April2005

GET DIRTY with Rui Batisa’s texturingtutorial on page 10

Thinking of sidegrading or upgrading?Check out Aaron Biscombe’s CINEMA4D Release 9 Review on page 14.

REVIEW

© Dave Brinda 2005

Interview with Dave BrindaLearn a little more about Dave andwhat he does on page 4.

TEXTURING TUTORIAL

MONO FLOP TUTORIAL

Volume 02 Issue 04April 2005 | $3.99

HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS ISSUE:

How do you like your toast? GiveBase80’s Mono Flop tutorial a go! Becareful not to burn the toast, page 25.

How do you like your toast? GiveBase80’s Mono Flop tutorial a go! Becareful not to burn the toast, page 25.

GET DIRTY with Rui Batisa’s texturingtutorial on page 10

Thinking of sidegrading or upgrading?Check out Aaron Biscombe’s CINEMA4D Release 9 Review on page 14.

3D ATTACK QUICK INDEX3D ATTACK QUICK INDEX

PAGE 4-8

PAGE 9

Interview with Dave Brinda by Tavy Ann

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

http://www.doschdesign.com

http://www.doschdesign.com

Tavy: Dave thanks for taking sometime out of your schedule for 3DAttack and our readers. Some ofour readers may not be familiar withwho you are. Would you mind shar-ing a bit about yourself?

Dave: Thank you Tavy, it's an honorto participate. My name is DaveBrinda, I'm 36 and live in northernCalifornia with my wife and our twokids.

As a creative professional, I've beenworking in the design industry forthe past 12 years. I currently spe-cialize in interactive and motiongraphics design and digital illustra-tion.

Throughout my career I've had theopportunity to work on some excit-ing projects and develop someaward-winning creative for clientsincluding; Universal Pictures,Twentieth Century Fox, AppleComputer, Cisco Systems, Disney,Sun Microsystems, and NationalGeographic.

I got into 3D a year or two ago andhave since had the opportunity toutilize those new skills in both myprofessional projects and for fun.

Tavy: Tell us about your education.Do you have any formal educationor training in Graphics?

Dave: I graduated from The ArtCenter College of Design inPasadena, California. I started outmy professional career in commer-cial photography and quickly driftedinto the design world. I was interest-ed early on with the entire designprocess and began developing proj-ects from concept to completion. Inthe early 90's I had the opportunityto establish and direct a creativeservices agency and one of the firstdigital photography studios.

Tavy: CINEMA 4D is your 3D appli-cation of choice. Why? What otherapplications are you currently usingor would like to implement in thefuture?

Dave: Cinema 4D is an outstandingpiece of software! What initially drewme to Cinema was it's incredibleease of use. Everything was so intu-itively designed, that I was amazedat how quickly I picked it up, andwas stunned at the quality of

imagery I was able to produce. Tome, Cinema seems perfectly tunedto the needs of the individualartist...I can concentrate on what I'mtrying to express creatively and thetechnical aspects don't get in theway. As I slowly gain more experi-

Interview with Dave BrindaBy Tavy Ann

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http://www.brinda.com

ence with the program, I'm constant-ly impressed with it's depth of fea-tures and capabilities. I feel like I'veonly barely scratched the surface.

As far as other programs I'm cur-rently using, it's pretty much all thegraphics standards: Photoshop,Freehand, AfterEffects, Flash, etc.I've been dabbling with Apple'sMotion and can't wait to see wherethey take that program. I'm also cur-rently working on adding ZBrush tomy skill set, as I'm totally amazed bythat program and it's uniqueapproach to organic modeling.

Tavy: Dave your resume is impres-sive! You have done work for someof the big guys. Apple Computer,National Geographic, Disney, CiscoSystems, Sun Microsystems,Twentieth Century Fox andUniversal Pictures, to name a few.Can you give us a little insight intoyour work for some of these compa-nies.

Dave: Thanks Tavy, I have been for-tunate to be able to work with somegreat clients on some really excitingprojects. My Apple relationshipbegan with designing a series of in-store demos that utilized rich motiongraphics and interactivity to show-case their products in retail environ-ments like CompUSA and Fry'sElectronics. I've since done severalmotion graphics projects like the"Welcome animation" for the SetupAssistant in OSX, an animated logofor iTunes, and most recently an

RSS screensaver for the upcomingrelease of Tiger. My work forNational Geographic involved some2D photo illustration. My work forSun has involved a variety interac-tive and motion graphics projects,and most recently some 3D virtualset environments done in Cinema.My work for Universal Pictures hasgiven me the opportunity to create

some amazing online experiencesfor entertainment properties like:"The Bourne Supremacy", "TheHULK", and "A Beautiful Mind".

Tavy: Of all of your professionalprojects do you have a favorite?One you're the most proud of?Was the most rewarding?


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It's really difficult to point out oneoverall favorite. In my professionalwork, I'm really proud of the work Idid for Apple on the in-store demos,but my recent work on the "BourneSupremacy" project was a lot of fun.It was really rewarding to be able tocome up with a concept, visualizethe overall experience, and then beable to actually build it all out in 3D.

It was awesome to finally watch thefilm and see how close the 3D envi-ronments came to matching the filmexperience. As far as personal work,the "Medieval Airport" image wasreally fun to work on, and I'm reallyproud of how it turned out.

Tavy: Your image "MedievalAirport", WOW! This is probably mypersonal favorite of all the workyou've done. Can you tell us a littleabout this project?

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

personal project for a Cinema 4Ddesign competition over atRenderosity. The premise of thecompetition was, what if flight hadbeen invented during the Medievalera? What would the vehicles havelooked like, how would they be pow-ered, what would a Medieval airporthave looked like, etc? My conceptcentered around the idea of utilizingthe natural environment. The lift ofhot air, the momentum of runningwater and the updraft of a canyonwall.

I envisioned the vehicles being across between an old sailing shipand a hot air balloon. I also wantedto infuse a bit of a story, so I addedthe two figures in the foreground. Iwanted to let the viewer's imagina-tion wander...who are they? Is it afather and son?

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

ed the viewer to "participate" in theimage. I really wish I would havehad time to finish the image a bitmore (ie. Add some other signs oflife, like people walking acrossbridges, horses and carts on roadsand maybe small village in the dis-tance, etc.)

Anyway, at some point, I'd like todevelop the project further...possiblyinto a book or maybe even a shortfilm. I couldn't help but do a quickanimated version just for fun...it wasjust begging to move :)

Tavy: When developing a websitefor a major motion picture like TheBourne Supremacy, where do youstart and end? Can you give us alook into your work flow?

Dave: Each project is unique, but ingeneral my process is pretty muchthe same regardless of the client, orthe type and size of the project.It all starts with a little research (In


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the case of entertainment projectsthat involves reading the script andreviewing assets) and a dialog withthe client to establish the goals ofthe project. The overall goals arethen translated into specific designobjectives that will be the basis forevaluating future design solutions.Once we have a target that every-one agrees on, we can move intothe creative exploration phase.

This is the brainstorming, sketching,"blue sky" phase where anything ispossible and there are no "bad"ideas. Eventually this develops intoan overall concept that will serve asa blueprint and guiding force for thedesign production.

The typical design production phaseinvolves comps in Photoshop, possi-bly some 3D work in Cinema, ani-mation in After Effects, and pro-gramming in Flash. The creativedevelopment during production iscontinuously evaluated against our

established design objectives, andeventually it develops into a suc-cessful product that matches theoriginal creative vision, and exceedsthe client's expectations.

Tavy: You've got a lot on your plateDave, as do many professionals inthis industry. We all need time awayfrom our work. What do you do torelax and get away from it all?

Dave: It's all about family forme...just hanging out and spendingtime with my wife and kids. I lovethe outdoors, and enjoy hiking andexploring. Also, I've never forgottenmy first true love of photography. It'skind of nice now that I've sort of"reclaimed my amateur status"...Ican just shoot for the love of pho-tography without the pressure of itbeing a job.

Tavy: Thanks again Dave for shar-ing more about you and your workwith 3D Attack and our readers.

Many aspiring 3D Artists, GraphicDesigners, Web Designers, MotionGraphics Designers, etc. will readthis interview. Do you have anywords of wisdom or advice youwould like to leave them with.

Dave: My pleasure Tavy, I appreci-ate the opportunity to share and amhonored to participate.

As far as advice, I'd say don't gettoo hung up on the technical aspectof things. These tools are definitelyimportant, and we couldn't do ourjob without them, but don't lose sightof what your real value is. Yourunique point-of-view and creativevision is what will set you apart inthe long run. Being able to closeyour eyes and envision the endresult is the greatest tool you have.

The other pearl of wisdom I'd like topass is something I learned inschool and have carried with meever since. It is from a poem


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"Beginners Mind" by the JapaneseZen master Shunryu Suzuki: "In thebeginners mind there are endlesspossibilities, in the expert's mindthere are few". It seems that some-times the more of an "expert" webecome the more restrictions weimpose on ourselves, and we endup limiting ourselves creatively. Withevery new design challenge, try tomaintain the beginner's point-of-viewof endless possibilities, and neverlose your passion for learning.

I wish everyone the best, andremember to work hard, do goodwork, and never give up.

-Dave


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WIN PATH DEFORMER

AND N.O.T.A !

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Renato Terabella http://www.tarabella.it/ is sponsoring the April "C4D Quiz" with some greatPrizes. By answering a simple question and sending an e-mail with "C4D QUIZ" as yoursubject line and your answer to [email protected], 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 deform-ers there are not limits to your creativity. Simply choose the spline to use and your objectwill be deformed without losing proportions. Path Deformer deforms the object along theglobal z-axis and also has a banking parameter to roll the objects over a spline and an offsetparameter to control the position along the path. You can also place a Null-Object under thedeformator to have a precise reference for position and rotation along the path. PathDeformer 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 par-ented to a null that owns the "N.o.t.a" tag. You need only to make a group of all the objectsyou need to animate and set a destination keyframe for scale, rotation and position. Nowyou are able to give another object (generally null) a position and rotation reference a startposition 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 [email protected] no later than April 30, 2005 for a chance to winPath 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 e-mail.

*3D Attack staff and their immediate families are not eligible to enter or win "C4D Quiz" prizes.

WIN PATH DEFORMER

AND N.O.T.A !

http://www.tarabella.it/c4d/

http://www.tarabella.it/c4d/

I bet you can spot a computer gen-erated image from a real photo mostof the time. Why is that? Computergenerated images are, usually, tooclean and too perfect. On the otherhand, real world objects capturedon a photo are subject to wear andtear on a daily basis. Some morethan others, of course, but even abrand new object taken out of itsprotective box can already have fin-ger marks of the person who pack-aged it, some indentation caused bya fall, a bit of dust that may alreadybe inside its box, etc.

We can say, without fear of beingwrong, that there are no “perfect”objects. Those “imperfections”,when added to a computer generat-ed image, make it more believable.Unfortunately, they are what is moredifficult to reproduce when dealingwith computer imagery. Before westart adding “dirt” to our models, wemust understand what “imperfec-tions” should be added. The bestway to understand that is to observethe world around and know the “his-tory” of your model. Let me throw insome examples:

You modeled a mouse, “the point-ing device, not the rodent”, and youwant to add dirt to it. Where would itgather dirt? If it is not an opticalmouse, you could say that on therubber ball. However, it is not neces-sary to add materials, dirty or not, toparts that are not seen in the finalrender. So, from the visible partswhere does a mouse get dirty? Onthe resting place of the fingers,right? But wait, look at your mouse.If you have not cleaned it a littlewhile ago, you will notice that on theexact place you place your fingers itis quite clean, shiny even. It is justdirty on the surrounding area ofwhere you place your fingers. That

is because your finger, rubbingagainst the plastic, actually polishesit. The dirt only gathers where thefingers drags it to. And the polishedarea is also considered an “imper-fection” you must/should add.Where else does the dirt gather? Onthe indentations. Those places arenatural resting places for dust andgrime. Even when you clean yourmouse, if you do not use a hardbrush and, maybe, some cleaningfluid, the indentations will keep thedirt in.

Besides shape, lets consider thematerials. The mouse cord (no, itsnot a wireless mouse) is made of asofter, rubbery plastic. Therefore, italso grabs dirt easier than the hardplastic case of the mouse.

Lets now consider an object that issituated outside, exposed to theenvironment. Let’s say a road sign.Road signs are made out of metal,so they can get rusty. They only getrusty on the places where they arenot protected by paint, though. Sorust only appears in places wherepaint usually peals off or can getscratched off. Paint itself gets dirtyor less saturated with age, but notevenly. As most objects, the roadsign will get more damaged atground level and that is where most“wear & tear” must be applied.In a nutshell, adding dirt is not sim-ply adding “noise” to your models. Itmust be a well thought out and bal-anced process.

Instead of going through a painstak-ingly detailed tutorial that would onlycover a couple of specific cases, Iwill present a set of tips and tricks.For you to have something to workwith, I created a “basic” file and then“dirtied” it up. You can open both tocompare the materials ‘the geometry

is the same’ and the final render ofeach (01) (02). To illustrate the tipsand tricks, I will be using the materi-als from the “dirtied” file. Enoughtalk! Let us go to the tips.

Dirt is usually a layer on top of thematerials. In CINEMA 4D, we shouldfollow the same metaphor: Createthe clean base material and, as dif-ferent materials, all the layers of dirtyou want to add to your model.

The trick into adding materials ontop of other materials is to use, judi-ciously, the Mix with other Materialsoption and the Alpha channel ofyour materials. It’s not as trivial asone may think. Let us see how itworks:

On the first image (03) two materialswere added together. They wereapplied in the order that can beseen on image (04). The MixTextures option of the second mate-rial (Mat2) is set to ON. The result

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Picture 01

Picture 02

can be seen as Mat3. WARNING!!Mat2 just has the Bump channel set.So, its preview is showed as com-plete black (05). The color channelwas turned on just for the illustra-

tions so that you can see some-thing. Otherwise, even the Colorchannels would be added and theresulting color would be too bright.The same applies for the followingexample. The second image (06) isexactly the same as the first one,except, the material Mat2 now has

an Alpha channel too. So, it onlyaffects the texture on the placeswhere the Alpha channels are nottransparent.

The third image (07) is exactly thesame as the second image but theMix Texture option of the second

material is turned off. So, the tex-tures are overlaid but not mixed. Inthis case, the Alpha channel defineswhat shows through. On the fourthimage (08), the placement of thematerials was inverted. Since the

Mix Textures option is turned off, thesecond texture completely overlaysthe first one.

On the fifth image (09), the MixTextures option is turned on. So, aninteresting effect happens: the firsttextures, since it has an Alpha chan-

nel, defines what places are opaqueand what places are invisible. Then,by mixing the textures, the secondmaterial is only applied on theplaces that are set opaque by thefirst texture.

This can all be done with more thanjust two textures, of course. Justremember that the Mix Texturesoption mixes the texture with theprevious one (the one on its left).Also, remember that textures areADDED, not Multiplied. So, colorswill brighten when mixed. Addingseveral layers of Bump, using differ-ent materials with Mix Textures on,is a great way to add richer detail tomodels.

Complex textures can be createdwith the Layer shader and by usingcombinations of noises and gradi-ents. As an example, the “dripping”rust beneath the door knob was cre-ated using these settings:

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


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Picture 03 Picture 06

Picture 09

Picture 07

Picture 08

Picture 05

Picture 04

settings of the Color channel, exceptit uses the default black and whitecolors (11). The Specular channel isset to low settings rust is not veryshinny (12).

Finally, the complex part is on theAlpha channel. A Layer shader con-tains four combined shaders. (13)The first one is a vertical gradientthat adds a bit of transparency tothe lower part of the mask. The sec-ond one, a vertical gradient too,multiplied by the first one, will createa ramp for the rust stripes. Whatcreates the stripes is the third shad-er, a Noise shader with a stretched

Y scale, set to Levr mode. Finally,the forth shader, a Noise shader setto Multiply, adds graininess to thewhole mask. You may ask why I settwo gradients at the start when onewas surely enough? Using two, Ican adjust the stripes length inde-pendently of their transparency. But,if you prefer, you can use just onegradient.

Grime, dirt, dust. All these gathermore on the corners and folds thanon the flat surfaces. There are twomain ways to add this and each onehas advantages and disadvantages.

You can use a Dirt shader on theAlpha channel, if you want to use anindependent material to add to oth-ers (don’t forget to turn on the Invertoption of the Alpha channel). This

has the advantage of being able tocalculate dirt for any type of object itis applied to, no matter if it is aPrimitive object, a NURBS object ora polygonal object. The disadvan-tages are the slowness of theprocess and the flickering that canoccur in animations, even with highsettings. To avoid flickering, the Dirtshader can be backed on a bitmap,but for that you need very clean UVcoordinates on your object. Sincethat can only be assured by usingBodyPaint, this method will be pre-sented in a future tutorial.

You can “bake” the dirt on a VertexMap. This has the advantage ofbeing very fast and completely freeof flickering. The disadvantage isthat it only works on polygonalobjects.

You can create a "baked" VertexMap by choosing Calculate Dirt fromthe Render menu. The dialog thatappears is very similar to the onethat the Dirt shader shows (14).Make sure the Map Type is set toVertex Map. Set the parameters

(more about them in a moment) andhit Start. After a little moment(depends on the number of vertexesof your object) a new Vertex Maptag appears. Click it to check theresult. If it isn't what you want,delete the tag and try again. Theaccuracy of the Vertex Map dirtdepends very much on the density


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Picture 10

Picture 11

Picture 12

Picture 13

Picture 14

of the mesh. To use the “baked”Vertex Map in a material, you mustuse the Vertex Map shader. TheVertex Map shader is also a greatmethod to blend two materialstogether in a very smooth way. Todo that, the Vertex Map shader isplaced on the Alpha channel of thematerial that will be blended.

Then, we just have to "paint" thevertex map with a gradient. It’s ashame that this method only workswith polygonal objects. For explain-ing what each parameter means, Iwill explain the theory behind theDirt calculation.

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

The number of “drops” of the “sprin-kle” is the number of Rays. How far

they travel is the Max Distance. Howwide is the “sprinkle” (the angularspread) is the Spread parameter.

If any of the drops of the “sprinkle”hit a surface, the point P is dark-ened, depending on the distance thedrop traveled before it hit somethingand the Contrast value. (16) If, aftertraveling Distance it hits nothing, thepoint P will get no dark contribution.

If you get artifacts (dirt appearingwhere it should not), increase theRay Bias value. Unfortunately, thishas the effect of "pushing" the dirtaway from corners.

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

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

[email protected]

Keep on Attacking and get dirty!


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Picture 16

http://www.tools4d.com/

When MAXON unveiled Release 9of its flagship modeling and anima-tion software, they did so to thedelight and adulation of users andcritics alike. The already sophisti-cated and dependable software hadbeen revamped and revitalized withthe implementation of more than100 new features and functions.

While it was immediately clear thatthe software's developers had paida significant amount of attention tothe streamlining of the product'salready impressive workflow andinterface, with the inclusion of fea-tures such as the Heads Up Display(HUD), and a more global AttributeManager, MAXON went on todelight its loyal community by intro-ducing N-Gon support, a pumped-upmodeling toolset, and an easy touse cloth engine in Clothilde, whichhas many applications besidesdesigning stylish outfits for charac-ters, as CINEMA 4D's innovativeusers have already demonstrated.

Well, its almost summer, and whileother software companies often takesignificantly more time to addressproblems in their product, MAXONhas provided Release 9.1, a freeupdate of more than 50 new fea-

tures and enhancements, that cre-ates an even more rich animationexperience than before.

This month, 3D Attack has askedme to review the XL Bundle of thesoftware, which rivals the feature setof other 3D giants, such as Mayaand XSI, and is suitable for both theprofessional user, or the hobbyistwho is ready to take his projects tothe next level of sophistication. Ifyou are new to 3D entirely, or com-ing from another software, you mightbe unaware that the MAXON line ofproducts operate on a modular sys-tem that allows those new to 3D ortransferring over to custom buildtheir own 3D Studio, tailored to hisor her needs.

I hope this review can serve as afriendly introduction to the programfor those new to it, as well as a dis-cerning resource for those longtimeand professional users consideringthe upgrade.

The XL Bundle includes CINEMA 4DCore, the MOCCA 2 module,Advanced Render 2, ThinkingParticles, PyroCluster, and NETRender. In addition, as my personalwork is mostly non-photorealistic, orNPR work, be looking for a reviewof the Sketch and Toom module inthe May issue of 3D Attack.

INTERFACE

Lets begin with R9 Core. This formsthe basis of our 3D experience, andprovides us with the tools to createthe necessary building blocks to anysuccessful animated endeavor. Asa student, who has to balance any3D work with additional courseworkin other areas, its very important tome that any project I undertake, Ican do so efficiently, and that I am

readily aware of the tools that areavailable to me.

It's important that the interface ismalleable so that I can create aworkspace that is both comfortableto look at for extended periods, aswell intelligently constructed forwhatever task I am undertaking.CINEMA 4D is more than suited tothis task. I have never seen a pro-gram so visually flexible. The inter-face features menus that aredetachable, as well as beautifulHUD that can display scene infor-mation directly on top of your 3Dviewport, in addition to a new globalpop-up that enables you to accesspopular command sets on the fly.

One of my favorite features, hasbeen the consolidation of the manymanagers that veterans of C4D willbe familiar with- so that a singleAttribute Manager is able to access

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MAXON CINEMA 4D 9.1 ReviewBy Aaron Biscombe

http://www.maxon.net

any object tool, material etc. andmultiple instances of the AttributeManager can be opened andlocked, so that all your favoriteoptions are available to you simulta-neously.

Another of my favorite additions tothe interface are the new viewmodes available in the viewports,here is an example of constantshading, which enables you to seethe object wireframes even whenthey are not selected.

MODELING

I think its fair to say that almosteveryone (including myself) wasfalling over themselves with theintroduction of N-Gon support intothe modeling workflow. While R8.5was a very capable modeler andthere were plenty of examples of

great organic and hard surface mod-eling available for CINEMA 4D, Iknow that personally, coming from aMaya background, I found charactermodeling challenging before R9.

I was also one of the many usersthat purchased The Third Party'swonderful Mesh Surgery modelingplugin, that enabled users to per-form various sophisticated modelingoperations, such as loop and ringselections, as well as a ridiculouslysnazzy knife tool that ran rings

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

Release 9 includes a similar toolsetto Mesh Surgery, including a vastset of selection tools and modes,including the new auto-selection andtweak selection modes, whichenable you to quickly switch

between points, edges, or polygonson the fly. R9 does have an awe-some knife tool, that can cut holes,planes, or the traditional line cut thatyou might be familiar with fromMaya. You can constrain any ofthese tools to selections, which Ioften do with the knife tool in pathmode. I think my favorite modelingaddition though has to be the brushtool, which allows the user to sculptobjects interactively. It works beau-tifully, and without slowdown, evenon my puny Dual 867 Mhz G4.

DOCUMENTATION

One thing I've loved about CINEMAfrom the first moment I started usingit, is the extensive documentationthat comes with the software. Inaddition to the PDF Reference andManuals that amount to some 3000pages of reading, there is a full color170 page printed quickstart manualto help you get up to speed on thebasics of the software. In additionto all that, there is an excellent 180minute video tutorial included on CD

which walks the user through acomplete animation project fromscratch. However, while this materi-al is excellent, and more thanenough for getting up to speed onthe core software, I find the manualsfor the additional modules to besomewhat lacking, particularly theMOCCA 2, and the ThinkingParticles ones.

ANIMATION

CINEMA 4D comes complete withthe tools necessary to bring yourprojects into the 4th dimension,including easy animation of parame-ters, and a fairly functional timelineand an FCurves editor. I am not apower animator by any means,focusing mainly on modeling, but Ihave to admit that the CINEMA 4Dtimeline feels quite clunky in com-parison to other state of the art soft-ware.

Take Motionbuilder for example,whose timeline is so elegantlydesigned that I hardly even noticeits their, that's how wonderfullyimplemented it is- its second nature.And while it might be unfair to com-pare C4D to such a specialized soft-ware, users care less about what isfair, and more about what works.But again I have to emphasize thatbeginning animation is ridiculouslyeasy to learn- it doesn't get any sim-pler than 1-click keyframing.

MATERIALS, LIGHTING, & REN-DERING

One of my hands down favoriteaspects of CINEMA 4D R9 is thematerial manager. It just works. Itworked well in 8.5 and it works aswell if not better now. Simply createa material and it appears with all 13channels that you're familiar with

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from other 3D software. In addition,there are over 50 shaders built inthat you can load into these basechannels and edit to your heart'scontent.

It comes with excellent noiseshaders, and surface effects.Meanwhile, there are nine types oflights at your disposal, and numer-ous ways to edit them. Back to thematerials, I've seen many requestsfor MAXON to upgrade to a node-based material system (completewith snazzy node-based editor), andwhile I admit that I would love to seeone as well, I wouldn't want that atthe expense of the ease of use ofthe current system. In Maya, it tookme forever to figure out how to cre-ate the look I wanted in a material,whereas in C4D, there are no tearsinvolved. In addition, even withoutthe Advanced Render module, C4Dpacks one of the fastest raytracersavailable, without loss of quality, andthis important for any project.There's a wealth of preset resolu-tions to render to, as well as outputformats. On top of this, multipassrendering in C4D is fairly easy to setup, and the software can save multi-pass files specifically for Photoshop,After Effects, Final Cut Pro orMotion, as well as Combustion.

ADVANCED RENDER

The Advanced Render module addsprofessional rendering tools to the3D artist's arsenal. With featureslike caustics and radiosity, globalillumination and vector motion blur,you have all the tools at your dis-posal to create highly realistic, orhighly stylized imagery. AdvancedRender has excellent support forHDR images- in many competingprograms they are a chore to set upand implement in your render, in

C4D its as easy as loading one intoa material channel. New to Release9 is SubPolyDisplacement, whichenables you to use texture maps toadd depth to your scene, withoutraising your poly count.

MOCCA 2

I'm of mixed feelings about MOCCA2. On the one hand, I couldn't behappier about the new Clothildecloth simulation engine. Its fairlyeasy to start learning how to use,and while learning how to dresscharacters takes a bit of time, youquickly see the possibilities of clothwhen used in conjunction with vari-ous aspects of the software, likeparticles and collisions in general.

I've seen some pretty convincingimages of vehicle crashes that weresimulated using Clothilde. On theother hand, I still find charactersetup in MOCCA 2 to be an unnec-essarily painstaking task. I feel like

at this stage in the game, it shouldbe fairly simple for a beginning ani-mator to come in, read the manual,

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and set up a simple, useable IK rig.It should be as simple as setting upyour bone chain, and drawing yourik handles between the root and thetip.

But in MOCCA 2, I always feel likeI'm starting out with a complex rigthat I don't understand, and trying toremove expressions and featuresuntil I'm left with something simpler,and even then I still can't get it towork properly.

There are definitely things that Ienjoy about the module- I reallyenjoy the process of setting up abone hierarchy with the bone tool, Ifind it fits quite well into my work-flow, and painting weights is astraightforward process with ClaudeBonet; but I hope in the futureMAXON looks into simplifying therigging process a bit.

I personally have found that usingCactus Dan's IK Tools in conjunctionwith MOCCA 2 provides a trulyenjoyable rigging experience.

THINKING PARTICLES and PYRO-CLUSTER

While the default particle systemthat comes with CINEMA is suitablefor basic particle effects, there aretimes when something more com-plex is necessary. This is whereThinking Particles comes in. Justlike MAXON says, it is possible tocreate effects based on particle andobject interaction, and when used inconjunction with XPresso trulysophisticated effects are possible. Ipersonally find it takes me a while toget even the simplest particle effectgoing, but I attribute that to my lackoff technical prowess, rather thanany innate flaw in the system itself.

Pyrocluster, which is MAXON's volu-metric shading module, works witheither the default particle engine orThinking Particles to create realisticsimulations that can both receivelight and cast shadows. Its definite-ly an advanced tool, but its maindrawback is the time it takes to com-pute, which is rather lengthy.

CONCLUSION

I can't seem to recommend CINEMA4D enough. It's wonderfully easy tolearn and use, the interface is flexi-ble and easy on the eye, andMAXON seems really committed tokeeping it's users happy. The docu-mentation is excellent, and toolsdon't just work well, they work beau-tifully. As with any software, thereare some shortcomings, such as thedifficulty of setting up characters inMOCCA 2, but the rich onlineresources (including the large andfriendly user base), more than makeup for these few problems withworkarounds, innovative techniques,and specialized plugins. I giveCinema 4D Release 9.1 a 5 out of 5Attack points for being a full-fea-tured, professional solution to awide variety of animation projects.

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This is the final part in the modelingstage of the lookout tower, it will beless intricate than previous parts aswe are going to be rounding off themodel with a couple of details andadd-ons.

We will be adding bars in the win-dows, another stone array, stonerelief detail on the tower surface andsubtle cobbles on the top floor of thetower. We begin this tutorial byopening the appropriate file wherewe left off in Part 2, so open theTowerPart3Start.c4d file that camewith the magazine.

First we will add the bars. Create acylinder, set its radius to 1.5, theheight to 100 and the RotationSegments to 12. Then change itsposition to Y 135 and Z -215. Thiswill place the cylinder nicely in themiddle window like in picture 1A.

Duplicate the cylinder once (simplecopy/paste should suffice) andchange the Orientation of the dupli-cate to +X. We can see it stickingout of the sides now so change itsheight to 40 and rename this cylin-der to 'Bar 1'. Duplicate Bar 1 andrename the duplicate to Bar 2. Nowset the Y position of Bar 1 and 2 to147 and 114 respectively, result in

picture 1B. To make it a little moreinteresting we will add connectionswhere the bars cross, we could justadd spheres there but that's a littleboring so we will add slightly extrud-ed cubes there.

Create a cube. Before we are goingto change it we want it in the rightposition first. With the cube selectedcall the 'Transfer' function(Functions -> Transfer). The transferfunction is extremely useful to movean object to a certain axis position ofanother object. In the Transferoptions tab we see a field called'Transfer to', drag the Bar 1 objectfrom the object manager into thisfield and hit Apply. The cube willnow be moved to the centre point ofBar 1 (the cube is still very large butwe'll change that next).

With the transfer done go to theobject properties of the cube andchange its X, Y and Z Size parame-ters to 7 and set all the X, Y and Zsegments to 6. Now you'll be able tosee a small subdivided cube exactlywhere the upper bars cross, picture2A. Make an instance of the cube

(Objects -> Modeling -> Instance)and call the transfer function again.This time with the instance selecteddrag the Bar 2 object into the

Transfer To field and hit apply. Theinstance of the cube will be moveddown where the lower bars cross,picture 2B. We will now continuemodeling the actual cube object andthe instance will change right with it,very handy.

Select the Cube, make it editableand rename it to 'Bar Connector'.Switch to polygon mode and withthe Live Selection tool select asquare of 4x4 polygons on the frontof the cube like in picture 3A.Select the Bevel tool and set itsExtrusion to 1.4, its Inner Offset to

0.6 and subdivisions to 2 and apply.The connector is basically finishednow but to make it look a bit morecrispy click on the Phong tag of theobject and set it to 30 percent andhit enter, result in picture 3B. Thelast step is selecting the 5 objectswe created for the window bars (the3 cylinders, cube and the instance),grouping them and rename thatgroup to 'Window Bars'.

To put this Window Bars object intothe other window sills as well we willcreate an instance of it and rotate iton the central point of the toweritself. So select the Window Barsobject and make an instance of it,then create a Null Object (Objects ->

Basic Modeling - Lookout Tower Part 3By Bram van Gerwen

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Null Object) and drop the windowbars instance into it. Switch back tothe Model tool, select the NullObject and rotate its H rotation to -28.2 in the coordinates manager, hitenter and you will notice the barsbeing rotated into the left windowlike in picture 4A. To fill the rightwindow simply duplicate the Null

Object and remove the - from the Hrotation value and hit enter, this willmake the duplicate rotate to theopposite side and fill the right win-dow like in picture 4B. For clarity inyour object manager rename theNull Objects to Bars A and B respec-tively, feel free to group these barobjects again and rename thatgroup and also rename any otherobjects I didn't tell you to rename.As a scene grows it becomes vitallyimportant to give all your objectsappropriate names to be able to findthem back in later stages.

Next I will show thee how to makeone portion of stone relief on thetower surface which you will be ableto add more randomly if desired.Zoom in on the wall left of the door-way, select the Tower Body objectand switch to polygon mode. Withthe Live Selection tool select thepolygons like in picture 5. Thenselect the Extrude tool and set its

offset to -4, Subdivisions to 1 and hitapply. The selection will be extrudedinward creating an indentation in thetower surface, result in picture 6A.We notice that the HyperNURBSmake our dent corners much too

rounded. We will weight those cor-ners to make them sharper. First temporarily disable theHyperNURBS object by clicking thegreen check behind it, if the objectis still X-rayed disable that as well.Switch to edge mode and with theRing Selection tool click on both

short edges that point inward andyou will notice it selects all shortedges on the dent extrusion like inpicture 6B.

We only want to weigh the cornersso select the Live Selection tool andwhile holding ctrl drag over theselected edges that are not on cor-ners to deselect those, check pic-ture 6C for reference. Then selectthe Loop Selection tool and whileholding shift select the inner andouter edge loop, this will give theresult like in picture 6D.

Now that the corners and edgeloops are selected, switch theHyperNURBS on again and selectthe Weight HyperNUBRS tool(Structure -> Weight HyperNURBS).Set it to 65% and click set, thechange will be visible immediately.In order to make the weightededges look better we will need toincrease the Subdivision Editor set-ting in the HyperNURBS objectproperties tab, set it to 3 and hitenter. The indentation is ready andwe will now put some protrudingstones into it. Switch to Polygonmode and select the two lowestpolygons on the indentation surfacelike in picture 7A. Then select theextrude tool and set its Extrusion to


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2, the Inner Offset to 1.4,Subdivisions to 0 and hit Apply. Now do the rest of the polygons inthe indentation in the same fashionuntil you have 10 stone protrusionslike in picture 7B. We will alsoweight the stone edges to makethem more square. Switch to Edgemode and with the Loop Selectiontool select all the top edge loops ofthe stones like in picture 8A andclick Grow Selection (Selection ->

Grow Selection). This will increasethe selection to include the cornersof the stones as well. Call theWeight HyperNURBS tool again setit to 75 and click set. The stones willbe transformed from their roundforms to square forms due to theweights on the edges, check picture8B for the result. There now thistechnique is mastered you can addmore areas of randomly protrudingstones on the tower surface if youwish. But before you might do thatwe are going to add some other pro-trusions, namely the beams onwhich the second floor is suspendedthat stick out of the surface of thetower body. This is a very simpleaddition and will be done with aslightly deformed cube and an arrayobject. We're not actually going tomodel the second floor inside thetower as you won't see that anyway,

we just want to create the illusionthat it's there. Open a new sceneand create a cube, set its dimen-sions to X 30, Y 20 and Z 30. Asmall object so zoom in on it. Makeit editable and switch to edge mode.Select the lower edge that lies paral-lel to the Z-axis and move it inwardalong the X-axis like in picture 9.You might find that the axis of theedge is tilted when you select it. If

this is the case set the Axis to Worldfirst in the Move tool Modeling Axisoptions, now the edge can bemoved easily along the world axisinstead of it's own tilted one.

Now to finish off this object switch topolygon mod, select the Knife tool,set it to loop and make cuts like inpicture 10. These cuts will makesure the HyperNURBS will makesmooth edges instead of a sphere.Next switch to front view and go intoPoint mode. Select the RectangleSelection tool, disable 'only select

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

the tilted surface, picture 11A. Thenwith the Move tool move them out-ward along the X-axis until you getthe result like in picture 11B. Createa hyperNURBS object and drop thecube into it. Rename thehyperNURBS object to 'Beam', thencopy it and past it back into theTower scene. Back in the Towerscene create another Array anddrop the Beam object into it. We wit-ness our Beam object being nicelydistributed around the tower, but its

not rotated the right way. Switch tothe Model tool, select the Cubeobject inside the Beam NURBS andset its H rotation to 90 in the coordi-nates manager. Now that's theobjects are oriented towards thetower we need to decrease thearray radius to make them touch thetower surface. Click on the arrayand set the radius to 233 and alsochange its Y height to 36 in thecoordinates manager. Lastly we willadd a little stone detail on the flooron top of the tower. Switch toPolygon mode and go to top viewand set the Display of the view toGourad Shading for easier selection.With the Live Selection tool selectthe polygons of the floor on top ofthe tower like in picture 12A. Nowselect the Knife tool, set it to Loop,enable 'restrict to selection' and


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make 2 cuts on each section so thatyou have fairly regular subdivisions,picture 12B. Now in Polygon moderandomly select groups of polygonsand single polygons while holdingshift. We're going to create a cob-bled effect from these selections byusing the Extrude tool. So select theExtrude tool, set it's Offset to 1 anddisable 'preserve groups', we don't

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

behind the Offset to 50 and Apply.The Variation will extrude all poly-gons with a variation of 50 percentfrom the 1 offset value makingextrusions ranging from 0.5 to 1.5. If you render now you'll notice thevariation has a slight but subtleeffect on the extruded cobbles.There, that's it for the main LookoutTower modeling. Basically the modelcan be expanded with countless ofsmall details that don't require muchmodeling at all. For instance createa cylinder and put it tilted onto thebeam protrusion above the door tocreate a flagpole, then with transfermove a Plane object to the flagpoleposition and scale and move it a bitand you have a flag. Of course ifyou want to make that more realisticyou'll need clothilde which would bean entirely different tutorial. Also as Isaid earlier on the stone protrusionscan be added anywhere on thetower surface greatly increasing it'sstone looks. And if you're adventur-ous, deform some editable sphereswith the Magnet tool, just nudge ithere and there to create some rocksand prop them up against the sideof the tower for even more realism.Some of these additions can beviewed in theTowerPart3Finished.c4d file I provid-ed and in picture 13 of course.

But modeling is only a part of creat-ing realism, Texturing and lightingcreate a very big part in finishing thescene. Of course I already provideda reasonably acceptable lightingsetup but the textures are still lack-ing. So we will tackle the texturing ofthe Lookout Tower in part 4 of thisamazing tutorial to give it a far more

realistic look. Well that's it for nowand have fun adding those details tothe tower. I'd like to see someresults, so feel free to post yourefforts on the 3D Attack forum wherewe can all laugh... umm, I meancompliment and help you with yourmodeling ;)

Thanks and greetings, Bram


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http://www.c4dmodelshop.com

Combining splines in order toextrude them

Quite often we are asked how sim-ple logos can be made by ExtrudeNurbs. I think now it's time to pro-vide you with a short and simpletutorial for exactly that propose.

So let's get right at it.

Click at the Top View viewport toactivate it. An active viewport win-dow is indicated by a blue rectanglearound it. Create a Circle Splineand change its Radius to about 400.Now create a Text Spline and enterthe acronym c4d that we want touse for this tutorial. Create a secondText Spline and enter 9 into the textfield (Picture01)

Move both text splines into the circlespline. Notice that all three splineswere created while the top viewporthas been active. Doing that makessure that all three of our splineshave the same position along the y-axis (Picture 02).

In order to combine these threesplines we have to make it editableby pushing c order by using theMake Editable function within theFunctions menu. Rename theobjects in accordance with their con-tent: For example the spline that

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

Select the three splines by clicking itwhile holding down the shift key.You can even click and drag themouse in the Object Manager inorder to create a rectangular selec-tion. Connect the three splines viaConnect found in the Functionsmenu. CINEMA 4D creates a newspline object right above the othersplines (Picture 05).

Deactivate the old spline objects byclicking the green hook. The greenhook will change into a red x.

Switching the objects off preventsconfusion and deactivates it for theviewport pipeline (Picture 06)

Create an Extrude NURBS objectand make it the parent of the newlycreated object. Picture 07

Combining SplinesBy Georg Niedermeier

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Picture 01

Picture 02

Picture 03

Picture 04

Picture 05

Picture 06

Picture 07

Double-click the extrude NURBSand change its attributes within theAttributes Manager as shown in thepicture.

Especially the object propertiesneed adjustment because at themoment the spline object is extrud-ed along the z-axis which in ourcase is wrong. Decrease this valueto zero.

Because we want an extrusionalong the y-axis, we have toincrease this value to about 25.Picture 08

We are nearly finished, but there'sone thing that is really important.Our final object will look much betterif we create a fillet. Take a look atpicture 08 again and adjust theCaps and Rounding option accord-ingly.

The more steps you enter in theSteps field the rounder the fillet willbe. Play around with the values inorder to see what happens with ourobject.

That is all. Of course you can usesplines that you have drawn byhand, too. The only thing you haveto remember is to create all of thesplines you want to connect in thesame viewport window.Picture 09

As always, If you have any prob-lems or questions regarding thistutorial then please feel free to askyour questions on our forum at:

http://www.3dattack.net/forum/

ThanksGeorg Niedermeier aka sad

Combining SplinesBy Georg Niedermeier

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Picture 08

Picture 09

http://www.3dattack.net

Well don’t we all want to morphshapes once in a while? Don’t we alluse C4D and its tools to do so?Don’t we all get a little frustratedbecause the tools provided by C4Dcould be easier to handle? There isa solution to this...EMorpher!

I must say I am pretty impressed on“how easy” to use this plugin is andthus it makes me wonder whyMAXON hasn’t done it the sameway!

Now what does it do you ask? Letme explain. Let’s say you created acharacter and now you are ready toanimate some facial expressions.

Well, you could of course use CINE-MA’S tools and go ahead and createyour facial expressions and such.You will soon notice that this can bea time consuming process and yourobject manager will also get a littlemessy with the tools provided byC4D.

That’s why you should have a lookat EMorpher. This plugin will make iteasier and faster without creatingtoo many duplicates of your mainobject. Emorpher will create a “nullobject” for each “morph” you createand you will be able to mix those dif-ferent “morp” targets by simply mov-ing the null objects! Amazing, isn’tit? Easy you say? RIGHT! That’show it should be.

Now, how exactly does that work?Let me explain this with somescreenshots. First, you’ll create yourcharacter or whatever else youwant. You will then convert yourmodel into a poly object (if notalready done).

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

state” of your object. The Emorphertag will have to be on the null object.Double clicking on the tag will open

a window and you will be able tocreate new morph targets. Simplymodify your mesh, and once satis-fied, you click on “add target” to

make this new morph pose available(null object with name will be gener-ated). You can add as many posesas you want by repeating thisprocess.

You can test your poses or deletethem, or even mirror them.Emorpher is really easy to use onceyou play with it for a little while.

A little critique from my side: A betterdocumentation would make it easier(although is already pretty easy touse). All together I’m pretty satisfiedwith this plugin! It’s as said before,easy to use and worth the money. Itwill make your life a lot easier and Ialso haven’t noticed any crashes orbugs. This plugin is a “must-have”for character animators or such whowant to go that direction.

Summary: A timesaver all the way!Pricing is fair and the ease of usemakes this plugin a hit!

Price: $40 USD

URL:http://www.eggington.net/~eago/

Email: [email protected]

Platform: PC/MAC Compatible

Rating: 5/5

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Plugin Review: EMorpherBy Thomas Pasieka

http://www.eggington.net/~eago/

http://www.eggington.net/~eago/

Mono-flop in complex animationsetups. How to automate a toaster:

Well here we go, yet anotherXPresso tutorial that seems difficultat first, but that will make life easier.The Mono-Flop node. It is a mouth-full, but basically in english it is aplain ordinary timer. Everybodyknows about timers, like the one inthe hallway that switches the lightoff after a while. Well that is exactlywhat we are going to explore.Honey can you switch the mono-flopon please!

What we will do in this tutorial is alittle more complicated than a timeron a hallway light. We will make acompletely automated Toaster. Oneswitch animates the whole thing. Itwill even grill the bread, and if youmake an error, it may even burn it.

The idea behind this tutorial is tohave objects with associated behav-ior. I did the tutorial about "AgingBananas" with the same philosophy(!) in mind. I prefer not using thetimeline, it is a part of the software Idon't like a lot. I want to exclusivelyuse user-data sliders. The only time-lined thing is the start of thesequence. For the rest it will showno key-frames at all. All aspects ofanimation are done in XPresso andit even stops automatically. It is real4D (3d + time) or an "animatedobject"

Well ok, lets get started

Prerequisites (what you need)- A toaster- Some bread- A little patience

Before we startI like clear setups of null objects,

with clear names, it makes life easi-er later on. I like my null object incorrect places from the start, other-wise XPresso can mess up thingsbadly. If something has to rotate thenull containing the rotating partstands at the rotating point and notin the middle of space. I animatenulls, not objects. This is so I canadjust the object position within thenull at will, after the XPresso isdone. Urgh, I am orthodox!

The Mono-flop node

I will start by explaining the mono-flop itself. As said earlier it couldjust have been named "Timer-node"at birth, but why do it simple whenyou can do complicated?

- The input ports

The mono-flop is driven by a Time-port, so you will always need aTime-node connected to it. Thenthere is the duration and it is count-ed in frames and controls the...duration of course. The trigger portis the one that starts the sequence.There are two modes: Normal andOneShot. The reset port is there toreset the counting of how manytimes the node has been used.

- The output ports

Count counts the number of timesthe node has been activated, verypractical for incremental things. (ele-vators) The Outport is true or falseto tell whether the monoflop is on oroff. The State port is the most impor-tant in this case. Upon trigger itcounts from 0.00 to 1 in the givenduration. This is actually our motoror driver for our animation.So The timer in a hall-way basicallylooks like this [Light timer]

The Switch is a bool (true/false) andsets the trigger on for 1 second setby a constant. The out port is con-nected to the brightness of the light.Lets get started.........

Step 1 The User-Data and theXPresso tag.

Ok, we have a total of two differentparent objects, one is the toasterand the other is the slice of bread.Actually there are two slices. Right-click on the Toaster object andadd an XPresso-tag. Ok easy! We will need some User-Data toactivate the toaster.

I always associate user-data withthe XPresso tag itself and not thenull object. One is free to do other-wise, but the XPresso is moreportable this way. Especially witheasy set-ups, this is the way to go.

So select the XPresso-tag and go tothe attributes manager, choose "Adduser-data" from the menu at the top.Now name the user data "Start At(F)" or whatever and set the datatype to Time and hit OK.

Do it again and name it"Duration(F)" and set the type totime, counted in frames by default. We need a third one just for the funof it, Call it "Temperature(1...5)", thisone is to burn the bread beyondrecognition ; ). Set it to integer andwit a range from 1 to 5 in steps of 1and hit OK.

Mono-flop in Complex AnimationsBy Base80

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Light Timer

Step 2 The XPresso Setup

OK the hard part, the XPresso itself.The hard thing is that the movementof the toast going down and up havea fixed length, but the toasting itselfis flexible in length. The going downand up take 30 frames each. First thing we do is make a timenode. It is the driver of the anima-tion our motor as it were.

Then we drag the XPresso tag tothe XPresso editor and open theuser-data ports on the right. To startthe animation we need to comparethe 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 checkwhat happens just connect a resultnode to the end. I have set the startto 30F, so when I hit play the resultnodes goes to 1 at the 30th frame, itstays at 0 at any other frame. OK sofar. [Compare]

Ok the second thing is setting thetime for the start of the going up ofthe bread. The sequence takes 30frames. So I have to subtract 30Ffrom the "duration" user-data. Easy,take a math-node set it to subtractand connect the "duration" user-dataand a constant set to time and to30F. In this example I used a dura-tion of 100F so the result is 70F,isn't it? Now we need to do the com-pare thing again to get the start timeof this sequence. First we have toadd the result of the previous calcu-lation to the "start at" user data. Theresult gives us the exact frame atwhich the bread will go up. So we

use a math-node st to add.Duplicate the compare thing aboveand connect the result of the calcu-lation to the second port. Now wehave a result of "1" at frame 30 forthe start sequence and another oneat the start of the end sequence.So far so good. [compare2]

Now we can proceed to the mono-flop-nodes. Add two of them to theXPresso editor. Connect a timenode to the Time-port and connectthe results of each compare node tothe Trigger-port. As I said before thegoing up and down sequences havea fixed time span of 30 frames each.So we can enter 30f to the duration-port of each mono-flop in the attrib-ute manager. We need to open theState-port for further processing.This is a part of the setup so far.[monoflop]

We are not finished yet, we need athird mono-flop for the remainingtime after the start sequence. Forthe trigger we add 30 frames to thestart frame and for the duration wesubtract the start sequence from thetotal duration. Hang in there peoplewe are almost there. We set the out-put of this mono-flop to OUT (bool-true/false).

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

mono-flops. What we see is the firstresult jumping to true at the startframe and until 30f further. Then the"remaining time result jumps to trueand a while later the end sequenceresult jumps to true while the remainstays true. Whoaaaa! Isn't this sick-ening. Well we are done with mono-flopping for the movement.

Step 3 The range mapping formovement.

The fun part is always this one. Therange-mapping thing. Add a 3 rangemappers, to the State-ports of thestart and end sequence mono-flopsand to the Out-port of the remainingtime mono-flop. The range mapperswill make the movement of thebread going down so we need toknow those two positions in ourmodel. In this case y=0 for lowerposition and 10 for lower. We needthese figures in the range mappersas 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 rangemapper because of a sudden jumpat the end of the start sequence.Some fiddling has been done here.)

Now take a math node set it to Addand add-up the three out-ports ofthe range mappers.

At this point we have al the move-ments of the toaster done. Try it,connect the result to the position ofan object and hit play. We must beabsolutely crazy to do all this for solittle result.

So we want more realistic move-ments. we will alter the range map-per-splines to do just that. Make aspline in the first range-mapper that


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Compare

Compare2

Monoflop

goes down in a curve. Leave the theremaining sequence range mapperwithout spline and especially the lastspline is interesting. I want the toastto make a small jump at the end.Watch the the images below for thefinal settings.[rangemapper1] [rangemapper2]

I changed the output upper toaccommodate the little bump in thespline my end figure should be 10(so 12.5x0.8=10) Are we getting aheadache. We are done anyway.Now we have a smooth movementdown and a nice little jump at theend.

Step 4 the animated texture of thebread (procedural)

For the burning of the bread we willuse the state port of the remainingtime mono-flop. So once the breadis down it will start changing color.connect it to a range mapper and

use the temperature user-data asthe upper output. So the higher thetemp the higher the number thatcomes out of the range mapper.The texture made by buzhug has aeven beige color for the un-toastedbread and a dark brown for thetoasted bread. These two colorsreside in a fusion texture. The blendslider mixes the two colors. Weneed to drag the fusion texture inthe xpresso editor. (open the textureclick on the fusion and drag its iconfrom the attribute manager to thexpresso editor)

We will connect the range-mapperoutput to the blend port of the tex-ture, but we need a math node(divide by 5) to accommodate theoutput numbers. When we animatewe will see the bread change colorlike we want. Great! But at the endof the sequence it flips back to nor-mal and we don't want that. Weneed to freeze the grilled state untilthe end of the timeline. Take aFreeze-node. Connect the Value tothe previous range-mapper and theswitch to the Out-port of the mono-flop (put a NOT-node in between forgood results).

Now we have the bread toastingalready but the brown color doesn'treset at the start of the animation,For that We have to use a compare-node and connect a time node anda constant of 0.

We connect the result to a Flip-flop-node's switch port and the not usedhigher to the on-port. the result ofthe flip-flop-node has to be connect-ed to the Freeze-nod. You probablywant to shoot me at this time. OKwe are done with the bread. Itbegins white and ends brown. Thetemperature user-data is there toalter the effect.

Step 5 The glow

Hmm fed up? The glow texture andlight coming out of the toaster haveto be made yet to have the right endresult. It is the same procedure asthe bread color without the freeze.So only a range-mapper comingfrom the same mono-flop as aboveconnected to the light's brightnessport, the texture glow and fusionports (between black and red) andwe are done. In the range mapperwe can alter the spline to go slowlyup and drop at the end to get a bet-ter result. (See big picture on lastpage of this tutorial).

Congratulations if you have comethis far. The method above is verylabor intensive and looks completelyuseless. And it is for a part. But ourtoaster is now fully functional andthat is nice. And we have learned touse a lot of nodes, and that is nice.

Side-notesThe volume light and the glowingtexture. Walien has once againmade a beautiful volume light, thistime combined with a glowing tex-ture. The texture is in the goodiesfolder mapped on a plain geometryfor further exploration.

The toaster modelThanks to the excellent skills ofBuzhug this tutorial has a less harshcharacter. The toaster is inspiredloosely from toasters produced justafter the second world war. HeavyMetal and Chrome. The modelingshows high definition modeling witheconomy of polygons.

Thanks all for your patience and Ihope you will use the mono-flop foryour projects.


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Rangemapper1

Rangemapper2


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http://www.cinema4duser.com

Micro Tut-It-Yourself- Formula-Egg-Thing

Here is a sample of what the formu-la spline can do for you. The file isin the goodies folder with the maga-zine.

It looks complicated and it actuallyis. Like most of us, I am not a mathhead, but I am a math cheater.I found the formula on the excellentwww.3d-meier.de and copy/pasted itinto the formula-spline. There are alot of very handy formula's and thisfile is the ideal starting point forthem.

One thing to know is that Tmin andTmax are the limits within which theformula is calculated and the nº ofsamples define the resolution andnumber of calculations of the spline. Don't set the samples to high,because it is cpu intensive.

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

Micro Tut - Formula EggBy Base80

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At ChristianDesigns.org we provide a multitude of design servicesdedicated to your web design and web hosting needs. We focusin creating an atmosphere where quality and honesty share afriendship in Christian web design or Christian website hosting.Our services will enable you to compete within your market. Wespecialize in serving individuals, organizations, churches, corpo-rations, and mission groups.

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http://www.christiandesigns.org

Welcome to part three of the land-scape tutorial!

In this part we will create somedetails for our landscape: Grass andsome clouds

Because we need to use the wellknown plug-in Hairdepartment,developed by the B. G. S. group, aGerman plug-in developer, you willfind the Monster Edition plugin with-in our “Goodies” folder. The editionyou will find in the goodies folderworks slightly different from the oneused in this tutorial. Nevertheless,you can easily follow my steps.

Because we can't add hair instantlywe have to create a selection ofpolygons that we want to use. Inorder to create that selection youneed to switch to the live-selectiontool and select a portion of our firstlandscape object. Make sure thatyou are in the top view window. Asyou can see in (picture 52) I select-ed a strip of polygons along the

fence. I have not selected the poly-gons that make the perpendicularpoles of the fence. That is neces-sary because we don't want thegrass to grow on those poles(Picture 53).

There exist different versions ofHairdepartment that can be found

on the Internet, but we will focus onthe version that is available at theBGS - group website, Version 1.83.This version requires us to split theselected polygons from the land-scape object. Splitting means that aselection of polygons is copied to acompletely new polygon-object. (Picture 54)

Sometimes people tend to mix upDisconnect and Split. While Splitproduces new objects that consist ofthe selected polygons, Disconnectkind of cuts the polygons off thesource object. Disconnect doesn'tproduce another object, but makesthe polygons that have been discon-nected independent.Imagine a polygon object fromwhich several polygons have beendisconnected. Say you want toselect all polygons of that object.You make a rough selection and youwant to use the Grow Selection toolin order to select all other polygonsthat make the object too. CINEMA4D will do what you want it to do

with the exception that any discon-nected polygons will not be selectedby Grow Selection because it's notreally connected to the other part ofthe object. If you want to reallyunderstand what I've explained,please take the time to experimentwith disconnect and split! It is theeasiest way to move a split or dis-connected group of polygons alongthe y-axis, to see where the differ-ence is.

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

By selecting the newly createdLandscape.1 object, your perspec-tive viewport will look like this:(Picture 56).

Activate the Landscape.1 object andexecute the Hairdepartment plug-infound in the Plug-ins menu (Picture57) In order to see what the stan-dard values will produce, just clickthe OK button within the mainparameters window.

Hairdepartment will come up withanother window called Hairform. Hit

Landscape Tutorial Part 3By Georg Niedermeier aka Sad

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Picture 52

Picture 53

Picture 55

Picture 56

Picture 54

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

It doesn't look like something thatwe want to create at the moment.Therefore we will undo this experi-ment and execute the plug-in againand enter the values shown in (pic-ture 59).

Distance marks the distancebetween one blade of grass toanother one. The higher thisamount is, the less grass will be cre-ated. A very low value will allow youto create a very dense meadow, butbe careful because if this value is

too low, memory usage will be huge.Half the value will create four timesthe grass. The Length value markshow long each blade of grass willbe.

Radius lets you take control overhow thick a blade of grass is.Sections determines how many sec-tions a blade of grass will consist of.Those can be explained best with apicture (Picture 59b).

Gravity gives control over howstrong blades of grass are bentdownward. You can even enternegative values. Length Variationhelps to vary the length of theblades. If you enter a value of 50percent, the length Value will be var-ied by the Length Variation value.Hairdepartment adds or subtracts 50percent of the length value. A bladelength of 100 units will result inblades between 50 up to 150 unitshigh. The Direction Variation valuegives control how the blades willappear. Based on the number ofSegments Hairdepartment changesthe direction in which the bladesgrow.

A high value of direction variationcombined with many segments willresult in a very curled appearance ofthe blades. Angle Variation addsvariation to the angle of growth,which results in a more realisticgrass. To Verticals lets you influence

the behavior of the Angle Variationoption. The blades that are nearlyvertical will remain that way. A valueof 50 percent will extenuate theangle variation to 50 percent of itsvalue. Hit OK after you have enteredthe values and the Hairform windowwill come up (Picture 60).

Sidefaces determines the number ofsides a blade of grass will have. Ifyou enter 2 sidefaces you will get aflat shape.

Form: Hairdepartment offers 8 differ-ent forms of blades. Please consultthe manual of Hairdepartment tounderstand what kind of forms areavailable. You can leave it as is.

Start, Middle, End Depth (depth andwidth) control the shape of ourblades. This bill stands for bottom,middle, top of the blades. Imagine you look at a blade of grassin top view. Length is the thicknessalong z-axis while width is the thick-ness along the x-axis.If you enter the values shown in pic-ture 60 the result will be a conicalshape of grass blades.

Middle (1.0-5.0) determines whicharea of the blades is considered asmiddle. Middle is not defined by thelength of the blades but by the num-ber of sections. A blade with fivesections consists of six segmentpoints. Because Hairdepartmentdoesn't allow relative values themiddle of such blade would contain


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Picture 57

Picture 58

Picture 59

Picture 59b

Picture 60

two segment points. This allowsyou to move the middle of a bladeup or down. In this tutorial we willleave it at 2. If you don't understandwhat that explanation means pleaseconsult the manual of Hairdepartment.

After you have and to the values asshown in the picture hit OK again.(Picture 61). Hairdepartment cre-ates two new objects in the objectmanager. The first one is a spline

object that relays the distributionand direction I behavior of ourgrass. The second one is the grassgeometry. If you don't like theappearance of the geometry youcan delete the polygon object andactivate Hair Volume within theHairdepartment entry found in theplug-ins menu (Picture 63)If you do that the hairform window ofthe plug-in will appear and you canenter different values. Just play

around with the settings until youare satisfied. We will move on tocreate a nice cloud, now.

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

hypernurbs object and a cube.Rename both objects to cloud.(Picture 64)

It's is a good method to createdetails of a scene within a complete-ly new scene because a scene thatis crowded with objects can easilylead to confusion. If you are worriedabout keeping the correct propor-tions you can copy another objectfrom your full scene into the newlyopened scene. Objects that arecopied from one scene into anotherone will keep their initial position.The cube object should have valuessimilar to these (Picture 65).

Select the cube that you haverenamed to cloud earlier and hit 'c'in order to convert it into a polygonobject. In the object manager apolygon object can be discerned bythe blue triangle (Picture 67).

Because we want to create take outthat looks like a plastic toy we needto shift points. Switch to the pointmode and choose RectangleSelection from the Selection menu.(Picture 68)

In order to allow the rectangle selec-tion tool to not only select visiblepoints we need to adjust the settingswithin the Attributes Manager.

If we do not deactivate the OnlySelect Visible Elements option CIN-EMA 4D will only select points thatare directly visible. A point that sitsexactly behind another point wouldnot be selected because CINEMA4D determines these points as notvisible (Picture 69)

Switch to the front viewport and usethe rectangular selection tool inorder to select the polygons on top.After you have selected the points,


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Picture 61

Picture 64

Picture 65

Picture 67

Picture 63

Picture 68

move it up along the y-axis. (Picture70) The cloud should get a slightlyconical form. Switch to the rightviewport and scale the selectedpoints along the z-axis (Picture 71).

The line of points on top of ourobject needs to have a zigzagshape. Make the necessary selec-tions by using the rectangular selec-tion tool. If you want to use the liveselection tool please make sure todisable the Only Select VisibleElements option in the attributesmanager. Select one pair of pointsand move it up along the y-axis.Repeat this step time and again in

order to produce an object thatreminds you of a cloud. The very leftand very right points in the middlemust be selected together. In orderto do that you have to select the pairof points on the left (or right), holdthe shift key down and select thesecond pair of points. Maybe youhave selected some more pointsand want to unselect one pair ofpoints? That's very easy: hold downthe control key (ctrl) and mark thepoints you want to remove from yourselection (Picture 72).

The last step of modeling our cloudis to select the overhanging pairs ofpolygons and to scale the selectedpoints along z-axis. Scale it to yourlikes (Picture 73).

The cloud is almost finished it onlylacks some material which we willcreate now. Create a new materialby selecting the respective functionfrom the File menu within theMaterial Manager (Picture 74)Deactivate any material channel and

activate the Luminance channel.The Luminance channel makes anobject which it is applied to inde-pendent of lighting. Add the Fresnel-Shader object by clicking the blackarrow right to the Texture selector(Picture 75).

The Fresnel shader changes thecolor of an object depending on theangle in which a polygon is facingthe camera. The more it is faced tothe camera the more the color fadesinto the color defined on the rightside of the gradient in the shaderproperties. The Use Bump functionactivates bump mapping and dis-placement mapping for the Renderdrop-down list. This particular drop-down list - found directly under thecheckbox - holds a number of com-binations of rendering methods


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Picture 69

Picture 70Picture 72

Picture 74

Picture 75

Picture 73

Picture 71

which are interesting when it comesto transparent materials. Front Onlycalculates the falloff on a givenobject´s front side only. The back-side will be calculated black if it'svisible.

Front Trans calculates the falloff ona given object´s front side only. Thebackside will be calculated white ifit's visible. This option is very usefulfor transfer and objects such as avase made of glass.

Back only calculates the falloff on agiven object backside only. Thefront side will be calculated black ifit's visible.

Back Trans calculates the falloff ona given object backside only. Thefront side will be calculated white ifit's visible.

Front and Back calculates front andback of the falloff (Picture 76).You can close the Material Editornow. Assign the material by drag-

dropping it on the Hypernurbsobject. You will see that the texturemapping is not correct. In order tochange the mapping you need tobring up the texture tag attributes inthe Attributes Manager by double-clicking the texture tag on the veryright of the Hypernurbs object.

Click the drop-down list right to theProjection attribute and selectSpherical (Picture 77).

Because the editor view is not capa-ble of rendering the Fresnel texturein real-time we have to render theimage in order to see what happenswith our object (Picture 78).

Our cloud is finished. Select theHypernurbs object and press ctrl cin order to copy the object. Switchback to the landscape scene andpaste the cloud by pressing ctrl p.(Picture 79)The cloud is way too big so we haveto scale it down a bit. Activate theHypernurbs object and switch to theModel Mode which you can findwithin the tools menu of Cinema4d(Picture 80)

In contrast to the object mode theobject scale of 1 is not changedwhen in model mode even if youscale it up or down. Switching to bemodel mode is not absolutely nec-essary in our case but it is good toget used to that method becausehuge differences in the scaling ofobjects can cause trouble, especial-ly when it comes to animation. Please make sure to take a look atChapter 8: Tools Menu (model) andchapter 11.10 of the Cinema4d man-ual because it is essential that youunderstand the difference betweenmodel and object mode.

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

If you're satisfied with the size of thecloud, click the functions menu (theHypernurbs object should bemarked) and select duplicatebecause we don't need just one


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Picture 76

Picture 77

Picture 78

Picture 79

Picture 80

cloud but 10 or 12 (Picture 81).Activate the options Duplicate,Options and Tool in the Attributes

Manager and make the settingsshown below (Picture 82).Click Apply and take a look at theObject Manager. CINEMA 4D has

created a null object containing 12instances of the cloud object. It ispossible to increase the number ofcopies in real-time and if you aresatisfied unfold the cloud_copiesobject by clicking the small plus onthe left of the object name. Mark thecloud_copies null object and chooseSelect Children from the ObjectsMenu of the Object Manager. Thisfunction selects all children objectsof a given parent object and the par-ent object itself (Picture 83)

Unselect the cloud_copies parentobject by holding down the ctrl keyand executing a single click on it

which leaves only the cloud instanceobjects marked (Picture 84).

We have to do that because theRandomize function only works withselected objects. Choose theRandomize function (Picture 85).

Click Apply and change the Movevalues in a way that the cloudscover the entire scene. You can

loosely orientate on the valuesshown in picture 86. Switch to thetop viewport and get real-time feed-back on your changes. (Picture 86 - Picture 87).

That's all for today. In the nextissue we will finish this tutorial. Ihope you like this tutorial for so far.(Picture 88)


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Picture 81

Picture 82

Picture 85

Picture 83

Picture 86

Picture 87

Picture 88

Picture 84

Artist Comments: Hi I am 54 years oldand live in the United kingdom in a smalltown in Wiltshire. I have worked all mylife in the construction industry. My firstinterest in the creation of 3D images asan hobby started on the Amiga. I do notknow how many of you will remember asmall program called Sculpt 3D, show-ing my age now, but this gave me thebug for modeling. I then moved on to a 3D program calledImagine, but when its developmentstopped I found and changed to thisgreat modeling program C4D XL6, withwhich and am now working with on a PCand, as of late, have grown more andmore interested in modeling natural his-tory subjects with my favorite modelingprogram, CINEMA 4D. Of the images Ihave created my favorite is the Cricketwhich has been printed in 3D World. Myfavorite artists are Pupi, Matthieu, Dez,and Cartesius.

Artist Spotlight...Raymond Salter

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Name: Raymond Salter.Age: 54.Occupation: Building ConstructionCountry: United Kingdom

Software: CINEMA 4D R9 StudioBundle, BodyPaint 2, Poser 4, PaintShop Pro 6 and Imagine

Favorite places on the web:3D Attack, Renderosity, 3D Valley, CGTalk

Otter 18/1/2004 - Here I have made an attempt to simulate a wet clumpy fur effect of a otter drink-ing 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 aflower top. Flower tops made from Hair Department and heads extruded out.

Artist Spotlight...Raymond Salter

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

Mandrill 31/12/2003 - Mandrills come fromWest African and are one of the largest forestmonkeys. The males are very colorful andmakes it ideal for modeling in C4D 8.1. Alltextures are procedural. I used box modelingand Hair Department for fur.

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

Window 11/10/2004 - The window part of thisimage is all modeled with nurbs objects andsplines. Radiator is box modeled. There aretwo deferent hdri images, one for inside andone for outside, plus one light for shadows.

GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPSWITH MEATS MEIER

INTRODUCTION TO ZBRUSH:ZBRUSH PRODUCTION PIPELINE

Most of us have heard about the socalled hype Tool "Zbrush". An appli-cation that blurs the Line betweenpixels and polygons with Pixologic'sunique "Pixol"Technology.(http://www.pixologic.com) Zbrush isan awesome Highend 2D Paintingand 3d Modeling/Texturing applica-tion at a very fair price! And in myopinion, a MUST-HAVE applicationfor those whose hearts beat fordetailed organic modeling.

The Gnomon Workshop recruitedthe highly decorated Tutor MeatsMeier to release two DvD Packages:"Introduction to Zbrush" and "ZBrushProduction Pipeline". Each Packageconsists of 2 DvD's and wasreleased in December 2004. Asalways, supporting Mac + PCFormat.

The "Introduction to ZBrush" DvDcomes along with 6 hours of videotutorial lectures explained by MeatsMeier. It is announced as "forZBrush newbies", but I think it cov-ers a lot of nice things to know, evenfor the more experienced ZBrusher.

First, Meats explains the Heart ofZBrush- the "Pixol technology"(Pixols in contrast to common pixelsare basically 3D pixels that can hold3D depth, orientation and materialinformation). Each of the followinglectures is based on the one beforeand makes the audiences skillsgrow by getting more and moretechnical understanding of ZBrush'sfeatures. Lecture two is about theZBrush Interface: Meats is explain-ing ways to customize palettes, how

the interface is working generally,how to handle the viewport etc. Hedrags attention to the self explaining(auto help) possibilities of Zbrushand walks through every menu (yesreally!!!) explaining what it does andhow it affects your work.

Each tweak is shown- there's is nofast forwarding! He's getting moreand more into detail in the followingchapters: 2.5D Tools, 3D Primitives,3D Edit Mode, Alpha Skinning,Texturing, Zspheres, Multimarkers,Displacement, Creation, Renderingwithin zBrush, Zscripts, Preferences.

No Tool or command is forgotten.You are told how to model highlydetailed meshes and how to exportthem to external 3D applications.You'll get to know to paint textureswith the 2.5 Toolset and how to cus-tomize your own tools. Even as a 2dpainting software, ZBrush is offeringtools that are a match to the big 2dapplication functions.

Furthermore, you learn how toexport the needed maps to get yourmillion poly models rendered in thecommon 3D applications fast andeasily and as detailed as in ZBrush.

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GNOMON ZBRUSH WORKSHOPSReview by Mark Gmehling aka Macling

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/

You'll get to know an efficient work-flow to fasten your skills.

And as I said before: Meats Meierexplains every button, every palette,every slider…nothing is left uncov-ered. I think there is no better

Introduction to this awesome appli-cation imaginable. Even the experi-enced ZBrusher will increase hisunderstanding and skills after listen-ing to Meats for 6 interesting hours!And the ZNewbie will finish the DvDlectures with a really deep knowl-

edge and technical understanding ofZbrush for sure. The Second DVDpackage (2DvD's inside) "ZBrushProduction Pipeline" focuses on therelationship between ZBrush andcommon 3D applications. (In thiscase Meats is using Maya as exter-nal renderer) and consists of over 4hours video tutorials+ some BonusMaterial rendered by Meats Meier.

He teaches the complete workflowfrom optimizing meshes you want touse in ZBrush, importing thesemeshes into ZBrush- detailing itwithin ZBrush 2.5 tools- Texturing itwithin ZBrush using the powerfulProjection master- exporting themaps(displacement/ normal/ bump/texture etc)- and finally reach thedetailed look made in ZBrush on thelow poly mesh back in Maya.

The lectures covered are called asfollows: Preparing Geometry in your3D Package, Basics of ZBrushTexture, UV's and Mapping,Creating and RenderingDisplacement Maps Creating /Rendering Normal Maps, CreatingBlend Shapes.

In Contrast to the Introduction toZBrush DvD, this one goes moreinto detail by following a charactermodeling/texturing project frombeginning to end.

Meats teaches an efficient workflowhere that shows how much ZBrushcan fasten a traditional modelingand texturing process. AlthoughMaya is used as external renderer I(using CINEMA 4D) can say thisPackage is a must-have too to mas-ter ZBrush completely. As C4D sup-ports SPD (Sub PolygonDisplacement) you're only a fewclicks away from using the featuresa 16bit ZBrush displacement map

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offers within C4D. (ZBrush dis-placement is possible in earlierCNEMA 4D versions too, but yourmesh has to have a very high subdi-vision level and the map has to betweaked- So in versions below 9ZBrush Displacement maps work,but only for Stills I think.) If you'reinterested in how CINEMA 4D workswith ZBrush look here:http://www.pixolator.com

Notice: Gnomon is offering specialstudents prices: Qualified students,faculty and schools are eligible for a29% discount on all GnomonWorkshop DVD titles, bundles andscene files. Educational orders canbe placed either online or via mail-

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Finally: Both of the Meats MeierZBrush DVD's are a must for everyserious ZBrusher! (Btw: Meats

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

Mark Gmehling

Summary: Simply a must haveproduct!

Price: $69 for a single DVD

URL: http://www.thegnomonwork-shop.com

Platform: PC/MAC Compatible

Rating: 5/5

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The goal of this tutorial is to showyou how to direct particles preciselyby carrying out a simulation of con-voying of objects that arrive mixedthen are separated in different direc-tions according to their color. Thiswill use the concept of TP groups,essential to master if you wish parti-cles to have different behaviors. There are four steps to achieve thiseffect :

1. Create and setup the first emitter,which will be duplicated twice.

2. Set up an expression that con-trols the three emitters to differenti-ate flows in order to prevent thatseveral particles are emitted simul-taneously.

3. Add an expression using therepulsion to prevent that the parti-cles interpenetrate.

4. Place and direct the deflectorsthen assign the various flows of par-ticles to the corresponding deflec-tors.

1 Create and set up the emitter

We need three identical emitters,only the emitted objects will be dif-ferent, so we will set up only oneemitter, the two others will be dupli-cates. Go to Objects menu /Object-Library and add a TP Basic Emitterthen go to the attributes and modifythe parameters like shown on pic-ture 1. For now leave the ParticleGroup empty, we will change thatlater. Set the diameter to 1 and theSpread Angle to 0, this enables usto get a flow of aligned particles. Set the lifespan to the total durationof your animation (frames), to avoidparticles to suddenly disappear.The user-data does not give accessto all the parameters of the emitter,

to refine the adjustments we willmodify the Pstorm-node directly.Double click on the icon of XPressoto open the editor then select thePstorm-node and modify only thehighlighted parameters, as illustrat-ed in picture 2.

The birthrate controls precisely theflow, as we have set the value to 6the emitter creates a particle everyfive frame (at 30 fps), this settingpreserve a minimum distancebetween each emitted object. Don'tforget that the interval depends alsoon speed, therefore if you modifythe flow it will be necessary toadjust speed and vice-versa.

A light variation in speed avoids thatthe interval between the particles isidentical, that gives a more naturalfeeling to the simulation. The size isa percentage which adjusts the

dimension of the particles, 25means that each particle will havethe quarter of the dimension of theoriginal object.

At this stage you get a flow of parti-cles aligned and spaced irregularly,as seen on picture 3. Now that oneemitter is ready we will duplicate it,

but we have to create first thegroups of particles, essential to dis-sociate the three flows. Go to theThinking Particles settings windowand right-click on All in the Particlegroups field and add three groupsand name them red, green and blue,like picture 4.

Leave the Particle Geometry objectof the hierarchy of the emitter inorder to not duplicate it, your hierar-

How To Sort Particles With TPBy Tabou

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chy must be like illustrated on pic-ture 5.

Now you can duplicate the emittertwice, group the three emitterstogether then change names andmaterials as illustrated on picture 6.

Drag each group of particles into thecorresponding box of each emitter -picture 7.

Now we have three flows of parti-cles but if you launch a preview youwill see only one because for themoment the three emitters are iden-tical. To differentiate them you willset up an expression preventing theemitters from emitting simultaneous-ly.

2 Differentiate flows

Select the parent Null object of thegroup of emitters and add a XPressotag. The idea is to generate randomintegers from 1 to 3, each numberwill start one or the other of theemitters. Add a random node, with aReal output and, in the attributesmanager, check the positive valuesbutton, to get only values from 0 to1. To transform this result into val-ues from 1 to 3 you will use a rangemapper node. Set the range-mappernode to the values as in picture 8.So now the values from 0 to 1 aretransformed to 1 to 4. It remains toconvert these real numbers (1,836,

3,051 for example) into whole val-ues (1, 3). For that just add theUniversal node and set it to Integer. It now remains to test this value asto start the corresponding emitter.Add a Compare node and aCondition node.

Connect input 1 of the comparenode to the output of the Universalnode and set the value of input 2 to1. Connect the output of the com-pare node to the switch of the condi-tion node. Set the type of data onBoolean and check only the boxInput 3.

Drag the tag blue emitter into theXPresso window and connect theoutput of the condition to the Enableinput port. You get a result identicalto that illustrated on picture 9. Thinkof re-naming the tags your emitters,that allows you to recognize themeasier in the XPresso editor. Now

duplicate the three nodes (Compare,Condition and XPresso), thenreplace value 1 by 2 in the secondcondition node and by 3 in the thirdcondition node. Replace the refer-ence of the emitters, as illustratedon picture 10 (see last page bottompicture).

Preview what you got and you'll seethe three colors follow one anotherin a random way.

However there remains a problem :because of their different speeds(remember, the speed variationparameter which is not set to zero toobtain irregular spaces between theblocks) some blocks collide with oth-ers and even cross them. The PRepulse & Bounce node will enableyou to fix this problem.

3 Avoid collisions

The Object Library provides a TPParticle Collision object ready touse, all the parameters are set inthe user data, like illustrated in pic-ture 11.

How To Sort Particles With TPBy Tabou

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As it is necessary to detect the colli-sions between particles that belongto different groups you have to setAll to group A and B.

Test the simulation, the blocks donot overlap anymore. Now we willset up the deflectors and theXPresso that will allow to direct theparticles towards different directionsaccording to their color.

4 - Separate the particles withdeflectors

As usual we will set up the effect fora group, the red for example andduplicate it later. There is no deflec-tor for the green particles since theygo straight. The deflector is createdwith Null object which help to placeand direct the effect easily, theexpression will determine the groupof particles which will be affected.Create a null object, place it at theintersection of the three ways anddirect it at 45° on the axis H. do notforget to re-name the object to giveit an clear name, R1 deviation forexample. Duplicate the object thenmove approximately 300 units anddirect 57°.

Duplicate the object again then putrotation at 0° and move it 150 unitson Z-axis and of 75 on the X-axis.Select the three deflectors andduplicate them. Re-name theobjects and place them in a sym-metrical way. Now the deflectors arein place but we need to give themthe right groups of particles to fol-low the right direction. OpenXpresso of object TP ParticleCollision then add a PPass nodeand a Pdeflector node. ConnectPPass node to the red group. Selectthe Pdeflector node and set theparameters like illustrated on pic-ture 12.

Connect the PPass node to thePdeflector node then duplicate bothnodes. Replace the reference-objectwith the R2 deflection, increase thevalue of Surface to 50 and decreasethe Spin by 2. Duplicate the nodesagain and proceed in the same wayfor the third deflection by increasingthe value of surface to 100 and bychanging the object by the R3deflection.

Select the 6 nodes and duplicatethem. Change in the nodes PPassof the red group to the blue groupand in the PDeflector the red deflec-tor by the corresponding blue

deflector. Launch simulation, if youdid not make an error the particlesare automatically directed towardsthe way which corresponds to theircolor.

Have fun !

tabou

Thank you base80 for your transla-tion.

How to Sort Particles With TPBy Tabou

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Tuto

rial

First of all we need a spline that ren-ders the path which the camerashould follow (Picture 00).

Switch to the top viewport and cre-ate a Freehand Spline that remindsyou of a spiral by click-dragging inthe viewport (Picture 01).

You will notice that the spline isquite edgy, but there exist a solu-tion for that particular problem:Activate the Live Selection tool andmark and delete points that youdon't really need. Example: If thereare two points that sit quite close toeach other, just delete one or moreof it (Picture 01b).

Repeat that until the spline consistof points that have a uniform dis-tance to each other (Picture 01c).

In order to make our spiral shaperound again, select all points of thespline and choose Soft Interpolation

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

This function realigns the tangentsof the spline which results in a verysoft curve (Picture 01e).

If you don't like the position of a tan-gent you can easily change theposition of it by using the Move tool.

Play around with the tangents andsee how they work.The next step isa little tricky because you have toraise some points of the spline forwe want to create a camera anima-tion that orbits around a object in thecenter of the spiral while the splineslowly ascends. Mark all points ofthe spline object except the very firstone on the darker end of the splineand move it up a bit (Picture 01f).

Unselect the second point using theLive Selection tool. Don't forget tohold down the ctrl key in order tounselect a selected point. After uns-electing the second point, move therest up a bit (Picture 01g)

Now repeat these steps: unselectanother point, move up, unselectanother point, and so on. Your frontor side view will look something likethis (Picture 01h)

Notice the little terraces at eachpoint. We don't want to keep it thatway because the camera animation

How To Create A Camera Animation In R9By Georg Niedermeier

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Picture 00

Picture 01

Picture 01b

Picture 01c

Picture 01d

Picture 01e

Picture 01f

Picture 01f

would appear quite fidgety that way.Again the easiest way to resolve thisproblem is to mark all points of thespline object and to execute the SoftInterpolation function that we haveused earlier in this tutorial.

The terraces have disappearedbecause the spline tangents are notstraight anymore but diagonal toeach other. Feel free to changesome tangents to see how theyinfluence the spline behavior.(Picture 01i).

By the way, you can also work ontangents and spline points in per-spective view. Maybe you wonderhow that would be possible becausein perspective view you cannotmove tangents and points quiteexact. That's not true because for-tunately even spline points andspline tangents can be manipulatedwhile axis are locked or unlocked. Ifyou want to move a tangent up ordown, just lock the x-axis and z-axis

and the tangents can be moved upor down only. Now that our spiralobject is finished we need to adjustthe settings which define the spline'sdistribution of points. Adaptive andNatural spline interpolation are use-ful for splines that need narrow andvery soft curves. If we were using aspline with such interpolation, thecamera movement would acceleratein straight areas and break in nar-row curves. The reason for thatbehavior is the way CINEMA 4D cal-culates interpolation of splines.Movement speed depends on thedistribution of interpolation points.Movement becomes slower at thosepoints that stand close to eachother, while it becomes faster wherepoints stand more apart. The inter-polation points are not the splinepoints.

Double click the spline object andtake a look at the AttributesManager. Click the drop-down listright to Intermediate Points andselect Uniform (Picture 02).

The Uniform option makes CINEMA4D to change the distribution ofinterpolation points of splines. Theinterpolation points are distributeduniform, now. That uniform interpolation allows ourcamera to move at a constantspeed. Create a Target Cameraobject found in the Objects menu(Picture 03).

Mark the Camera object in theObject Manager and assign theAlign to Spline Tag. You will find it inthe File menu of the ObjectManager (Picture 04).

You will see the Align to Spline Tagin the Object Manager right to yourCamera object. Perform a doubleclick on the tag in order to bring upthe attributes of the Align to SplineTag in the Attributes Manager.(Picture 05)

Drag-drop the spline object into theSpline Path drop box (Picture 06).Make sure that the animation slideris positioned on the very left.(Picture 07)


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Picture 01h

Picture 01i

Picture 02

Picture 03

Picture 04

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

Add a keyframe. (Picture 07b)

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

Change the Position value to 100percent and right click the little dotleft to the word Position and add akeyframe, again (Picture 08aPicture 07b)

Put some objects in the middle ofthe spiral and move the camera tar-get null object there, too.

The last action we have to take is toactivate the camera. Click theCamera menu of the perspectiveview and and select the camera.(Picture 09)

Hit the Play Button.

That's all you need for a camerathat should move along a spline.You can assign the Move alongSpline Tag to any object you like.

How about animating the cameratarget along another spline?

If you don't want to use a targetcamera you can try a standard cam-era, too.

If you want to look along the path itis moving on, just activate the tan-gential checkbox. Play around withthe possibilities and create breath-taking camera action!

Georg aka Sad


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Picture 05

Picture 07b

Picture 08

Picture 08

Picture 06

Picture 07

Picture 07

Picture 07a

Picture 08a

Picture 09

Best of CINEMA 4DSome of the best artists around the world using CINEMA 4D

3

Image: Jeweller's ArtArtist: Danilo VenturaCountry: ItalyWebsite: under constructionDate created: 14/02/2005Software: CINEMA 4D R8.2

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

3

Image: Race BikeArtist: Mas Guillaume "Quinn"Country: FranceWebsite: http://membres.lycos.fr/peluche203Date created: January, February 2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R8.5

3

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

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

3

Image: Old Vampire KingArtist: Gianluca MattiaCountry: ItalyWebsite: www.studioideabari.it/gianlucamattiaDate created: 2005Software: Cinema 4d XL, Bodypaint 3d, AdobePhotoshop

Artist Comments: This image is a personal plan. I havemodeled all in hypernurbs. For the texture of the skin Ihave used various levels for giving detail. I have madevarious tests of lighting system and background, untilarriving to the final result. I have modeled the acces-sories to part and subsequently inserted on the model.The instrument magnet has helped to obtain the expres-sion me makes, deforming the parts of the face. Theblood that falls has been added in photoshop. In thescene two luminous sources are present, one spot andone omni.

3

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

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

3

Image: RollBotArtist: PETER HOFMANN - peXelCountry: GermanyWebsite: http://www.peXel.deDate created: March 2005Software: CINEMA 4D R9, PHOTOSHOP 6

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

Q: Magnumstar: What's the bestway to clean up a area of clusteredpolygons?

A: Fluffy: Select them and hit back-space or delete. Go into point mode,then right-click in the viewport(make sure no point is selectedfirst), then choose "optimize" withthe "remove isolated" option activat-ed, to get rid of all the flying points.Then use the bridge tool or Createpolygons tool to redraw your poly-gons. If you meant simplify a mesh,then use the polygon reduction tool,that is available as a deformer(menu "object>deformation>polygonreduction"). For more details on thisdeformer -> take the manual in yourbathtub!

Q: Rubberfish: Does anyone knowhow to duplicate an object along aspline? For example, 100 sphere'spositioned equal distance from eachother along a spline. With the firstsphere at one end and the 100thsphere at the other end, with all theother copies in-between.

A: Bram: Yes I do! In R9 you canjust use the Duplicate option and theset it to Along spline, then drop yourspline in the field, set your dupli-cates and hit apply. But I see you

have 8.5 so it requires some extrasteps as the duplicate tool is notenhanced like in R9. Simply useFunctions -> Duplicate to duplicateyour object with the amount youwant, all directions set to 0 so theyall are in the same place. ThenSelect the object group that is creat-ed, go to Function -> Arrange andenter the name of the spline onwhich the objects are to bearranged. That should do it. P.S. it isadvisable to make an instance ofyour object first and then duplicatethe instance, this will save a lot ofmemory if you are going to duplicatea lot.

Q: Neosushi: Is there a possibility torender the shadow-map only once ?For example:- Camera movement around a nonanimated object- Light array above this object.Cinema always calculates the shad-ow map new, but actually I think itdoesn't make any sense ! Maybe I'mwrong, but is there a way to renderonly one shadow-map and make itusable for all other frames ????Does this makes sense?

A: Bram: Yeah, easily! In the rendersettings options enable 'Cacheshadow maps'. This will create a

The CINEMA 4D Q&A PagesFrom the 3D ATTACK Forum

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Que

stio

ns a

nd A

nsw

ers

illum folder with your project andsave the shadow data for the firstframe in there. The same data willbe used for the rest of the framesand thus cut your render times inhalf or something like that . Formoving stuff, this is not advisable ofcourse.

Q: Jerry: I've got an omni-light that Iwant to fade out to nothing. I've gotsome visibility and noise on it, andsome dust. For some reason when Itry to turn the brightness down C4Dwont let me? Some sort of default?Or is it one of the other attributesrestricting the fade out? Any helpwould be magnificent!

A: Rui Batista: As a default, therender settings have the "Auto Light"option turned on. This will makeCinema4D create a default light assoon as you have no light present inyour scene. So, when you turn youronly light off (whether by really turn-ing it off or by lowering the bright-ness to 0%), Cinema4D will, auto-matically, create a default light.

http://www.cactus3d.com

54

Editor’s Notes

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*3D Attack the CINEMA4D Magazine and allmaterial contained therein are copyright protect-ed. You may not disassemble or distribute anypart of this publication without prior written con-sent from 3D Attack directly. Any attempts to doso will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of thelaw as it applies in Michigan, USA. This appliesfor both 3D Attack material as well as anynamed artist contained in its publications.Although we read through all the tutorials andproof-read them for errors we cannot guaranteethat they are 100% error-free and therefore can-not issue refunds based on those errors.

Hello there Readers andAttackers!

WOW! Can you believe it’s alreadySpring? As winter passes andSpring emerges, so does new life.The 3D Attack Team is looking for-ward to bringing new and excitingtutorials, articles, reviews, artistinterview, and great C4D Quizzes toall of our readers in the future. Ournext issue, the May issue, has somegreat treats. You won’t want to missit!

Once again, we would like to thankour very supportive forum membersand our dedicated readers. 3DAttack has been blessed with thebest. YOU ROCK!

Thanks and KEEP ON ATTACKING!

The 3D Attack Team

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If you would like to submit a tutorialor article, or have your software orplug-in reviewed by 3D Attack,please click on the following link forinstructions: http://3d attack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=1405All submissions must be e-mailed toAttention: Tank at [email protected]

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If you have questions concerning aspecific tutorial or want to show us atutorial you have completed, feelfree to post your questions and workon our C4D discussion forums atwww.3dattack.net.

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If you would like to submit an imagefor consideration for the Best ofCINEMA 4D Gallery section of themagazine, please send an 800x600rendering to [email protected]. Ifyour image meets the level of excel-lence we are looking for, we willcontact you for more information.

55

Keep on attacking...By Sir Gong

April2005

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