Cinema 4D #1

Jay Payne - Process and Production - 18/01/2017

This session was just an introduction to Cinema 4D. We looked at how we can create something in Illustrator and make it 3D by merging the two softwares together.

To begin with, we looked at some websites and pieces of work that people have designed using Cinema 4D. Channel 4 was a good example of it.

Nowadays, more agencies are using Cinema 4D because it's very interesting what you can do with this software and it's quicker and easier than using a camera to record something, you can simply create it in Cinema 4D.


Channel 4 Branding 2010 from ruddstudio on Vimeo.

What I had to do first was to create a logo in Illustrator which I can upload on Cinema 4D. This is what I have created using the shape tool and the pen tool in Illustrator....

After I designed it, I had to save it in a way that I can then upload it in Cinema 4D, which was to save it as 'Illustrator 8'. That allowed me to upload it in Cinema 4D and after that, I opened up Cinema 4D, went to 'file', 'merge' then open Illustrator file. I had everything set up to begin using Cinema 4D.

I was taught the basic buttons in Cinema 4D and the X, Y and Z axis lines which can be seen above, those lines can be used when I want to move the shape in different directions or position across the X, Y or Z axis.

First thing I had to do was to click on 'Extrude' and place each layer of the Illustrator file into it which can be seen at the top right, I had to create a different Extrude layer for each layer of the shape. The reason was so that I could change and edit each part of the shape separately.

The next step was to edit the shape, I made it thicker so it looks 3D by going to 'object' then used 'movement' and changed the thickness of the shape which can be seen above.

The next step was to change the colour of the shape, since the shape has different layers, I can change the colour of each part instead of having just one colour. I achieved that by going to the bottom box in Cinema 4D and clicking on it and it shows a sphere, this option, I could change the colour, diffusion and even the glow of the shape. I clicked on 'colour', from there, I could change the colour of the sphere, when I was happy with the colour, I would drag the sphere to the extrude layer I wanted to change colour. The explanation can be seen below.

After that, it was time to create a floor and background to the shape. I did this by clicking on 'floor' 'tags', 'Cinema 4D Tags', 'Compositing' then clicked on 'Comp Background' and 'Comp background for HDR Maps'. and to give it colour, I just dragged a colour sphere to the floor and background layers.

The next step was to give the shape a shadow to make it look as realistic as possible, this was achieved by going to 'general', 'shadow maps (soft)' then change the 'H' to 210 then 'S' to 5% and created another light layer by going to 'coord' and changing it to 500 X, 500 Y, 500 Z and the intensity to 67%. I could choose how hard I wanted the shadow by changing the resolution of it.

It was time to make the object move, to set it up, I had to include a camera layer, simply by going to the camera option and I had to remember, when I was ready to make the object move, I had to turn the camera on by clicking on the button next to the camera layer.

Before I made the object move, I had to include text to my object, I did that by going to 'mograph', 'motext' then to edit the text, I would go to 'object' and from there, I could edit the depth, name, font etc.

To make the object move, I had to remember to turn the camera on then go to 'object', 'null object' then drag it to the camera layer. I had to make sure before I could record the object, I had to check the settings by going to the bottom box and checking that the timeline was at the start, changed the frames to 120F then went to 'coord' and turned it on by clicking on a button by 'R' which turned red, making sure it was at 0 degrees then moved the timeline to 120F and changed the degrees to 360. To make it move slower, I had to go to 'Windows', 'time (dope sheet)' then click on linear which slowed the object down when turning.

When I was happy with the end result, it was time to render the whole thing. I went to 'render options', save' then changed it so it saves as a quicktime movie then went to 'options' and changed the compression type to H.264 and then went to 'output' and changed the 'frame range' settings to 'all frames' and that was it.

Cinema 4D Experimentation from Daniel Boscarino on Vimeo.