Cinema 4D: The Artist’s Project Sourcebook Third Edition This page intentionally left blank Cinema 4D: The Artist’s Project Sourcebook Third E dition Kent McQuilkin Anne Powers Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451, USA The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, UK © 2011 ELSEVIER INC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McQuilkin, Kent. Cinema 4D : the artist's project sourcebook / Kent McQuilkin. -- 3rd ed. p. cm. Rev. ed. of: Cinema 4D / Anne Powers. 2007. ISBN 978-0-240-81450-6 (pbk.) 1. Computer animation. 2. Three-dimensional display systems. 3. Cinema 4D XL. 4. Computer graphics. 5. Rigging (Computer animation) I. Powers, Anne. Cinema 4D. II. Title. TR897.7.P69 2011 006.6'93--dc22 2011009865 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. For information on all Focal Press publications visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com 11 12 13 14 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the China Contents Introduction Acknowledgements 1 Who This Book Is For and How It’s Different 2 The DVD 2 The 4D Environment and Workflow 3 Introduction to the Basics of CINEMA 4D 3 Content Browser 5 Layer Browser 6 Preferences 8 1 The Power of Primitives 9 Ornament Project 10 Greek Pool 15 The Desert Scene Project 29 2 Under the Hood 50 MoGraph Mace 50 City Building 57 Modeling a Spaceship 70 3 NURBS Modeling Tools 89 3D 101: The Vase 89 Skull Mask Extrude 100 Creating a Shovel with a Bezier NURBS 110 4 Deformers and Other Modeling Helpers 118 Bend and Boolean Lock Project 118 Wind Deformer Flag 127 MetaBall 133 5 Materials in Depth 136 Shaders 138 Channel Shaders 140 Planet Texturing Project 142 Island of Displacement 156 6 Better under Lights 167 Creating and Animating a SearchLight 167 Intro to GI: Lighting with Objects 171 Lighting a Product 177 No GI.....No Problem 181 7 Animation Basics 183 Butterfly Project 183 Controlling Animation with Rail Splines & F-Curves 196 8 Head Shots 199 Modeling a Character Head 199 Animating a Character with Pose Morph 229 9 Rigging a Character 234 Creating the Joints 234 Mirroring/Binding/Weighting 239 10 Cameras in Control 243 Setting Up a Camera to Animate along a Helix Spline 244 The Stage Object: Uitlizing Multiple Cameras 247 Depth of Field 249 CINEMA 4D in Production: An Interview with Chris Smith 250 11 The Art of Rendering 252 Investigating Render Settings 253 Multi-Pass Rendering 268 CineMan: Integrate Pixar’s RenderMan into your CINEMA 4D workflow 272 12 A Jolt of Xpresso 275 School of Fish 275 Thinking Particles: PBlurp 285 13 BodyPaint: The Artist’s Connection 290 Painting a Book in BodyPaint 290 BodyPaint UV Editing 300 Projection Man 320 CINEMA 4D in Production: An Interview with Tom Quach 325 14 Tips on Type 328 Extruding Text 328 Deformers on Type 332 Sweep Text 337 Sweep Along Text 339 MoText Introduction 341 Animate MoText with the Random Effector 345 Making Specialized Fonts with the Spline Mask 348 PolyFX 352 15 More out of MoGraph 358 Spline Effector 359 MoGraph Tracer 361 MoGraph Sound Effector 364 MoSpline 367 CINEMA 4D in Production: An Interview with Rob Garrott 369 16 After Effects Integration 372 Part 1: Setting Up a Simple Scene fo AE Integration 372 Part 2: Setting Up Tags and Render Settings 374 Part 3: Importing and Compositing in AE 378 17 Dynamics and Special Effects 386 Rigid Body Dynamics 386 The Fracture Object 389 Cloth Dynamics 393 Cloner Soft Body Dynamics and Baking the Dynamic Calculations 397 PyroCluster 399 Creating a Fantasy Landscape with Hair 402 Headdress Project 404 18 Stereoscopic Content Creation in CINEMA 4D 414 Creating a Stereoscopic Rig in C4D using Xpresso 414 Creating a Stereoscopic Scene 419 Compositing Stereo Images in Photoshop 421 SVI Stereo 3D Editor Plug-in 2.3 423 19 CINEMA 4D and 427 Friends Vue 9xStream Integration 427 On the DVD The DVD includes C4D project files for each chapter, completed examples of projects, example files to explore beyond the scope of the text, and rendered movies and stills. There is much more learning to do with hours of additional hands-on instructional resources provided on the DVD including: • Instructional Quicktime Video Tutorials covering the latest in CINEMA 4D R12. These include: Motor Dynamics, Linear Workflow, Color Profiles, White Balance, Soft and Rigid Body Dynamics and the Camera Deformer. • Well over one hundred and fifty pages of tutorials in pdf format for printing, or viewing on your computer. Subjects include advanced modeling, texturing, character animation, After Effects integration, RealFlow, ZBrush. • Background images and texture bitmaps to bolster your texture stock. Index 431 Introduction Acknowledgements This book would not be possible without the help, support and knowledge of the following individuals. I owe a great deal of gratitude: To Dennis McGonagle, Carlin Reagan and Anne McGee of Focal Press, for their insight, support and the opportunity to author this book. To Anne Powers, for creating a non-technical book series that puts tools to practical uses and has helped spark the imagination of so many 3D enthusiasts and professionals. To Michael Hewes, Rick Barrett and all of the great team at MAXON, for their incredible knowledge and endless supply of answers and support. To Ray Davis of Pixar, who went to infinity and beyond in getting RenderMan up and running and up and running again when I fouled things up. To Ihor Petelycky and Spatial View, for an incredible program and even better support. To Matt Riveccie of e-on, for all of the extraordinary amount of support in keeping me up to date with Vue. To Cormac Slevin and Antonio Manfredi at Digital Video S.p.A, for their insight in combining the 2D animation of Toonz with 3D assets. To Kent Braun of DigiCel, for many great years of support and his amazing knowledge of animation and dedication to bringing 2D animation to students, hobbyists and professionals alike with FlipBook Pro. To Rosanna Thomson and the team at Next Limit Technologies for their support and help with RealFlow. To Chris Smith, Tom Quach and Rob Garrott, for taking the time out of their busy schedules to be a part of this book and provide their expert insight into the tools of their respective trades. To David Gilbert, for introducing me to the teaching profession years ago and allowing me to learn at least as much as I’ve taught. To Austin Webb, for his time and expertise in photography and for shooting great shots for textures and scene creation. To my good friend Fikremarium for his interest and willingness to allow me to build his head in my computer and put it on display. To my brother, Steven and father, Tom, for all of their support, inspiration and encouragement though out this process. To my mom, for being the best mother I could ever ask for and all the great texture photos and editing advice she supplied. Thanks for all of the time you put in, and for always being supportive. To my wife, Sally, and my four precious children, Max, Emma, Samuel, and Khari. You all are my treasures. Thank you for all the sacrifices you’ve made as I’ve been in this process. Above all, I thank God for every second I have on this Earth and the incomparable love, and compassion He has for all mankind. 1