.
| | 02:41 | And you see when I move it, it
changes the shape of the cube.
| | 02:44 | I'll undo that, Ctrl+Z.
| | 02:46 | But, I can't rotate that single
point, because it has no dimension.
| | 02:50 | So, if I grab the Rotate tool by hitting R
on the keyboard, and if I click inside the
| | 02:54 | Rotate tool, anywhere where there's not
a axis band, I can freely rotate it.
| | 02:59 | But, you notice that nothing happens.
| | 03:02 | When I let go, it snaps
right back to that orientation.
| | 03:04 | Same thing goes if I add an axis band.
| | 03:07 | When I click and drag, I now can
rotate that point but nothing happens.
| | 03:12 | Let's hit the Spacebar to get back to the
Selection tool, and then grab more than one point.
| | 03:16 | I'll grab two points along the same edge.
| | 03:20 | You see that the axis handle has averaged to
the middle of this edge here, that's because
| | 03:24 | it's splitting the difference between
the locations of these two points.
| | 03:28 | Now though, I can scale, move, and rotate.
| | 03:32 | If I move these points, you
see the whole edge moves along.
| | 03:35 | If I rotate, you see that it
rotates both of those points.
| | 03:40 | And that's the difference between a
single point and a group of points.
| | 03:43 | I can rotate them around at different axes.
| | 03:45 | I can't rotate them around their common axis
though, because you see that has no dimension.
| | 03:51 | The most important thing to remember about points is
that when you move points, you're moving polygons.
| | 03:56 | Polygons and edges
cannot exist without points.
| | 03:59 | Let's move on to edges now.
| | 04:01 | An edge is a straight line
connected by two points.
| | 04:05 | So, let's click on the Edge mode, and you
see our points went away and we're left with
| | 04:09 | just the lines that make up this cube.
| | 04:12 | However, if we grab the Selection tool, click
on one of those lines, you could see I now
| | 04:17 | have that edge highlighted.
| | 04:20 | Edges are dimensional
only along their long axis.
| | 04:24 | For example, I can't rotate it around its
long axis, but I can rotate it around the
| | 04:29 | axis that's common to both
points at the end of the edge.
| | 04:33 | If I select more than one edge, let's switch back
to the Selection tool by hitting the Spacebar.
| | 04:37 | I'm going to hold down the Shift key and grab
two edges and you can see that it's averaged
| | 04:42 | the position of those edges.
| | 04:43 | If I grab an edge along the side here, now it
averages the position in three dimensions.
| | 04:50 | If I rotate those edges, I'll
just click in here and drag.
| | 04:53 | You can see I can really distort that
cube like crazy; Command or Ctrl+Z.
| | 04:59 | The most important thing to remember about
edges is that edges cannot be bent, because
| | 05:04 | it governs the behavior of a lot of
the modeling tools inside of CINEMA 4D.
| | 05:09 | The last thing we want to look at is polygons.
| | 05:12 | And this icon here is a polygon icon.
| | 05:15 | When I click it, my edge goes away,
and now I'm left with just polygons.
| | 05:19 | And when I move the mouse over, you can see that it
highlights different polygon sides of the cube.
| | 05:23 | Now, when I select that single polygon, I get
a polygon selection and I can rotate this.
| | 05:29 | Now, polygons can be scaled and rotated.
| | 05:32 | And remember, when you're moving a polygon, you're
moving the points around with it and vice-versa.
| | 05:36 | If you move points, you're moving polygons,
if you move polygon, you're moving points.
| | 05:40 | And the edges of course are
going along for the ride.
| | 05:44 | I can twist that, I can rotate it, I can scale
it, hit T on the keyboard, I can scale that
| | 05:48 | up or down, and that really allows me to do a lot of
interesting things with the shape of this cube.
| | 05:53 | I just hit Command or Ctrl+Z to
get back to the cube itself.
| | 05:57 | I want to get back to the idea of a single
edge not being able to be bent and translate
| | 06:01 | that into polygon land.
| | 06:03 | In terms of polygons, this single side of cube is
made up of four edges; one, two, three, and four.
| | 06:10 | Those edges cannot be bent individually, but
that polygon can't be actually bent, but it
| | 06:14 | can be twisted and that does
weird things to your model.
| | 06:17 | Let's switch back to Point
mode and grab a single point.
| | 06:20 | Let's hit the Spacebar to
get the Selection tool.
| | 06:23 | I'll just drag that straight up.
| | 06:25 | Now, when I drag that point straight up, you'll
see that my polygon that's on top of the cube
| | 06:30 | now becomes bent and twisted.
| | 06:33 | And you can see that from this angle here, I've
got a straight line going from here to here.
| | 06:38 | But, when I orbit around, I
can't see that line anymore.
| | 06:42 | That's because CINEMA 4D does not know how to
interpret that polygon in the Render Engine.
| | 06:46 | Let's orbit around to this angle here, and
click on the Render Inactive View button.
| | 06:50 | And when we do that, we're going
to see a break along that edge.
| | 06:54 | Now, that looks like a straight edge right
there, but if we orbit around, hold down the
| | 06:57 | 3 key and drag around here.
| | 06:59 | And we render from this angle, Command or
Ctrl+R, now we see we don't see that edge.
| | 07:04 | It looks smooth from this angle.
| | 07:06 | And that's because CINEMA 4D once again
does not know how to interpret that polygon.
| | 07:11 | That's why it's a really good idea in your
modeling process to keep an eye out for bent
| | 07:15 | or twisted polygons.
| | 07:16 | The more those you have in your object, the
more strange behavior you're going to get
| | 07:20 | when it comes to time for rendering.
| | 07:22 | Now that you understand the basic building
blocks of all 3D objects, there are some core
| | 07:26 | tools that can be used to
manipulate those elements.
| | 07:29 | We'll explore those in the next movies.
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| Using the Knife tool| 00:00 | Points, Edges, and Polygons are the fundamental
building blocks of all 3D objects, and those
| | 00:04 | building blocks can be manipulated using some
really important tools, the most important
| | 00:09 | of which I think is the Knife tool.
| | 00:11 | The Knife tool can be used to
create slices in your objects.
| | 00:14 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to add a cube to the scene, and I'm
going to make that cube editable by clicking
| | 00:20 | on the Make Editable button.
| | 00:21 | I can also hit the letter C on the keyboard.
| | 00:24 | Now, I'm going to switch into Point mode.
| | 00:26 | I almost always use the Knife tool in Point
mode, and there are some important reasons
| | 00:31 | for that in the behavior of the Knife tool.
| | 00:33 | There is three ways you
can grab the Knife tool.
| | 00:35 | I can go to the Mesh menu>Create tools and
select Knife, I can also hit the letter K
| | 00:41 | on the keyboard, or I can right-click.
| | 00:44 | Now let's go ahead and select the
Knife tool now and see how it works.
| | 00:48 | I'm in the Perspective window,
and I'm going to click and drag.
| | 00:52 | The way the Knife tool works in its
default state is a click and drag method.
| | 00:55 | So, if I click anywhere in the grey area, I
can drag across the cube, and when I let
| | 01:01 | go, that creates a slice through my cube that
lines up exactly from the camera's point of
| | 01:06 | view with that cube, and the
slice that travel through it.
| | 01:10 | Now, what's actually happened?
| | 01:12 | CINEMA 4D has taken that slice
and added points to my cube.
| | 01:17 | You can see I now have new
points there, there, and there.
| | 01:20 | If I orbit around my cube though, you notice
on the back side that the knife has not sliced
| | 01:25 | all the way through and that's
created something that is kind of evil.
| | 01:29 | Sometimes it can't be avoided,
but most of the time it can.
| | 01:32 | That evil thing is called an N-gon.
| | 01:34 | Now, N-gons aren't actually evil, I
just call them that to be dramatic.
| | 01:38 | But, what makes them evil is that you lose
control over how your objects break when they
| | 01:43 | transform and move.
| | 01:45 | Polygons come in three flavors;
triangles, quadrangles, and N-gons.
| | 01:49 | Quadrangles can be subdivided evenly.
| | 01:51 | They can even be converted into triangles.
| | 01:53 | But, N-gons are polygons that have more than
four sides, and they do weird things when
| | 01:58 | you're trying to form them.
| | 01:59 | What I mean by that is you'll notice this
polygon on the back side, there is an edge
| | 02:04 | here, there's an edge here, here, here,
and here, and that's five edges.
| | 02:09 | That's one-to-many for a square.
| | 02:11 | Now, what happens is when I go to move this
point right here, let's get back the Selection
| | 02:16 | tool and grab that point right there, when I
take that point and drag it on this axis,
| | 02:20 | what I end up with is that same
weird fall-off issue on this polygon.
| | 02:25 | CINEMA 4D does not know how to interpret this
deformation of this polygon and so it's going
| | 02:30 | to do weird things as I render.
| | 02:32 | You can see from this angle, it looks
like a straight edge through there.
| | 02:35 | From this angle, it looks smooth.
| | 02:36 | And so, if you were to animate around this
section, it would do very strange things in
| | 02:41 | the Render Engine.
| | 02:41 | So, the way you get around that is by
slicing all the way through your object.
| | 02:45 | Now, let's delete this
cube and start over again.
| | 02:47 | In fact, let's close this whole document up;
Command or Ctrl+W, and no, we don't want to
| | 02:52 | save it, and we're back
in a new fresh document.
| | 02:55 | Let's click on a cube to add it, make it
editable, and then go into Point mode.
| | 03:00 | Now, let's grab the Knife
tool the right-click method.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to right click.
| | 03:05 | I right clicked on the cube but I could
right-click any place in the editor window.
| | 03:08 | And this is a Contextual menu, and this
Contextual menu changes based on what mode you're in.
| | 03:14 | Different tools are available in different
modes and so this Contextual menu would change.
| | 03:18 | Now, because we're in Point mode, these are
all the tools that can be used with points.
| | 03:23 | So I'm going to select the Knife tool, and
when I let go of that, I now have the Knife
| | 03:27 | tool just as if I grabbed it from the menu;
much faster than going up and grabbing it
| | 03:31 | from the menu though.
| | 03:32 | Over in the right-hand side of the interface
in the Attribute Manager, you can see that
| | 03:36 | my Knife tool has some options, most important
of which are these guys; Restrict to Selection,
| | 03:41 | and Visible Only, and Create N-gons.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to uncheck all three of those.
| | 03:45 | Now, when I click and drag through my object,
let's orbit around and see what happened,
| | 03:50 | you can see that it actually
made a slice all the way through.
| | 03:54 | And that's really great because now I've got
nothing but quadrangles in my model and can
| | 03:58 | maintain that quadrangle efficiency all the
way through my modeling process this way.
| | 04:03 | Now, there's a much better way to use the
Knife tool, and that's called Loop mode.
| | 04:07 | Let's see how that works.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to undo; Command or Ctrl+Z.
| | 04:11 | And now, over on the Knife options,
I'm going to select Loop mode.
| | 04:15 | When I do that, I get a line
that draws around my object.
| | 04:19 | Let's zoom in here a bit.
| | 04:20 | Now, as I move the Knife tool up and down
these edges, you'll be seeing a white line.
| | 04:25 | Now, that white line is not drawing on my
screen here because of the screen capture
| | 04:29 | software that I'm using.
| | 04:31 | CINEMA 4D and the screen capture software
are not getting along very well and so it's
| | 04:35 | inhibiting the drawing of that line.
| | 04:37 | But, you'll be seeing a white line drawing around
your object, and that's indicating the loop.
| | 04:41 | Now, on my screen, you'll see four white dots,
and those white dots are telling me that the
| | 04:46 | Knife tool is going to cut all
the way around those edges.
| | 04:48 | Now, when I click, it just made
a cut right at that location.
| | 04:53 | And you can see that as I move around, I can
make multiple cuts around this object by clicking
| | 04:58 | on different lines.
| | 05:00 | Now, the reason I like to use the Knife tool
in this mode is because no matter what options
| | 05:05 | I have unchecked.
| | 05:06 | Even if I were to turn on Restrict to Selection
and Create N-gons, I can still use the Knife
| | 05:10 | tool in this mode.
| | 05:12 | Now, if I switch over to Polygon mode, in
Polygon mode, you'll see that I can make cuts
| | 05:18 | with this Knife tool in my cube
because I have nothing selected.
| | 05:23 | I'll use the Spacebar to get back to the
Selection tool and I'm going to make some selections.
| | 05:28 | Now that I have these selections made, if I
switch back to the Knife tool by hitting
| | 05:31 | the Spacebar, when I try to make a cut, notice
what happens; it only cut the selected polygons.
| | 05:37 | Now, the problem with that, if I make a cut
in there, now I've got my Snap settings on.
| | 05:42 | I accidently turned my snapping on right here.
| | 05:44 | If this happens to you, you can
turn it off by just clicking that.
| | 05:48 | That's going to make your
lining up a lot easier.
| | 05:50 | Now, if I make another cut there, you'll see
that what's happening is it's only cutting
| | 05:55 | this area right around
those selected polygons.
| | 05:58 | And you see the cut no longer
travels all the way around the object.
| | 06:01 | And that's really important to
notice because I've created N-gons.
| | 06:04 | If I hit the Spacebar and grab that polygon
right there, that's an N-gon and that's what
| | 06:09 | I want to try to avoid creating.
| | 06:11 | So, that's why I don't use the
Knife tool in Polygon mode very often.
| | 06:15 | I'd much prefer to use it in Point mode.
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| Working with the Extrude tool| 00:00 | When working in Points, Edges, and Polygons,
the Extrude tool allows you to create extrusions
| | 00:06 | or movement in the polygons as your object.
| | 00:09 | Now, let's see what that means.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to do my same trick here,
I'll add a cube and make it editable.
| | 00:14 | This time I'm going to
travel into Polygon mode.
| | 00:17 | Now, I'm going to use the Selection tool.
| | 00:19 | I'll just hit the Spacebar to grab the Selection
tool, and I'll grab a single side of the polygon.
| | 00:23 | When I do that, I right-click in the menu and I
have all these options available to me now.
| | 00:28 | The Extrude option is this guy right here.
| | 00:30 | I'll select that, and with the Extrude tool
active, if I click and drag any place that's
| | 00:35 | not on one of these handles, it's very important, don't
click on the handles, click away from the handles.
| | 00:41 | I'll click and drag.
| | 00:42 | When I do that, I'm now extruding.
| | 00:44 | I'm adding a layer of definition to this object
in a way that's different than the Knife tool.
| | 00:50 | Each time I click and drag,
I make a new extrusion.
| | 00:53 | If I click once, I deselect it.
| | 00:56 | Now, let's go back and undo that for a second,
and I will undo to get back all the way to
| | 01:00 | the default cube.
| | 01:02 | Let's switch back to the Selection tool, and
grab two sides of this cube, and I'll hit
| | 01:06 | the Spacebar again to get
back to the Extrude tool.
| | 01:09 | When I click and drag, it extrudes
these polygons in two directions.
| | 01:13 | Now, what happens though if I wanted to add
an extrusion that traveled around the sides
| | 01:18 | where these polygons were merged together?
| | 01:21 | That's where something called
the Maximum Angle comes in.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to undo that for a second.
| | 01:26 | You notice over here in the Extrude tool, let's
raise that up a bit, the Maximum Angle is set for 89.
| | 01:31 | That means anything less than 89 degrees,
CINEMA 4D is going to treat that as two extrusions.
| | 01:37 | And what it's referring to is the angle between the
polygons, the angle from this polygon to this polygon.
| | 01:44 | And I know because this is a
cube it's exactly 90 degrees.
| | 01:47 | So, because the Max Angle is set to 89 degrees,
when I click and drag, it's going to treat
| | 01:52 | these as two separate polygons.
| | 01:54 | Now, if I change the Maximum Angle from 89
to 91, now it's just one degree more, I know
| | 02:01 | that, that 91 is more than this angle here.
| | 02:03 | Watch what happens when I click and drag.
| | 02:05 | You can see that it extrudes that outward
creating this arrangement of polygons on the
| | 02:09 | top here, and that is a
really important behavior.
| | 02:13 | There's going to be times where you want to
make sure that you extrude around corners
| | 02:16 | and that allows you to do it.
| | 02:18 | There is one more really important option with
the Extrude tool, and that's Preserve Groups.
| | 02:23 | Let's see how that works.
| | 02:24 | I'm going to close this document up,
Command or Ctrl+W and don't bother saving it.
| | 02:28 | Let's get a sphere this time.
| | 02:31 | Let's make that sphere editable by clicking
on the Make Editable option, and let's go
| | 02:35 | into Polygon mode again.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to zoom in a bit.
| | 02:38 | Now, I'm going to grab just a few
polygons on the front of this sphere.
| | 02:41 | So, let's hit the Spacebar to get the
Selection tool, and just paint a selection around.
| | 02:46 | I'll just grab a bunch of polygons here.
| | 02:48 | Let's orbit around so we
can see those from the side.
| | 02:50 | Now, I'm going to right-click
and get my Extrude tool.
| | 02:53 | When I extrude outward, look what happens.
| | 02:56 | It extrudes out as one solid chunk.
| | 02:58 | Well, what happens if I wanted to extrude
each one of those polygons individually?
| | 03:02 | That's where Preserve Groups come in.
| | 03:04 | That's different than the Maximum Angle.
| | 03:07 | Because of the shape of the cube, the angle
from polygon to polygon is extremely low.
| | 03:12 | So, in order to get those polygons to
separate, I have to uncheck Preserve Groups.
| | 03:16 | So let's undo; Command or Ctrl+Z and
then let's uncheck Preserve Groups.
| | 03:20 | And now watch what
happens when I click and drag.
| | 03:23 | You can see that now it extrudes each of
these polygons individually creating a lot more
| | 03:28 | detail, and each time I drag, I can
create a new level of detail there.
| | 03:35 | The next thing I want to talk
about is the Create Caps option.
| | 03:37 | So, once again, I'm going to close this
document up, don't bother saving it.
| | 03:42 | And in a new document, I'm
going to create a plane this time.
| | 03:45 | And a plane object is just a flat arrangement
of polygons, and you can see it's laying flat
| | 03:50 | on the ground plane.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to make it editable,
and then go into Polygon mode.
| | 03:54 | Now, the way that the Extrude tool normally
behaves is that when you extrude something,
| | 04:00 | it's going to leave a cavity
where that extrusion happened.
| | 04:02 | So, let's see what that means.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to get the Selection tool, hit Spacebar, and
grab an arrangement of polygons here on this plane.
| | 04:10 | Let's orbit around so we
can see the underside.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to right-click
and get the Extrude tool.
| | 04:15 | And when I click and drag,
I'm dragging to the right now.
| | 04:20 | It's extruding outward along the polygons.
| | 04:22 | Now, you can see that it's left this cavity
here, and this cavity is where the polygons
| | 04:27 | used to be, and it's
added this level of detail.
| | 04:30 | Now, how did it know to do that?
| | 04:32 | First of all, all 3D applications have
something called a normal direction.
| | 04:36 | The normal direction is the direction that
the polygons are facing and it's along an
| | 04:39 | axis that's perpendicular to
the surface of the polygon.
| | 04:43 | In order for me to be able to see these
normals, I need to turn on an option.
| | 04:47 | I'm going to go to the Options
menu and go to Configure All.
| | 04:51 | And under the Attribute Manager now I see the
Viewport Options, and I am on the Display Section.
| | 04:56 | I'm going to turn on Normals.
| | 04:58 | When I do that, I now see these little white
lines extending up and those white lines tells
| | 05:02 | me what direction those polygons are facing.
| | 05:05 | If we look around underside, you can see that
those white lines don't extend in both directions.
| | 05:10 | This is the back side of the polygons, and
those are the front sides of the polygons.
| | 05:15 | And so, by dragging to the left,
you're extruding along the normal axes.
| | 05:18 | Now, the Extrude tool has a
really important option.
| | 05:21 | Let's right-click again and go back to
the Extrude tool to get to its options.
| | 05:25 | We're going to do Create Caps.
| | 05:27 | When I select Create Caps, because I had the
Extrude tool still selected, it filled in
| | 05:31 | the backside of those polygons.
| | 05:33 | Let's undo that and redo it again.
| | 05:35 | So, I'm going to undo and then I'll undo
to get back to my original flat plane.
| | 05:40 | When I use the Extrude tool now,
I'm going to turn on Create Caps.
| | 05:42 | So when I do it this time, you notice that
it automatically creates polygons along the
| | 05:48 | backside of that extrusion.
| | 05:49 | You can see I've created depth here, but I
filled in the hole on the backside automatically.
| | 05:53 | There's going to be a lot of
times when you want to do that.
| | 05:56 | For example, let's undo one more time.
| | 05:59 | If I want to add thickness to this entire
plane and have it become more of a rectangular
| | 06:02 | prism, I'm going to select all the polygons
and then grab the Extrude tool one more time,
| | 06:08 | and I'll leave Create Caps on,
and watch what happens.
| | 06:09 | I'm going to click and drag to the right and
I've created a rectangular prism, basically
| | 06:13 | a thick plane that now has
polygons on both sides.
| | 06:17 | So that Create Caps option is really useful.
| | 06:20 | So as you can see the Extrude tool allows
you to create dimension in your objects and
| | 06:25 | create unusual shapes by
extruding along the normal axis.
| | 06:29 | Next up, we'll take a look at the Extrude
Inner tool which is a variation on that idea.
| | 06:34 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Extrude Inner| 00:00 | The Extrude Inner tool is a variation on the
Extrude tool that allows you to create insets
| | 00:05 | of polygons on the surface of an object
without actually changing the shape of the polygon.
| | 00:10 | Let's see what that means.
| | 00:11 | So let's get our old buddy, the Cube, back
again and we'll make it editable by clicking
| | 00:15 | on the Make Editable Button and
let's travel into Polygon mode.
| | 00:19 | Now, I'm going to click
and select a polygon here.
| | 00:22 | Let's zoom in a bit.
| | 00:24 | Let's right-click and go to Extrude Inner
which is right below the Extrude tool.
| | 00:27 | The keyboard shortcut is I.
| | 00:28 | Now, with the Extrude Inner tool selected,
if I click anywhere that's not on one of the
| | 00:34 | handles and drag to the left or right, if I
drag to the right, it's going to go outward.
| | 00:38 | I don't want to do that.
| | 00:39 | I want to drag to the left and extrude inward.
| | 00:43 | And what that's doing is creating an inset.
| | 00:45 | Now, that allows me to combine
this action with the Extrude tool.
| | 00:48 | So, let's say I wanted to create
a little hole in this object.
| | 00:51 | I can grab the Extrude tool and then drag to the
left, and I'm creating a hole in the object.
| | 00:58 | So, you can see how useful that can be.
| | 00:59 | Now, if I want to inset that again, I'll hit I on
the keyboard to get back to the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 01:04 | I'll drag to the left and get that Extrude
Inner and then let's do another extrusion.
| | 01:09 | Hit the D on the keyboard and let's drag
to the right this time and get that out.
| | 01:14 | You can see now I've got this great little
inset here and that's really what the Extrude
| | 01:19 | Inner tool is all about, is
creating those kinds of insets.
| | 01:22 | Let's see what that looks like on a sphere.
| | 01:24 | Let's delete that cube and
let's add a sphere to the scene.
| | 01:28 | Let's make it editable, C on the keyboard, and now
we're automatically in Polygon mode right now.
| | 01:33 | And let's hit the Spacebar
to get the Selection tool.
| | 01:36 | Let's grab a bunch of these polygons.
| | 01:38 | Now, let's hit I on the keyboard
to get the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 01:42 | And let's click and drag to the left, and you can
see now what I've done is I've created that inset.
| | 01:47 | And now I can do another extrusion, hit
D on the keyboard, and now I can go in.
| | 01:51 | And then I can hit the letter I again, and do an
Extrude Inner and hit D again to extrude outward again.
| | 01:58 | You can see I've created a
great little seam on my object.
| | 02:00 | It's a great way to add detail to your objects if
you're building a spaceship or something like that.
| | 02:05 | You can really do a lot with this technique of
insetting and then extruding and insetting and extruding.
| | 02:10 | It's a great way to add definition
to the surfaces of your objects.
| | 02:15 | That's pretty much it for
the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 02:16 | It's a very simple tool to use,
but it's incredibly powerful.
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| Using Close Polygon Hole and Create Polygon| 00:00 | There are going to be a lot of times when
you're modeling in CINEMA 4D where you're
| | 00:04 | going to want to be able to close holes and
objects and there's a very special tool for
| | 00:08 | that, that can be useful in certain situations
; it's called the Close Polygon Hole tool.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to create a cube here, and let's
make it editable and get into Polygon mode.
| | 00:18 | Now, what I want to do is to just simply delete
one of the polygons on the side of this object.
| | 00:22 | So, let's hit the Spacebar to get to the
Selection tool, and click on one of the sides of the
| | 00:25 | cube and hit the Delete key.
| | 00:27 | You can see that opens up the side of
the cube, and creates this large hole.
| | 00:31 | If I right-click in the interface, I
can go to Close Polygon Hole tool.
| | 00:36 | When I hover over that cube side,
it gives me the option to close it.
| | 00:40 | When I click once, it closes up that hole.
| | 00:44 | Now, that's really all there is to it.
| | 00:46 | There is an option for the Close
Polygon Hole tool, Create Tri-/Quadrangle.
| | 00:50 | You want to generally leave that unchecked.
| | 00:52 | Most of the time when you use it, you're
going to be using it in a situation where you're
| | 00:55 | going to close up a very specific polygon.
| | 00:57 | One of the dangers of using this tool is when
you're on an object like a sphere, for example,
| | 01:02 | where you have to close up a
whole bunch of polygons at once.
| | 01:05 | Let's see what that means.
| | 01:06 | Let's delete that cube and let's go back
to our sphere and let's make it editable.
| | 01:11 | And we're here in Polygon mode already.
| | 01:13 | So let's hit the Spacebar, get the Selection tool
and grab some polygons and then delete them.
| | 01:18 | Now, we're left with this hole and we want to use
the Close Polygon Hole tool to close that up.
| | 01:24 | If we right-click and grab Close Polygon Hole,
and we hover over that, you see that it finds
| | 01:29 | the hole just fine, but when we click it,
we end up with this weirdly shaped polygon.
| | 01:33 | That's an N-gon and that's no good.
| | 01:36 | In this situation, we want to be really
careful about creating holes and objects like this.
| | 01:41 | If we try on the Tri-/Quadrangle Button, you
can see that's not going to do as much good.
| | 01:45 | I'll undo that, and I'll turn that button on.
| | 01:48 | And then when we hover over that hole and
click, you can see that it made a bunch of
| | 01:53 | triangles, but they're not really organized
that well and still creates this weird dimple
| | 01:57 | on the side of the sphere.
| | 01:59 | If I undo that one more time, a really
important thing to remember is that when you delete
| | 02:04 | polygons, you're not
necessarily deleting points.
| | 02:07 | So, if I go into Point mode, you can see all the points
that made up those guys are still available to me.
| | 02:14 | I can use those points to close
that hole up in a very specific way.
| | 02:18 | I can do that with the Create Polygon
tool, and let's see how that works.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to orbit around this guy so
I can see some very specific points.
| | 02:27 | I want to see these points right here.
| | 02:29 | Let's right-click and get Create Polygon.
| | 02:32 | Now, the Create Polygon tool works in a very
specific way, and there's a rhythm to it.
| | 02:37 | And when we're creating a quadrangle, in this
case, we're going to go from these four points
| | 02:41 | to create a polygon.
| | 02:41 | I'm going to go one, and I'm clicking one
time on each of the points, two, three, and
| | 02:47 | on the fourth one I go bum, bum.
| | 02:48 | And I always do that even
when I'm working by myself.
| | 02:51 | I go one, two, and you have to be very careful about
which points you're doing this on, three, b um, bum.
| | 02:58 | Now, the reason I say you have to be careful,
watch what happens when I click on the wrong point.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to go one, two, three, bum, bum.
| | 03:06 | It looks like I made the polygon in the right
direction, but when I orbit around, you can
| | 03:11 | see that, that polygon is actually stretched,
and I clicked on a point that was on the inside.
| | 03:15 | So, you have to be really careful
about which points you click on.
| | 03:18 | That's why I'll orbit around so
I can see that point isolated.
| | 03:21 | Let's undo that and do it again
; one, two, three, bum, bum.
| | 03:26 | Now, I can work my way around
with the Create Polygon tool.
| | 03:29 | One, two, three, bum, bum, one, two, three,
bum, bum, one, two, three, bum, bum; I think
| | 03:40 | you get the idea.
| | 03:41 | I can go all the way around with that
and close that sphere up completely.
| | 03:44 | Now, one of the dangers with the Create
Polygon tool is the idea of the normals.
| | 03:48 | And remember we talked about normals earlier.
| | 03:50 | Normal is an axis that extends outward from a polygon
based on the perpendicular angle to the surface.
| | 03:56 | The normal direction determines the
front side or back side of a polygon.
| | 03:59 | Now, when you're creating polygons with the
Create Polygon tool, you could be creating
| | 04:03 | polygons that are facing the wrong direction.
| | 04:06 | So, to find out, let's go to the Options menu
and go to the Configure All, and under the
| | 04:11 | Display options, let's turn Normals
on if it's not turned on already.
| | 04:15 | If we switch into Polygon mode and we select
the polygon, I'm going to hit the Spacebar
| | 04:20 | to grab the Selection tool.
| | 04:22 | You can see that when I click on those polygons,
check it out, they are not facing the same
| | 04:26 | direction as the rest of the polygons.
| | 04:29 | You can see that all the ones that I created
by hand are facing the wrong direction, and
| | 04:33 | that can be really problematic
when you're texturing or lighting.
| | 04:36 | So, rather than leave those, what I'll do is
select all the polygons and now I can really
| | 04:42 | see which ones are facing the wrong direction.
| | 04:43 | You can see if I orbit inside,
there's those lines facing inward.
| | 04:47 | I'll right-click and do a Align Normals.
| | 04:52 | And that forces the minority normals to conform to
the direction that all the other normals are facing.
| | 04:57 | So, both the Close Polygon Hole tool and the
Create Polygon tool are really important when
| | 05:02 | you're trying to close
up holes in your objects.
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| Working with the Bridge tool| 00:00 | The Bridge tool really
acts just like its name.
| | 00:02 | It allows you to create spans between
two different sections of polygons.
| | 00:06 | Now, I've got a very simple scene
file that we're starting with here.
| | 00:09 | It's just two cubes and they
are arranged along the X-axis.
| | 00:13 | What I want to be able to do is to create
a little bridge or span between these two
| | 00:17 | objects going this direction along the X-axis.
| | 00:20 | So, this is a multi-step process.
| | 00:22 | The first step in this process is that I need to
merge these two objects into a single polygon object.
| | 00:27 | So, to do that, I'm going to select both
objects in the Object Manager and I'll right-click.
| | 00:33 | And in the contextual menu that comes up,
what I want to do is connect both objects
| | 00:37 | and then delete the old objects.
| | 00:39 | So let's do a Connect Objects and Delete.
| | 00:42 | That leaves us with just a single object.
| | 00:44 | You notice our scene hasn't changed its
look but the Object Manager has changed.
| | 00:47 | We now have one polygon object
that contains all those polygons.
| | 00:51 | Now, we can use the Bridge tool to
bridge those two sets of polygons together.
| | 00:55 | Before I do that, I want to create
an inset on each of these faces.
| | 00:58 | So, let's grab each polygon.
| | 01:01 | So I've got the Selection tool active.
| | 01:03 | I'll grab that polygon and I'll hold down
the Shift key and I'll grab that polygon.
| | 01:06 | Now, let's right-click and
grab the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 01:09 | And this is great.
| | 01:10 | We can do the Extrude Inner tool at
the same time on both these polygons.
| | 01:14 | I'll click and drag to the
left to extrude inward.
| | 01:16 | Let's make it nice and thin. Here we go!
| | 01:19 | Now, what I want to do is to create a bridge
between these and there's a couple of different
| | 01:24 | ways I can do that.
| | 01:25 | I can bridge the two polygons, if I right-click
and go to the Bridge tool, if I click on these
| | 01:31 | polygons and go, boom, like that.
| | 01:33 | I've created a bridge.
| | 01:34 | Now, the problem with that bridge as you can
see is that it's twisted, it is not straight.
| | 01:39 | And I don't normally ever use the Bridge
tool in Polygon mode; I just wanted you to see
| | 01:43 | what would happen when you did.
| | 01:44 | I'll undo that, Command+Z,
and get back to where we were.
| | 01:48 | Now, the way I prefer to use
the Bridge tool is in Edge mode.
| | 01:51 | Let's delete those polygons leaving our holes
there, and let's now switch over to Edge mode.
| | 01:56 | I've still got the Bridge tool active.
| | 01:58 | If I can go from edge to edge, I'm going to
know exactly how I'm creating those polygons.
| | 02:03 | So, let's go from this edge
here and go to this edge.
| | 02:06 | This is where you've got to be really careful
about which edge you're actually selecting.
| | 02:09 | You can see that I wouldn't want
to do any of these other edges.
| | 02:11 | I want to go right to there.
| | 02:13 | You can see when I let go,
that creates a nice little span.
| | 02:16 | I'll do it from here to here, and then I'll
do it from here to here, and then I'll do
| | 02:20 | it from here to here. There we go!
| | 02:23 | And now you can see I've spanned
that gap with the Bridge tool.
| | 02:27 | That's really the beauty of it.
| | 02:28 | It allows you to quickly create a
closure between two sections of polygons.
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|
|
2. Working with SplinesExplaining spline types| 00:00 | In CINEMA 4D terms, a spline is simply a fancy
way of saying a path and you've probably worked
| | 00:05 | with paths already in programs like
Photoshop and Illustrator, and After Effects.
| | 00:09 | In CINEMA 4D, splines or paths are an
integral part of both modeling and animation.
| | 00:16 | At the technical level, a spline is simply
a collection of points that are connected
| | 00:20 | by the mathematical expression of a line.
| | 00:23 | Now, that expression can be
described in several different ways.
| | 00:26 | And that's really the beautiful thing about
CINEMA 4D compared to Photoshop, Illustrator,
| | 00:30 | After Effects, there is more than one
way to describe a path or a spline.
| | 00:35 | I'm going to switch to the Orthographic View.
| | 00:38 | Now, it's a very important rule of thumb, never
draw your splines in the Perspective View.
| | 00:43 | Let me explain why.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to get the Spline tools here, and
I've got the Free Hand Spline tool and it
| | 00:50 | works just like the Pencil
tool inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:52 | If I click and drag and draw a spline here in
this window, you can see that I did a pretty
| | 00:57 | good job of drawing that.
| | 00:59 | If I orbit around, you can see that I've got
the spline, it looks just like it did when
| | 01:04 | I drew it, but it's at a
weird angle to the world.
| | 01:07 | It's not very useful and it's going to be hard to
organize my scene around such a strange angle.
| | 01:12 | When you draw your splines, you want to draw
them in a very specific view and I almost
| | 01:16 | always draw my splines in one of the
Orthographic Views, either the top or the front.
| | 01:21 | So, let's try that again.
| | 01:22 | Let's undo, and let's switch
back to the Orthographic Views.
| | 01:26 | Let's do that in the front view.
| | 01:27 | I'm going to use that same spline.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to draw another little baby
duck shape like I had before. There we go!
| | 01:34 | Now, when I switch back to the Perspective
View, you can now see that I've drawn that
| | 01:39 | baby duck along the X-Y plane.
| | 01:42 | And that's very important, when it comes
time to extrude, this will extrude perfectly.
| | 01:48 | What I mean by that is, splines are an
important part of the modeling process but they don't
| | 01:51 | render on their own; they need some help.
| | 01:53 | And what they need help
from are NURBS objects.
| | 01:55 | Let's take a look at how to extrude this.
| | 01:57 | Now, before we do that, there's a very
important feature on the spline that we need to do and
| | 02:01 | that's the Close Spline option.
| | 02:02 | If I click on that, it's
going to close up my spline.
| | 02:06 | Let's take a look at that
tip of the baby duck's snout.
| | 02:09 | You can see that when I uncheck that.
| | 02:11 | That's where I stopped
drawing the spline and it's open.
| | 02:15 | When I click that, it's closed again.
| | 02:17 | Let's take a look at the Extrude NURBS object.
| | 02:19 | Now, when I click and hold on this icon,
it looks like a cube being tortured.
| | 02:24 | I want to grab the Extrude NURBS object.
| | 02:26 | The Extrude NURBS is a generator, and it
needs at least one child in order to extrude.
| | 02:31 | So, when I let go of that in the scene, nothing
happens, but if I take my spline, and I drop
| | 02:36 | it on to the Extrude NURBS making it a child,
I now instantly get a baby duck shape, and
| | 02:42 | this baby duck shape will render.
| | 02:44 | If I undo that to before when it's just the
spline, if I hit the Render and Active View,
| | 02:49 | you can see I get nothing.
| | 02:51 | But, if I take the spline and drop it on the
Extrude NURBS, when I render, I get a baby duck shape.
| | 02:56 | Now, it's not a very good baby duck shape, but
there are some great spline tools for shaping that.
| | 03:02 | Let's take a look at those now.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to navigate to the front view again,
and take a look at the points that make up
| | 03:08 | this baby duck shape.
| | 03:10 | Now, if I go to the Selection tool, and click
on a point, you can see that it's drawn my
| | 03:15 | point automatically at
something called Bezier spline.
| | 03:18 | Now, these behave just the same way they
would inside of Photoshop or Illustrator.
| | 03:22 | If I switch to the Move tool, I can now grab
the handles of this and smooth these shapes
| | 03:28 | out, and I can go in here and grab that one
and round it out a bit, and give a little
| | 03:33 | tail on the baby duck. There we go!
| | 03:37 | And grab that one, and smooth that section
out a little bit, and so, you can see just
| | 03:41 | the same way that you would in Illustrator.
| | 03:43 | If I want to break the handle and create a
odd shape on it, I can hold down the Shift
| | 03:47 | key and break that handle out this way.
| | 03:49 | Now, I'll undo that, because I don't
want to give my baby duck a gut there.
| | 03:53 | That would look kind of funny.
| | 03:55 | So, these tools are very similar to what
you'd experience in other applications.
| | 04:00 | Now, that's just what you get when you draw
something called a freehand spline; it leaves
| | 04:05 | you off in a Bezier spline.
| | 04:07 | Now, there's some other very
important spline types that you can use.
| | 04:11 | Let's take a look at those now.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to make a new
scene, Command or Ctrl+N.
| | 04:14 | And the next most important
type of spline is a B-spline.
| | 04:20 | When I let go of that, I've got this
funny looking squiggle as my icon.
| | 04:24 | Now, the way the B-spline works is that it
creates an arc based on three or more points.
| | 04:30 | So, the first time I click, I get a single
point, the second time I click, I get a straight
| | 04:35 | line, the third time I click, I get a smooth arc
based on the triangulation of these three points.
| | 04:42 | The fourth time I click, it uses the next
three points to create a smooth arc and it
| | 04:46 | always does that all the way around.
| | 04:49 | Now, the beautiful thing about B-splines is
that they're very hard to put a kink in.
| | 04:54 | If I wanted to try and put a hard edge in this
B-spline, if I switch back to the Selection
| | 04:58 | tool and grab these two points for example,
I'll grab that point right that there and
| | 05:01 | put it right up against there, that's about the only
way you can do that is by clustering points together.
| | 05:06 | It's really easy to make smooth, flowing
curves with a B-spline and I always use B-splines
| | 05:12 | when I'm creating animation paths.
| | 05:15 | Splines in CINEMA 4D have something called a
direction associated with them and that's
| | 05:20 | a really important concept.
| | 05:21 | The direction of the spline indicates which way
that objects will animate along that spline,
| | 05:27 | and also, the direction that polygons flow along the
spline when you create certain types of objects.
| | 05:32 | The direction of the spline is
indicated by the color of the spline.
| | 05:36 | You may have noticed that my
spline has a color from white to blue.
| | 05:42 | White is the starting point, blue is the ending
point, and that's based on the direction that
| | 05:45 | I drew my spline in.
| | 05:47 | Let's delete that spline and start over.
| | 05:49 | I'm going to click and hold on these guys,
and let's this time use a Linear spline.
| | 05:54 | I'm going to just click and draw a
bunch of points with the Linear spline.
| | 05:58 | You can see that, because I started at this
side, the spline is now starting at white,
| | 06:04 | and transitions to blue at the end.
| | 06:06 | So this is one end of the spline,
this is the other end of the spline.
| | 06:10 | Let's say I wanted to reverse
the direction of that spline.
| | 06:13 | I can do that by right-clicking
and telling it to Reverse Sequence.
| | 06:17 | Now, I've reversed the direction of that spline and
polygons will flow along it in a different direction.
| | 06:23 | So, what can you do with
splines in terms of shapes?
| | 06:26 | I'm going to delete this
spline and start over again.
| | 06:29 | Let's draw out a B-spline one more time, and
I'm going to just click out here and draw
| | 06:35 | a nice smooth path. There we go!
| | 06:37 | And let's say I want to create a pipe or
tube that extends along this spline and that's
| | 06:43 | where the NURBS objects come in.
| | 06:44 | I'll switch back to the Perspective View.
| | 06:47 | I can go now to the NURBS
objects, and grab a Sweep NURBS.
| | 06:51 | And if you look at the icon for the Sweep
NURBS, you can see that it has a little white
| | 06:54 | spline along the end and another white spline
that's along the spine of the tube, and it
| | 06:59 | looks like a pipe.
| | 07:00 | And that is a very good
indication of what it does.
| | 07:03 | So, the Sweep NURBS is a green icon that means
it's a generator object, so it needs at least
| | 07:08 | two objects to work.
| | 07:09 | And in this case, it needs a
Path spline and a Profile spline.
| | 07:14 | So the way to read this is that I'm going to
draw the first spline in there; nothing happens.
| | 07:18 | I need to have a shape to
extrude along this path.
| | 07:22 | So, let's go back to the Spline
Objects, and I'll grab a Star.
| | 07:25 | Now, this star is a little bit big, so let's
hit T on the keyboard to get the Scale tool
| | 07:30 | and scale it way down.
| | 07:32 | Now, what I want to do is take that star,
and drag it into the hierarchy, and the order
| | 07:37 | of the objects is extremely important.
| | 07:40 | The way to read this is, Sweep NURBS, I want
you to extrude this star along this spline.
| | 07:46 | Now, what it's doing is, it's saying, Sweep NURBS, I
want you to extrude this spline along this star.
| | 07:52 | And I get a very different outcome.
| | 07:53 | If I reverse them, it goes
back to where it was before.
| | 07:56 | And that's one of the great things about working
with those NURBS objects is that they're always
| | 08:00 | live, you can change these splines.
| | 08:02 | So, for example, if I go back to the front
view, I grab my Path spline, I can click on
| | 08:08 | that guy, and I can move these points
around and this object is extremely flexible.
| | 08:13 | And so I can change that shape if I don't
like it, and also I can go to the Star spline.
| | 08:19 | And if I want to have more points for example, I
can change those and add more points to it.
| | 08:25 | You can see I have a lot of control over that.
| | 08:27 | There's also a set of options on the Sweep NURBS
that allow you to change the shape of that.
| | 08:32 | I can adjust the end scale to make it
fat at one end or skinny at one end.
| | 08:36 | I can adjust the growth, the rotation.
| | 08:40 | Let's change the end scale back again.
| | 08:41 | If I adjust the rotation, you can see I'm
adding a twist to it along the length of the
| | 08:46 | spline.
| | 08:46 | So, there are a lot of great things you can do
with the Sweep NURBS and the spline objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with spline points| 00:00 | Splines are simply a collection of points that are
connected by a mathematical expression of a line.
| | 00:06 | The points that make up that spline can be
manipulated to change the shape of the spline.
| | 00:10 | They can also be reordered to change
the direction along which data flows.
| | 00:14 | Let's create a very simple B-spline here.
| | 00:16 | I'll switch to the front view by middle-mouse
clicking and clicking in the interface here.
| | 00:21 | Let's grab the B-spline tool.
| | 00:23 | I'm just going to click to draw some points.
| | 00:27 | Now, the direction of the spline
is indicated by this color here.
| | 00:32 | White is the starting point
and blue is the ending point.
| | 00:36 | The order of the points along the
spline is indicated along by the direction.
| | 00:39 | But, how can you see that for real?
| | 00:41 | In the interface here, over on the right-hand
side, I'll bring that window down just a bit,
| | 00:46 | is something called the Structure Manager.
| | 00:49 | If I click on that, because I have my spline
selected in the Object Manager, it shows me
| | 00:53 | the makeup of the points on that object.
| | 00:56 | And this may look familiar to
you; it's simply a spreadsheet.
| | 00:59 | All the objects in CINEMA 4D can be
expressed in terms of a spreadsheet.
| | 01:03 | This spreadsheet tells me the location and
space of the points that make up this object,
| | 01:09 | and it also tells me the order of the points.
| | 01:12 | Now, this point that is darkened down here at the
bottom is the point that is currently selected.
| | 01:17 | Let's hit the Spacebar to
switch back to the Selection tool.
| | 01:20 | If I click on this point,
you'll see that it grabs number 6.
| | 01:23 | These points have something called
an Index Value associated with them.
| | 01:27 | The first point in this line is always 0.
| | 01:29 | If I grab that, and drag it down in the hierarchy,
I've now reordered those points and you can
| | 01:35 | see it's squiggled up my spline.
| | 01:37 | Let's undo that; Command or Ctrl+Z.
| | 01:39 | If I want to change the order of those points,
I can right-click and go to Reverse Sequence,
| | 01:46 | and that will reverse the
direction of those splines.
| | 01:48 | You can see now the spline that I had
selected is no longer number 0, it's number 7.
| | 01:54 | I can also click on this point, and right-click
it, and set it as the first point.
| | 01:59 | That's going to reorder
the flow of those points.
| | 02:02 | Now, you can see that my gap, the point at which
it would close, is put in a different location.
| | 02:08 | I'll undo that as well.
| | 02:10 | There are going to be quite a few times where you've
drawn a spline, and you want to add points to it.
| | 02:14 | There's a great easy way to do it.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to use the Move tool, hit E on the
keyboard, hold down the Ctrl key, and I can
| | 02:20 | click on the spline.
| | 02:22 | That adds a point to that
location on the spline.
| | 02:25 | I'll click and add a few extra points here.
| | 02:27 | I'm holding down the Ctrl key,
and clicking on that spline.
| | 02:31 | Now, if I hold down the Ctrl key, and click
away from the spline, watch what happens.
| | 02:36 | It adds a point to the end of the spline.
| | 02:38 | It added it to that location there.
| | 02:41 | This point here is part of this
curve here, so don't get confused.
| | 02:43 | If I move that around a bit, you can
see that it's just from here to here.
| | 02:48 | If I wanted to add a point to this
end, I need to reverse the sequence.
| | 02:52 | So, if I right-click, Reverse the Sequence,
hold down the Ctrl key, and now I've added
| | 02:57 | a point over there.
| | 02:58 | Now, if I want to close the spline, let's
switch back to the Object Manager, grab the
| | 03:02 | spline to get to the spline attributes, I can
click the Close icon, and I've closed my spline up.
| | 03:08 | Now, when I reverse the sequence, you see
that there is the dividing line where the
| | 03:13 | point begins, and ends.
| | 03:14 | If I right-click and go to Reverse Sequence,
now this becomes the starting point over here.
| | 03:20 | One more thing I want to talk about when it
comes to splines is the idea of the intermediate
| | 03:25 | points that will make up a spline.
| | 03:28 | Let's switch to the Perspective View.
| | 03:30 | And the way that CINEMA 4D draws the spline is
it's trying to do it in the easiest way possible.
| | 03:36 | That means it's interpreting for
you the values between points.
| | 03:41 | So, from this point to this point, from this
point to this point, CINEMA 4D is guesstimating
| | 03:46 | what it needs to draw this curve smoothly.
| | 03:49 | Now, this is expressed in the
intermediate points area of the spline properties.
| | 03:54 | The angle defaults to five degrees which
usually gives you pretty smooth points.
| | 03:58 | But, if I increase that angle, it's
counter-intuitive to what you think.
| | 04:02 | The higher the value, the more jagged, this
line is going to become, if I draw that up.
| | 04:07 | Now, because I have a B-spline, you
won't see that readily until I deselect it.
| | 04:12 | Now, when I deselect that spline, you
can see now my spline is very jagged.
| | 04:15 | When I click on it, it
goes back to being smooth.
| | 04:18 | But, this is how it's
going to actually operate.
| | 04:22 | It draws it smooth for you so you can
see what the path would look like.
| | 04:25 | If I bring that back to 0, now I get very smooth
lines no matter what, and that's the smoothest level.
| | 04:33 | Angle 0 gives you a great adaptive setting.
| | 04:35 | In an earlier movie, I created
a Sweep NURBS with a B-Spline.
| | 04:41 | Let's do that again here.
| | 04:43 | I'm going to add a Sweep NURBS to the scene
and then I'm going to add a Profile spline
| | 04:48 | and let's do another Star object.
| | 04:50 | Let's make that star really small.
| | 04:52 | Then, let's take this star and
sweep it along this spline. O kay.
| | 04:57 | Now, under the Sweep NURBS,
there is a Rotation value.
| | 05:01 | If I twist that around, you'll see
that the spline starts to twist.
| | 05:06 | I'm going to crank it way up on purpose.
| | 05:08 | Now, one of the things you'll notice is that
the spline, as it twists, first of all at
| | 05:13 | the point where it meets that
it is creating a seam there.
| | 05:17 | So let's uncheck on the Path spline.
| | 05:19 | Let's uncheck Close spline.
| | 05:21 | The other thing you'll notice is that it
doesn't twist evenly along its length.
| | 05:25 | That's because of those intermediate points.
| | 05:28 | By using adaptive points, CINEMA 4D is
guessing how many points it's going to need, and the
| | 05:34 | less points it needs, the
less points it's going to use.
| | 05:37 | And so, that's causing this change in value
along the length, it needs more points in
| | 05:41 | this area, so we're getting more twist, and less
points in this area, so we're getting less twist.
| | 05:46 | Now, the way to fix that, let's say we
wanted to have uniform twists all the way along,
| | 05:50 | let's click on the Intermediate Points pulldown and
change it to be Uniform along the length of the spline.
| | 05:56 | Now, we can increase the number of points.
| | 05:59 | Let's crank that value up.
| | 06:01 | Now, what's happening is because this B-
spline does not have the uniform distance between
| | 06:06 | each of the real points, when you spread
those points out in a uniform fashion, you still
| | 06:11 | get an uneven distribution.
| | 06:13 | So now, let's go back again.
| | 06:15 | Let's turn the Sweep NURBS off and go back again to
Natural, and then increase or decrease that value.
| | 06:22 | You can see that it becomes really
hard to get that value to become even.
| | 06:28 | That's really the point
I'm trying to make here.
| | 06:30 | You have to be very careful about how you
draw your splines because you can end up with
| | 06:33 | very uneven distributions of points
that can be problematic down the road.
| | 06:38 | You can only do so much with the intermediate
points, and you'll end up having to redraw
| | 06:42 | or add points to your spline
to try and smooth things out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Connecting splines and rounding corners| 00:00 | There are going to be a lot of times when
you're working with splines where you are
| | 00:03 | going to want to create a smooth
transition or connection between two splines.
| | 00:07 | Now, in order to do this we need to connect
the splines together much the same way that
| | 00:12 | we did with the Bridge tool in
the Polygon modeling module.
| | 00:17 | I've got two arc splines here and what I want
to do is create a nice smooth transition that
| | 00:22 | goes from this point to this point.
| | 00:24 | And in order to do that, the first step is
going to be to connect these two splines together.
| | 00:28 | Now, I'm going to select both arc splines and
then right-click in the interface or right-click
| | 00:34 | on the arc splines themselves and I'm
going to go to Connect Objects and Delete.
| | 00:39 | When I do that, I end up with a single
arc spline that now encompasses both arcs.
| | 00:46 | So you can see that when I go into Point mode,
I've got points on these splines I can now
| | 00:50 | start working with.
| | 00:51 | Now, what I want to do is to create a point
right in the middle that's going to allow
| | 00:55 | me to create a smooth
transition from here to here.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to middle mouse click into the
Front view and let's zoom in on these guys.
| | 01:04 | Now, if I click on the Move tool and hold
down the Ctrl key, if I click to add a point,
| | 01:09 | it's going to add from that end over there.
| | 01:12 | I really wanted to add
from this end over here.
| | 01:14 | So let's undo that for a second.
| | 01:16 | And then let's select all the points on each
of these segments by hitting Command+A or
| | 01:21 | Ctrl+A on the keyboard.
| | 01:23 | Now, what I'm going to do is
right-click and go to Reverse Sequence.
| | 01:26 | When I do that, now I can
click to deselect all those guys.
| | 01:31 | If I hold on the Ctrl key now, it's
going to draw from that point right there.
| | 01:36 | Now, I want this point that I've
clicked to draw to be exactly in the middle.
| | 01:40 | Now, in order to do that I can use the Coordinate
Manager down here at the bottom of the interface.
| | 01:45 | I want to have this point be at zero along the
X-axis so it will line up directly with Y.
| | 01:52 | So if I take this value here and set that
to be 0, it doesn't go to the right place.
| | 01:58 | Now, the reason for that is because
of this little pull-down right here.
| | 02:02 | It is set for Object (Relative).
| | 02:04 | Let's undo that for a second.
| | 02:06 | And in order to see why this is happening, let's
back out for a bit and get out of Point mode.
| | 02:12 | Let's click on the model mode and you can see
the Axis point for these guys is over here.
| | 02:18 | This change when I merge the splines together.
| | 02:20 | So the Object Relative position for that
point is relative to this location here.
| | 02:25 | So if I switch it to 0, it's going to jump to line
up with this Y-axis here, not the world Y-axis.
| | 02:32 | So let's get back to Point mode and then
change this pull-down to be World Relative.
| | 02:38 | Now when I switch that to be 0, it's
going to jump right to the center.
| | 02:43 | And now what I can do is I want
to connect these two locations.
| | 02:47 | So now if I switch to the Selection tool by
grabbing the Selection tool up here, I'm going
| | 02:51 | to click and drag across both of those points.
| | 02:54 | Now when I right-click, I can use the Join
Segments command to join those two segments together.
| | 03:00 | And you'll notice that the flow of my line
is changed now to going from white to blue.
| | 03:06 | I had two different flows and
now I've got one merged flow.
| | 03:09 | Now, you can see that I don't have a
smooth transition between these corners.
| | 03:14 | What I want to do is grab this point here and
right-click and change it to be Soft Interpolation.
| | 03:21 | What that's going to do is give me
handles on either side of that.
| | 03:26 | And if I click on that, I use the Move tool,
I can now drag that out to create that arc.
| | 03:33 | I don't want to hold the Shift key down, I
want to try and drag that out as smoothly
| | 03:36 | as possible like that.
| | 03:38 | If I right-click again, I can go to Equal
Tangent Direction and then Equal Tangent Length
| | 03:46 | and that will make sure that my
handles are lined up nicely.
| | 03:49 | I can now grab these points here and
select that and go Soft Interpolation as well.
| | 03:55 | Now, this is going to be
a little bit trickier.
| | 03:57 | I'm going to have to get
in there and eyeball this.
| | 03:59 | Now, I've already got my Move tool selected.
| | 04:01 | Now, if I grab this handle here and I can
draw it like that, I can take this one and
| | 04:07 | draw it like that, I'm lining it up.
| | 04:08 | I've got a pretty nice smooth transition.
| | 04:12 | One last option I want to talk about when it
comes to manipulating splines is something
| | 04:15 | called the Chamfer.
| | 04:17 | Let's create a new document, Command+N or
Ctrl+N on the keyboard, and in that document
| | 04:22 | I'm going to create a Text spline.
| | 04:25 | And the Text spline creates the word Text
on screen and under its Object Properties
| | 04:29 | I can change which shows up here.
| | 04:30 | Let's create just a capital H.
| | 04:32 | So I'll hold down the Shift key and type in
the capital H and I'll click any place outside
| | 04:36 | that field and I now have
this giant letter H here.
| | 04:39 | And I'm going to make this editable by
clicking on the Make Editable button.
| | 04:44 | Then go into Point mode, and let's say I
want to create a rounded version of this.
| | 04:48 | I just middle mouse click
to get to the Front view.
| | 04:51 | If I select all these points, right-click,
and I'm going to go to the Chamfer option,
| | 04:57 | and when I select that, I
can now click and drag.
| | 04:59 | I can put in a Radius numerically,
but I want to eyeball this.
| | 05:02 | I want to click and drag to the right, and
as I do that, I can round those corners off
| | 05:08 | and that is a really amazing thing
to be able to do, it's so easy.
| | 05:10 | Let's undo that and do it again.
| | 05:12 | Now, you want to be really careful.
| | 05:13 | Don't click more than once.
| | 05:14 | If I click and drag and then click and
drag again, I'm chamfering the Chamfer.
| | 05:19 | Let's zoom in and see what
that actually looks like.
| | 05:21 | You can see it created a
second point right there.
| | 05:24 | Let's undo that and undo again.
| | 05:25 | I'll click and drag once and
then click and drag again.
| | 05:28 | You can see that it chamfers at each time.
| | 05:30 | Now, you got to be careful.
| | 05:31 | There are may be a time where you want do
that, but what you don't want to do is to
| | 05:35 | click and drag and have those points touch
like that because now you're merging those
| | 05:39 | two points together.
| | 05:40 | There's actually two points on top of one
another in that spot, and that's not a good thing.
| | 05:44 | Let's undo that to get back to just a nice
square and then we'll chamfer it nice and round.
| | 05:51 | I'll hit H on the keyboard to
Frame up the entire object.
| | 05:54 | The Chamfer tool has done a
great job of smoothing that H out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extruding paths from Adobe Illustrator| 00:00 | CINEMA 4D is the tool of choice for
a lot of motion graphics artist.
| | 00:03 | And one of the things that motion graphics
artists have to do on a regular basis is to
| | 00:07 | extrude type and make it look cool.
| | 00:09 | Now, CINEMA 4D has a great integration with After
Effects and it has a really strong integration
| | 00:15 | with Illustrator as well.
| | 00:16 | What we're going to be doing in this movie
is importing paths from Illustrator in the
| | 00:20 | CINEMA 4D and then extruding them.
| | 00:22 | So I'm here in Adobe Illustrator and the first
thing I'm going to do is create a new document.
| | 00:26 | So it's Command+And or Ctrl+N.
| | 00:28 | Now, I normally work in points inside of
Illustrator and I normally work at the size of the final
| | 00:33 | resolution that I'm going to
be rendering my scene at.
| | 00:36 | So in this case, I've set
my document to 1280x720.
| | 00:39 | Now, I'm going to twirl open
the Advanced options here.
| | 00:43 | The Color mode is extremely important.
| | 00:45 | CMYK is bad, do not use it.
| | 00:48 | So let's pull on that Color mode
and switch the document to RGB.
| | 00:51 | Now, that I switched to RGB I can hit OK on the
keyboard and we get this nice new Illustrator document.
| | 00:57 | And what I want to do is
to create a piece of type.
| | 01:00 | So let's hit T on the keyboard to bring up
the Type tool and I'm going to click any place
| | 01:04 | in the document window and
I'm going to type out a word.
| | 01:08 | So let's type out H-E-L-L-O, HELLO, and I'm
going to click away from there and then take
| | 01:14 | that and use the V tool to get to my Transform
options and let's scale that up, holding the
| | 01:20 | Shift key down to make it nice and big.
| | 01:22 | Now, the font I'm going to use is Arial Black.
| | 01:24 | Let's switch that over, so I have
switched out of the Type tool.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to switch back to the
Type tool so I can see my Font options.
| | 01:31 | And then in the font, I'm going
to click on it and select all.
| | 01:35 | So I'm going to change my font from Myriad
Pro and scroll upward and select Arial Black,
| | 01:43 | and that's a nice chunky
typeface, I like that.
| | 01:46 | And so, let's now click away from
there and use the V tool to get that out.
| | 01:51 | Now, what I want to do is I want to center this
up in the window and kind of maximize its size.
| | 01:56 | So what I'm going to do is cut that type to
the clipboard, Command+X or Ctrl+X, and then
| | 02:00 | I'm going to center up the window, Command+0 or Ctrl+0,
and then paste it down, Command+V or Ctrl+V.
| | 02:06 | And that centers that type up in the window.
| | 02:08 | Now, I want to maximize the size.
| | 02:11 | Let's drag that up in size.
| | 02:13 | And now what I can do is save this document.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to save this document and I'm
going to navigate to the exercise files to
| | 02:20 | the splines folder and I'm going to save this.
| | 02:22 | Now, I want to call this type master.
| | 02:24 | The reason I want to call this type-master is
because I like to have a copy of the original
| | 02:29 | type files for the Illustrator file.
| | 02:31 | When you're working in CINEMA 4D, it can only
read the path information so we have to convert
| | 02:35 | this type to outlines at some point.
| | 02:37 | So I like to always have a copy of my type
that I can get back to in case I need to make
| | 02:41 | a new word or make changes to that word.
| | 02:44 | So let's call this type-master.
| | 02:47 | So, type-master.ai and I'm going to save that
into the splines folder, which is one of the
| | 02:55 | chapter folders inside the exercise files.
| | 02:58 | I'll hit Save and in the secondary dialog box that
comes up I'll leave it as an Illustrator 6 file.
| | 03:04 | So I'll just hit Enter or
click OK on the dialog box.
| | 03:07 | And now, we've got our type-master file.
| | 03:09 | Now that we have our type-master saved out, we want
to create a version that we can open in CINEMA 4D.
| | 03:14 | So the first thing I want to do
is convert my type to outlines.
| | 03:17 | So I'll hit Shift+Command+O or Shift+Ctrl+O
on the keyboard and that's going to convert
| | 03:23 | the type to outlines.
| | 03:24 | Now, I can go Shift+Command+S or Shift+Ctrl+S
to save a copy, and I'm going to save that
| | 03:29 | in the same location and I'm just going
to call it what it is, the word Hello.
| | 03:33 | So, I'll type out H-E-L-L-O and I'll do it -8.
| | 03:37 | Now, the reason I have an 8 after that is so that I
know that it's going to be an Illustrator 8 file.
| | 03:42 | At the time of this recording, CINEMA 4D can
only read Illustrator 8 files, and that -8
| | 03:46 | at the end tells me that
it's an Illustrator 8 file.
| | 03:49 | So now I'll just hit Save and then in the
dialog box that comes up, we'll go to the
| | 03:54 | pull-down and change the version to
Illustrator 8 and then I'll hit OK.
| | 03:58 | And now, this dialog box that
comes up, you can just ignore it.
| | 04:02 | It's just warning us that we're saving
it in an older version and that's okay.
| | 04:05 | So I'll click OK here. A nd that's it.
| | 04:07 | We were ready to move to CINEMA 4D.
| | 04:10 | Now, I can do a Command+S or Ctrl+S and I'll
get that warning dialog again, I'll hit OK.
| | 04:16 | And now I've saved that out for CINEMA 4D.
| | 04:18 | Now, what we need to do is
switch over to CINEMA 4D.
| | 04:21 | Now, here in CINEMA 4D I'm going to go to the
Object Manager File menu and select Merge Objects.
| | 04:28 | And then I'll navigate to the Desktop to my
exercise files in the splines subfolder and
| | 04:32 | I'll grab the HELLO-8.ai file,
and then I'll hit Open.
| | 04:37 | Now, the Import dialog box that comes up has some
options here and I'd leave them on the defaults.
| | 04:43 | The Connect Splines option is
what gives you your compound paths.
| | 04:47 | If I were to uncheck that then letters like O
for example, would come in as two separate
| | 04:51 | splines instead of a merged spline that
gives you a hole cut out in the center.
| | 04:55 | So let's hit OK and now you'll probably ask the
question, well, where the heck did my type go?
| | 05:00 | And you notice this little blue arrow down
here, this arrow indicates that we have an
| | 05:04 | object selected but it's currently off camera.
| | 05:07 | Now, if I click that, that will take me right
to the object and it highlights it on screen.
| | 05:13 | Now, this isn't a view
that I actually want to see.
| | 05:15 | I want to get this object back
to the center of the world.
| | 05:17 | So let's go back to the View
menu and do a Frame Default.
| | 05:20 | And then I'm going to zero out
the position of this object.
| | 05:23 | So let's go to the Object Manager, select
HELLO-8 and in the Coordinate Properties,
| | 05:28 | we'll go to the Position
Value and I'll zero these out.
| | 05:31 | So I'll double-click to highlight that and
hit 0 and then Tab zero, and then tab over
| | 05:36 | one more time and that gives me my
object right at the center of the world.
| | 05:40 | Now, if I twirl open the HELLO, you can see that
I've got paths for each of the individual letters.
| | 05:45 | I'm now ready to extrude that type.
| | 05:47 | So let's go to the NURBS menu and
grab the Extrude NURBS object.
| | 05:52 | And the Extrude NURB object is a generator
icon and that generator needs children in
| | 05:57 | order to function.
| | 05:58 | So, let's take the HELLO-8 group and drag
it and make it a child of the Extrude NURB.
| | 06:02 | When we do that, nothing happens.
| | 06:04 | The reason nothing happens is that the Extrude
NURB, by default, tries to extrude the very
| | 06:09 | first thing it encounters.
| | 06:10 | Well, in this case, the very first thing it
encounters is this Null object right here.
| | 06:14 | And it can't extrude a null.
| | 06:15 | It doesn't know that these
paths are underneath it.
| | 06:18 | So, we have to tell the Extrude NURB to look
pass the null to the paths that are below.
| | 06:23 | On the Extrude NURBS under the Object
Properties is the Hierarchical button.
| | 06:27 | When I turn that on, I now get the
word HELLO and this will render.
| | 06:31 | If I click the Render in Active
View, I can now see the word HELLO.
| | 06:35 | Now, let's zoom in on that word on the edges
here and there's a very important thing I
| | 06:40 | want to talk about, and that's the
transition on the edges of the word.
| | 06:44 | Let's click on the Render
in Active View button.
| | 06:47 | And one of the things you'll notice about
this type is that at the transition from the
| | 06:51 | face to the top, it is extremely razor sharp.
| | 06:56 | That is a dead giveaway that the
type was generated in the computer.
| | 06:59 | Now, you're probably thinking, of course, it was
generated in the computer, it's CINEMA 4D type.
| | 07:02 | But, when you render things out you want people to
have the illusion that they feel like real objects.
| | 07:08 | And a sharp edge like that just doesn't
exist in a real world except on a scalpel.
| | 07:13 | And so, what we want to do is create a little
bit of a transition from the face of the type
| | 07:16 | to the top edge of the type.
| | 07:18 | And the way we do that is by using
the Caps option on the Extrude NURBS.
| | 07:21 | So let's select the Caps and go to the Start
Cap, that's the front face here, and I'm going
| | 07:26 | to change it to Fillet and Cap.
| | 07:28 | And I get this really big bevel and
that's not necessarily what I want.
| | 07:33 | Big bevels are kind of going out of style now.
| | 07:35 | So I want to change it to a nice small bevel,
and the way I do that is adjusting the radius.
| | 07:39 | Let's change that to a Radius of 1.
| | 07:41 | And now I've got a nice tight bevel.
| | 07:44 | And I'm going to add one
more level of step to it.
| | 07:48 | If I change the steps, let's change that
step to say 5, this is going to be too round.
| | 07:53 | But you'd notice if I zoom in on that, you
can see it gets a very rounded look to it.
| | 07:57 | You can see that round transition there.
| | 07:59 | I don't want five steps.
| | 08:00 | I want just two and that's going to give me a
nice soft transition, that's not round filling.
| | 08:05 | Now when I back out, the difference between
having that razor edge and having an edge
| | 08:10 | that has a smooth transition is that you
get these great highlights on the edge.
| | 08:13 | If I hit Command+R, which is the same thing
as hitting the Render in Active View button,
| | 08:17 | it's Ctrl+R on the PC.
| | 08:20 | You can see now that I have these great edges
on my letters and you could see it's picking
| | 08:24 | up those highlights nicely.
| | 08:26 | That creates a lot of
visual interest in your type.
| | 08:29 | Working with type from Illustrator in CINEMA
4D is a really straightforward process and
| | 08:33 | it's a crucial part of every
motion graphic artist workflow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Modeling with Polygons and SplinesModeling workflow overview| 00:00 | Modeling objects in CINEMA 4D is really about
breaking down the task into some manageable chunks.
| | 00:08 | This is the object we're going to
be creating, a speaker cabinet.
| | 00:11 | And if I were to try and just start modeling
elements of the speaker randomly, I wouldn't
| | 00:16 | be able to fit them together in a logical way.
| | 00:18 | So we're going to approach this process by
starting with the speaker cabinet, then creating
| | 00:23 | the tweeter, then creating the woofer
element that goes inside the cabinet.
| | 00:29 | By creating the cabinet first, it gives us
a framework that we can then use to judge
| | 00:34 | the size of our objects.
| | 00:36 | Sometimes when I am modeling objects I work
from a direct sketch that has all the proportions
| | 00:41 | I need, but other times, I model from scratch.
| | 00:44 | If you do model from scratch, you have to
approach it in a logical fashion, by doing
| | 00:48 | that, you set yourself up for success.
| | 00:51 | So let's close the Picture Viewer.
| | 00:53 | And this is the same file that
generated the rendering you just saw.
| | 00:57 | I've hidden all the Environment objects under this
single null object, so I'll just twirl that closed.
| | 01:02 | This is the hierarchy that
we're going to be creating.
| | 01:06 | We've got a Tweeter object and we've got a
Cabinet that contains something called a Boolean
| | 01:12 | object, a Cube that is the outer
shape of the cabinet, and a Cylinder.
| | 01:17 | Let's hide these other objects.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to twirl this close
; we'll come back at those.
| | 01:21 | Hold on the Option key or Alt key on the PC,
click twice and then drag straight down to
| | 01:26 | hide all those other objects.
| | 01:28 | What's going on is this Boolean is
actually cutting a hole inside the cube.
| | 01:32 | If I disable the Boolean, you can see I
actually have a Cylinder and this Cube object that
| | 01:38 | are there together.
| | 01:40 | And when I turn on the Boolean,
the Boolean cuts a hole in that.
| | 01:43 | And I don't normally use Boolean
objects except for a situation like this.
| | 01:47 | I know the cabinet is not going to be moving or
animating and I can safely cut that circular
| | 01:51 | hole in there to get room for my woofer.
| | 01:55 | So let's reveal the Woofer Cone.
| | 01:57 | The Woofer Cone is created with something
called a Loft NURBS and that's a series of
| | 02:01 | splines that are skinned
together to create this shape.
| | 02:05 | The reason I did that is if I want to go back and
animate the woofer and have it be pulsating with the music.
| | 02:11 | I can simply take one of these circles here for
example, and I can animate that circle right here.
| | 02:18 | And you can see that by animating that circle,
the Woofer Cone has the illusion of pulsating,
| | 02:24 | and that's going to give the speaker a lot
of energy when it comes time to animate.
| | 02:28 | Next up, is the Cone Center which is just
a simple sphere and that sphere is in the
| | 02:32 | same location as the
center of the Woofer Cone.
| | 02:35 | And then I've got the Ring
bolts and let's reveal those.
| | 02:39 | I'm holding down the Option key or Alt key on
the PC, and clicking on both of these dots
| | 02:43 | at the same time, and that reveals everything.
| | 02:47 | Ring bolts are just a series of
cylinders underneath an Array object.
| | 02:51 | An Array creates an arrangement of
objects around the central axis.
| | 02:55 | And then the Woofer ring itself is just a simple
Sweep NURBS and I've got a circle and a rectangle.
| | 03:01 | And the great thing about building it with a
Sweep NURB is that if I want to change the
| | 03:05 | diameter at anytime I can adjust the Radius
of the circle by scrubbing this value here.
| | 03:10 | I'll undo that, Command+Z or Ctrl+Z, and I
can also change the shape of that by adjusting
| | 03:15 | the rectangle here.
| | 03:17 | And I can go and change the width and height.
| | 03:20 | I can make it thicker, I can make it
thinner, I can also make it wider as well.
| | 03:26 | So hopefully, this gives you an idea of the
modeling process and how you can plan ahead
| | 03:30 | for creating the geometry
that you need for your objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building the cabinet with polygons and Booleans| 00:00 | The first step in our process of creating the speaker
cabinet is to start with the speaker cabinet itself.
| | 00:05 | I'm going to add a cube to the scene.
| | 00:06 | And this cube is going to be the
foundation for our whole model.
| | 00:11 | Before I make it editable and start chopping
on it with the Knife tool, I want to do a
| | 00:15 | couple of things.
| | 00:15 | First thing I want to do is change the aspect ratio
of it so that it more closely matches our cabinet.
| | 00:20 | So let's take the Size X
and make it about 530 units.
| | 00:23 | And I'm hitting the Tab key, change the Y to be 700,
and then I'm going to change the Z to be 270.
| | 00:31 | That's going to give us the right shape
for our speaker cabinet and depth as well.
| | 00:34 | Now, I want to change the
filleting on the speaker.
| | 00:38 | Let's back out just a bit.
| | 00:39 | A cube by default has these
very sharp defined edges.
| | 00:42 | They don't pick up highlights
when you shine a light on them.
| | 00:45 | And objects in the real world that have
corners on them and edges have little transitions
| | 00:50 | from the face to the side that pick up light, and that
really does a lot to make an object look more real.
| | 00:56 | So let's change the filleting on this
cabinet and I'm going to turn it on first.
| | 01:00 | Now, the default values
are too round in this case.
| | 01:03 | So let's start off by making the Fillet
Radius about 4 and the Fillet Subdivision, 2.
| | 01:08 | And that's going to give us
a really nice transition.
| | 01:10 | And you can see it's already picking up highlights just
from the Editor View Lighting that we're seeing here.
| | 01:16 | Next, we want to create the Boolean that's
going to generate the opening in the front
| | 01:20 | of the speaker cabinet so
the woofer can poke out.
| | 01:23 | And a Boolean object is a mathematical
way of adding and subtracting objects.
| | 01:29 | It's not something I normally use when I'm
modeling, unless I know that the object itself
| | 01:33 | isn't going to be deforming.
| | 01:35 | If I were trying to make a dancing speaker
cabinet, I wouldn't use Boolean object.
| | 01:39 | But this speaker cabinet is really just going
to be sitting there so I don't have to worry
| | 01:42 | about weird deformations and Boolean objects
make very strange geometry sometimes, and
| | 01:47 | so I try to avoid them when I'm modeling.
| | 01:49 | But this is an instance where
it's going to work out just fine.
| | 01:52 | A Boolean object exists under the
modeling Objects and let's add it to the scene.
| | 01:56 | The way the Boolean works is
that it has a logic to it.
| | 01:59 | The Boolean Type defines that logic and
we've got A subtract B as the default, and this
| | 02:03 | is exactly what we need.
| | 02:05 | You can see there are other options here.
| | 02:06 | The A subtract B indicates that there is
going to be two objects underneath here.
| | 02:11 | The Cube is going to be the A
object and we need a B object.
| | 02:14 | The B is going to be a cylinder that's
going to cut a round opening in the front.
| | 02:18 | So let's add a Cylinder to the scene, and
let's change the Orientation to be Z, or +Z
| | 02:24 | or -Z, it doesn't matter in this case.
| | 02:26 | And then I'm going to make the Radius to be
200 units and that's about the same diameter
| | 02:31 | as the woofer we're going to be creating.
| | 02:33 | Now, our Cylinder is sitting right in the
middle of our cabinet, so let's drag it on
| | 02:37 | its Z-axis and move it out a little bit.
| | 02:40 | And I'm going to move it down into position.
| | 02:43 | The woofer on this cabinet is going to take up
about the lower two-thirds and let's navigate
| | 02:47 | over a little bit and zoom
in just a little bit more.
| | 02:51 | You can see that it's
about in the right space.
| | 02:53 | So the way the Boolean object works is I'm going
to take the Cube and put it in the A position.
| | 02:57 | I'll take the Cylinder and drop it down into
the B position and instantly I get a hole.
| | 03:02 | Now, you notice this is all live.
| | 03:04 | If I change the cylinder into the A position,
you'll see that it cuts the cube out of the cylinder.
| | 03:10 | But that's not what we want so I
can always just switch it back.
| | 03:12 | I'll put the Cube into the A position.
| | 03:14 | Remember the Boolean always work in an A-B.
| | 03:18 | Now what I'll do is move the Cylinder back
into position so it's sticking just a little
| | 03:21 | bit out of the front of the cube.
| | 03:24 | And I don't want to go too far.
| | 03:25 | I want to have it
sticking just out of the face.
| | 03:28 | That gives us just what we want and now we've
got a nice deep opening for our subwoofer.
| | 03:32 | Before we go any further,
let's save our progress.
| | 03:34 | So let's go to the exercise files folder in
the modeling subfolder and let's call this
| | 03:38 | speaker working.c4d and
then I'll just hit Save.
| | 03:44 | Now that we've got our file saved, we
can move on with the modeling process.
| | 03:48 | Now, the Boolean makes very strange geometry
but we can't see that geometry even if we
| | 03:53 | go into Polygon mode.
| | 03:54 | What we need to do is to change our Display
Options and this setting in the Display Options
| | 03:59 | is going to let us see the
geometry of our objects.
| | 04:02 | Under the Display menu, we're going
to go to Gouraud Shading with Lines.
| | 04:07 | Now, the default is Gouraud Shading without
Lines, but we're going to turn on Lines.
| | 04:11 | And you can see that now our object has lines
on the surface and you really get a feel for
| | 04:15 | the geometry of the object.
| | 04:18 | As you can see the Boolean object is
creating these very long triangles on the front of
| | 04:21 | our object and that's not a very
optimum arrangement of polygons.
| | 04:25 | We're going to be needing to create some slices
up in the top area of this cabinet where our
| | 04:30 | tweeter is going to go and this large polygon
on the front is going to make that process
| | 04:34 | really difficult.
| | 04:35 | So to correct this problem, I can't
eliminate them completely but I can minimize them.
| | 04:40 | The way I'm going to do that
is by using the Knife tool.
| | 04:43 | Now before I can use the Knife tool, I'm
going to select the cube and make it editable.
| | 04:48 | Now that it's editable, I can
switch over to Point mode.
| | 04:51 | Now my points are very large here and that's
because I changed a display preference in
| | 04:54 | one of the earlier movies in this chapter.
| | 04:57 | In order to see large points, you're going to
need to change that same display preference.
| | 05:02 | The way I did that was by going to the
Options menu and going to Configure All.
| | 05:07 | And we're going to go to Viewport settings
and under where it says Point Handle Size
| | 05:12 | and Select Point Size, we're
going to change those values to 9.
| | 05:15 | And that's going to give you the exact
same size points that I've got here.
| | 05:19 | Now we're ready to do our slicing.
| | 05:20 | So let's select the cube and then right-click
anywhere in the Editor window to get the Knife tool.
| | 05:25 | The Knife tool mode by default is set to Line.
| | 05:27 | We want to change that mode to Loop.
| | 05:30 | Now that I'm in Loop mode I can
come in here and make a cut.
| | 05:33 | Now, the normal way for the Knife tool to work in
Loop mode is to draw a line around the object.
| | 05:39 | Now, I'm having an issue with my screen capture
software that's causing the line not to draw,
| | 05:44 | but you should be seeing a line
traveling all the way around your object.
| | 05:48 | In this window you can see that these four
dots represent where that line would be if
| | 05:52 | it were traveling all
the way around my object.
| | 05:55 | So when I cut this cube with the Knife tool,
it's going to change how the Boolean is behaving.
| | 06:00 | So let's make a cut with a Knife tool right
about here just above where the cylinder is
| | 06:05 | cutting into the cube.
| | 06:07 | Now, I don't want it to snap
down on top of that cylinder.
| | 06:10 | Over here in the left-hand side of the interface,
you'll notice that this magnet is activated.
| | 06:14 | That's the Snap settings.
| | 06:15 | When I grab the Knife tool before, it
automatically turned on the Snapping options for me, and
| | 06:20 | I'm going to turn that off
by clicking on the magnet.
| | 06:23 | Now I can make my cut without
having to worry about that snapping.
| | 06:26 | Before I do that, I want to make sure that
I'm not cutting through the cylinder, I want
| | 06:29 | to cut just above it.
| | 06:31 | Okay, that's looking pretty good.
| | 06:33 | I'm going to make a cut right about there.
| | 06:35 | And as you can see, that totally
changes how the Boolean is behaving.
| | 06:38 | Now I made my cut just a little bit too low.
| | 06:41 | That's what's causing these triangles here.
| | 06:43 | I can fix that by moving the edges up.
| | 06:46 | So let's undo that and then make our cut
just a little bit higher up on the cube.
| | 06:51 | And you can see that when I make this cut,
it isolates the geometry to just this area,
| | 06:56 | and that really changes the way the Boolean
object behaves and that's just what I need.
| | 07:00 | Now I need to make just a couple more cuts
up in the top area for the tweeter opening.
| | 07:04 | I'm going to make a cut right
about here and then right about here.
| | 07:09 | And then I need to make some cuts along
the X-axis for the tweeter opening as well.
| | 07:14 | So the first cut I want to make is going
to be right in the center of the cabinet.
| | 07:17 | Now, I could eyeball it but an easier way to
do it is to use just a little bit of math.
| | 07:22 | So I'll just make a cut anywhere and don't
worry about any geometry that it gets created.
| | 07:26 | We're going to fix that.
| | 07:28 | Now what I want to do is to select all
the points that resulted from that cut.
| | 07:32 | So let's switch over to the Rectangular Selection
tool and then make sure to uncheck Only Select
| | 07:36 | Visible Elements, that's very important.
| | 07:39 | That's going to allow me to
select objects all the way through.
| | 07:42 | Now when I middle mouse click to get to the
Four-way View, I can draw a selection around
| | 07:46 | those points in the front view.
| | 07:48 | And then when I go back to the Perspective
View and orbit around, you can see that I've
| | 07:51 | selected all the points, all the way through
to my object and that's really important.
| | 07:55 | Now I can use the awesome power of the Coordinate
Manager to change where those points show up.
| | 08:00 | Now, the Coordinate Manager is used for
changing where your object is in space, but it can
| | 08:04 | also be used for manipulating the
elements that make up your object.
| | 08:09 | And it's very important
in the modeling process.
| | 08:11 | The first thing I want to do is change the
pull-down here from Object Relative to World.
| | 08:18 | And then I want to change
where they are in the X-axis.
| | 08:20 | Right now they're showing up at -50 on the X-axis,
let's change that to zero, and you'll
| | 08:25 | see that those points are going to
jump right to the center of the cube.
| | 08:28 | Now I can make two more cuts
for the opening of that object.
| | 08:31 | So let's switch to the Perspective View.
| | 08:33 | I'm going to hit the
letter K for the Knife tool.
| | 08:35 | I'm going to make two cuts along the X-axis;
one about here and then one more about here.
| | 08:40 | Now, you notice I didn't worry about where I
made them, that's because I'm going to use
| | 08:43 | a little bit of math again
to correct their position.
| | 08:46 | So let's select those points again.
| | 08:48 | Let's switch to The Four-way View and
then we'll go back to the Selection tool.
| | 08:52 | I can just hit the Spacebar, that's going to
get me right back to my Rectangular Selection.
| | 08:56 | Now I can draw a selection around
both of those loops of points.
| | 08:59 | Now you can hold down the Shift key
when you grab the second ring of points.
| | 09:03 | And as I orbit around here, you can see that I've
selected all the points all the way through the object.
| | 09:08 | Now what I want to do is change both the
position and size of these and I'm going to use the
| | 09:12 | Coordinate Manager to do that.
| | 09:14 | If I go in the Coordinate Manager and look at
the X-axis position, you can see that they're
| | 09:18 | not lined up with Y.
| | 09:20 | Let's switch to the Front view.
| | 09:21 | I'll middle mouse click in the front view.
| | 09:23 | You could see that the axis point
is just a little bit offset from Y.
| | 09:25 | If I just drag it over here, you can see that that
X value changes down in the Coordinate Manager.
| | 09:30 | So now, if I change that value to be zero,
I know that these two rings of points are
| | 09:34 | going to be lined up exactly on the Y-axis so that
they are completely centered along this axis here.
| | 09:41 | Now what I want to do is create the size of
the opening using the Coordinate Manager and
| | 09:46 | I want to create a nice big opening for my
tweeter, because I got a nice big tweeter,
| | 09:49 | it's going to go right in there.
| | 09:51 | So let's hit T on the keyboard to get to the
Scale tool and I'll click on the X-axis only
| | 09:55 | and I just drag to the right to scale that up.
| | 09:59 | Now I can do the exact same thing vertically
by switching back to the Selection tool and
| | 10:03 | drawing a rectangle around
these two loops of points.
| | 10:07 | And then using the Scale tool, I can
scale that opening up just on the Y-axis.
| | 10:12 | I can also move it down just a bit, I'll hit
E on the keyboard to get the Move tool and
| | 10:17 | then drag that down.
| | 10:19 | That way, the tweeter is not too
close to the top of the cabinet.
| | 10:22 | This is the space that the tweeter is
going to occupy here, this little rectangle.
| | 10:26 | Now, I'm not concerned about this
opening here or this opening here.
| | 10:29 | I'm only concerned about
the opening in the middle.
| | 10:31 | But I think that's a pretty good size for the
tweeter compared to the woofer down below it.
| | 10:35 | So let's middle mouse click to get back to the
Perspective View and I think we're doing pretty good.
| | 10:39 | The last thing I want to do is to delete
these polygons on the front of the cabinet.
| | 10:44 | So let's switch over to Polygon mode, then
we'll go to Live Selection tool and grab just
| | 10:49 | those two polygons and hit Delete.
| | 10:52 | Now I've got an opening for my tweeter.
| | 10:54 | And you're probably asking yourself a very
important question at this moment, Rob, how
| | 10:58 | come you didn't just use another
Boolean object for the tweeter?
| | 11:01 | Well the answer is that because this is going
to be a rectangular opening, it's much easier
| | 11:06 | and cleaner to do these cuts with the Knife tool
and just delete the polygons than use a Boolean.
| | 11:11 | The Boolean object is going to
give you a very ugly geometry.
| | 11:15 | And we've already got one Boolean in the model
already and I didn't want to compound things
| | 11:18 | for this model by using a
second Boolean object.
| | 11:21 | So that's the first step in the process
for creating the cabinet on our speaker.
| | 11:25 | Now we can move on to modeling the tweeter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the tweeter with Extrude and Extrude Inner| 00:00 | Our speaker cabinet is coming together.
| | 00:02 | Now we're ready to create the tweeter that's going to
be right here in the top area of the speaker cab.
| | 00:08 | Let's start off by creating a Cube.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to move that cube up into position on
the speaker and let's do that in Front view.
| | 00:16 | The rectangle that is defined by these four lines
right here is where I want my tweeter to sit.
| | 00:22 | So I'm going to put that up about in the
center of that rectangle right there.
| | 00:26 | And then I'm going to use the Object
Properties of the cube to change the size of that.
| | 00:30 | So I'm scrubbing the X value.
| | 00:31 | Let me get it above that large,
so about 340 units there.
| | 00:36 | And then on the Y, let's scrub it down.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to change it to be about 116 on Y.
| | 00:43 | As I move it in there, you can see that it's
a little bit tight on the opening, so let's
| | 00:47 | change that to be about 120.
| | 00:50 | All I really care about is that there's a
little bit of overlap on that hole, so let's
| | 00:54 | switch back to the Perspective View.
| | 00:57 | Orbit around here.
| | 00:58 | Let's move that into position.
| | 01:00 | That's going to go right about there.
| | 01:02 | You can see it covers the hole nicely and
that gives us a great start for a tweeter.
| | 01:06 | So let's hide the cabinet and
focus just on this one object.
| | 01:10 | So I'm going to hold down the Option key or
Alt key on the PC and click twice on these
| | 01:14 | gray dots; one, two.
| | 01:16 | That's going to hide the Boolean
object and now I can focus on the tweeter.
| | 01:21 | So let's rename this
object and call it Tweeter.
| | 01:25 | And now, we can make it editable.
| | 01:26 | So I'll hit the letter C on the keyboard,
and I can also hit this Make Object Editable
| | 01:29 | button here which is now grayed out
because I've already made it editable.
| | 01:33 | So now, let's zoom in on that tweeter.
| | 01:36 | What we want to do to create the tweeter is
to create an inset of these polygons here
| | 01:40 | that we can then push into the tweeter object.
| | 01:43 | To do that, we're going to
use the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 01:46 | So let's start off by hitting the Extrude
Inner tool and I can right click in the interface
| | 01:50 | and grab Extrude Inner.
| | 01:53 | And I want to first select this polygon.
| | 01:55 | So let's hit the Spacebar to
get to the Selection tool.
| | 01:58 | Select that polygon on the front.
| | 01:59 | If you're not in Polygon mode already, make
sure that you click in Polygon mode over here
| | 02:02 | in the left-hand side.
| | 02:05 | And now I can select that polygon and then hit the
Spacebar to get back to the Extrude Inner tool.
| | 02:09 | And now, I can click and drag to the left and
when I do that I'm going to get an inset polygon.
| | 02:14 | Now, I'm not quite sure if that's the right
depth for that, so I'm going to undo that
| | 02:18 | to get back to the original polygon.
| | 02:20 | I'm going to drag and make it a little
bit thicker, so probably about there.
| | 02:25 | Let's, zoom in on it just a bit and
I'm going to create one more inset.
| | 02:30 | That inset is going to become the
actual indentation for the tweeter.
| | 02:35 | This first inset that I created
is just going to create the lip.
| | 02:39 | Now, I can create that inset by dragging in and
this one I'm going to drag way in to about here.
| | 02:45 | Now, this is the right size on the Y-axis for the
tweeter but it's the wrong size on the X-axis.
| | 02:50 | Let's get the Scale tool out, hit the letter
T on the keyboard and I'm going to drag to
| | 02:55 | the right on the X scale and square this up.
| | 03:00 | Now, I'm going to eyeball it to get it about
square and I think that's pretty good right there.
| | 03:05 | Bring it in right about there.
| | 03:08 | So you can see now we've got this kind of
triangular shape on the front of this device
| | 03:11 | that's going to allow us to push in.
| | 03:13 | If I switch the Move tool, E on the keyboard,
and drag that in, you can see our tweeter
| | 03:19 | now has that depth and it
creates just the right size box.
| | 03:24 | If I render this right now, Command+R or Ctrl+R
on the keyboard, you can see that my tweeter
| | 03:29 | really doesn't have a lot of definition to it.
| | 03:30 | It's very smooth on the inside.
| | 03:32 | That's because CINEMA 4D is creating a falloff on
the surface's object based on the angles here.
| | 03:39 | In order to correct this problem I'm
going to need to do some knife cuts.
| | 03:42 | So let's switch back to Point mode
and right-click to get the knife tool.
| | 03:46 | And the first cut that I want to
make is around the outer edge.
| | 03:49 | So remember, if you're using your Knife tool
and you see a white line traveling around
| | 03:54 | the surface of your object,
that is a normal behavior.
| | 03:56 | I am getting an error because of the
screen recording software I'm using.
| | 04:01 | It's not drawing that white line correctly.
| | 04:03 | So if you see a white line on your Knife tool, that
is normal and that's what you should be seeing.
| | 04:09 | What I'm seeing are these four dots here and those
four dots correspond to where the white line would be.
| | 04:14 | So I'm going to make a click about here around
the outer edge and then I'm going to do another
| | 04:19 | one on the inner edge right here.
| | 04:21 | So let's click right about here.
| | 04:24 | And what that does is
define the edge of our tweeter.
| | 04:28 | If we do another rendering, Command+R or Ctrl+R
on the keyboard, you can see now we have a
| | 04:32 | really great definition for the outer box.
| | 04:36 | I still don't have a lot of
definition on the inside here.
| | 04:39 | To correct that, we're going to
need to do a little bit of selecting.
| | 04:43 | Let's switch over to Edge mode here and we're
going to do a really quick selection of some edges.
| | 04:49 | The tool that I want to use to select the
edges is going to be the Path Selection tool.
| | 04:54 | So if I go to the Selection menu,
I'm going to select Path Selection.
| | 04:58 | The way the Path Selection tool works is
that it allows you to draw selected paths.
| | 05:03 | So I'm going to click and drag.
| | 05:05 | You can see as I do that it highlights the
paths that I want to draw on and when I let
| | 05:09 | go, those paths are selected.
| | 05:11 | You may be seeing highlighted paths on yours and I'm
not because of that screen capture software again.
| | 05:17 | But I can tell that those paths have been
highlighted or selected because they have gone invisible.
| | 05:22 | So let's orbit around here.
| | 05:23 | I'm going to hold down the Shift key and
click and drag to the right. Here we go.
| | 05:29 | That selects that one.
| | 05:29 | Now, what I want to do is repeat
that process all the way around.
| | 05:34 | So let's take that one and go down here.
| | 05:36 | I'm holding the Shift key down to
make sure that I add to the selection.
| | 05:39 | I want to grab all these edges at once.
| | 05:42 | And I'll draw a path down there and then
let's orbit around to the other side.
| | 05:47 | Let's hold down the Shift key
again and add to the selection.
| | 05:51 | While I'm here, I'll get
this one too. Here we go.
| | 05:56 | Let's orbit around now.
| | 05:59 | And then I'm going to hold down the Shift
key and grab that path right there, and that
| | 06:05 | one right there, I missed it.
| | 06:07 | And then grab those edges right there.
| | 06:11 | Once you're done, you should have all the
edges selected that make up that contour of
| | 06:16 | the interior of the tweeter
and the outside of the box.
| | 06:20 | What I'm going to do next
is use the Bevel tool.
| | 06:23 | If I right-click on the
interface and go to Bevel.
| | 06:26 | When I drag to the right,
that's going to create a bevel.
| | 06:31 | And I don't want to make it too thick.
| | 06:32 | If I bevel it too much, I end up
with this crazy rounded tweeter.
| | 06:35 | What I want to do is just drag it
to the right just a little bit.
| | 06:38 | Now, of course, if I
mess up I can always undo.
| | 06:42 | And then I'll click and drag again.
| | 06:44 | Now, you want to be careful
when you click and drag.
| | 06:45 | If I click multiple times and drag multiple
times, I'm going to end up with these weird
| | 06:49 | bevels like that.
| | 06:50 | I don't ever want them to cross
like that, so I'll undo twice.
| | 06:54 | And I'm just going to click and drag to
the right and bevel it just like that.
| | 06:58 | If I render this right now, Command+R or Ctrl+R
on the keyboard, you can see we have a nice
| | 07:03 | definition around the edges.
| | 07:04 | We got a nice definition on the
interior and I think we're in great shape.
| | 07:09 | I do want to make one more cut with the knife
tool right here, so let's switch to Point mode.
| | 07:13 | And I'll get the Knife tool by hitting K on
the keyboard and I'm still in Knife Loop mode
| | 07:18 | and I'm going to make a cut
right down here near the base.
| | 07:20 | And when I do that, that's going to
define the center of the tweeter.
| | 07:24 | Let's do another Command+R
or Ctrl+R on the PC.
| | 07:28 | There we go, now we've got a great
looking center for that tweeter.
| | 07:32 | The process of making of a tweeter object
like this really centers around the idea of
| | 07:35 | starting with that base object, creating the
insets, and then pushing and pulling on the
| | 07:39 | polygons until you have
just the shape you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the speaker cone using Loft NURBS| 00:00 | Now that we've got a great looking tweeter
for our speaker, we can start on the woofer
| | 00:03 | cone that is going to sit in
the main part of the cabinet.
| | 00:07 | So let's back out just a bit and I'm
going to reveal the Boolean object.
| | 00:12 | I'm holding down the Option or Alt key on
the PC, and I'm going to click once on these
| | 00:16 | dots here and that's
going to reveal the Boolean.
| | 00:19 | You can see the tweeter fits nicely
in that opening we created for it.
| | 00:23 | Now we can concentrate on this area here
which is where the woofer is going to go.
| | 00:28 | To create the woofer, we're going to use
something called the Loft NURBS and a Loft NURBS is
| | 00:32 | a very special type of NURBS object that creates a
skin based on the position and shape of splines.
| | 00:39 | So to create my woofer, I'm going to
need to start with a circular spline.
| | 00:43 | So let's go to the Spline objects
and grab a Circle spline primitive.
| | 00:47 | Now, I want to get that circle in the exact
same position as this cylindrical opening.
| | 00:52 | To do that, I can use a little bit
of math or I can use a cool trick.
| | 00:56 | If I take the circle and parent it to the
cylinder object and then go to the Coordinate
| | 01:01 | Properties, I can use CINEMA 4D's default
behavior of relative position to get that
| | 01:06 | circle in the same location as the cylinder.
| | 01:09 | So to do that, I'm going to go to the
Coordinate Properties on the circle and then zero out
| | 01:13 | the X, Y, and Zs.
| | 01:15 | And so, when I do that, you can see now the circle
is exactly in the same position as the cylinder.
| | 01:21 | Let's take it out of that hierarchy now.
| | 01:22 | I'm bringing it up here to the top.
| | 01:24 | Now we can start to build our woofer.
| | 01:28 | All this other stuff is getting in the way a
little bit, so let's hold down the Option
| | 01:30 | or Alt key again and click twice on these
gray dots, boom, boom, and then the same thing
| | 01:35 | for the tweeter, boom, boom.
| | 01:37 | Now we can focus just on the circle.
| | 01:40 | The Loft NURBS needs to have multiple splines
to create the skin and we want to have insets
| | 01:45 | of these splines in exactly the same location.
| | 01:48 | We're going to use a really cool feature that's
going to allow us to use a Scale tool to change
| | 01:52 | the size of the spline and
create a copy at the same time.
| | 01:56 | I'm in Point mode, so let's
switch back to model mode.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to hit T on the keyboard and
that's going to bring up the Scale tool.
| | 02:03 | With the Scale tool selected, if I hold down
the Ctrl key, and click and drag at the same
| | 02:09 | time, not only am I scaling the spline
but I'm making a copy of it as well.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to make three more copies using
this technique, so there is one and then I'm
| | 02:18 | going to Ctrl drag again and this time, I'll
make the next one there and then I'll do one
| | 02:24 | more that's inset from that one.
| | 02:26 | That's pretty good right about there.
| | 02:28 | So you should end up with four splines that are all
inset from one another based on that outer edge.
| | 02:35 | Now what I can do is to put
these under a Loft NURBS.
| | 02:38 | Let's go to the NURBS objects and
we're going to grab a Loft NURBS.
| | 02:42 | The Loft NURBS creates a skin based
on the splines that we put under it.
| | 02:47 | So let's take these splines and then let's name
them in order from the outward to the inward.
| | 02:52 | We can call it number 1, and then I'm going
to arrow up, and change the name of that one
| | 02:57 | to number 2, hit the Up Arrow again and change
that to 3, Up Arrow again and change that to 4.
| | 03:03 | So what we want to do is to reverse the order
of these guys so that the 4 is the last one
| | 03:08 | and the 1 is the first one.
| | 03:09 | So let's take that and just
go 1, 2, 3, 4, there we go.
| | 03:15 | Now I can take these splines and
place them under the Loft NURBS.
| | 03:18 | And when I do that, you see I get eight new
mesh and that mesh is based on the position.
| | 03:24 | Now, all these splines are in the same
location, so the mesh is kind of overlapping.
| | 03:28 | So now what we can do is
start to shape our woofer cone.
| | 03:31 | So let's start with number four.
| | 03:33 | The number 1 we're going to
leave in the same location.
| | 03:35 | I'm going to grab number 4, and then take that
with the Move tool and move it on the Z-axis back.
| | 03:42 | Here we go.
| | 03:44 | And then I'll take number 3 and move it
back as well until it is just outside.
| | 03:50 | You see that I've got a cap there and that's being
caused by the Object properties on the Boolean.
| | 03:57 | And I don't want to have a cap on
my object, so I slip for the cap.
| | 04:00 | I do want to have a Back Cap,
but I don't want a Front Cap.
| | 04:02 | So let's go to the End Cap
and change that to None.
| | 04:05 | Now, I guessed wrong and that
created an opening on this end.
| | 04:09 | So what I want to do is change that one
back to Cap and change this one to None.
| | 04:14 | Now you can see that our cone is taking shape.
| | 04:17 | So that was 4 and 3.
| | 04:18 | Let's just change the shape on 3 just a bit.
| | 04:20 | I want to have a little bit of an inset right
there and our speaker cone looks fantastic.
| | 04:26 | The cool part about this is that if we want the
speaker cone to pulsate, we can take splines
| | 04:31 | 3 and 4 and just have them pulsate by
animating their position and we can create a little
| | 04:37 | boom, boom action.
| | 04:39 | So I'll undo that to get them
back to their original position.
| | 04:43 | Now we can reveal the Boolean Object and see how
our speaker cone looks compared to the model.
| | 04:49 | So let's hold down the Option or Alt
key and click once on those guys.
| | 04:52 | And you can see there it is in position.
| | 04:55 | Now, it's too far into the models.
| | 04:57 | Let's take the splines and then hold
down the Shift key to select all of them.
| | 05:03 | And then I'm going to move them on the Z-axis
so that they are out here at the outer edge.
| | 05:08 | I'm just going to eyeball them into position.
| | 05:10 | That's pretty good just like that.
| | 05:12 | So you can see our speaker is
really starting to come together.
| | 05:14 | We can now turn on the tweeter as well
holding down the Option or Alt key and clicking on
| | 05:19 | those gray dots.
| | 05:20 | Now we're ready to create the bracket
that's going to hold the woofer in place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the cone bracket using Sweep NURBS| 00:00 | Now that we've got our subwoofer in position,
we can make the bracket that's going to frame
| | 00:04 | it on the outside of the speaker and
give it a little more fit and finish.
| | 00:08 | The bracket itself needs to
match up with the subwoofer.
| | 00:11 | So the starting point for it should be one
of the splines that makes up the subwoofer.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to grab spline number 1, which is
the one that's on the outermost edge and Ctrl
| | 00:20 | drag a copy of it.
| | 00:21 | So I hold down the Ctrl key
and drag a copy of it up.
| | 00:25 | And this is going to be now our
starting point for that bracket.
| | 00:29 | Now, what I want to do is to create a Sweep
NURBS that's going to create a profile that
| | 00:35 | goes all the way around the outside of that.
| | 00:38 | Step one is going to be to add to Sweep NURBS
to the scenes, so let's add a Sweep NURBS.
| | 00:42 | I'd like it to be in the same position as the bracket
itself which is in the same position as that spline.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to start of by taking the Sweep
NURBS placing it underneath that spline and
| | 00:52 | going to the Coordinate
Properties and zeroing out those values.
| | 00:55 | So let's go to zero, zero, and I'm hitting
the Tab key to get through those fields.
| | 01:02 | Now that it's in the same location,
I can take that and drag it out.
| | 01:06 | And I'll now take the original spline
and make it a child of the Sweep NURBS.
| | 01:10 | Remember the way the Sweep NURBS works is it
needs two splines to operate and the shape
| | 01:15 | that I want to have around the speaker cone is
going to be essentially just a rectangular bracket.
| | 01:20 | So let's go to the spline
objects and grab a Rectangle Spline.
| | 01:26 | The Rectangle spline, I'm going to
drag as a child of the Sweep NURBS.
| | 01:30 | Now, when I do that, I'm going to get this
really large cylinder and that's going to
| | 01:33 | change in just a moment.
| | 01:34 | Before I do that, I want
to zero-out its position.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to take this position and go
zero and zero and get in the same location.
| | 01:41 | You notice nothing really changed.
| | 01:42 | I just like to do that to
keep them in the same location.
| | 01:45 | Now, I can go to the
rectangle and start to shape it up.
| | 01:48 | So I go to the Object Properties on the rectangle and
start off by making the Width a little bit smaller.
| | 01:54 | I think it's going to be right
about there, right around the 36 mark.
| | 01:58 | Let's go to the Height now, and change that
down and have it be substantially thinner.
| | 02:04 | So let's make the Height about 10 on
the height and about 36 on the Width.
| | 02:09 | And I think that's pretty good.
| | 02:11 | Let's zoom-in a bit and take a look at that.
| | 02:13 | You can see there's a very
hard edge on our bracket.
| | 02:17 | We want to give it just a
little bit of a bevel.
| | 02:18 | And the way we're going to do that is by going to
the rectangle and changing the Rounding settings.
| | 02:23 | Now, when I add a rounding, you're going to
see it's going to give it a very round edge
| | 02:26 | and I don't want quite that much, so let's the
change the Radius from 5 down to about 1.
| | 02:32 | There we go.
| | 02:32 | Now we've got a nice round edge.
| | 02:34 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R on the
keyboard, that's going to render the frame.
| | 02:38 | You can see that I've got a really
nice highlight being pick up by that.
| | 02:41 | Now, one of the things you may have noticed
about the speaker bracket and also about the
| | 02:46 | cone itself is that I can see a little bit of
faceting around the edges and that's because
| | 02:51 | of the intermediate angle of
the splines that I'm using.
| | 02:55 | Let's go to the circle spline that's
underneath the Sweep NURBS and change the intermediate
| | 02:58 | Angle from five to zero.
| | 03:01 | And when I do that, that's going to give me
a much smoother spline that gives me many
| | 03:05 | more rotation values around this axis.
| | 03:09 | And when I render that, Command+R or Ctrl+R,
you can see I no longer see that faceting.
| | 03:13 | Let's do the same thing for each
of the splines in the Loft NURBS.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to draw a rectangle around all of
those and we'll change that value all at once.
| | 03:21 | Let's change the angle from 5 to 0, and that's
going to give us a much smoother Sweep NURBS.
| | 03:27 | If I hit Command+R or Ctrl+R again, we'll be able
to see that we have a great looking cone there.
| | 03:32 | So you can see making the
bracket was really easy.
| | 03:35 | The key to the process was get in the Sweep
NURBS and using our existing Loft NURBS spline
| | 03:40 | as a starting point.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying finishing touches and organizing the hierarchy| 00:00 | Our speaker cabinet is just about finished.
| | 00:03 | Before we adjust the hierarchy, there's a couple
of little finishing touches we want to add.
| | 00:07 | We need to have a little dome here
in the center of the speaker cone.
| | 00:10 | And so to create that, we're
going to add a sphere to the scene.
| | 00:14 | Now that sphere I'd like to have in the exact
same position as the very last spline in the
| | 00:19 | hierarchy which is this number 4 spline.
| | 00:21 | So let's take the Sphere and
parent it to that spline right there.
| | 00:26 | And under the Coordinate Properties, I'm going to
zero out its position, so zero tab, zero tab, zero.
| | 00:33 | And now it's right on the same location.
| | 00:34 | Now, what I can do is adjust the size of
that and I'm using the orange handle here.
| | 00:40 | What that changes is the radius value.
| | 00:42 | Now, I can scrub the Radius value or I can
just visually adjust it with that orange handle.
| | 00:47 | What I wanted to do is to line up
with that inner cone, and there we go.
| | 00:53 | So it's right at the edge.
| | 00:54 | It creates a nice blend.
| | 00:56 | And now I can take that cone and just put it back
just a bit and expand it outward just a hair.
| | 01:03 | There we go.
| | 01:03 | Now, when we render that, Command+R or Ctrl+R,
you can see that we have a great looking cone
| | 01:07 | on top of our cone.
| | 01:09 | So let's back out just a little bit.
| | 01:11 | The great thing about this arrangement is if
I take this number 3 and number 4 and I'll
| | 01:16 | parent them together, now I can take that
and animate its position and I get this great
| | 01:22 | movement on the subwoofer,
and all of it moves together.
| | 01:25 | You notice that the Sphere can exist under
the Loft NURBS without interfering with it.
| | 01:30 | Everything stays live.
| | 01:30 | You can make changes to it.
| | 01:32 | It also presents you with some
interesting animation options too.
| | 01:36 | Let's undo that to get it
back to its original position.
| | 01:38 | The last thing we need to do is to add the
little rivets that are going to go around
| | 01:42 | the outside of the bracket.
| | 01:44 | So let's start of by creating
a little bit of a cylinder.
| | 01:47 | And it's a little too big right now, so let's change
the Radius by grabbing that orange handle there.
| | 01:52 | It's in the same location as everything.
| | 01:54 | Let's change the Height to about 50 for now.
| | 01:58 | We'll come back to the radius later.
| | 02:00 | Let's hide all of our other objects.
| | 02:01 | Let's close the hierarchies here.
| | 02:04 | I'm going to hold down the Option or Alt key
and I'm going to click twice on the Sweep
| | 02:08 | NURBS, hold, and then drag downward to
paint, and that's going to hide everything.
| | 02:13 | And now, I can create the array.
| | 02:16 | Let's add an array object to the scene and
take our cylinder and add it to the array.
| | 02:20 | And I think that's probably a good number.
| | 02:22 | We've got I think eight of those.
| | 02:24 | And if I go to the cylinder itself, I can take
the height and make it a little bit skinnier
| | 02:31 | and then make it a little bit
thinner that way. There we go.
| | 02:35 | The other thing I want to do is on the
top of each cylinder, I want to bevel it.
| | 02:39 | So if I go to the Cylinder options and go
to the Caps option then turn on Filleting.
| | 02:43 | That's a little too round so I'll go
to the Radius and drag that downward.
| | 02:48 | And then I'm going to change
the Segments from 5 to 2.
| | 02:51 | And then let's adjust the
Radius a little bit more. O ops!
| | 02:54 | I accidentally click and held
down and it changed to thicker.
| | 02:57 | So I'm going to change that manually by
highlighting the text and typing in the number 1.
| | 03:02 | So now let's back out a bit again and
we can rotate this whole array now.
| | 03:06 | So select the Array object and hit R on
the keyboard to bring up the Rotate tool.
| | 03:10 | And when I grab the X-band here,
I'm going to click and drag.
| | 03:13 | And I want to hold on the Shift key, that's
going to constrain the motion of the rotation
| | 03:18 | to even increments and I'm going to
set it on 90 and that's perfect.
| | 03:23 | Now what we want to have is this Array
in the same location as our Sweep NURBS.
| | 03:27 | So let's hold down the Option or
Alt key to reveal the Sweep NURBS.
| | 03:31 | Take the array and place it under here.
| | 03:33 | Now, this is going to break the Sweep NURBS for
a moment and that's okay, we can get it back.
| | 03:38 | Take the Array, go to Coordinate Properties, and now
zero out the position, zero tab, zero tab, zero.
| | 03:46 | And then we'll take the Array and move it out of
the hierarchy and then our Sweep NURBS comes back.
| | 03:51 | Now we can take the array and adjust its radius and
that will get the objects centered up on that bracket.
| | 03:58 | So let's take those and bring them down into
position, so right around 200 units gives
| | 04:04 | us just what we need.
| | 04:06 | Now I could take the array and
push them in just a little bit.
| | 04:09 | I'll take that and just back it in just a
little bit so they just stick out of the object.
| | 04:14 | And when I render that, Command+R,
you can see I pushed it too far.
| | 04:18 | So let's hit A on the
keyboard to redraw the screen.
| | 04:20 | Let's zoom in a little bit.
| | 04:21 | And in fact, let's look at this from the side view,
which in this case is going to be the right-hand view.
| | 04:27 | And let's zoom in on that and then we can
push it forward just a bit and that's pretty
| | 04:32 | good right there.
| | 04:34 | Now we know they're sticking out just the
right amount and we can middle mouse click
| | 04:38 | to get back and here we are
in the Perspective View.
| | 04:41 | Hold down the Option or Alt key, click once
and drag down and then that reveals everything.
| | 04:46 | And now we can build our
hierarchy for the whole speaker cabinet.
| | 04:49 | Let's start by adding a Null object to the
scene and we'll call this one Speaker parent
| | 04:56 | and take everything and parent it up to that.
| | 04:59 | So I'll draw a rectangle around everything,
drag it and make it a child to Speaker parent.
| | 05:04 | Now what we want to do is to raise it all up.
| | 05:06 | So let's grab the Speaker parent, switch to
the right-hand view, and make that full screen.
| | 05:10 | Let's back out so we can see everything.
| | 05:13 | We want our speaker to sit on the ground
plane, which is right here at this blue line.
| | 05:17 | Let's take the speaker and adjust it upward on
the Y-axis, dragging up until it sits on Y.
| | 05:23 | Here we go.
| | 05:26 | I can't see that handle anymore, so what I
can do is go to the Coordinate Property and
| | 05:29 | just click a little bit to arrow that up.
| | 05:31 | And that's pretty good right there.
| | 05:33 | Just one more click.
| | 05:35 | And now, we've got a great Y
position for our Speaker parent.
| | 05:39 | Now what we can do is add one more Null
object and let's call this one Speaker ground.
| | 05:46 | And take the Speaker
parent and parent it to that.
| | 05:49 | Now it's very easy to get our
speaker to sit on the ground.
| | 05:52 | All I ever have to do is
zero out that Y position.
| | 05:54 | So, for example, let's switch to Perspective
View and we have our speaker cabinet animating
| | 05:59 | and dropping down at the floor.
| | 06:00 | All I have to do is change that Y value to
zero and it's always going to sit nice and
| | 06:04 | flushed on the floor.
| | 06:06 | So there you go, our
speaker cabinet is all done.
| | 06:09 | We didn't focus on lighting or texturing in
this movie, but you can take a look at the
| | 06:13 | finished file to get the examples for how
to create the textures and lighting for the
| | 06:18 | rendering that I showed you at
the very top of this chapter.
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ConclusionWhat's coming next| 00:00 | So that's it for C4D
Essentials: Polygons and Splines.
| | 00:04 | In the next course, C4D Essentials: Cameras,
Animation and Deformers, we'll take a look
| | 00:08 | at the camera object and how to
look at your scenes in a dynamic way.
| | 00:12 | We'll use keyframes to make your objects
move and we'll manipulate them using deformers.
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