April2005

Volume 02 Issue 04 April 2005 | $3.99

HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS ISSUE: REVIEW

Thinking of sidegrading or upgrading?

Check out Aaron Biscombe’s CINEMA 4D Release 9 Review on page 14.

TEXTURING TUTORIAL

GET DIRTY with Rui Batisa’s texturing tutorial on page 10

MONO FLOP TUTORIAL

Interview with Dave Brinda How do you like your toast? Give Base80’s Mono Flop tutorial a go! Be careful not to burn the toast, page 25.

Learn a little more about Dave and what he does on page 4.

© Dave Brinda 2005

3D ATTACK QUICK INDEX PAGE 4-8

Interview with Dave Brinda by Tavy Ann

PAGE 9

The C4D Quiz

PAGE 10-13

GET DIRTY! by Rui Batista

PAGE 14-17

CINEMA 4D Release 9.1 Review by Aaron Biscombe

PAGE 18-21

Lookout Tower Part 3 by Bram van Gerwen

PAGE 22-23

Combining Splines by Georg Niedermeier

PAGE 24

EMorpher Review by Thomas Pasieka

PAGE 25-28

Mono Flop Tutorial by Base80

PAGE 29

Micro-Tut-Formula Egg by Base 80

PAGE 30-35

Landscape Tutorial Part 3 by Georg Niedermeier

PAGE 36-37

Artist Spotlight “Raymond Salter” by Tavy Ann

PAGE 38-40

GNOMON ZBrush Review by Mark Gmehling

PAGE 41-43

How to Sort Particles With TP by Tabou

PAGE 44-46

Camera Animation in R9 by Georg Niedermeier

PAGE 47-52

Best of C4D Gallery

PAGE 53

CINEMA 4D Q&A

PAGE 55

3D ATTACK Comic by Sir Gong

Interview with Dave Brinda

By Tavy Ann

Interview

Tavy: Dave thanks for taking some time out of your schedule for 3D Attack and our readers. Some of our readers may not be familiar with who you are. Would you mind sharing a bit about yourself?

Dave: Thank you Tavy, it's an honor to participate. My name is Dave Brinda, I'm 36 and live in northern California with my wife and our two kids.

As a creative professional, I've been working in the design industry for the past 12 years. I currently specialize in interactive and motion graphics design and digital illustration.

Throughout my career I've had the opportunity to work on some exciting projects and develop some award-winning creative for clients including; Universal Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Disney, Sun Microsystems, and National Geographic.

I got into 3D a year or two ago and have since had the opportunity to utilize those new skills in both my professional projects and for fun.

Tavy: Tell us about your education.

Do you have any formal education or training in Graphics?

Dave: I graduated from The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I started out my professional career in commercial photography and quickly drifted into the design world. I was interested early on with the entire design process and began developing projects from concept to completion. In the early 90's I had the opportunity to establish and direct a creative services agency and one of the first digital photography studios.

Tavy: CINEMA 4D is your 3D application of choice. Why? What other applications are you currently using or would like to implement in the future?

Dave: Cinema 4D is an outstanding piece of software! What initially drew me to Cinema was it's incredible ease of use. Everything was so intuitively designed, that I was amazed at how quickly I picked it up, and was stunned at the quality of

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imagery I was able to produce. To me, Cinema seems perfectly tuned to the needs of the individual artist...I can concentrate on what I'm trying to express creatively and the technical aspects don't get in the way. As I slowly gain more experi-

Interview with Dave Brinda

By Tavy Ann

ence with the program, I'm constantly impressed with it's depth of features and capabilities. I feel like I've only barely scratched the surface.

Interview

As far as other programs I'm currently using, it's pretty much all the graphics standards: Photoshop, Freehand, AfterEffects, Flash, etc.

I've been dabbling with Apple's Motion and can't wait to see where they take that program. I'm also currently working on adding ZBrush to my skill set, as I'm totally amazed by that program and it's unique approach to organic modeling.

Tavy: Dave your resume is impressive! You have done work for some of the big guys. Apple Computer, National Geographic, Disney, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures, to name a few.

Can you give us a little insight into your work for some of these companies.

Dave: Thanks Tavy, I have been fortunate to be able to work with some great clients on some really exciting projects. My Apple relationship began with designing a series of instore demos that utilized rich motion graphics and interactivity to showcase their products in retail environments like CompUSA and Fry's Electronics. I've since done several motion graphics projects like the "Welcome animation" for the Setup Assistant in OSX, an animated logo for iTunes, and most recently an

RSS screensaver for the upcoming release of Tiger. My work for National Geographic involved some 2D photo illustration. My work for Sun has involved a variety interactive and motion graphics projects, and most recently some 3D virtual set environments done in Cinema.

My work for Universal Pictures has given me the opportunity to create

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some amazing online experiences for entertainment properties like: "The Bourne Supremacy", "The HULK", and "A Beautiful Mind".

Tavy: Of all of your professional projects do you have a favorite?

One you're the most proud of?

Was the most rewarding?

Interview with Dave Brinda

Interview

By Tavy Ann

It's really difficult to point out one overall favorite. In my professional work, I'm really proud of the work I did for Apple on the in-store demos, but my recent work on the "Bourne Supremacy" project was a lot of fun.

It was really rewarding to be able to come up with a concept, visualize the overall experience, and then be able to actually build it all out in 3D. It was awesome to finally watch the film and see how close the 3D environments came to matching the film experience. As far as personal work, the "Medieval Airport" image was really fun to work on, and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Tavy: Your image "Medieval Airport", WOW! This is probably my personal favorite of all the work you've done. Can you tell us a little about this project?

Dave: Thanks, it's one of my favorites too. It was created as a

personal project for a Cinema 4D design competition over at Renderosity. The premise of the competition was, what if flight had been invented during the Medieval era? What would the vehicles have looked like, how would they be powered, what would a Medieval airport have looked like, etc? My concept centered around the idea of utilizing the natural environment. The lift of hot air, the momentum of running water and the updraft of a canyon wall.

I envisioned the vehicles being a cross between an old sailing ship and a hot air balloon. I also wanted to infuse a bit of a story, so I added the two figures in the foreground. I wanted to let the viewer's imagination wander...who are they? Is it a father and son?

Are the coming home, or arriving at a new destination for the first time? I wanted a sort of ambiguity that invit-

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ed the viewer to "participate" in the image. I really wish I would have had time to finish the image a bit more (ie. Add some other signs of life, like people walking across bridges, horses and carts on roads and maybe small village in the distance, etc.)

Anyway, at some point, I'd like to develop the project further...possibly into a book or maybe even a short film. I couldn't help but do a quick animated version just for fun...it was just begging to move :) Tavy: When developing a website for a major motion picture like The Bourne Supremacy, where do you start and end? Can you give us a look into your work flow?

Dave: Each project is unique, but in general my process is pretty much the same regardless of the client, or the type and size of the project.

It all starts with a little research (In

Interview with Dave Brinda

Interview

By Tavy Ann

the case of entertainment projects that involves reading the script and reviewing assets) and a dialog with the client to establish the goals of the project. The overall goals are then translated into specific design objectives that will be the basis for evaluating future design solutions.

Once we have a target that everyone agrees on, we can move into the creative exploration phase.

established design objectives, and eventually it develops into a successful product that matches the original creative vision, and exceeds the client's expectations.

This is the brainstorming, sketching, "blue sky" phase where anything is possible and there are no "bad" ideas. Eventually this develops into an overall concept that will serve as a blueprint and guiding force for the design production.

Dave: It's all about family for me...just hanging out and spending time with my wife and kids. I love the outdoors, and enjoy hiking and exploring. Also, I've never forgotten my first true love of photography. It's kind of nice now that I've sort of "reclaimed my amateur status"...I can just shoot for the love of photography without the pressure of it being a job.

The typical design production phase involves comps in Photoshop, possibly some 3D work in Cinema, animation in After Effects, and programming in Flash. The creative development during production is continuously evaluated against our

Tavy: You've got a lot on your plate Dave, as do many professionals in this industry. We all need time away from our work. What do you do to relax and get away from it all?

Tavy: Thanks again Dave for sharing more about you and your work with 3D Attack and our readers.

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Many aspiring 3D Artists, Graphic Designers, Web Designers, Motion Graphics Designers, etc. will read this interview. Do you have any words of wisdom or advice you would like to leave them with.

Dave: My pleasure Tavy, I appreciate the opportunity to share and am honored to participate.

As far as advice, I'd say don't get too hung up on the technical aspect of things. These tools are definitely important, and we couldn't do our job without them, but don't lose sight of what your real value is. Your unique point-of-view and creative vision is what will set you apart in the long run. Being able to close your eyes and envision the end result is the greatest tool you have.

The other pearl of wisdom I'd like to pass is something I learned in school and have carried with me ever since. It is from a poem

Interview with Dave Brinda

Interview

By Tavy Ann

"Beginners Mind" by the Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki: "In the beginners mind there are endless possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few". It seems that sometimes the more of an "expert" we become the more restrictions we impose on ourselves, and we end up limiting ourselves creatively. With every new design challenge, try to maintain the beginner's point-of-view of endless possibilities, and never lose your passion for learning.

I wish everyone the best, and remember to work hard, do good work, and never give up.

-Dave

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R E M R O F E D H T A P N WI !

A .

T .

O .

N D N A Renato Terabella http://www.tarabella.it/ is sponsoring the April "C4D Quiz" with some great Prizes. By answering a simple question and sending an e-mail with "C4D QUIZ" as your subject line and your answer to 3dattack@3dattack.net, you could win the following: PATH DEFORMER - THE RIGHT WAY TO DEFORM VIA SPLINE Path Deformer is a proportional path deformer that's easy to use. Like all standard deformers there are not limits to your creativity. Simply choose the spline to use and your object will be deformed without losing proportions. Path Deformer deforms the object along the global z-axis and also has a banking parameter to roll the objects over a spline and an offset parameter to control the position along the path. You can also place a Null-Object under the deformator to have a precise reference for position and rotation along the path. Path Deformer is a tool made by a 3D user for 3D users.

N.O.T.A - NOT ONLY TEXT ANIMATOR N.o.t.a is an automatic motion generator that helps to animate the sequence of objects parented to a null that owns the "N.o.t.a" tag. You need only to make a group of all the objects you need to animate and set a destination keyframe for scale, rotation and position. Now you are able to give another object (generally null) a position and rotation reference a start position and play with all splines provided in the gui.

One entrant will win both Path Deformer and N.o.t.a by answering the following question:

Question - What is the name of the MAXON USA CEO? E-mail your answer to 3dattack@3dattack.net no later than April 30, 2005 for a chance to win Path Deformer and N.o.t.a. We will pool all entrants and pick a random winner on May 1, 2005. The winner will be announced on our forum at www.3dattack.net and be notified via email. *3D Attack staff and their immediate families are not eligible to enter or win "C4D Quiz" prizes.

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Get Dirty - Texturing Tutorial

By Rui Batista

Tutorial

I bet you can spot a computer generated image from a real photo most of the time. Why is that? Computer generated images are, usually, too clean and too perfect. On the other hand, real world objects captured on a photo are subject to wear and tear on a daily basis. Some more than others, of course, but even a brand new object taken out of its protective box can already have finger marks of the person who packaged it, some indentation caused by a fall, a bit of dust that may already be inside its box, etc.

We can say, without fear of being wrong, that there are no “perfect” objects. Those “imperfections”, when added to a computer generated image, make it more believable.

Unfortunately, they are what is more difficult to reproduce when dealing with computer imagery. Before we start adding “dirt” to our models, we must understand what “imperfections” should be added. The best way to understand that is to observe the world around and know the “history” of your model. Let me throw in some examples: You modeled a mouse, “the pointing device, not the rodent”, and you want to add dirt to it. Where would it gather dirt? If it is not an optical mouse, you could say that on the rubber ball. However, it is not necessary to add materials, dirty or not, to parts that are not seen in the final render. So, from the visible parts where does a mouse get dirty? On the resting place of the fingers, right? But wait, look at your mouse.

If you have not cleaned it a little while ago, you will notice that on the exact place you place your fingers it is quite clean, shiny even. It is just dirty on the surrounding area of where you place your fingers. That

is because your finger, rubbing against the plastic, actually polishes it. The dirt only gathers where the fingers drags it to. And the polished area is also considered an “imperfection” you must/should add.

Where else does the dirt gather? On the indentations. Those places are natural resting places for dust and grime. Even when you clean your mouse, if you do not use a hard brush and, maybe, some cleaning fluid, the indentations will keep the dirt in.

Besides shape, lets consider the materials. The mouse cord (no, its not a wireless mouse) is made of a softer, rubbery plastic. Therefore, it also grabs dirt easier than the hard plastic case of the mouse.

Lets now consider an object that is situated outside, exposed to the environment. Let’s say a road sign.

Road signs are made out of metal, so they can get rusty. They only get rusty on the places where they are not protected by paint, though. So rust only appears in places where paint usually peals off or can get scratched off. Paint itself gets dirty or less saturated with age, but not evenly. As most objects, the road sign will get more damaged at ground level and that is where most “wear & tear” must be applied.

In a nutshell, adding dirt is not simply adding “noise” to your models. It must be a well thought out and balanced process.

Instead of going through a painstakingly detailed tutorial that would only cover a couple of specific cases, I will present a set of tips and tricks.

For you to have something to work with, I created a “basic” file and then “dirtied” it up. You can open both to compare the materials ‘the geometry

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is the same’ and the final render of each (01) (02). To illustrate the tips and tricks, I will be using the materials from the “dirtied” file. Enough talk! Let us go to the tips.

Picture 01

Picture 02

Dirt is usually a layer on top of the materials. In CINEMA 4D, we should follow the same metaphor: Create the clean base material and, as different materials, all the layers of dirt you want to add to your model.

The trick into adding materials on top of other materials is to use, judiciously, the Mix with other Materials option and the Alpha channel of your materials. It’s not as trivial as one may think. Let us see how it works: On the first image (03) two materials were added together. They were applied in the order that can be seen on image (04). The Mix Textures option of the second material (Mat2) is set to ON. The result

Get Dirty - Texturing Tutorial

By Rui Batista

Mix Textures option is turned off, the second texture completely overlays the first one.

On the fifth image (09), the Mix Textures option is turned on. So, an interesting effect happens: the first textures, since it has an Alpha chan-

Picture 03

Picture 06

an Alpha channel too. So, it only affects the texture on the places where the Alpha channels are not transparent.

Tutorial

Picture 04

can be seen as Mat3. WARNING!!

Mat2 just has the Bump channel set.

So, its preview is showed as complete black (05). The color channel was turned on just for the illustra-

The third image (07) is exactly the same as the second image but the Mix Texture option of the second

Picture 09

nel, defines what places are opaque and what places are invisible. Then, by mixing the textures, the second material is only applied on the places that are set opaque by the first texture.

Picture 07

material is turned off. So, the textures are overlaid but not mixed. In this case, the Alpha channel defines what shows through. On the fourth image (08), the placement of the materials was inverted. Since the

This can all be done with more than just two textures, of course. Just remember that the Mix Textures option mixes the texture with the previous one (the one on its left).

Also, remember that textures are ADDED, not Multiplied. So, colors will brighten when mixed. Adding several layers of Bump, using different materials with Mix Textures on, is a great way to add richer detail to models.

Complex textures can be created with the Layer shader and by using combinations of noises and gradients. As an example, the “dripping� rust beneath the door knob was created using these settings:

Picture 05

tions so that you can see something. Otherwise, even the Color channels would be added and the resulting color would be too bright.

The same applies for the following example. The second image (06) is exactly the same as the first one, except, the material Mat2 now has

Picture 08

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The Color channel (10) is simply a Noise shader with dark browns. The Bump channel uses the same Noise

Get Dirty - Texturing Tutorial

By Rui Batista

Picture 12

Tutorial

Picture 10

You can “bake” the dirt on a Vertex Map. This has the advantage of being very fast and completely free of flickering. The disadvantage is that it only works on polygonal objects.

settings of the Color channel, except it uses the default black and white colors (11). The Specular channel is set to low settings rust is not very shinny (12).

Picture 13

Picture 11

Finally, the complex part is on the Alpha channel. A Layer shader contains four combined shaders. (13) The first one is a vertical gradient that adds a bit of transparency to the lower part of the mask. The second one, a vertical gradient too, multiplied by the first one, will create a ramp for the rust stripes. What creates the stripes is the third shader, a Noise shader with a stretched

has the advantage of being able to calculate dirt for any type of object it is applied to, no matter if it is a Primitive object, a NURBS object or a polygonal object. The disadvantages are the slowness of the process and the flickering that can occur in animations, even with high settings. To avoid flickering, the Dirt shader can be backed on a bitmap, but for that you need very clean UV coordinates on your object. Since that can only be assured by using BodyPaint, this method will be presented in a future tutorial.

Y scale, set to Levr mode. Finally, the forth shader, a Noise shader set to Multiply, adds graininess to the whole mask. You may ask why I set two gradients at the start when one was surely enough? Using two, I can adjust the stripes length independently of their transparency. But, if you prefer, you can use just one gradient.

Grime, dirt, dust. All these gather more on the corners and folds than on the flat surfaces. There are two main ways to add this and each one has advantages and disadvantages.

You can use a Dirt shader on the Alpha channel, if you want to use an independent material to add to others (don’t forget to turn on the Invert option of the Alpha channel). This

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You can create a "baked" Vertex Map by choosing Calculate Dirt from the Render menu. The dialog that appears is very similar to the one that the Dirt shader shows (14).

Make sure the Map Type is set to Vertex Map. Set the parameters

Picture 14

(more about them in a moment) and hit Start. After a little moment (depends on the number of vertexes of your object) a new Vertex Map tag appears. Click it to check the result. If it isn't what you want, delete the tag and try again. The accuracy of the Vertex Map dirt depends very much on the density

Get Dirty - Texturing Tutorial

By Rui Batista

of the mesh. To use the “baked” Vertex Map in a material, you must use the Vertex Map shader. The Vertex Map shader is also a great method to blend two materials together in a very smooth way. To do that, the Vertex Map shader is placed on the Alpha channel of the material that will be blended.

Tutorial

Then, we just have to "paint" the vertex map with a gradient. It’s a shame that this method only works with polygonal objects. For explaining what each parameter means, I will explain the theory behind the Dirt calculation.

For each point P of the surface of an object that has Dirt assigned, a “sprinkle” of “dirt” rays is fired in the overall direction of the normal. Just like this: (15)

they travel is the Max Distance. How wide is the “sprinkle” (the angular spread) is the Spread parameter.

If any of the drops of the “sprinkle” hit a surface, the point P is darkened, depending on the distance the drop traveled before it hit something and the Contrast value. (16) If, after traveling Distance it hits nothing, the point P will get no dark contribution.

Picture 16

If you get artifacts (dirt appearing where it should not), increase the Ray Bias value. Unfortunately, this has the effect of "pushing" the dirt away from corners.

To finish this tutorial, I propose that you dissect the "old_door_knob_poly_extra.c4d" file.

Picture 15

The number of “drops” of the “sprinkle” is the number of Rays. How far

It uses all the tricks I presented here and a few more. If you stumble into something that you can't figure out, please contact me at:

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rui_mac@ruimac.com Keep on Attacking and get dirty!

MAXON CINEMA 4D 9.1 Review

By Aaron Biscombe

Software Review

When MAXON unveiled Release 9 of its flagship modeling and animation software, they did so to the delight and adulation of users and critics alike. The already sophisticated and dependable software had been revamped and revitalized with the implementation of more than 100 new features and functions.

While it was immediately clear that the software's developers had paid a significant amount of attention to the streamlining of the product's already impressive workflow and interface, with the inclusion of features such as the Heads Up Display (HUD), and a more global Attribute Manager, MAXON went on to delight its loyal community by introducing N-Gon support, a pumped-up modeling toolset, and an easy to use cloth engine in Clothilde, which has many applications besides designing stylish outfits for characters, as CINEMA 4D's innovative users have already demonstrated.

Well, its almost summer, and while other software companies often take significantly more time to address problems in their product, MAXON has provided Release 9.1, a free update of more than 50 new fea-

tures and enhancements, that creates an even more rich animation experience than before.

This month, 3D Attack has asked me to review the XL Bundle of the software, which rivals the feature set of other 3D giants, such as Maya and XSI, and is suitable for both the professional user, or the hobbyist who is ready to take his projects to the next level of sophistication. If you are new to 3D entirely, or coming from another software, you might be unaware that the MAXON line of products operate on a modular system that allows those new to 3D or transferring over to custom build their own 3D Studio, tailored to his or her needs.

I hope this review can serve as a friendly introduction to the program for those new to it, as well as a discerning resource for those longtime and professional users considering the upgrade.

The XL Bundle includes CINEMA 4D Core, the MOCCA 2 module, Advanced Render 2, Thinking Particles, PyroCluster, and NET Render. In addition, as my personal work is mostly non-photorealistic, or NPR work, be looking for a review of the Sketch and Toom module in the May issue of 3D Attack.

INTERFACE Lets begin with R9 Core. This forms the basis of our 3D experience, and provides us with the tools to create the necessary building blocks to any successful animated endeavor. As a student, who has to balance any 3D work with additional coursework in other areas, its very important to me that any project I undertake, I can do so efficiently, and that I am

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readily aware of the tools that are available to me.

It's important that the interface is malleable so that I can create a workspace that is both comfortable to look at for extended periods, as well intelligently constructed for whatever task I am undertaking.

CINEMA 4D is more than suited to this task. I have never seen a program so visually flexible. The interface features menus that are detachable, as well as beautiful HUD that can display scene information directly on top of your 3D viewport, in addition to a new global pop-up that enables you to access popular command sets on the fly.

One of my favorite features, has been the consolidation of the many managers that veterans of C4D will be familiar with- so that a single Attribute Manager is able to access

MAXON CINEMA 4D 9.1 Review

By Aaron Biscombe

any object tool, material etc. and multiple instances of the Attribute Manager can be opened and locked, so that all your favorite options are available to you simultaneously.

Another of my favorite additions to the interface are the new view modes available in the viewports, here is an example of constant shading, which enables you to see the object wireframes even when they are not selected.

around the default C4D knife tool, and an uber-cool brush tool that was perfect for soft-selections.

Release 9 includes a similar toolset to Mesh Surgery, including a vast set of selection tools and modes, including the new auto-selection and tweak selection modes, which enable you to quickly switch

ANIMATION

Software Review

MODELING I think its fair to say that almost everyone (including myself) was falling over themselves with the introduction of N-Gon support into the modeling workflow. While R8.5 was a very capable modeler and there were plenty of examples of

great organic and hard surface modeling available for CINEMA 4D, I know that personally, coming from a Maya background, I found character modeling challenging before R9.

I was also one of the many users that purchased The Third Party's wonderful Mesh Surgery modeling plugin, that enabled users to perform various sophisticated modeling operations, such as loop and ring selections, as well as a ridiculously snazzy knife tool that ran rings

which walks the user through a complete animation project from scratch. However, while this material is excellent, and more than enough for getting up to speed on the core software, I find the manuals for the additional modules to be somewhat lacking, particularly the MOCCA 2, and the Thinking Particles ones.

between points, edges, or polygons on the fly. R9 does have an awesome knife tool, that can cut holes, planes, or the traditional line cut that you might be familiar with from Maya. You can constrain any of these tools to selections, which I often do with the knife tool in path mode. I think my favorite modeling addition though has to be the brush tool, which allows the user to sculpt objects interactively. It works beautifully, and without slowdown, even on my puny Dual 867 Mhz G4.

DOCUMENTATION One thing I've loved about CINEMA from the first moment I started using it, is the extensive documentation that comes with the software. In addition to the PDF Reference and Manuals that amount to some 3000 pages of reading, there is a full color 170 page printed quickstart manual to help you get up to speed on the basics of the software. In addition to all that, there is an excellent 180 minute video tutorial included on CD

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CINEMA 4D comes complete with the tools necessary to bring your projects into the 4th dimension, including easy animation of parameters, and a fairly functional timeline and an FCurves editor. I am not a power animator by any means, focusing mainly on modeling, but I have to admit that the CINEMA 4D timeline feels quite clunky in comparison to other state of the art software.

Take Motionbuilder for example, whose timeline is so elegantly designed that I hardly even notice its their, that's how wonderfully implemented it is- its second nature.

And while it might be unfair to compare C4D to such a specialized software, users care less about what is fair, and more about what works.

But again I have to emphasize that beginning animation is ridiculously easy to learn- it doesn't get any simpler than 1-click keyframing.

MATERIALS, LIGHTING, & RENDERING One of my hands down favorite aspects of CINEMA 4D R9 is the material manager. It just works. It worked well in 8.5 and it works as well if not better now. Simply create a material and it appears with all 13 channels that you're familiar with

MAXON CINEMA 4D 9.1 Review

By Aaron Biscombe

Software Review

from other 3D software. In addition, there are over 50 shaders built in that you can load into these base channels and edit to your heart's content.

It comes with excellent noise shaders, and surface effects.

Meanwhile, there are nine types of lights at your disposal, and numerous ways to edit them. Back to the materials, I've seen many requests for MAXON to upgrade to a nodebased material system (complete with snazzy node-based editor), and while I admit that I would love to see one as well, I wouldn't want that at the expense of the ease of use of the current system. In Maya, it took me forever to figure out how to create the look I wanted in a material, whereas in C4D, there are no tears involved. In addition, even without the Advanced Render module, C4D packs one of the fastest raytracers available, without loss of quality, and this important for any project.

There's a wealth of preset resolutions to render to, as well as output formats. On top of this, multipass rendering in C4D is fairly easy to set up, and the software can save multipass files specifically for Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro or Motion, as well as Combustion.

ADVANCED RENDER The Advanced Render module adds professional rendering tools to the 3D artist's arsenal. With features like caustics and radiosity, global illumination and vector motion blur, you have all the tools at your disposal to create highly realistic, or highly stylized imagery. Advanced Render has excellent support for HDR images- in many competing programs they are a chore to set up and implement in your render, in

C4D its as easy as loading one into a material channel. New to Release 9 is SubPolyDisplacement, which enables you to use texture maps to add depth to your scene, without raising your poly count.

MOCCA 2 I'm of mixed feelings about MOCCA 2. On the one hand, I couldn't be happier about the new Clothilde cloth simulation engine. Its fairly easy to start learning how to use, and while learning how to dress characters takes a bit of time, you quickly see the possibilities of cloth when used in conjunction with various aspects of the software, like particles and collisions in general.

I've seen some pretty convincing images of vehicle crashes that were simulated using Clothilde. On the other hand, I still find character setup in MOCCA 2 to be an unnecessarily painstaking task. I feel like

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at this stage in the game, it should be fairly simple for a beginning animator to come in, read the manual,

MAXON CINEMA 4D 9.1 Review

Software Review

By Aaron Biscombe

and set up a simple, useable IK rig.

It should be as simple as setting up your bone chain, and drawing your ik handles between the root and the tip.

But in MOCCA 2, I always feel like I'm starting out with a complex rig that I don't understand, and trying to remove expressions and features until I'm left with something simpler, and even then I still can't get it to work properly.

There are definitely things that I enjoy about the module- I really enjoy the process of setting up a bone hierarchy with the bone tool, I find it fits quite well into my workflow, and painting weights is a straightforward process with Claude Bonet; but I hope in the future MAXON looks into simplifying the rigging process a bit.

I personally have found that using Cactus Dan's IK Tools in conjunction with MOCCA 2 provides a truly enjoyable rigging experience.

THINKING PARTICLES and PYROCLUSTER While the default particle system that comes with CINEMA is suitable for basic particle effects, there are times when something more complex is necessary. This is where Thinking Particles comes in. Just like MAXON says, it is possible to create effects based on particle and object interaction, and when used in conjunction with XPresso truly sophisticated effects are possible. I personally find it takes me a while to get even the simplest particle effect going, but I attribute that to my lack off technical prowess, rather than any innate flaw in the system itself.

Pyrocluster, which is MAXON's volumetric shading module, works with either the default particle engine or Thinking Particles to create realistic simulations that can both receive light and cast shadows. Its definitely an advanced tool, but its main drawback is the time it takes to compute, which is rather lengthy.

17

CONCLUSION I can't seem to recommend CINEMA 4D enough. It's wonderfully easy to learn and use, the interface is flexible and easy on the eye, and MAXON seems really committed to keeping it's users happy. The documentation is excellent, and tools don't just work well, they work beautifully. As with any software, there are some shortcomings, such as the difficulty of setting up characters in MOCCA 2, but the rich online resources (including the large and friendly user base), more than make up for these few problems with workarounds, innovative techniques, and specialized plugins. I give Cinema 4D Release 9.1 a 5 out of 5 Attack points for being a full-featured, professional solution to a wide variety of animation projects.

Basic Modeling - Lookout Tower Part 3

Tutorial

By Bram van Gerwen

This is the final part in the modeling stage of the lookout tower, it will be less intricate than previous parts as we are going to be rounding off the model with a couple of details and add-ons.

picture 1B. To make it a little more interesting we will add connections where the bars cross, we could just add spheres there but that's a little boring so we will add slightly extruded cubes there.

We will be adding bars in the windows, another stone array, stone relief detail on the tower surface and subtle cobbles on the top floor of the tower. We begin this tutorial by opening the appropriate file where we left off in Part 2, so open the TowerPart3Start.c4d file that came with the magazine.

Create a cube. Before we are going to change it we want it in the right position first. With the cube selected call the 'Transfer' function (Functions -> Transfer). The transfer function is extremely useful to move an object to a certain axis position of another object. In the Transfer options tab we see a field called 'Transfer to', drag the Bar 1 object from the object manager into this field and hit Apply. The cube will now be moved to the centre point of Bar 1 (the cube is still very large but we'll change that next).

First we will add the bars. Create a cylinder, set its radius to 1.5, the height to 100 and the Rotation Segments to 12. Then change its position to Y 135 and Z -215. This will place the cylinder nicely in the middle window like in picture 1A.

Duplicate the cylinder once (simple copy/paste should suffice) and change the Orientation of the duplicate to +X. We can see it sticking out of the sides now so change its height to 40 and rename this cylinder to 'Bar 1'. Duplicate Bar 1 and rename the duplicate to Bar 2. Now set the Y position of Bar 1 and 2 to 147 and 114 respectively, result in

Transfer To field and hit apply. The instance of the cube will be moved down where the lower bars cross, picture 2B. We will now continue modeling the actual cube object and the instance will change right with it, very handy.

Select the Cube, make it editable and rename it to 'Bar Connector'.

Switch to polygon mode and with the Live Selection tool select a square of 4x4 polygons on the front of the cube like in picture 3A. Select the Bevel tool and set its Extrusion to 1.4, its Inner Offset to

With the transfer done go to the object properties of the cube and change its X, Y and Z Size parameters to 7 and set all the X, Y and Z segments to 6. Now you'll be able to see a small subdivided cube exactly where the upper bars cross, picture 2A. Make an instance of the cube 0.6 and subdivisions to 2 and apply.

The connector is basically finished now but to make it look a bit more crispy click on the Phong tag of the object and set it to 30 percent and hit enter, result in picture 3B. The last step is selecting the 5 objects we created for the window bars (the 3 cylinders, cube and the instance), grouping them and rename that group to 'Window Bars'.

(Objects -> Modeling -> Instance) and call the transfer function again.

This time with the instance selected drag the Bar 2 object into the

18

To put this Window Bars object into the other window sills as well we will create an instance of it and rotate it on the central point of the tower itself. So select the Window Bars object and make an instance of it, then create a Null Object (Objects ->

Basic Modeling - Lookout Tower Part 3

By Bram van Gerwen

Null Object) and drop the window bars instance into it. Switch back to the Model tool, select the Null Object and rotate its H rotation to 28.2 in the coordinates manager, hit enter and you will notice the bars being rotated into the left window like in picture 4A. To fill the right window simply duplicate the Null

short edges that point inward and you will notice it selects all short edges on the dent extrusion like in picture 6B.

Tutorial

offset to -4, Subdivisions to 1 and hit apply. The selection will be extruded inward creating an indentation in the tower surface, result in picture 6A. We notice that the HyperNURBS make our dent corners much too

Object and remove the - from the H rotation value and hit enter, this will make the duplicate rotate to the opposite side and fill the right window like in picture 4B. For clarity in your object manager rename the Null Objects to Bars A and B respectively, feel free to group these bar objects again and rename that group and also rename any other objects I didn't tell you to rename.

As a scene grows it becomes vitally important to give all your objects appropriate names to be able to find them back in later stages.

Next I will show thee how to make one portion of stone relief on the tower surface which you will be able to add more randomly if desired.

Zoom in on the wall left of the doorway, select the Tower Body object and switch to polygon mode. With the Live Selection tool select the polygons like in picture 5. Then select the Extrude tool and set its

rounded. We will weight those corners to make them sharper.

First temporarily disable the HyperNURBS object by clicking the green check behind it, if the object is still X-rayed disable that as well.

Switch to edge mode and with the Ring Selection tool click on both

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We only want to weigh the corners so select the Live Selection tool and while holding ctrl drag over the selected edges that are not on corners to deselect those, check picture 6C for reference. Then select the Loop Selection tool and while holding shift select the inner and outer edge loop, this will give the result like in picture 6D. Now that the corners and edge loops are selected, switch the HyperNURBS on again and select the Weight HyperNUBRS tool (Structure -> Weight HyperNURBS).

Set it to 65% and click set, the change will be visible immediately.

In order to make the weighted edges look better we will need to increase the Subdivision Editor setting in the HyperNURBS object properties tab, set it to 3 and hit enter. The indentation is ready and we will now put some protruding stones into it. Switch to Polygon mode and select the two lowest polygons on the indentation surface like in picture 7A. Then select the extrude tool and set its Extrusion to

Basic Modeling - Lookout Tower Part 3

By Bram van Gerwen

Tutorial

2, the Inner Offset to 1.4, Subdivisions to 0 and hit Apply.

Now do the rest of the polygons in the indentation in the same fashion until you have 10 stone protrusions like in picture 7B. We will also weight the stone edges to make them more square. Switch to Edge mode and with the Loop Selection tool select all the top edge loops of the stones like in picture 8A and click Grow Selection (Selection ->

we just want to create the illusion that it's there. Open a new scene and create a cube, set its dimensions to X 30, Y 20 and Z 30. A small object so zoom in on it. Make it editable and switch to edge mode.

Select the lower edge that lies parallel to the Z-axis and move it inward along the X-axis like in picture 9.

You might find that the axis of the edge is tilted when you select it. If

the tilted surface, picture 11A. Then with the Move tool move them outward along the X-axis until you get the result like in picture 11B. Create a hyperNURBS object and drop the cube into it. Rename the hyperNURBS object to 'Beam', then copy it and past it back into the Tower scene. Back in the Tower scene create another Array and drop the Beam object into it. We witness our Beam object being nicely distributed around the tower, but its

this is the case set the Axis to World first in the Move tool Modeling Axis options, now the edge can be moved easily along the world axis instead of it's own tilted one.

Grow Selection). This will increase the selection to include the corners of the stones as well. Call the Weight HyperNURBS tool again set it to 75 and click set. The stones will be transformed from their round forms to square forms due to the weights on the edges, check picture 8B for the result. There now this technique is mastered you can add more areas of randomly protruding stones on the tower surface if you wish. But before you might do that we are going to add some other protrusions, namely the beams on which the second floor is suspended that stick out of the surface of the tower body. This is a very simple addition and will be done with a slightly deformed cube and an array object. We're not actually going to model the second floor inside the tower as you won't see that anyway,

Now to finish off this object switch to polygon mod, select the Knife tool, set it to loop and make cuts like in picture 10. These cuts will make sure the HyperNURBS will make smooth edges instead of a sphere.

Next switch to front view and go into Point mode. Select the Rectangle Selection tool, disable 'only select

visible elements' and drag across the 4 points on the middle cuts on

20

not rotated the right way. Switch to the Model tool, select the Cube object inside the Beam NURBS and set its H rotation to 90 in the coordinates manager. Now that's the objects are oriented towards the tower we need to decrease the array radius to make them touch the tower surface. Click on the array and set the radius to 233 and also change its Y height to 36 in the coordinates manager. Lastly we will add a little stone detail on the floor on top of the tower. Switch to Polygon mode and go to top view and set the Display of the view to Gourad Shading for easier selection.

With the Live Selection tool select the polygons of the floor on top of the tower like in picture 12A. Now select the Knife tool, set it to Loop, enable 'restrict to selection' and

Basic Modeling - Lookout Tower Part 3

By Bram van Gerwen

Tutorial

make 2 cuts on each section so that you have fairly regular subdivisions, picture 12B. Now in Polygon mode randomly select groups of polygons and single polygons while holding shift. We're going to create a cobbled effect from these selections by using the Extrude tool. So select the Extrude tool, set it's Offset to 1 and disable 'preserve groups', we don't

want all the cobbles to be at the same height so set the Var value

behind the Offset to 50 and Apply.

The Variation will extrude all polygons with a variation of 50 percent from the 1 offset value making extrusions ranging from 0.5 to 1.5.

If you render now you'll notice the variation has a slight but subtle effect on the extruded cobbles.

There, that's it for the main Lookout Tower modeling. Basically the model can be expanded with countless of small details that don't require much modeling at all. For instance create a cylinder and put it tilted onto the beam protrusion above the door to create a flagpole, then with transfer move a Plane object to the flagpole position and scale and move it a bit and you have a flag. Of course if you want to make that more realistic you'll need clothilde which would be an entirely different tutorial. Also as I said earlier on the stone protrusions can be added anywhere on the tower surface greatly increasing it's stone looks. And if you're adventurous, deform some editable spheres with the Magnet tool, just nudge it here and there to create some rocks and prop them up against the side of the tower for even more realism.

Some of these additions can be viewed in the TowerPart3Finished.c4d file I provided and in picture 13 of course.

21

But modeling is only a part of creating realism, Texturing and lighting create a very big part in finishing the scene. Of course I already provided a reasonably acceptable lighting setup but the textures are still lacking. So we will tackle the texturing of the Lookout Tower in part 4 of this amazing tutorial to give it a far more

realistic look. Well that's it for now and have fun adding those details to the tower. I'd like to see some results, so feel free to post your efforts on the 3D Attack forum where we can all laugh... umm, I mean compliment and help you with your modeling ;) Thanks and greetings, Bram

Combining Splines

By Georg Niedermeier Combining splines in order to extrude them Quite often we are asked how simple logos can be made by Extrude Nurbs. I think now it's time to provide you with a short and simple tutorial for exactly that propose.

So let's get right at it.

Click at the Top View viewport to activate it. An active viewport window is indicated by a blue rectangle around it. Create a Circle Spline and change its Radius to about 400.

Now create a Text Spline and enter the acronym c4d that we want to use for this tutorial. Create a second Text Spline and enter 9 into the text field (Picture01)

Picture 02

makes the word c4d needs to be called accordingly (Picture 03 Picture 04).

Picture 05

Switching the objects off prevents confusion and deactivates it for the viewport pipeline (Picture 06)

Tutorial

Picture 03

Picture 06

Create an Extrude NURBS object and make it the parent of the newly created object. Picture 07 Picture 01

Move both text splines into the circle spline. Notice that all three splines were created while the top viewport has been active. Doing that makes sure that all three of our splines have the same position along the yaxis (Picture 02).

In order to combine these three splines we have to make it editable by pushing c order by using the Make Editable function within the Functions menu. Rename the objects in accordance with their content: For example the spline that

Picture 04

Select the three splines by clicking it while holding down the shift key.

You can even click and drag the mouse in the Object Manager in order to create a rectangular selection. Connect the three splines via Connect found in the Functions menu. CINEMA 4D creates a new spline object right above the other splines (Picture 05).

Deactivate the old spline objects by clicking the green hook. The green hook will change into a red x.

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Picture 07

Combining Splines

By Georg Niedermeier

Double-click the extrude NURBS and change its attributes within the Attributes Manager as shown in the picture.

Especially the object properties need adjustment because at the moment the spline object is extruded along the z-axis which in our case is wrong. Decrease this value to zero.

The more steps you enter in the Steps field the rounder the fillet will be. Play around with the values in order to see what happens with our object.

That is all. Of course you can use splines that you have drawn by hand, too. The only thing you have to remember is to create all of the splines you want to connect in the same viewport window.

Picture 09

Tutorial

Because we want an extrusion along the y-axis, we have to increase this value to about 25.

Picture 08

We are nearly finished, but there's one thing that is really important.

Our final object will look much better if we create a fillet. Take a look at picture 08 again and adjust the Caps and Rounding option accordingly.

Picture 09

As always, If you have any problems or questions regarding this tutorial then please feel free to ask your questions on our forum at: http://www.3dattack.net/forum/ Thanks Georg Niedermeier aka sad

Picture 08

23

Plugin Review: EMorpher

By Thomas Pasieka

Well don’t we all want to morph shapes once in a while? Don’t we all use C4D and its tools to do so?

Don’t we all get a little frustrated because the tools provided by C4D could be easier to handle? There is a solution to this...EMorpher!

I must say I am pretty impressed on “how easy” to use this plugin is and thus it makes me wonder why MAXON hasn’t done it the same way!

state” of your object. The Emorpher tag will have to be on the null object.

Double clicking on the tag will open

Plugin Review

Now what does it do you ask? Let me explain. Let’s say you created a character and now you are ready to animate some facial expressions.

Well, you could of course use CINEMA’S tools and go ahead and create your facial expressions and such.

You will soon notice that this can be a time consuming process and your object manager will also get a little messy with the tools provided by C4D. That’s why you should have a look at EMorpher. This plugin will make it easier and faster without creating too many duplicates of your main object. Emorpher will create a “null object” for each “morph” you create and you will be able to mix those different “morp” targets by simply moving the null objects! Amazing, isn’t it? Easy you say? RIGHT! That’s how it should be.

Now, how exactly does that work?

Let me explain this with some screenshots. First, you’ll create your character or whatever else you want. You will then convert your model into a poly object (if not already done).

You will also have to create a “null object” which will be used as “main

a window and you will be able to create new morph targets. Simply modify your mesh, and once satisfied, you click on “add target” to

A little critique from my side: A better documentation would make it easier (although is already pretty easy to use). All together I’m pretty satisfied with this plugin! It’s as said before, easy to use and worth the money. It will make your life a lot easier and I also haven’t noticed any crashes or bugs. This plugin is a “must-have” for character animators or such who want to go that direction.

Summary: A timesaver all the way!

Pricing is fair and the ease of use makes this plugin a hit!

Price: $40 USD URL: http://www.eggington.net/~eago/ Email: eago9@yahoo.com Platform: PC/MAC Compatible Rating: 5/5

make this new morph pose available (null object with name will be generated). You can add as many poses as you want by repeating this process.

You can test your poses or delete them, or even mirror them.

Emorpher is really easy to use once you play with it for a little while.

24

Mono-flop in Complex Animations

By Base80

Mono-flop in complex animation setups.

How to automate a toaster:

Tutorial

Well here we go, yet another XPresso tutorial that seems difficult at first, but that will make life easier.

The Mono-Flop node. It is a mouthfull, but basically in english it is a plain ordinary timer. Everybody knows about timers, like the one in the hallway that switches the light off after a while. Well that is exactly what we are going to explore.

Honey can you switch the mono-flop on please!

What we will do in this tutorial is a little more complicated than a timer on a hallway light. We will make a completely automated Toaster. One switch animates the whole thing. It will even grill the bread, and if you make an error, it may even burn it.

The idea behind this tutorial is to have objects with associated behavior. I did the tutorial about "Aging Bananas" with the same philosophy (!) in mind. I prefer not using the timeline, it is a part of the software I don't like a lot. I want to exclusively use user-data sliders. The only timelined thing is the start of the sequence. For the rest it will show no key-frames at all. All aspects of animation are done in XPresso and it even stops automatically. It is real 4D (3d + time) or an "animated object" Well ok, lets get started Prerequisites (what you need) - A toaster - Some bread - A little patience Before we start I like clear setups of null objects,

with clear names, it makes life easier later on. I like my null object in correct places from the start, otherwise XPresso can mess up things badly. If something has to rotate the null containing the rotating part stands at the rotating point and not in the middle of space. I animate nulls, not objects. This is so I can adjust the object position within the null at will, after the XPresso is done. Urgh, I am orthodox!

The Mono-flop node I will start by explaining the monoflop itself. As said earlier it could just have been named "Timer-node" at birth, but why do it simple when you can do complicated?

- The input ports The mono-flop is driven by a Timeport, so you will always need a Time-node connected to it. Then there is the duration and it is counted in frames and controls the... duration of course. The trigger port is the one that starts the sequence.

There are two modes: Normal and OneShot. The reset port is there to reset the counting of how many times the node has been used.

- The output ports Count counts the number of times the node has been activated, very practical for incremental things. (elevators) The Outport is true or false to tell whether the monoflop is on or off. The State port is the most important in this case. Upon trigger it counts from 0.00 to 1 in the given duration. This is actually our motor or driver for our animation.

So The timer in a hall-way basically looks like this [Light timer]

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Light Timer

The Switch is a bool (true/false) and sets the trigger on for 1 second set by a constant. The out port is connected to the brightness of the light.

Lets get started.........

Step 1 The User-Data and the XPresso tag.

Ok, we have a total of two different parent objects, one is the toaster and the other is the slice of bread.

Actually there are two slices.

Right-click on the Toaster object and add an XPresso-tag. Ok easy!

We will need some User-Data to activate the toaster.

I always associate user-data with the XPresso tag itself and not the null object. One is free to do otherwise, but the XPresso is more portable this way. Especially with easy set-ups, this is the way to go.

So select the XPresso-tag and go to the attributes manager, choose "Add user-data" from the menu at the top.

Now name the user data "Start At (F)" or whatever and set the data type to Time and hit OK. Do it again and name it "Duration(F)" and set the type to time, counted in frames by default.

We need a third one just for the fun of it, Call it "Temperature(1...5)", this one is to burn the bread beyond recognition ; ). Set it to integer and wit a range from 1 to 5 in steps of 1 and hit OK.

Mono-flop in Complex Animations

By Base80

Step 2 The XPresso Setup

Tutorial

OK the hard part, the XPresso itself.

The hard thing is that the movement of the toast going down and up have a fixed length, but the toasting itself is flexible in length. The going down and up take 30 frames each.

First thing we do is make a time node. It is the driver of the animation our motor as it were.

Then we drag the XPresso tag to the XPresso editor and open the user-data ports on the right. To start the animation we need to compare the current time with the start time.

Create a compare node and set it to ==, attach the time node and the "Start at"-user-data to it. To check what happens just connect a result node to the end. I have set the start to 30F, so when I hit play the result nodes goes to 1 at the 30th frame, it stays at 0 at any other frame. OK so far. [Compare]

use a math-node st to add.

Duplicate the compare thing above and connect the result of the calculation to the second port. Now we have a result of "1" at frame 30 for the start sequence and another one at the start of the end sequence.

So far so good. [compare2]

Step 3 The range mapping for movement.

Compare2

Now we can proceed to the monoflop-nodes. Add two of them to the XPresso editor. Connect a time node to the Time-port and connect the results of each compare node to the Trigger-port. As I said before the going up and down sequences have a fixed time span of 30 frames each.

So we can enter 30f to the durationport of each mono-flop in the attribute manager. We need to open the State-port for further processing.

This is a part of the setup so far. [monoflop]

Compare

Ok the second thing is setting the time for the start of the going up of the bread. The sequence takes 30 frames. So I have to subtract 30F from the "duration" user-data. Easy, take a math-node set it to subtract and connect the "duration" user-data and a constant set to time and to 30F. In this example I used a duration of 100F so the result is 70F, isn't it? Now we need to do the compare thing again to get the start time of this sequence. First we have to add the result of the previous calculation to the "start at" user data. The result gives us the exact frame at which the bread will go up. So we

mono-flops. What we see is the first result jumping to true at the start frame and until 30f further. Then the "remaining time result jumps to true and a while later the end sequence result jumps to true while the remain stays true. Whoaaaa! Isn't this sickening. Well we are done with monoflopping for the movement.

Monoflop

We are not finished yet, we need a third mono-flop for the remaining time after the start sequence. For the trigger we add 30 frames to the start frame and for the duration we subtract the start sequence from the total duration. Hang in there people we are almost there. We set the output of this mono-flop to OUT (booltrue/false).

OK we will check if everything is alright. Just add a result-node set to Bool to all the Out-ports of the

26

The fun part is always this one. The range-mapping thing. Add a 3 range mappers, to the State-ports of the start and end sequence mono-flops and to the Out-port of the remaining time mono-flop. The range mappers will make the movement of the bread going down so we need to know those two positions in our model. In this case y=0 for lower position and 10 for lower. We need these figures in the range mappers as such (input lower-input upper output lower - output upper; -start sequence 0-0.999-0-10 -remain sequence 0-1-0-10 -end sequence 0-1-0-10 (I had to put 0.999 in the first range mapper because of a sudden jump at the end of the start sequence.

Some fiddling has been done here.)

Now take a math node set it to Add and add-up the three out-ports of the range mappers.

At this point we have al the movements of the toaster done. Try it, connect the result to the position of an object and hit play. We must be absolutely crazy to do all this for so little result.

So we want more realistic movements. we will alter the range mapper-splines to do just that. Make a spline in the first range-mapper that

Mono-flop in Complex Animations

By Base80

goes down in a curve. Leave the the remaining sequence range mapper without spline and especially the last spline is interesting. I want the toast to make a small jump at the end.

Watch the the images below for the final settings. [rangemapper1] [rangemapper2]

Tutorial

Rangemapper1

Rangemapper2

I changed the output upper to accommodate the little bump in the spline my end figure should be 10 (so 12.5x0.8=10) Are we getting a headache. We are done anyway.

Now we have a smooth movement down and a nice little jump at the end.

Step 4 the animated texture of the bread (procedural) For the burning of the bread we will use the state port of the remaining time mono-flop. So once the bread is down it will start changing color. connect it to a range mapper and

use the temperature user-data as the upper output. So the higher the temp the higher the number that comes out of the range mapper.

The texture made by buzhug has a even beige color for the un-toasted bread and a dark brown for the toasted bread. These two colors reside in a fusion texture. The blend slider mixes the two colors. We need to drag the fusion texture in the xpresso editor. (open the texture click on the fusion and drag its icon from the attribute manager to the xpresso editor) We will connect the range-mapper output to the blend port of the texture, but we need a math node (divide by 5) to accommodate the output numbers. When we animate we will see the bread change color like we want. Great! But at the end of the sequence it flips back to normal and we don't want that. We need to freeze the grilled state until the end of the timeline. Take a Freeze-node. Connect the Value to the previous range-mapper and the switch to the Out-port of the monoflop (put a NOT-node in between for good results).

Now we have the bread toasting already but the brown color doesn't reset at the start of the animation, For that We have to use a comparenode and connect a time node and a constant of 0.

We connect the result to a Flip-flopnode's switch port and the not used higher to the on-port. the result of the flip-flop-node has to be connected to the Freeze-nod. You probably want to shoot me at this time. OK we are done with the bread. It begins white and ends brown. The temperature user-data is there to alter the effect.

27

Step 5 The glow Hmm fed up? The glow texture and light coming out of the toaster have to be made yet to have the right end result. It is the same procedure as the bread color without the freeze.

So only a range-mapper coming from the same mono-flop as above connected to the light's brightness port, the texture glow and fusion ports (between black and red) and we are done. In the range mapper we can alter the spline to go slowly up and drop at the end to get a better result. (See big picture on last page of this tutorial).

Congratulations if you have come this far. The method above is very labor intensive and looks completely useless. And it is for a part. But our toaster is now fully functional and that is nice. And we have learned to use a lot of nodes, and that is nice.

Side-notes The volume light and the glowing texture. Walien has once again made a beautiful volume light, this time combined with a glowing texture. The texture is in the goodies folder mapped on a plain geometry for further exploration.

The toaster model Thanks to the excellent skills of Buzhug this tutorial has a less harsh character. The toaster is inspired loosely from toasters produced just after the second world war. Heavy Metal and Chrome. The modeling shows high definition modeling with economy of polygons.

Thanks all for your patience and I hope you will use the mono-flop for your projects.

Mono-flop in Complex Animations

Tutorial

By Base80

28

Micro Tut - Formula Egg

By Base80

Micro Tut-It-Yourself- FormulaEgg-Thing Here is a sample of what the formula spline can do for you. The file is in the goodies folder with the magazine.

Tutorial

It looks complicated and it actually is. Like most of us, I am not a math head, but I am a math cheater.

I found the formula on the excellent www.3d-meier.de and copy/pasted it into the formula-spline. There are a lot of very handy formula's and this file is the ideal starting point for them.

One thing to know is that Tmin and Tmax are the limits within which the formula is calculated and the nยบ of samples define the resolution and number of calculations of the spline.

Don't set the samples to high, because it is cpu intensive.

Don't blame me for headaches, I am also a formula-noob! Have fun!

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Whether you are a designer looking to obtain website hosting or your needs require our custom services, we can fill that void.

Sincerely, John Mark Napuunoa ChristianDesigns.org

29

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad Welcome to part three of the landscape tutorial!

In this part we will create some details for our landscape: Grass and some clouds

Tutorial

Because we need to use the well known plug-in Hairdepartment, developed by the B. G. S. group, a German plug-in developer, you will find the Monster Edition plugin within our “Goodies� folder. The edition you will find in the goodies folder works slightly different from the one used in this tutorial. Nevertheless, you can easily follow my steps.

Because we can't add hair instantly we have to create a selection of polygons that we want to use. In order to create that selection you need to switch to the live-selection tool and select a portion of our first landscape object. Make sure that you are in the top view window. As you can see in (picture 52) I selected a strip of polygons along the

Picture 53

on the Internet, but we will focus on the version that is available at the BGS - group website, Version 1.83.

This version requires us to split the selected polygons from the landscape object. Splitting means that a selection of polygons is copied to a completely new polygon-object.

(Picture 54)

with the exception that any disconnected polygons will not be selected

by Grow Selection because it's not really connected to the other part of the object. If you want to really understand what I've explained, please take the time to experiment with disconnect and split! It is the easiest way to move a split or disconnected group of polygons along the y-axis, to see where the difference is.

The result of the split function is a second polygon object with the same name and a .1 added to the name (Picture 55).

Picture 55

By selecting the newly created Landscape.1 object, your perspective viewport will look like this: (Picture 56).

Picture 54

Picture 52

fence. I have not selected the polygons that make the perpendicular poles of the fence. That is necessary because we don't want the grass to grow on those poles (Picture 53).

There exist different versions of Hairdepartment that can be found

Sometimes people tend to mix up Disconnect and Split. While Split produces new objects that consist of the selected polygons, Disconnect kind of cuts the polygons off the source object. Disconnect doesn't produce another object, but makes the polygons that have been disconnected independent.

Imagine a polygon object from which several polygons have been disconnected. Say you want to select all polygons of that object.

You make a rough selection and you want to use the Grow Selection tool in order to select all other polygons that make the object too. CINEMA 4D will do what you want it to do

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Picture 56

Activate the Landscape.1 object and execute the Hairdepartment plug-in found in the Plug-ins menu (Picture 57) In order to see what the standard values will produce, just click the OK button within the main parameters window.

Hairdepartment will come up with another window called Hairform. Hit

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad

too low, memory usage will be huge.

Half the value will create four times the grass. The Length value marks how long each blade of grass will be.

Picture 57

Radius lets you take control over how thick a blade of grass is.

Sections determines how many sections a blade of grass will consist of.

Those can be explained best with a picture (Picture 59b).

the behavior of the Angle Variation option. The blades that are nearly vertical will remain that way. A value of 50 percent will extenuate the angle variation to 50 percent of its value. Hit OK after you have entered the values and the Hairform window will come up (Picture 60).

OK and take a look at the results (Picture 58).

Tutorial

Picture 60

Picture 59b

Picture 58

It doesn't look like something that we want to create at the moment.

Therefore we will undo this experiment and execute the plug-in again and enter the values shown in (picture 59).

Picture 59

Distance marks the distance between one blade of grass to another one. The higher this amount is, the less grass will be created. A very low value will allow you to create a very dense meadow, but be careful because if this value is

Gravity gives control over how strong blades of grass are bent downward. You can even enter negative values. Length Variation helps to vary the length of the blades. If you enter a value of 50 percent, the length Value will be varied by the Length Variation value.

Hairdepartment adds or subtracts 50 percent of the length value. A blade length of 100 units will result in blades between 50 up to 150 units high. The Direction Variation value gives control how the blades will appear. Based on the number of Segments Hairdepartment changes the direction in which the blades grow.

A high value of direction variation combined with many segments will result in a very curled appearance of the blades. Angle Variation adds variation to the angle of growth, which results in a more realistic grass. To Verticals lets you influence

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Sidefaces determines the number of sides a blade of grass will have. If you enter 2 sidefaces you will get a flat shape.

Form: Hairdepartment offers 8 different forms of blades. Please consult the manual of Hairdepartment to understand what kind of forms are available. You can leave it as is.

Start, Middle, End Depth (depth and width) control the shape of our blades. This bill stands for bottom, middle, top of the blades.

Imagine you look at a blade of grass in top view. Length is the thickness along z-axis while width is the thickness along the x-axis.

If you enter the values shown in picture 60 the result will be a conical shape of grass blades.

Middle (1.0-5.0) determines which area of the blades is considered as middle. Middle is not defined by the length of the blades but by the number of sections. A blade with five sections consists of six segment points. Because Hairdepartment doesn't allow relative values the middle of such blade would contain

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad two segment points. This allows you to move the middle of a blade up or down. In this tutorial we will leave it at 2. If you don't understand what that explanation means please consult the manual of Hairdepartment.

hypernurbs object and a cube.

Rename both objects to cloud.

(Picture 64)

After you have and to the values as shown in the picture hit OK again.

(Picture 61). Hairdepartment creates two new objects in the object manager. The first one is a spline

Picture 65

Tutorial

Picture 67 Picture 64 Picture 61

object that relays the distribution and direction I behavior of our grass. The second one is the grass geometry. If you don't like the appearance of the geometry you can delete the polygon object and activate Hair Volume within the Hairdepartment entry found in the plug-ins menu (Picture 63) If you do that the hairform window of the plug-in will appear and you can enter different values. Just play

Picture 63

around with the settings until you are satisfied. We will move on to create a nice cloud, now.

Open a new scene (don't close the landscape scene) and create a

It's is a good method to create details of a scene within a completely new scene because a scene that is crowded with objects can easily lead to confusion. If you are worried about keeping the correct proportions you can copy another object from your full scene into the newly opened scene. Objects that are copied from one scene into another one will keep their initial position.

The cube object should have values similar to these (Picture 65).

Select the cube that you have renamed to cloud earlier and hit 'c' in order to convert it into a polygon object. In the object manager a polygon object can be discerned by the blue triangle (Picture 67).

Because we want to create take out that looks like a plastic toy we need to shift points. Switch to the point mode and choose Rectangle Selection from the Selection menu.

(Picture 68)

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Picture 68

In order to allow the rectangle selection tool to not only select visible points we need to adjust the settings within the Attributes Manager.

If we do not deactivate the Only Select Visible Elements option CINEMA 4D will only select points that are directly visible. A point that sits exactly behind another point would not be selected because CINEMA 4D determines these points as not visible (Picture 69) Switch to the front viewport and use the rectangular selection tool in order to select the polygons on top.

After you have selected the points,

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad

Picture 69

Tutorial

move it up along the y-axis. (Picture 70) The cloud should get a slightly conical form. Switch to the right viewport and scale the selected points along the z-axis (Picture 71).

order to produce an object that reminds you of a cloud. The very left and very right points in the middle must be selected together. In order to do that you have to select the pair of points on the left (or right), hold the shift key down and select the second pair of points. Maybe you have selected some more points and want to unselect one pair of points? That's very easy: hold down the control key (ctrl) and mark the points you want to remove from your selection (Picture 72).

Picture 74

activate the Luminance channel.

The Luminance channel makes an object which it is applied to independent of lighting. Add the FresnelShader object by clicking the black arrow right to the Texture selector (Picture 75).

Picture 72 Picture 70

The last step of modeling our cloud is to select the overhanging pairs of polygons and to scale the selected points along z-axis. Scale it to your likes (Picture 73).

Picture 75 Picture 71

The line of points on top of our object needs to have a zigzag shape. Make the necessary selections by using the rectangular selection tool. If you want to use the live selection tool please make sure to disable the Only Select Visible Elements option in the attributes manager. Select one pair of points and move it up along the y-axis.

Repeat this step time and again in

Picture 73

The cloud is almost finished it only lacks some material which we will create now. Create a new material by selecting the respective function from the File menu within the Material Manager (Picture 74) Deactivate any material channel and

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The Fresnel shader changes the color of an object depending on the angle in which a polygon is facing the camera. The more it is faced to the camera the more the color fades into the color defined on the right side of the gradient in the shader properties. The Use Bump function activates bump mapping and displacement mapping for the Render drop-down list. This particular dropdown list - found directly under the checkbox - holds a number of combinations of rendering methods

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad which are interesting when it comes to transparent materials. Front Only calculates the falloff on a given object´s front side only. The backside will be calculated black if it's visible.

Click the drop-down list right to the Projection attribute and select Spherical (Picture 77).

Front Trans calculates the falloff on a given object´s front side only. The backside will be calculated white if it's visible. This option is very useful for transfer and objects such as a vase made of glass.

Picture 79

Tutorial

Back only calculates the falloff on a given object backside only. The front side will be calculated black if it's visible.

Back Trans calculates the falloff on a given object backside only. The front side will be calculated white if it's visible.

Front and Back calculates front and back of the falloff (Picture 76).

You can close the Material Editor now. Assign the material by drag-

Picture 77

Because the editor view is not capable of rendering the Fresnel texture in real-time we have to render the image in order to see what happens with our object (Picture 78).

Picture 78

Picture 76

dropping it on the Hypernurbs object. You will see that the texture mapping is not correct. In order to change the mapping you need to bring up the texture tag attributes in the Attributes Manager by doubleclicking the texture tag on the very right of the Hypernurbs object.

Our cloud is finished. Select the Hypernurbs object and press ctrl c in order to copy the object. Switch back to the landscape scene and paste the cloud by pressing ctrl p.

(Picture 79) The cloud is way too big so we have to scale it down a bit. Activate the Hypernurbs object and switch to the Model Mode which you can find within the tools menu of Cinema4d (Picture 80)

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Picture 80

In contrast to the object mode the object scale of 1 is not changed when in model mode even if you scale it up or down. Switching to be model mode is not absolutely necessary in our case but it is good to get used to that method because huge differences in the scaling of objects can cause trouble, especially when it comes to animation.

Please make sure to take a look at Chapter 8: Tools Menu (model) and chapter 11.10 of the Cinema4d manual because it is essential that you understand the difference between model and object mode.

Rule of bump: Model Mode for modeling, Object Mode for animating.

If you're satisfied with the size of the cloud, click the functions menu (the Hypernurbs object should be marked) and select duplicate because we don't need just one

Landscape Tutorial Part 3

By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad cloud but 10 or 12 (Picture 81).

Activate the options Duplicate, Options and Tool in the Attributes

loosely orientate on the values shown in picture 86. Switch to the top viewport and get real-time feedback on your changes.

(Picture 86 - Picture 87).

Picture 83 Picture 81

which leaves only the cloud instance objects marked (Picture 84).

Manager and make the settings shown below (Picture 82).

Click Apply and take a look at the Object Manager. CINEMA 4D has

Tutorial

Picture 86

Picture 84 Picture 82

created a null object containing 12 instances of the cloud object. It is possible to increase the number of copies in real-time and if you are satisfied unfold the cloud_copies object by clicking the small plus on the left of the object name. Mark the cloud_copies null object and choose Select Children from the Objects Menu of the Object Manager. This function selects all children objects of a given parent object and the parent object itself (Picture 83)

We have to do that because the Randomize function only works with selected objects. Choose the Randomize function (Picture 85).

Unselect the cloud_copies parent object by holding down the ctrl key and executing a single click on it

Click Apply and change the Move values in a way that the clouds cover the entire scene. You can

Picture 87

That's all for today. In the next issue we will finish this tutorial. I hope you like this tutorial for so far.

(Picture 88)

Picture 85

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Picture 88

Artist Spotlight...

Raymond Salter

Spotlight

Name: Raymond Salter.

Age: 54.

Occupation: Building Construction Country: United Kingdom Software: CINEMA 4D R9 Studio Bundle, BodyPaint 2, Poser 4, Paint Shop Pro 6 and Imagine Favorite places on the web: 3D Attack, Renderosity, 3D Valley, CG Talk Artist Comments: Hi I am 54 years old and live in the United kingdom in a small town in Wiltshire. I have worked all my life in the construction industry. My first interest in the creation of 3D images as an hobby started on the Amiga. I do not know how many of you will remember a small program called Sculpt 3D, showing my age now, but this gave me the bug for modeling.

I then moved on to a 3D program called Imagine, but when its development stopped I found and changed to this great modeling program C4D XL6, with which and am now working with on a PC and, as of late, have grown more and more interested in modeling natural history subjects with my favorite modeling program, CINEMA 4D. Of the images I have created my favorite is the Cricket which has been printed in 3D World. My favorite artists are Pupi, Matthieu, Dez, and Cartesius.

Otter 18/1/2004 - Here I have made an attempt to simulate a wet clumpy fur effect of a otter drinking in a river using Hair Department and modeled in C4D 8.1.

Bumble Bee 11/2/2004 - A bumble bee modeled in C4D 8.1 collecting pollen and nectar from a flower top. Flower tops made from Hair Department and heads extruded out.

3

Artist Spotlight...

Raymond Salter

Spotlight

Window 11/10/2004 - The window part of this image is all modeled with nurbs objects and splines. Radiator is box modeled. There are two deferent hdri images, one for inside and one for outside, plus one light for shadows.

Great Green Bush Cricket 28/8/2004 - Here is an image of the largest Bush Cricket in England modeled in C4D 8.1. The main skin effect was achieved with a slightly bigger outer skin with just a transparency and reflection on it.

Mandrill 31/12/2003 - Mandrills come from West African and are one of the largest forest monkeys. The males are very colorful and makes it ideal for modeling in C4D 8.1. All textures are procedural. I used box modeling and Hair Department for fur.

Caterpillar 13/11/2004 - When I first saw one of these highly colored critters I just had to model it and try out the new CINEMA 4D R9. I mainly box modeled this one.

GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPS Review by Mark Gmehling aka Macling GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPS WITH MEATS MEIER INTRODUCTION TO ZBRUSH: ZBRUSH PRODUCTION PIPELINE

DVD Review

Most of us have heard about the so called hype Tool "Zbrush". An application that blurs the Line between pixels and polygons with Pixologic's unique "Pixol"Technology. (http://www.pixologic.com) Zbrush is an awesome Highend 2D Painting and 3d Modeling/Texturing application at a very fair price! And in my opinion, a MUST-HAVE application for those whose hearts beat for detailed organic modeling.

The Gnomon Workshop recruited the highly decorated Tutor Meats Meier to release two DvD Packages: "Introduction to Zbrush" and "ZBrush Production Pipeline". Each Package consists of 2 DvD's and was released in December 2004. As always, supporting Mac + PC Format.

The "Introduction to ZBrush" DvD comes along with 6 hours of video tutorial lectures explained by Meats Meier. It is announced as "for ZBrush newbies", but I think it covers a lot of nice things to know, even for the more experienced ZBrusher.

First, Meats explains the Heart of ZBrush- the "Pixol technology" (Pixols in contrast to common pixels are basically 3D pixels that can hold 3D depth, orientation and material information). Each of the following lectures is based on the one before and makes the audiences skills grow by getting more and more technical understanding of ZBrush's features. Lecture two is about the ZBrush Interface: Meats is explaining ways to customize palettes, how

the interface is working generally, how to handle the viewport etc. He drags attention to the self explaining (auto help) possibilities of Zbrush and walks through every menu (yes really!!!) explaining what it does and how it affects your work.

Each tweak is shown- there's is no fast forwarding! He's getting more and more into detail in the following chapters: 2.5D Tools, 3D Primitives, 3D Edit Mode, Alpha Skinning, Texturing, Zspheres, Multimarkers, Displacement, Creation, Rendering within zBrush, Zscripts, Preferences.

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No Tool or command is forgotten.

You are told how to model highly detailed meshes and how to export them to external 3D applications.

You'll get to know to paint textures with the 2.5 Toolset and how to customize your own tools. Even as a 2d painting software, ZBrush is offering tools that are a match to the big 2d application functions.

Furthermore, you learn how to export the needed maps to get your million poly models rendered in the common 3D applications fast and easily and as detailed as in ZBrush.

GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPS Review by Mark Gmehling aka Macling

edge and technical understanding of Zbrush for sure. The Second DVD package (2DvD's inside) "ZBrush Production Pipeline" focuses on the relationship between ZBrush and common 3D applications. (In this case Meats is using Maya as external renderer) and consists of over 4 hours video tutorials+ some Bonus Material rendered by Meats Meier.

DVD Review

He teaches the complete workflow from optimizing meshes you want to use in ZBrush, importing these meshes into ZBrush- detailing it within ZBrush 2.5 tools- Texturing it within ZBrush using the powerful Projection master- exporting the maps(displacement/ normal/ bump/ texture etc)- and finally reach the detailed look made in ZBrush on the low poly mesh back in Maya.

The lectures covered are called as follows: Preparing Geometry in your 3D Package, Basics of ZBrush Texture, UV's and Mapping, Creating and Rendering Displacement Maps Creating / Rendering Normal Maps, Creating Blend Shapes.

In Contrast to the Introduction to ZBrush DvD, this one goes more into detail by following a character modeling/texturing project from beginning to end.

You'll get to know an efficient workflow to fasten your skills.

And as I said before: Meats Meier explains every button, every palette, every slider…nothing is left uncovered. I think there is no better

Introduction to this awesome application imaginable. Even the experienced ZBrusher will increase his understanding and skills after listening to Meats for 6 interesting hours!

And the ZNewbie will finish the DvD lectures with a really deep knowl-

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Meats teaches an efficient workflow here that shows how much ZBrush can fasten a traditional modeling and texturing process. Although Maya is used as external renderer I (using CINEMA 4D) can say this Package is a must-have too to master ZBrush completely. As C4D supports SPD (Sub Polygon Displacement) you're only a few clicks away from using the features a 16bit ZBrush displacement map

GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPS Review by Mark Gmehling aka Macling

Meiers english is easily understood, even for the not native english speakers) Without any doubt 5 of 5 Attack Points for both Gnomon Training DvD's.

DVD Review

Mark Gmehling Summary: Simply a must have product!

Price: $69 for a single DVD URL: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com Platform: PC/MAC Compatible offers within C4D. (ZBrush displacement is possible in earlier CNEMA 4D versions too, but your mesh has to have a very high subdivision level and the map has to be tweaked- So in versions below 9 ZBrush Displacement maps work, but only for Stills I think.) If you're interested in how CINEMA 4D works with ZBrush look here: http://www.pixolator.com Notice: Gnomon is offering special students prices: Qualified students, faculty and schools are eligible for a 29% discount on all Gnomon Workshop DVD titles, bundles and scene files. Educational orders can be placed either online or via mail-

order. An order for a single DVD would go from $69 to $49. An order of five DVDs ($69/each) would go from $345 to $245. As a students you just have to fax a dated students ID and a dated personal ID to get 29% off! (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com) Btw: Most ZBush resellers are offering ZBrush 2 with a Wacom Graphics Tablet as a bundle with very nice prices these days. And the Z-Fun really comes up using a pressure sensitive tablet.

Finally: Both of the Meats Meier ZBrush DVD's are a must for every serious ZBrusher! (Btw: Meats

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Rating: 5/5

How To Sort Particles With TP

By Tabou

The goal of this tutorial is to show you how to direct particles precisely by carrying out a simulation of convoying of objects that arrive mixed then are separated in different directions according to their color. This will use the concept of TP groups, essential to master if you wish particles to have different behaviors.

There are four steps to achieve this effect : 1. Create and setup the first emitter, which will be duplicated twice.

Tutorial

2. Set up an expression that controls the three emitters to differentiate flows in order to prevent that several particles are emitted simultaneously.

dimension of the particles, 25 means that each particle will have the quarter of the dimension of the original object.

At this stage you get a flow of particles aligned and spaced irregularly, as seen on picture 3. Now that one emitter is ready we will duplicate it,

to refine the adjustments we will modify the Pstorm-node directly.

Double click on the icon of XPresso to open the editor then select the Pstorm-node and modify only the highlighted parameters, as illustrated in picture 2.

3. Add an expression using the repulsion to prevent that the particles interpenetrate.

but we have to create first the groups of particles, essential to dissociate the three flows. Go to the Thinking Particles settings window and right-click on All in the Particle groups field and add three groups and name them red, green and blue, like picture 4.

4. Place and direct the deflectors then assign the various flows of particles to the corresponding deflectors.

1 Create and set up the emitter We need three identical emitters, only the emitted objects will be different, so we will set up only one emitter, the two others will be duplicates. Go to Objects menu /ObjectLibrary and add a TP Basic Emitter then go to the attributes and modify the parameters like shown on picture 1. For now leave the Particle Group empty, we will change that later. Set the diameter to 1 and the Spread Angle to 0, this enables us to get a flow of aligned particles.

Set the lifespan to the total duration of your animation (frames), to avoid particles to suddenly disappear.

The user-data does not give access to all the parameters of the emitter,

The birthrate controls precisely the flow, as we have set the value to 6 the emitter creates a particle every five frame (at 30 fps), this setting preserve a minimum distance between each emitted object. Don't forget that the interval depends also on speed, therefore if you modify the flow it will be necessary to adjust speed and vice-versa.

A light variation in speed avoids that the interval between the particles is identical, that gives a more natural feeling to the simulation. The size is a percentage which adjusts the

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Leave the Particle Geometry object of the hierarchy of the emitter in order to not duplicate it, your hierar-

How To Sort Particles With TP

By Tabou

chy must be like illustrated on picture 5.

Tutorial

Now you can duplicate the emitter twice, group the three emitters together then change names and materials as illustrated on picture 6.

Drag each group of particles into the corresponding box of each emitter picture 7.

2 Differentiate flows Select the parent Null object of the group of emitters and add a XPresso tag. The idea is to generate random integers from 1 to 3, each number will start one or the other of the emitters. Add a random node, with a Real output and, in the attributes manager, check the positive values button, to get only values from 0 to 1. To transform this result into values from 1 to 3 you will use a range mapper node. Set the range-mapper node to the values as in picture 8.

So now the values from 0 to 1 are transformed to 1 to 4. It remains to convert these real numbers (1,836,

3,051 for example) into whole values (1, 3). For that just add the Universal node and set it to Integer.

It now remains to test this value as to start the corresponding emitter.

Add a Compare node and a Condition node.

Connect input 1 of the compare node to the output of the Universal node and set the value of input 2 to 1. Connect the output of the compare node to the switch of the condition node. Set the type of data on Boolean and check only the box Input 3.

Now we have three flows of particles but if you launch a preview you will see only one because for the moment the three emitters are identical. To differentiate them you will set up an expression preventing the emitters from emitting simultaneously.

Drag the tag blue emitter into the XPresso window and connect the output of the condition to the Enable input port. You get a result identical to that illustrated on picture 9. Think of re-naming the tags your emitters, that allows you to recognize them easier in the XPresso editor. Now

42

duplicate the three nodes (Compare, Condition and XPresso), then replace value 1 by 2 in the second condition node and by 3 in the third condition node. Replace the reference of the emitters, as illustrated on picture 10 (see last page bottom picture).

Preview what you got and you'll see the three colors follow one another in a random way.

However there remains a problem : because of their different speeds (remember, the speed variation parameter which is not set to zero to obtain irregular spaces between the blocks) some blocks collide with others and even cross them. The P Repulse & Bounce node will enable you to fix this problem.

3 Avoid collisions The Object Library provides a TP Particle Collision object ready to use, all the parameters are set in the user data, like illustrated in picture 11.

How to Sort Particles With TP

By Tabou

As it is necessary to detect the collisions between particles that belong to different groups you have to set All to group A and B.

deflector. Launch simulation, if you did not make an error the particles are automatically directed towards the way which corresponds to their color.

Test the simulation, the blocks do not overlap anymore. Now we will set up the deflectors and the XPresso that will allow to direct the particles towards different directions according to their color.

Have fun ! tabou Thank you base80 for your translation.

Tutorial

4 - Separate the particles with deflectors As usual we will set up the effect for a group, the red for example and duplicate it later. There is no deflector for the green particles since they go straight. The deflector is created with Null object which help to place and direct the effect easily, the expression will determine the group of particles which will be affected.

Create a null object, place it at the intersection of the three ways and direct it at 45째 on the axis H. do not forget to re-name the object to give it an clear name, R1 deviation for example. Duplicate the object then move approximately 300 units and direct 57째.

Duplicate the object again then put rotation at 0째 and move it 150 units on Z-axis and of 75 on the X-axis.

Select the three deflectors and duplicate them. Re-name the objects and place them in a symmetrical way. Now the deflectors are in place but we need to give them the right groups of particles to follow the right direction. Open Xpresso of object TP Particle Collision then add a PPass node and a Pdeflector node. Connect PPass node to the red group. Select the Pdeflector node and set the parameters like illustrated on picture 12.

Connect the PPass node to the Pdeflector node then duplicate both nodes. Replace the reference-object with the R2 deflection, increase the value of Surface to 50 and decrease the Spin by 2. Duplicate the nodes again and proceed in the same way for the third deflection by increasing the value of surface to 100 and by changing the object by the R3 deflection.

Select the 6 nodes and duplicate them. Change in the nodes PPass of the red group to the blue group and in the PDeflector the red deflector by the corresponding blue

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How To Create A Camera Animation In R9

By Georg Niedermeier

First of all we need a spline that renders the path which the camera should follow (Picture 00).

Picture 01b

Play around with the tangents and see how they work.The next step is a little tricky because you have to raise some points of the spline for we want to create a camera animation that orbits around a object in the center of the spiral while the spline slowly ascends. Mark all points of the spline object except the very first one on the darker end of the spline and move it up a bit (Picture 01f).

Picture 00

Tutorial

Switch to the top viewport and create a Freehand Spline that reminds you of a spiral by click-dragging in the viewport (Picture 01).

Picture 01c

Picture 01f

from the Edit Spline submenu within the Structure menu (Picture 01d)

Unselect the second point using the Live Selection tool. Don't forget to hold down the ctrl key in order to unselect a selected point. After unselecting the second point, move the rest up a bit (Picture 01g)

Picture 01d

Picture 01

You will notice that the spline is quite edgy, but there exist a solution for that particular problem: Activate the Live Selection tool and mark and delete points that you don't really need. Example: If there are two points that sit quite close to each other, just delete one or more of it (Picture 01b).

This function realigns the tangents of the spline which results in a very soft curve (Picture 01e).

Picture 01f

Repeat that until the spline consist of points that have a uniform distance to each other (Picture 01c).

In order to make our spiral shape round again, select all points of the spline and choose Soft Interpolation

Picture 01e

If you don't like the position of a tangent you can easily change the position of it by using the Move tool.

44

Now repeat these steps: unselect another point, move up, unselect another point, and so on. Your front or side view will look something like this (Picture 01h) Notice the little terraces at each point. We don't want to keep it that way because the camera animation

How To Create A Camera Animation In R9

By Georg Niedermeier

Picture 01h

Tutorial

would appear quite fidgety that way.

Again the easiest way to resolve this problem is to mark all points of the spline object and to execute the Soft Interpolation function that we have used earlier in this tutorial.

The terraces have disappeared because the spline tangents are not straight anymore but diagonal to each other. Feel free to change some tangents to see how they influence the spline behavior.

(Picture 01i).

and the tangents can be moved up or down only. Now that our spiral object is finished we need to adjust the settings which define the spline's distribution of points. Adaptive and Natural spline interpolation are useful for splines that need narrow and very soft curves. If we were using a spline with such interpolation, the camera movement would accelerate in straight areas and break in narrow curves. The reason for that behavior is the way CINEMA 4D calculates interpolation of splines.

Movement speed depends on the distribution of interpolation points.

Movement becomes slower at those points that stand close to each other, while it becomes faster where points stand more apart. The interpolation points are not the spline points.

Double click the spline object and take a look at the Attributes Manager. Click the drop-down list right to Intermediate Points and select Uniform (Picture 02).

Picture 03

Mark the Camera object in the Object Manager and assign the Align to Spline Tag. You will find it in the File menu of the Object Manager (Picture 04).

Picture 04 Picture 01i

By the way, you can also work on tangents and spline points in perspective view. Maybe you wonder how that would be possible because in perspective view you cannot move tangents and points quite exact. That's not true because fortunately even spline points and spline tangents can be manipulated while axis are locked or unlocked. If you want to move a tangent up or down, just lock the x-axis and z-axis

Picture 02

The Uniform option makes CINEMA 4D to change the distribution of interpolation points of splines. The interpolation points are distributed uniform, now.

That uniform interpolation allows our camera to move at a constant speed. Create a Target Camera object found in the Objects menu (Picture 03).

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You will see the Align to Spline Tag in the Object Manager right to your Camera object. Perform a double click on the tag in order to bring up the attributes of the Align to Spline Tag in the Attributes Manager.

(Picture 05) Drag-drop the spline object into the Spline Path drop box (Picture 06).

Make sure that the animation slider is positioned on the very left.

(Picture 07)

How To Create A Camera Animation In R9

By Georg Niedermeier

Add a keyframe. (Picture 07b)

Picture 05 Picture 07b

Move the keyframe slider to the right (Picture 08).

Picture 08

Change the Position value to 100 percent and right click the little dot left to the word Position and add a keyframe, again (Picture 08a Picture 07b)

Tutorial

Picture 08

Picture 09

How about animating the camera target along another spline?

If you don't want to use a target camera you can try a standard camera, too.

If you want to look along the path it is moving on, just activate the tangential checkbox. Play around with the possibilities and create breathtaking camera action!

Georg aka Sad

Picture 06

Picture 08a

Picture 07

Put some objects in the middle of the spiral and move the camera target null object there, too.

Right click at the little dot left to the word Position (Picture 07a) Picture 07

The last action we have to take is to activate the camera. Click the Camera menu of the perspective view and and select the camera.

(Picture 09) Hit the Play Button.

Picture 07a

That's all you need for a camera that should move along a spline.

You can assign the Move along Spline Tag to any object you like.

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Best of CINEMA 4D

Some of the best artists around the world using CINEMA 4D

Image: Jeweller's Art Artist: Danilo Ventura Country: Italy Website: under construction Date created: 14/02/2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R8.2

Artist Comments: I have realized these jewels in order to give them to my girlfriend. To give the true ones would have been banal! (and expensive:) ) I'M NOT A JEWELER, so I'd gather informations, especially for details (clips, stones, dimensions...ecc ecc) , for the rest... all fantasy!

Only my imagination and my LOVE

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Image: Race Bike Artist: Mas Guillaume "Quinn" Country: France Website: http://membres.lycos.fr/peluche203 Date created: January, February 2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R8.5

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Image: Col. S. Bird Artist: Peter Fendrik (pupi) Country: Hungary Website: Date created: 2005 02 28 Software: CINEMA 4D R9, BodyPaint, Photoshop

Artist Comments: This image the III part of my Bird Saga.

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Image: Old Vampire King Artist: Gianluca Mattia Country: Italy Website: www.studioideabari.it/gianlucamattia Date created: 2005 Software: Cinema 4d XL, Bodypaint 3d, Adobe Photoshop

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Artist Comments: This image is a personal plan. I have modeled all in hypernurbs. For the texture of the skin I have used various levels for giving detail. I have made various tests of lighting system and background, until arriving to the final result. I have modeled the accessories to part and subsequently inserted on the model.

The instrument magnet has helped to obtain the expression me makes, deforming the parts of the face. The blood that falls has been added in photoshop. In the scene two luminous sources are present, one spot and one omni.

Image: Nature Artist: Jens Kappelmann "jeso" Country: Germany Website: www.jeso.de.vu Date created: 21.02.2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R9 - BodyPaint R2 - Dpit 2.5

Artist Comments: I spent most of my time on this image developing the lighting and textures.

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Image: RollBot Artist: PETER HOFMANN - peXel Country: Germany Website: http://www.peXel.de Date created: March 2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R9, PHOTOSHOP 6

Artist Comments: Post process in Photoshop (layered COPIC pen images). So it looks a bit like painted.

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The CINEMA 4D Q&A Pages From the 3D ATTACK Forum

Questions and Answers

Q: Magnumstar: What's the best way to clean up a area of clustered polygons?

A: Fluffy: Select them and hit backspace or delete. Go into point mode, then right-click in the viewport (make sure no point is selected first), then choose "optimize" with the "remove isolated" option activated, to get rid of all the flying points.

Then use the bridge tool or Create polygons tool to redraw your polygons. If you meant simplify a mesh, then use the polygon reduction tool, that is available as a deformer (menu "object>deformation>polygon reduction"). For more details on this deformer -> take the manual in your bathtub!

Q: Rubberfish: Does anyone know how to duplicate an object along a spline? For example, 100 sphere's positioned equal distance from each other along a spline. With the first sphere at one end and the 100th sphere at the other end, with all the other copies in-between.

A: Bram: Yes I do! In R9 you can just use the Duplicate option and the set it to Along spline, then drop your spline in the field, set your duplicates and hit apply. But I see you

have 8.5 so it requires some extra steps as the duplicate tool is not enhanced like in R9. Simply use Functions -> Duplicate to duplicate your object with the amount you want, all directions set to 0 so they all are in the same place. Then Select the object group that is created, go to Function -> Arrange and enter the name of the spline on which the objects are to be arranged. That should do it. P.S. it is advisable to make an instance of your object first and then duplicate the instance, this will save a lot of memory if you are going to duplicate a lot.

Q: Neosushi: Is there a possibility to render the shadow-map only once ?

For example: - Camera movement around a non animated object - Light array above this object.

Cinema always calculates the shadow map new, but actually I think it doesn't make any sense ! Maybe I'm wrong, but is there a way to render only one shadow-map and make it usable for all other frames ????

Does this makes sense?

A: Bram: Yeah, easily! In the render settings options enable 'Cache shadow maps'. This will create a

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illum folder with your project and save the shadow data for the first frame in there. The same data will be used for the rest of the frames and thus cut your render times in half or something like that . For moving stuff, this is not advisable of course.

Q: Jerry: I've got an omni-light that I want to fade out to nothing. I've got some visibility and noise on it, and some dust. For some reason when I try to turn the brightness down C4D wont let me? Some sort of default?

Or is it one of the other attributes restricting the fade out? Any help would be magnificent!

A: Rui Batista: As a default, the render settings have the "Auto Light" option turned on. This will make Cinema4D create a default light as soon as you have no light present in your scene. So, when you turn your only light off (whether by really turning it off or by lowering the brightness to 0%), Cinema4D will, automatically, create a default light.

Editor’s Notes Hello there Readers and Attackers!

issues and extra Goodies on one CD! http://www.3d attack.net/shop/

WOW! Can you believe it’s already Spring? As winter passes and Spring emerges, so does new life.

The 3D Attack Team is looking forward to bringing new and exciting tutorials, articles, reviews, artist interview, and great C4D Quizzes to all of our readers in the future. Our next issue, the May issue, has some great treats. You won’t want to miss it!

Tutorial and Article Submissions

Once again, we would like to thank our very supportive forum members and our dedicated readers. 3D Attack has been blessed with the best. YOU ROCK!

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Thanks and KEEP ON ATTACKING! Dosch Design The 3D Attack Team RSS Feed on the Forum Our new forum also has a nice new feature: RSS - Really Simple Syndication. This actually means that you can get the latest posts without even visiting our forum. You can simply get it via mail or a RSS news reader, so you will always be up to date on things. RSS is actually still pretty new on the web, but it’s growing rapidly and more and more sites are using it. We wanted to jump on the train and bring you this great feature. To find out how to enable RSS check here: http://3d attack.net/forum/showthread.php?t= 1326 THE MAGAZINE ON CD Be sure to visit the 3D Attack shop and check out our new Magazine Collection on CD. 8 complete

Be sure to visit our friends at Dosch Design www.doschdesign.com.

Check out their wide selection of innovative and easy to use computer graphics products.

Friends of 3D Attack™ www.doschdesign.com www.maxon.net www.3duser.com.tw www.3dtotal.com www.cgtalk.com www.c4dcafe.com www.cinema4duser.com www.cactus3d.com www.3dfluff.com www.spot4d.co.uk www.3darena.de www.frenchcinema4d.com www.sadbatu.de www.C4dHotline.it www.peXel.de www.cgchannel.com

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www.ambientlight.co.uk Tutorials If you have questions concerning a specific tutorial or want to show us a tutorial you have completed, feel free to post your questions and work on our C4D discussion forums at www.3dattack.net.

www.bubbles4d.com www.mediaworks.fr www.3dlinks.com www.cgchina.com www.c4dzone.com www.c4d-pl.org *3D Attack the CINEMA4D Magazine and all material contained therein are copyright protect-

Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery

ed. You may not disassemble or distribute any part of this publication without prior written con-

If you would like to submit an image for consideration for the Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery section of the magazine, please send an 800x600 rendering to tavy@3dattack.net. If your image meets the level of excellence we are looking for, we will contact you for more information.

sent from 3D Attack directly. Any attempts to do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as it applies in Michigan, USA. This applies for both 3D Attack material as well as any named artist contained in its publications.

Although we read through all the tutorials and proof-read them for errors we cannot guarantee that they are 100% error-free and therefore cannot issue refunds based on those errors.

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Keep on attacking...

By Sir Gong

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