LearLearn hon how to crw to creaeate gte good lookingood lookingeeyye tee texturxtures with Photoshopes with Photoshop.. OnOnpapagge 16 Mare 16 Mark Gmehling will leadk Gmehling will leadthe wthe waay in this fy in this fantastic tutorial.antastic tutorial.

A shorA shor t tutorial on the frt tutorial on the free pluginee plugin“R“Reeplica”plica” thathat comes along witht comes along withthis issue written bthis issue written by Chrisy ChrisMontesano on paMontesano on pagge 30.e 30.

LLOOTR,TR, Star Star WWararss,, HarHarrr y Py Potterotter,, MaxMaxDennison has done it all.Dennison has done it all. RRead theead theinterintervieview with this talented Maw with this talented MattettePPainter on paainter on pagge 6.e 6.

ISSUE - OCTOBER 2005

Page 3 Editors Notes

Page 6-11 Interview with Max Dennison by Tavy Ann

Page 12 C4D Quiz

Page 13-15 Splitting Faces by Oliver Wuensch

PAGE 16-18 Painting a Realistic Eye Texture by Mark Gmehling

PAGE 19-21 Introduction to Sketching by Blend

PAGE 22-29 Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Pt2 by Jamie Hamel-Smith

PAGE 30-32 Replica Plug-in Tutorial by Chris Montesano

PAGE 33-35 Basic Animation - Fading Objects by Bram van Gerwen

PAGE 36 Volumetric Clouds - A Mini Tutorial by Gerard Ciavatti

PAGE 37-38 Spotlight on Jens Kappelmann “Jeso”

PAGE 39-42 Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery

PAGE 43 Attack Team

03

Editor’Editor’s Notess Notes

Reviews

If you would like 3D Attack to evalu-

ate and review your product, or if

you are a member of the press and

would like to evaluate and review

the 3D Attack line of plug-ins for

CINEMA 4D, feel free to contact

Thomas Pasieka at:

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Tutorials

If you have any questions or com-

ments regarding the tutorials within

the magazine, please feel free to

express them on or CINEMA 4D dis-

cussion forum at www.3dattack.net

Contact Information

3D Attack

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E-mail: 3dattack@3dattack.net

*3D Attack the CINEMA4D Magazine and all material con-

tained therein are copyright protected. You may not dis-

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out prior written consent from 3D Attack directly. Any

attempts to do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent

of the law as it applies in Michigan, USA. This applies

for both 3D Attack material as well as any named artist

contained in its publications. Although we read through

all the tutorials and proof-read them for errors we can-

not guarantee that they are 100% error-free and there-

fore cannot issue refunds based on those errors.

Hello Readers and Attackers!

This past month we, 3D Attack,

decided to bring to the community a

radio show dedicated to CINEMA

4D. Although we did this on the

spur of the moment and had many

technical issues, I think it went fairly

well. Our goal is to bring one 30-60

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We have lots of exciting and fun

things planned for future broadcasts.

You can tune into 3D Attack Radio

at www.3dattack.net/radio or sub-

scribe to our Podcast

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KEEP ON ATTACKING!

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***GOODIES FOLDER***

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

As most of our readers know, your

goodies folder usually comes zipped

with your magazine. We have

decided to do the Goodies a bit dif-

ferent. You will now find your

Goodies folder at http://www.3dat-

tack.net/goodies/ for download.

This allows us to make changes to

the Goodies folder easily, (if need-

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Reader Comments:

Kalab: “Woohoo! Thanks again3DAttack! Looks like another greatissue.”

MrBraun: “ Another great issue: thebest into best !!”

Eric_Heyninck: “BTW: anothersuperb issue. Great to seeChristiaan "Flingster" in there. He iswithout doubt the friendliest C4Dusers alive. Great modeling tips,SUPERB explaining of UV's etc, etc,but the best is...3DKiwi's comic.”

Scodigy: “Once again I found outabout some things in some of thetools I had never even realized orlooked at before today. WonderfulIssue, especially the Modelling tips.Loved Fluffy's animation guide.Splines in a Metaball object..who-dathunk?”

3DKiwi: “Hi Guys. Great magazine.The cartoon reminds me of some-one I know!! Gave me a damn goodlaugh.”

Jamesleaburn: “Great issue I espe-cially like the UV unfolding tutorial. Iliked the General purpose feel of thetutorials, technique rather than stepby step tutorials. I like step by steptutorials too, before anyone saysanything.”

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Inte

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zBlur:

zBlur is a post effect for Cinema 4D which can be used as an alternative

to C4D's own DOF. zBlur does not cancel out other post effects, it does

not require the Advanced Render module, and it supports reflections and

bleed control.

zBlur also has a preview window and a reference object that can make

changes right in the editor.

LUMEN:

LUMEN is a plug-in for Cinema 4D which provides a fast and efficient

global illumination and special effects solution.

LUMEN creates an array of lights using a source object's points or poly-

gons. LUMEN source objects can be any polygon object, spline, primi-

tive, or primitive spline, and several light parameters can be controlled

with information derived from bitmaps or procedural textures.

OLX:

OLX is a Cinema 4D plug-in that replaces and extends Cinema's built in

Object Library functionality. Not only does OLX support submenus, it

also supports separate libraries for documents, scenes, objects, materi-

als, render settings and layouts.

LSD:

LSD is a post effect plug-in for CINEMA 4D that can be used to create

stunning color/special effects. LSD gives you the ability to use a new

created zBuffer or CINEMA 4D’s own zBuffer to colorize, desaturate,

and/or add grain and noise to your pictures or animations.

For a complete list of 3D Attack Plug-in features, prices, videos, tutorials and screenshots visit our shop at www.3dattack.net/shop/

Tavy: Hi Max! Thanks for taking

time from your schedule to share a

little about yourself and your work

with 3D Attack. Throughout the 3D

community there is a growing inter-

est in Matte Painting. It is an honour

to have some time with one of the

best in the industry. Why don’t we

start with you sharing a little about

yourself and your educational/train-

ing background?

Max: Thanks Tavy - It's a pleasure

to be asked to contribute.

Well, my background has always

been quite artistic. I grew up in a

very 'artsy' family and I guess it

rubbed off somewhat. I trained as

an Industrial Designer back in the

late Eighties and I think it was while

at college that I really discovered my

interest in Illustration and the way

things work visually.

Despite it being a very 'Engineering'

based degree course, the photo-

graphic illustration side of it

appealed to me especially. Of

course, back then, there was no

computers to do it all for you, no

Photoshop like it is today, and the

first burgeoning releases of Alias

and Wavefront were difficult if not

impossible to get time on. All we

had were Magic Markers, pens, and

chalk pastels etc. I'm not sure

whether they still use them today

though. Indeed, I don't think I

touched a computer to produce illus-

trations until I started in the Film

Industry nearly ten years ago.

Nonetheless, I have always had a

fascination with drawing details and

examining what it is that makes an

aesthetic appealing. Industrial

Design of course gave me a great

opportunity to broaden my skills in

this area and to really start to dis-

sect photographic illustration down

into its component parts - i.e. under-

standing how to draw highlights,

shadows, tone, form and line etc.

Once I'd finished my course, I set up

an illustration business, specializing

in photographic illustration - both

industrial and fine art. I really

enjoyed this, and it gave me a fan-

tastic opportunity to expand my hori-

zons and to start to develop my own

style and to be able to draw and

paint what I wanted without the con-

straints of a college brief. It also

allowed me to explore what a com-

mercial brief is and how to tackle a

'real-world' scenario if you like. This

definitely helped me once I started

as a Matte Painter.

Tavy: Max your portfolio is both

diverse and impressive: The Lord of

the Rings Trilogy, Shakespeare in

Love, Peter Pan, Star Wars Episode

III Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter,

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, etc.

All of the fore mentioned films are

great, but the Rings Trilogy, for me,

was both awe inspiring and breath-

taking. It was like watching a mov-

ing painting. While working on The

Rings Trilogy you were the supervi-

sor of the Matte Painting

Department for Weta Digital. Can

you tell us a little about your work

with Weta and what it was like play

such a key role in movie making his-

tory?

Max: My time at Weta was a fantas-

tic experience. I was hugely fortu-

nate to have joined the company at

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Max Dennison maxdennison.com

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

a very early stage in the Rings pro-

duction. Indeed I was the first Matte

Painter on board and I believe the

first Matte Painter that they had had

in the traditional sense. So altogeth-

er I have to admit that it was quite

daunting to turn up on my first day

back in early 2000. At that point in

time though, Weta was just coming

to the end of Pre-Production and

had only started a hand full of the

enormous amount of Effects Shots

that it would eventually produce.

Also back then; I don't think anyone

really knew what he or she were let-

ting themselves in for to be honest.

No one really knew whether the

films would be the success that they

eventually turned out to be, or

indeed whether Weta could actually

produce the quality and quantity of

work that Peter Jackson expected.

To him, this was a labour of love

and passion on a grand scale, and

despite the fact that 3foot6 (The

Rings Production Company) wanted

all the effects to be done at Weta,

the company was still very, very

small. So, on the back of The

Frighteners and Contact, they need-

ed to the huge number of talented

people who could produce leading

and world-class effects.

I became Head of Matte Painting

during this period, and it was my job

to build a viable department that

could work in tandem with the all

other teams in the company. It was

also my job to make sure that we

could economically produce the

enormous amount of Matte

Paintings that would be required

and that we could cope with the vast

environments that would be needed.

Very early on, I started to forge what

would become a very strong rela-

tionship with 3Foot6's Art

Department, whose employees

included masters such as Paul

Lasaine, Alan Lee and John Howe.

The latter two being the leading

Tolkein illustrators in the world

proved an invaluable asset to have

access to. Their vision would even-

tually shape the whole of Jackson's

Middle Earth and become central to

the entire aesthetic of the films. Paul

has come from Disney and was a

truly incredible artist in his own right.

To this day, I am humbled by the tal-

ent of these three gentlemen.

Despite the prolific (and I say this

with authority) amount of work that

they produced, one cannot imagine

the quality of paintings, drawings,

sketches, doodles etc that they

delivered. Therefore, having them

actively involved in the manufacture

of the Matte Paintings at such an

early stage proved to be the right

idea. Through them, we could have

a direct line to what Peter Jackson

really wanted. They would produce

the concepts, show them to Peter,

and then hand them over to us. So

at the outset of every painting, we

would have a clear idea of composi-

tion, colour, and context.

To make matters slightly more com-

plicated for us, we knew that

Jackson wasn’t particularly enam-

ored with the concept of Matte paint-

ings. I guess he'd seen enough bad

ones in his time and was nervous

about using them so prodigiously in

his films. One of the great things

about Peter is that he had a very

clear idea in his mind's eye as to

what he wanted. He had the ability

that a lot of Directors don't have and

that is the ability to fully understand

and interpret concept art and Matte

Painting sketches. Just as one

would do with a painting in a gallery,

Peter could dissect what he liked

and didn't like, and verbalise what

he was thinking. Yet despite his

nervousness, we started to produce

work that 'seemed' to be what he

wanted and thus he gave us more

and more. In the end, I had up to six

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Matte Painters working full time for

three and a half years and produc-

ing Paintings for over 1500 Visual

Effects shots.

Tavy: Concerning Lord of the Rings,

one could ask enough questions to

fill a book, but I will ask only one. In

Return of the King when Gandalf

and Pippin are approaching Minas

Tirith and we get our first look at the

White City, I lost my breath. This

was one of the most beautiful

scenes I have ever seen. Can you

share with us a little of what went

into making that scene so magnifi-

cent?

Max: Yes, this shot was an eye-

catcher! The painting was put

together by a young American chap

named Dylan Cole who joined us

specifically for The Return of the

King. Dylan is a great Matte Painter

who is sure to do great things in the

future, but this film was particularly

special for him I think, and subse-

quently, he poured in an enormous

amount of effort. The shot itself was

part of what we called the Pelennor

Fields environment. This meant that

it formed part of the entire digital

landscape that existed between the

White Mountains to the West and

the Mordor Mountains to the East. In

between, lay the Pelennor Fields - a

vast stretch of flat shrub and grass

land with a single road leading from

the main gate of Minas Tirith straight

across through the abandoned town

of Osgiliath and then on towards the

Black Gates leading into Mordor

itself and the Gorgoroth Plains.

One of the ways that I liked to

assign shots to artists was to let

them have control or ownership over

specific environments. This, I felt,

would allow them to get thoroughly

stuck in and involved in the environ-

ment, eventually becoming the

experts and the point person for any

inquiries relating to that environ-

ment.

This format worked very well on the

whole I believe. However, due to the

complexity and size of this environ-

ment, coupled with the vast number

of shots that would use this work, I

broke the work up between Dylan

and myself, as there amounted too

much more work than one person

could cover on their own.

With this shot in particular, it is only

the second time that we have seen

the White City; the first being in Film

1 when Gandalf approaches the city

to investigate Bilbo's ring. However,

this is a huge establishing shot of

the city and one, which will set the

tone for the rest of the film. The shot

itself is constructed from many dif-

ferent elements. The citadel is a

miniature, which was built by Weta

Workshop. It is an incredible model -

about 12 foot high and superbly

detailed. This formed the basis for

the shot and it was photographed

using a motion control move. This

helped formalise the final camera

move, which had been tracked from

the original live plate. Once we had

the camera move digitised, we were

able to set up the digital environ-

ment in Maya. A low res Poly model

was then build for the hills and the

ground plain.

Once we had these elements, the

fun part began. This was where

Dylan could now start to paint the

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environment as a Matte Painting,

using photographic stills taken from

specific locations around the South

Island of New Zealand, which was

then projected onto the Geometry.

After a little back and forth, the CG

Cyc (cyclorama) was approved and

then the whole shot went down to

the Compositing Department in

order for them to 'comp' the live

plate back into the shot. After a few

final niggles were ironed out, the

other remaining elements were

placed in such as the flock of

'Grouse'.

Tavy: For all of the Star Wars

junkies….can you give us a little

insight on what you did for Return of

the Sith? Were you pleased with

the final result?

Max: Yes, I was delighted with the

final result of the Revenge of the

Sith. This was my first work on a

Star Wars feature and I have to say

that I was thrilled to have been

asked to be involved with the show.

It was an incredible experience for

me, not only to work on the show,

but also to work along side some of

the best Matte Artists in the world.

ILM has long since been the best

VFX facility in the world and having

worked there, I think I can see why.

The work that I was involved with

was specifically to do with a couple

of the planets. I completed Matte

Paintings for Kashyyyk, Felucia,

Coruscant, and Mustafar. In all,

there were about 11 paintings, which

I did, which ranged from establish-

ing shots of the planets themselves,

to shots of the landscape from the

air and the ground.

Tavy: Your personal work is just as,

if not, more beautiful and impressive

than your professional work. With

such a busy schedule would you like

more time for your personal work?

Let me rephrase that….With such a

busy schedule when do you find

time for your personal work?

Max: Unfortunately, I don't have a

great deal of time any more for my

own work, despite a strong desire

on my part to do so. I find it's a dou-

ble-edged sword in many ways.

Although I have been very lucky to

be constantly working on one pro-

duction or another, it means that by

the time I get home in the evenings,

I'm usually too worn out to sit down

and start painting again. So some-

thing's must give unfortunately...

Tavy: What software applications

are you currently using?

Max: I generally use Photoshop,

Maya and Shake on a day-to-day

basis. These give me all the flexibili-

ty I need to do most things. There

are a few other off-the-shelf pack-

ages that I sometimes use, but

mostly I use the three mentioned.

Tavy: Although Maya is your 3D

application of choice, CINEMA 4D

and BodyPaint 3D are rapidly being

used more and more in the film

industry. Do you see a growing

market for CINEMA 4D and

BodyPaint?

Max: Yes, I certainly do. I think that

software like CINEMA 4D is a great

InterIntervieview with Maw with Matte Ptte Painting ainting ArAr tist Max Dennisontist Max DennisonBy By TTaavy vy AnnAnn

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Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

having a good quality camera if you

are a Matte Artist is that you can

achieve superb quality reference

photo’s to use in your work. I have a

huge reference database, and much

to my wife’s distress, whenever we

do get to have a holiday together, I

tend to take photos of skies, trees,

rocks, and buildings rather than

ones of her….

Tavy: Are you currently working on

any projects you can tell us a little

about?

Max: At present, I have just started

on some concept and Matte work for

‘X men 3’, so that should be quite

exciting. I recently finished work on

Harry Potter 4 – The Goblet of Fire

which was great fun, but there are

some really exciting projects coming

up which I’m hoping to be involved

in.

Tavy: Thanks again Max. This was

a real treat for 3D Attack and our

readers. We will definitely be keep-

ing an eye on what you will be doing

next. One last question: As I previ-

ously stated, Matte Paining is grow-

ing in popularity and more and more

artists are looking to delve into this

area of the industry. Do you have

any words of advice to lend to the

thousands of aspiring Matte Painters

in the world?

Max: It is my pleasure Tavy. I feel

very privileged to have been asked

to share my thoughts and experi-

ences. As regards advice, the best

advice that I can give is strangely

NOT to rely on computers. The best

Matte Artists in the world are the

ones who have the capacity to ‘see’

and draw.

One shouldn’t let a computer do it

all for you and this is one reason

that I have to say that one should

avoid software that can allegedly

‘reproduce’ mountains, or seas etc,

like the plague. It just won’t work.

Use your own experiences and

skills, and hone them to be the very

best that they can be.

Also, do lots of investigation and

research in Matte Painting. Some of

the Legends of Matte Painting are

without doubt incredible. Many were

trained fine-artists had the uncanny

ability to be able to reproduce a

photographic painting on glass with

utmost precision and skill. A rare tal-

ent indeed.

But this is still a highly valued skill

nowadays. Directors are looking for

more and more ways to tell visual

stories and are asking Effects com-

panies to constantly push the

boundaries of what can be done. It

is very important to remember that

Photographic quality Effects are the

common expectation in every FX

production. And Matte Paintings are

no exception.

There will always be a demand for

great Painters, so try and be the

best that you can.

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Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

package to use. Although I don’t

generally use it, I have seen it in

action and am very impressed. The

downside of all these packages are

that there is so much to learn, and

every one of them is competing for

your attention.

I do use Maya as my 3D package

primarily because it was the first one

I picked up. And the amount of effort

it has taken to get to a level that

makes the package become trans-

parent means that I am reluctant to

dive headlong into learning a new

one.

There are indeed lots of similarities

between packages and lots of

crossover apps, but I tend to find

that people remain fairly loyal to

their software package of choice.

There are those who would swear

by 3DS Max, whilst other stick to

SoftImage or Maya etc.

I guess the bottom line for anyone

wishing to learn a new package is to

investigate the pros and cons quite

deeply. See what other people have

to say, and what their own experi-

ences are etc.

That way, one can make a much

more informed choice as to what

package that is right for you.

However, I digress. CINEMA 4D and

BodyPaint are becoming ever more

popular nowadays for a number of

reasons. I guess the main one is

cost. One cannot argue with the

cost of this app verses its versatility

and secondly because you have a

texture paint package working in

tandem with the 3D Package. In a

nutshell, it makes the whole process

so much easier.

Tavy: With your busy schedule you

surely have to take time for you.

When you’re not sitting in front of a

computer, what do you do for relax-

ation and enjoyment?

Max: When I’m not working on a

show, I really enjoy traveling. I find it

so relaxing and stimulating at the

same time to be in a strange new

country where one can lose oneself.

I have also recently bought a new

Canon Digital Camera, and am find-

ing that I’m photographing every-

thing in sight. The great thing about

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WIN TWO PRIZES!

INSIDERS SECRETS VOLUME 1 – BODYPAINT 3D 2 by Vital Distraction

BodyPaint 3D 2 Training DVD - http://www.vitaldistraction.com/

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Training CD’s - http://www.maxonshop.com/cgi-bin/uk/gp?pg=products/training.jlb-char

By answering the simple question below and e-mailing it to 3dattack@3dattack you could be the lucky winner.

Question: Who won the third and final round of the “The Prize Fight” competition sponsored by 3D Attack and

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Send an e-mail with TRAINING in the subject line, the answer to the question above along with your real name in the e-

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Creating organic asymmetrical

morph targets with the help of a

3D Attack Goodie XPresso.

Doing good facial animation has a

lot to do with asymmetrical faces.

Symmetrical faces are beautiful, but

boring, and the same applies for

symmetrical facial expressions: they

just are not natural. But, when creat-

ing characters in 3d, one recognizes

pretty fast that it is easier to build,

weight and rig a symmetrical char-

acter since you can mirror the sec-

ond half of the work.

An easy way to add asymmetries is

to add that to the character by using

a copy of the mesh, deform it slight-

ly and apply it as morph so you

keep the symmetries underneath for

the technical stuff.

But back to the topic:

Facial animation usually heavily rely

on morphs. To push the points of a

copy of the characters face (and

then use this as a morph target for

animation) is the most direct way to

deal with the complex details that

make a human facial expression .In

more advanced setups, the morphs

of the face are split into separate

areas (mouth, eyes & brows) and for

each area a number of morphs ( the

mouth for example: wide,narrow,

smile, frown) is created by the artist

and then linked to pose-mixer slid-

ers, or even more advanced 2-

dimensional slider systems.

To be able to create asymmetrical

facial expressions it is necessary to

have two morphs for each facial

expression. One for the left side,

and one for the right side of the

face.

This is relatively easy to achieve.

For the eyes you simply build both

sides of the morphs as individual

shapes. But when it comes to the

mouth and the brows, it becomes

pretty hard, since both sides com-

bined have to create a symmetrical

face, and especially in the middle of

the face, where the morphs overlap

the 2 morphs have to join so that

there is no unwanted distortion.

I have created an XPresso, that will

split a morph shape for both sides of

the face into two asymmetrical

shapes with the help of a vertex

map. The XPresso can be found in

the file "MorphsplitterExpresso.c4d"

in the "Goodies" folder of this

3DAttack issue and is free to use for

all 3D Attack readers. Here is a little

tutorial on how to use this XPresso.

It can of course be used for other

purposes then facial morph creation,

too (Picture 01).

Here we have our basic , symmetri-

cal head and a morph target

"Smile", that has been sculpted with

the help of CINEMA 4Ds slide-tool

and the mesh-brush tool.

The smile shape is not really sym-

metrical, but looks good.Only the

points of the mouth area have been

moved, the eye-area's points remain

unmoved to make it possible to mix

different eye-area expressions with

different mouth expressions (Picture

02).

The "Smile" head is hidden, the

base-head selected. With the help

of the rectangle-selection tool and

the deactivated "Only Select Visible

elements" option the left half of the

face is selected in points mode

(Picture 03).

Calling the "Set Vertex Weight" com-

mand from the Selection menu with

a strength of 100% a vertex-map tag

is created with a weight of 100% for

the left side and 0% for the right

side of the face.

Splitting FSplitting Faces!aces!By OliBy Olivver er WWuenscuenschh

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Picture 02

Picture 03

Again with the rectangle selection

tool, the middle area of the face

(where the overlap of the asymmet-

rical targets will appear later) is

being selected in point mode.

Lets call the plug in "Tag Manager "

from the plug ins menu.

Tag manager is an awesome plug in

from the sadly deceased

"Bonderland" creator Klaus

Karlhuber that can be found for free

on the CINEMA 4D R9 Goodies CD.

It has the wonderful feature (among

lots of others) to be able to blur

Vertex maps (Picture 07).

In the tag manager we select the

Vertex map (the middle points of the

head remain selected in point

mode)an right-click the icon. A pop

up menu appears and we choose

"Blur/Curve" (Picture 08)

In the dialogue that pops up activate

the "Restrict to Editor-

Pointselection" option and play with

the strength settings until you have

a reasonably blurred middle area,

then hit the "Set" button (Picture

09). Create 2 copies of the default

mesh in the object manager. Use

Ctrl- drag in object manager to cre-

ate the copies. Hide both copies

(red dots) (Picture 10).

Load the file

"MorphsplitterExpresso.c4d" from

the 3Dattack Goodies folder of this

issue into the file via the Object

managers menu File-> Load Object.

(Picture 11)

This will give you the Expression

and a couple of dummy objects.

A remark: due to a limitation of

XPresso, User data links to objects

that are empty render the

Splitting FSplitting Faces!aces!By OliBy Olivver er WWuenscuenschh

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Picture 04

Picture 05

Picture 06

Picture 07

Picture 09

Picture 08

Picture 10

Picture 11

Expression useless without a warn-

ing. So leave the dummy objects in

the User data until you substitute

the links with your own objects.

(Picture 12-13).

Drag the appropriate objects to the

User data fields on the XPresso tag.

(Picture 14)

Then click the "Execute_Splitmorph"

check box.

When the black cross vanishes and

the check box the operation has

successfully finished.

A note: all morph targets and copies

that were used by the XPresso have

been aligned on global coordinates

of the base mesh by the XPresso.

(Picture 15)

After unhiding copies for the left and

the right side, we see that the

XPresso has created 2 technically

perfect matching asymmetrical

morph targets. (Picture 16-17)

A quick test with a MOCCA pose

mixer object in point mode shows

that the 2 morph targets join seam-

less in the middle. When both

morphs are set to 100 percent they

join to form the "Smile" target that

we started with.

I hope this little XPresso is as help-

ful for those of you digging into

facial animation as it is for me.

Happy face-splitting and Keep On

Attacking.

Olli Wuensch

www.wuenschonline.de

Splitting FSplitting Faces!aces!By OliBy Olivver er WWuenscuenschh

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Picture 12

Picture 13

Picture 14

Picture 15

Picture 16

Picture 17

Painting a realistic eye texture

(fast forward technique) with

Photoshop

(by Mark Gmehling)

Hi there Attackers! In this mini tutori-

al I want to show you how to paint a

realistic eye texture in a few min-

utes. I’m using Photoshop CS in this

tutorial, but you’ll be able to follow

all steps with Photoshop 4 as well.

No Photoshop skills needed! You

should be able to follow even if

you’re opening Photoshop the first,

no let's say, second time.

Furthermore, there’s no tablet need-

ed. In fact, this workflow hasn’t

much to do with painting. I only work

with selections and filters:

First of all, I create a new

file(Ctrl/N), call it “eyemap”, and

decide what texture size I need to fit

my animation needs. I choose a

1024x1024 pixel size which allows

real close ups- resizing the map

smaller later is no problem, in any

case. Furthermore, change color-

mode to RGB, to make sure CINE-

MA will be able to read the file later.

Now I place some guidelines at

50% of height and width. You need

to go to the View tab and enable

Rulers, if they don’t show up auto-

matically.

I doubleclick the ruler somewhere,

and in the up popping window I set

the Ruler Units to percent, so I don’t

have to penetrate my brain with cal-

culating the half size of the docu-

ment.

Now I drag two rulers: one to 50%

percent height and one to 50%

width -the rulers snap to their posi-

tion (By the way: You can toggle

between visible and invisible rulers

by pressing Ctrl-H) (Pic_01). I cre-

ate a new layer(Ctrl-Shift-N) and call

it “eye texture”. I drag a rectangle

selection(M) across the whole docu-

ment in the height of about half doc-

ument . It is important that the

selection snaps to the horizontal

guideline to make sure it is centered

vertically. You can finetune the

dragged selection by going to

Selection-Transform Selection- han-

dles are added to the selection rec-

tangle and allow you to adjust the

size and position. I press “enter” to

execute the adjustments, then I fill it

(Alt-Backspace) 50% grey

(RGB:127).

Now I add noise to this area by

going to filters- noise- Add noise: I

choose an amount of 30%, the uni-

form distribution and enable the

monochromatic field in the Add

noise filter attributes (Pic_02)

After that I go to filters-Blur-

Motionblur, choose an angle of 90

degrees and a distance of 50 pixels.

The next filter I apply is responsible

to bring the rectangle shape in the

needed circular shape: I go to

Filters- Distort-Polarcoordinates-

and choose the rectangular to polar

option. It is important to deselect the

current selection first (Ctrl-D),

because the polar coordinates filter

needs the whole quadratic canvas

to act right (Pic_03).

Next I go to Image- Adjustments-

Brightness Contrast and increase

the contrast drastically to 95%.

Then I choose Filters again-

Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of

3,5% to the Layer (Pic_04)

I create a new Layer call it “iris”-As I

want a circular selection, I need to

keep the mouse pressed a moment

on top of the rectangle selection tool

in the tool bar to make the other

selection types appear. Then I just

drag a circle -keeping the shift key

pressed to ensure a 100%circled

shape snap it to the middle of the

document and fill(Alt-BackSpace)

with a 100% black- the iris-area is

roughed out. (By the way clicking D

lets the fore- and background color

snap back to 100% black and

100%white- pressing x- switches

back and foregroundcolor).

Painting a Realistic Eye TextureBy Mark Gmehling

16

Tuto

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Picture 01

Picture 02

Picture 03

Picture 04

Now I apply Gaussian Blur to the

“iris” Layer to make the look of the

eye more believable. Make sure the

selection isn’t active anymore (Ctrl-

D) and go to filters- Gaussian Blur

and apply a blur radius of 10 pixels

(Pic_05)

Now I Ctrl-click (or apple-click) the

“eye texture” layer and a selection

appears- I add a new layer (Ctrl-

Shift-N) call it “edge” and go to Edit-

Stroke and choose a strokewidth of

30 pixels, 100% black and an inside

location.

The outer stroke needs some blur

too to look more believable- With

the selection still active I go to

Filters- Gaussian Blur- radius 20

pixels (Pic_06)

To get a nicer blending I add one

more layer (Ctrl-Shift-N) call it

blending and add a rectangle selec-

tion- snapped to the center of the

canvas (holding the shift key to

ensure a 100% circular shape) and

fill the circular selection (Alt-

Backspace) 100% black.

(By the way: You can move the

selection while dragging it when you

use the spacebar too) After that, I

blur it too with the Gaussian Blur

(about 90pixels radius) –I make sure

the selection is not active any-

more(Deselect=Ctrl-D) before! Then

I adjust the opacity of this layer in

the layers menu (I end up at 63%

opacity) (Pic_07)

OK, that’s it for the basic-eyes tex-

ture so far. I’ve got a nice black and

white texture that is a good start to

generate different colored eyemaps.

Let’s give it some color:

I ctrl-click (apple-click) the eye tex-

ture layer- the eye texture-layer

selection appears- I create a new

layer (Ctrl-Shift-N) and call it “blue

color”. I choose a nice cold blue

from the color palette and Alt-

Backspace fill it.

After that, I apply the “Color”

Blendmode to this layer and drag it

under the “blend” layer. I finetune

the color by using the Hue

Saturation Adjustment under Image-

Adjustments just by dragging the

sliders till I’m satisfied. The result is

a uniform colored blue eye (Pic_08)

To add some color changes there

exist thousands of different

approaches- I do the following:

I duplicate the eye texture layer

rename it “eye texture variation” and

rotate it about 45 degrees by using

the transform command(Ctrl-T) and

dragging outside the corners- I exe-

cute by pressing return and then

change the “eye texture variation”

layers Blend Mode in the Layer

menu to darken or lighten. This

results in a more interesting pupil

noise (Pic_09).

For adding color changes to the

pupil I create a new layer name it

“color changes” drag it above the

“bluecolor”layer in the layer manag-

er and roughly draw some different

brownish colors with the brush

tool(B)- no tablet needed-

...because I (gaussian-)blur the col-

ors instantly (blur radius about 8pix-

els) and set this layers blendmode

to Color Dodge. After that I use the

Image- Adjustments- Hue Saturation

Sliders to get a nice variation

(Pic_10).

When I look at the “finished” eye

texture- the outer edge looks to

drastic to me- out of endless possi-

bilities to fix that, I choose a Hue /

Saturation/ Lightness treatment with

the colorize option enabled. I acti-

vate the edge layer, go to Image-

Painting a Realistic Eye TextureBy Mark Gmehling

17

Tuto

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Picture 05

Picture 06

Picture 07

Picture 08

Picture 09

Picture 10

Adjustments- Hue Saturation and

change the saturation to 25, light-

ness to about +16, and the hue to a

color that I like;) This adds another

color variation and smoothes the

edge appearance.

After that I drag the “iris” layer on

top in the layer manager. The last

step is to link all layers except the

background by enabling the linkage

field in the layer manager and trans-

form (Ctrl-T) them smaller to fit the

needs when mapping it onto a

sphere back in C4D or any other 3D

application.

When dragging the transform tool

Handles, I keep the alt key pressed

to center the transformation pivot

point and additionally the shift key to

keep the proportions (Pic_11).

Well, that’s it. Of course there are

other ways to generate eyemaps in

photoshop, but this method is quite

easy and fast forward in my opinion.

I hope you enjoyed following this

workaround and hope I inspired you

to generate some custom eye tex-

tures. In the goodies folder you’ll

find some eyemap-jpgs to have a

closer look. If you have questions

regarding this tutorial, don’t hesitate

to post a thread in the 2D-Section

(Sketch Pad) of the 3D Attack

forum.

CU on board- Keep Attacking!

Mark Gmehling

Painting a Realistic Eye TextureBy Mark Gmehling

18

Tuto

rial

Picture 11

Before I start this tutorial, I would

just like to make it clear I’m by no

means a professional 2D artists. I’m

a car designer who loves and

believes 2D sketches are a must

passage before working on any proj-

ect.

Sketching is a very personal way to

put down ideas, work on the con-

cepts, brainstorm and illustrate your

projects. Sketching doesn't neces-

sarily mean producing high end

drawings, as you see in magazines

or so. A sketch can simply be a

bunch of lines over lapping... the

main thing is the idea behind it.

With time and practice, you'll

acquire enough skills to produce

high end images, if that's your aim.

This first tutorial will deal with the

basics... Mediums, perspectives,

typical steps and logic to follow

when you want to present a certain

project.

PART I - PERSPECTIVES

There are different perspective

views and approaches to draw an

object. Depending on it's nature,

concept and ambient you want put it

in, the perspective of an object

changes.

There are rules you can follow and

books you can read, here we're

going to cover a simple logical way

to apply a perspective. Just as in

3D, every object is determined in

space by a polygon that limits its

volume. (In some 3d software you

can decide to see something called

the bounding box.) That's exactly

what you should do when you start

the base of your drawing. As you

see in the following views, these

boxes or guidelines help you limit

your sketch and maintain a decent

aspect/proportion. Some will be

"normal" perspectives, that we'll use

almost all the time, and some will be

"twisted" perspectives, that we use

to exaggerate for presentation pur-

poses... a kind of showing off.

Fig.1, Fig.1a:

Every item is in a box. The red line

shows what is called the “bounding

box”, the black lines are the “cutting

lines” you add in order to shape

your item inside of it. Fig 2:

A perspective is a virtual representa-tion of what you usually see by eye-sight. Therefore, there are different

ways of drawing it. As you can see

we have what is called Worm’s eye

view. Your eyesight is almost to the

ground. This perspective is useful

for representing buildings or monu-

ments.

The eye level view is the most “real-

istic”. You represent the object as

you would see it as a normal person

standing in front of it. The bird eye

level is a cool way to represent your

object. Mostly used for cars or “air

views” , this perspective is hard to

get, but gives a nice result for pre-

sentations.

Lastly ,you should take into consid-

eration proportions and the way

your object relates to your depth of

IntrIntroduction to Skoduction to Sketcetching (Behing (Beginnerginners)s)By BlendBy Blend

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Fig.1

Fig.1a

Fig.2

Fig.3

field. his brings us to the following

image Fig.3:

Here we can clearly see the relation

between your eye sight and the sur-

rounding objects: The horizon line,

representing your eye sight, will be

the base of the perspective of your

object (see fig2). The background

picture will define what your whole

image looks like. Follow these direc-

tions to get a descent representation

of what you’re drawing.

Fig. 4:

There are different guidelines to use

when drawing. The main 3 perspec-

tives are with 1, 2 or 3 vanishing

points. Of course, having the 3 van-

ishing points technique is the hard-

est.

We will see a detailed application of

these perspectives depending on

the project we’re working on. An

example we can give is the relation

between an object and its environ-

ment, as we can see in Fig. 5 and 6.

An object in a certain space will

obey to the space’s perspective

Another approach to get the right

perspective can be using images as

a reference. Just search on the net

for an image that give you the per-

spective you need, and use it a ref-

erence to make the volume lines of

your product. This technique is used

by everyone, even the best artists

out there. So there's no shame in

giving it a try in the beginning!

PART II - SETTING YOUR LAYOUT

Before you start sketching, you

should know where you're heading,

and what's the purpose of it. If it's a

brainstorming session, well please

feel free to draw everywhere, even

on your nice clean white walls :D

(ladies i'm just kidding!).

The point in sketching is fun and

useful... I draw 24/7, when i'm on

the phone, when i'm eating, when

i'm in the sub heading to work, when

i'm in the park... But when it comes

to presenting an object or using your

sketches as guidelines, a few con-

siderations should be taken:

Ask yourself, what you need to

show in this object. Study it, each

product requires a different

approach for presentation:

For example, when you present a

car you mainly focus on:

1- A side view (that's a must in car

design. It’s the view that makes you

fully understand the volumes and

lines of your vehicle). (fig.2)

2- A 3/4 view (this is a descent a

normal perspective) (fig.3)

3- A twisted view (helps you show

off your skills and attracts people to

look at your design) (fig.4)

4- Detail view (in this 1, you focus

on a specific part of your drawing

that you want to explain or simply

make people see)-

So, once you've thought of the

views you want to use and the way

to present your object, you're ready

to start sketching.

IntrIntroduction to Skoduction to Sketcetching (Behing (Beginnerginners)s)By BlendBy Blend

20

Tuto

rial

Fig.4

Fig.5

Fig.6 Fig.2

Fig.3

Fig.4

PART III - SKETCHING

Ok! Now that we're done setting up

everything, we'll pass to the rough

sketching. In this tutorial we're going

to sketch a concept sports car.

1st step, is to put down the basic

shape. First we draw a cube that

represents the perspective we want.

At this point, do not worry about

details. What you need to do is

understand your object, it's volume

and shape. As you've noticed, these

sketches should take a maximum of

a minute (fig.6) (needless to tell you

guys: do not be afraid to waste

many papers :D sometimes it takes

hours to get the exact shape you

want, sometimes from the first shot

:) ) Let your pencil flow and start

"building" your drawing. 2nd step,

now that our rough sketch is done,

and you have the general volume,

take the last sketch you did, put

another paper above it and redraw it

a bit cleaner. Keep the important

lines, and try to define it more.

(fig.7) Repeat this until you are sat-

isfied with your drawing (proportions

and general shape). This phase will

allow you to prepare your sketch for

adding details to it.

3rd step, once you're done with

"cleaning up" the rough sketch, we'll

pass to add some details to it.

Details are really important., same

as in 3D, it gives more value to your

project and helps you show your

design. So, give give this part lots of

attention. As you can see in this

sketch, I did many things: (fig 8)

1. I’ve decided to "flip" my view, this

can be done easily by just turning

your paper and drawing above it. It

might be a cool trick to get 2 per-

spectives in one. Secondly, I added

many details such as the air intake,

the lights, the door handles etc...

etc...

The car is starting to take shape.

4th and last step. Well now that you

added details, what you should do

is, for the zillionth time, take it all

and draw it again. Keeping it as

clean as possible, this sketch will be

used further on to make blueprints,

or simply to be rendered with colors,

digitally or traditionally. (fig.9) Now

that you've got the basics, try to

make different perspectives of the

same car. follow the same steps,

and once you're done, put it all

together to get something similar to

this view (fig.10) To conclude this

tutorial, I tried to keep it as simple

as possible. Don’t take sketching as

a heavy thing. let it come naturally

and don’t worry about getting it per-

fect the first time. You need time

and practice to get good skills.

Practice as much as you can on the

steps we saw earlier.

In the next tutorial, we'll take the

same car we did and render it using

pen tone and pastel.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Faking Sketch And Toon... for this

tips and tricks I thought of changing

a bit from what we did earlier, and

see something that relates a bit with

CINEMA 4D ... having a Sketch and

Toon like drawing can be really cool

and neat in a presentation. Not all of

us have the skills to draw great yet,

use 3d good, or simply don't have a

budget for buying the Sketch and

Toon module... here's a simple way

to make such renders, passing by

C4D. Model your object in C4D and

render it simply (no radiosity or any

effect) Print a copy of it, and then

with a black marker, just pass over

the edges and make some cross

hatching where the shadows

are...And there you go, a descent

"sketch" done with the help of 3d :D

(fig 11) Might sound silly, but this

very fast and easy trick helped me a

lot when I used to present stuff dur-

ing my university projects! Keep on

attacking...

IntrIntroduction to Skoduction to Sketcetching (Behing (Beginnerginners)s)By BlendBy Blend

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Fig.6

Fig.7

Fig.8

Fig.9

Fig.10

Fig.11

Welcome back everyone, let’s get to

it!

Modeling the Oil and Fuel Caps

Ok, the oil cap first; upon inspection

of the reference photography, I can

see that the oil cap is an 8 sided

shape with curved sides. We will be

using a cylinder to model it. Create

a Cylinder Primitive with 2 height

segments, and 16 rotation seg-

ments. We also want to change the

number of cap segments to 1.

Position and resize it in the viewport

using the model of the oil bottle and

the underlay as a guide. Now, we

could have started with a spline and

lofted the cap object, or we could

use HyperNURBS. In this case, I

just want to model it the old fash-

ioned way, a little bit of extruding

and beveling…

Let’s do it! It’s a well known fact that

when you create a cylinder in

Cinema 4D, the caps are not con-

nected to the hull (sides) of the

object. After making the cylinder

editable (C) you can choose the

polygons tool and move some of the

top faces if you don’t understand

what we mean by ‘not connected’

The fix for this is to run the Optimize

Command as soon as you make the

cylinder editable. The optimize com-

mand allows you to enter a radius,

and it checks every point in the

mesh and if 2 points are within that

radius, relative to each other, they

are connected and made into 1

point.

The result; after running the opti-

mize command with the default set-

tings of 0.01; your cylinder should

be all ready for the next step. So,

let’s make the cylinder editable and

optimize it! (Optimize can be

accessed by right clicking in the

Points, Polygons or Edges Tools…

So, the first thing we will do is select

the upper loop of polygons on the

side of our cylinder (U, L) (loop

selection) so, after selecting them,

we will extrude them a bit. (Image-

01) After extruding, we must switch

to the Edges Tool and select every

other edge around the polygons that

we just created with the extrude

function. We want to scale these in

a bit, but we don’t want the height of

them to change. For this step, I

would like to use the ‘Axis Bands’

feature. By pressing Shift-V you can

see the viewport settings in the

attributes manager. On the ‘Filter’

page, you can see the option for

axis bands.

Turn it on and you will now have

these grey bands like webbing that

connects the adjacent axes to one

another. Clicking and dragging these

bands will scale or move the object

on those 2 axes only, perfect for this

case. So, we want to scale the

edges down on the X and Z axes

while maintaining the Y size of the

edges. (Image-02) After this step,

we can bevel the alternate edges

and with all the polygons selected,

run the untriangulate command with

the ‘Create N-Gons’ option selected.

That should clean up our mesh quite

a bit. After beveling, run the optimize

command again, that should make

sure that everything is still connect-

ed. Now we can scale the top N-

Gon and bevel the edges to our lik-

ing. (Image-03) In the images

shown, I selected the inner N-Gon

and scaled it a bit, then moved it up.

Then, I selected the loops of edges

and beveled them a bit. And for the

Fuel tank. I will let you use the tech-

nique described above to create

your own fuel cap. (Image-04)

Modeling the Chain Guard

The chain guard is an interesting

piece, but it’s really simple. We will

start with a cube and then add knife

cuts to get the shape we want, all

the while maintaining quadrangles

and we will then drop it into our

HyperNURBS Object for further

smoothing and fine tuning. Start by

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2By Jamie Hamel - Smith

22

Tuto

rial

Image 01

Image 02

Image 03

Image 04

creating a cube and positioning it in

the right viewport so that it encom-

passes the chain guard area. Make

it editable and position the 4 corners

of it at the 4 corners of the chain

guard. (Image-05) Once that is

done, you will create 1 horizontal

and 1 vertical cut using the knife

tool in ‘Line’ mode. Make sure that

the ‘Only Visible’ option is

unchecked as we want to cut com-

pletely through the cube.

Try to follow the natural contours of

the object. If you see an area of def-

inition or an area where there

should be a crease, try to make the

cut there. After your first 2 cuts,

move the points a bit so they fit the

overall shape of the chain guard a

bit more. (Image-06) The magenta

lines are areas where you will want

to make additional cuts. But first we

need to make some adjustment

along the X-Axis. By switching to the

Top viewport you can see a clear

view of how wide the chain guard

should be and we can then proceed

to move and scale the chain guard

cube along the X-Axis.

Once you have tweaked the X posi-

tion of the faces they you will see

the chain guard start to take shape.

Notice that the chain guard is wider

near to the oil bottle than near the

claws in front. Go ahead and make

those adjustments and you should

end up with something looking like

this: (Image-07) Select the 3 poly-

gons at the front, extrude inner a bit

and then delete the polygons.

Repeat this for the rear end of the

chain guard (right in front of the oil

bottle) This will help to sharpen the

edges a bit when we do our next

step and drop the object into our

HyperNURBS object.

So go ahead and place our chain

guard object into our HyperNURBS

Object. It smoothes out quite nicely,

but its still too round at the top and

base. We will fix this by adding a

knife cut. Let’s select the knife tool,

select the ‘Plane Mode’ and make a

cut near the inner edge of the chain

guard. You will need to set the plane

to ‘ZY’ and then you can go ahead

and make your cut. (Image-08)

Now that the shape is looking good,

we will create one of the details on

the side of the chain guard. I don’t

want the model to become too com-

plex, so we will just do the detail

very roughly. With the chain guard

object selected, press the ‘Q’ key to

toggle the HyperNURBS on and off

for this part, we will have it off so we

can see the mesh better. Step 1;

select the 6 polygons shown.

Step 2; use the extrude inner tool a

bit to create an inner piece. Step 3;

Scale the polygons to 0 on the X-

Axis. Step 4; (in the top view port)

move the polygons along the X-Axis

to place them so that they don’t

bulge out anymore. (Image-09) And

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Image 05

Image 06

Image 07

Image 08

Image 09

this is how your chain guard should

look after it’s done! (Image-10)

Modeling the Main Body

This part of the model is going to be

hidden by the other parts we will

create later on, so it doesn’t have to

be very detailed at all. It will be a

simple extrusion with a rounded

base. We will start in the right view-

port and create an empty polygon

object (Objects > Polygon Object)

we will call this object ‘Engine Base’

Position the object around the cen-

ter of the chain guard as this is the

rough location of the center of the

object. Start by selecting the ‘Create

Polygon Tool’ and in the points tool,

start to draw as shown. (Image-11)

we will draw a simple shape that we

will then extrude. Select the N-Gon

that we just created and then switch

to the top viewport and using the

Extrude tool, (with the ‘Create Caps’

option checked) extrude it a bit, we

don’t need to extrude it the exact

amount as we will adjust that next.

So, once you have extruded the N-

Gon, switch to the perspective view-

port (F1) and move the 2 N-Gons

along the X-Axis so that they fill the

center of the chainsaw without inter-

secting the chain guard or the fuel

tank too much. (Image-12) After

switching back to the Right viewport,

use the rectangular selection tool

(with the ‘Visible Only’ option

unchecked) and select the polygon

that is shown and extrude it

(remember to uncheck the ‘Create

Caps’ option, we don’t want a cap in

the middle of our extrusion) so that

it lines up with the rounded piece at

the base of the image. (Image-13)

We will then return to the perspec-

tive viewport and select the 4 edges

at the end of the extrusion we just

created. The easiest way to do that

is to Ctrl-Click the edges tool (this

will convert the current polygon

selection to an edges selection)

after you have the 4 edges selected;

you can now bevel them to get that

nice rounded appearance at the

base of our extruded polygon.

Select the bevel tool and choose

‘Convex’ as the type of bevel. I am

going to use only 3 subdivisions for

my bevel, but feel free to use more

if you want to. (Adjust the number of

subdivisions in the Attributes

Manager with the bevel tool select-

ed) Drag in the viewport to interac-

tively bevel the edges. That’s it; we

are done with that part! The only

thing left to do is to add a Phong

Tag to the object. This will smooth it

out so you don’t see the individual

faces. Right click the object in the

Attributes Manager and choose

Cinema 4D tags > Phong. Set the

smoothing angle to 40 and we are

good to go!

Modeling the Engine’s Cylinder (the

part with all the fins on it)

So far most of our parts that we

have modeled have been quite

organic, now we will create an

object that is much more mechani-

cal. Even though we can’t really see

the cylinder that clearly, it can be

seen very clearly from the right side.

We can’t see it from the top view,

but we can use the top view to

guess where the center of it is.

Typically, on an engine like this one

that has only 1 cylinder, the spark

plug is directly in the center of the

cylinder. We can see the spark plug

very clearly from the top and side,

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Image 10

Image 11

Image 12

Image 13

and from the right viewport, we can

get a good idea how big it is. There

are 2 different groups of fins on it,

but we are going to model them as if

there were only 1 group of fins run-

ning the whole length of the cylinder.

(Just to keep it simple). The fins

stick out of the actual cylinder, so

we have to model the cylinder itself

a bit smaller than the fins, we will

then extrude the fins out of it.

Let’s start with my favorite primitive

object, a Cube. Position it where the

cylinder is using the top and right

view ports as a guide (use the top

for finding its position along the X-

Axis, and use the right to position it

from the side) Make it editable ‘C’

and scale it to the proper size. Make

sure to make it smaller than the fins.

(Image-14) Now we will use the

power of Cinema 4D’s new and

improved knife tool once again. We

are going to use the ‘Slice’ feature.

This option will allow us to create

multiple cuts along a specified plane

that are evenly distributed along the

object. Select the Knife tool and

choose the ‘Plane’ mode select the

X-Z Plane and click the ‘Slice’

checkbox. Increase the number of

cuts until it matches the number of

fins roughly. Click once in the view-

port to cut the object. (Image-15)

Now we have to create another set

of loops to extrude the fins from. It

would be easier to bevel the existing

cuts than to try to create a whole

new set of cuts for the fins to be

extruded from.

If we switch to the Edges Tool, we

can use the Rectangle Selection

Tool to select the loops of edges so

that we can bevel them. (Image-16)

once you have all the edges select-

ed, we want to choose the bevel

tool once again and this time we

want to have a bevel with 0

Subdivisions. Drag in the viewport

and you will see the selected edges

split apart. You want the split edges

to be the thickness of the fins. And

also, you want the space in-between

each pair of edges to be the thick-

ness of the spaces in between the

fins. If you are having trouble inter-

actively dragging in the viewport,

remember that you can always enter

the value numerically in the

Attributes Manager. I had to use a

very small value, so I did indeed

have to enter the value numerically

in the Attributes Manager. (Image-

17) The next step is selecting the

loops of Polygons that we want to

extrude to create the fins. Using the

same technique as before, we will

select the loops of polygons and

then extrude them. (Image-18)

The corners of the fins are not sharp

at all; they are rounded quite a bit.

To achieve this, we will switch to the

top viewport, (F2) and use the

Rectangle Selection Tool (with ‘visi-

ble only’ unchecked) to select the

edges straight through the object.

Just drag the selection box over

each corner and it will select the

edges on the corners all the way

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Image 14

Image 15

Image 16

Image 17

Image 18

down the object. After you have

them all selected, just do a bevel on

them and that should be it! You will

want a convex bevel with about 4 or

5 subdivisions. (Image-19) The next

step is to switch to the Polygons

Tool and select all (Ctrl-A) now right

click and choose the ‘Untriangulate’

function. Check the ‘Create N-Gons’

check box and press OK. This will

clean up some of the extra edges

and will leave us with our completed

cylinder!

Modeling the Cooling Fan Boss

This is the plate that connects the

vented grill with the STIHL logo on it

to the engine itself. If you look at the

photo named ‘DSC08691.jpg’ in the

reference photography folder, you

can clearly see how it connects to

the engine and then the vented grill

bolts onto it. We are just going to

model the boss for now, it’s a simple

extrusion. I’ll start with an N-Gon

and then extrude it, followed by a

bevel on the inside part to get the

rounded appearance. I’ll move very

quickly for this part. (Remember

when extruding to check the ‘create

caps’ checkbox) You can create a

Circle Spline Primitive to use as a

guide if you want to. (Since I am

tracing from the Left viewport and

piece of the black handle covers the

edge of the boss, a circle spline as

a guide will help a lot.) Just scale

and position it so that it shows you

the curve of the boss.

Step 1: Create the N-Gon by adding

an empty polygon object and using

the create polygon tool.

Step 2: Extrude the N-Gon and

make sure that the ‘Create Caps’

option is checked when doing so. If

you check the top viewport, you can

see exactly how much it needs to be

extruded.

Step 3: Select the loop of edges on

the inside N-Gon (select the N-Gon

and then Ctrl-Click the Edges Tool

to convert the selection to edges)

Then use the bevel tool to add a

convex bevel to the edges.

Step 4: Add a Phong Tag and set

the angle to 40, or whatever you

like. (Image-20)

Modeling the Starter / Cooling

Fan Grill

Now we will tackle the task of creat-

ing the grill on the left side of the

Chainsaw. First we will select the N-

Gon that we just created for the

boss, and then we will select the

split function to create a new polyg-

onal object containing this N-Gon.

We can then extrude it slightly (with

‘create caps’ on) and use the top

viewport as a guide to let us know

how much it needs to be extruded.

The next few steps will involve cre-

ating the central hub that all of the

fins connect to. Simply use the

underlays as guides and use a

Primitive Cylinder to create the

shape, but here is where we get a

little tricky… we need to create a

LatheNURBS Object with the same

general contour as the fins, then use

a Boolean to cut the spaces. This

process is easier illustrated than

explained, so I will use some

images to explain the process.

Firstly, we need to create our

LatheNURBS Object at the center of

the area that we want to create the

lathe. If you created a Circle Spline

primitive to aid you in drawing the

N-Gon for the boss, you can use

this as your center. If not, just create

the LatheNURBS Object and place

it at the center of the fins area. We

also need to rotate it -90 degrees on

the B-Axis so that the Green Axis

Handle points outward. (Image-21)

Now we need to create a Spline

Object (Objects > Spline Object.)

and send the spline object to the

same position and rotation as the

Lathe NURBS Object. The Transfer

Function is what we will use to do

this, Select your empty Spline

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Image 19

Image 20

Image 21

Object in the Object Manager and

choose Functions > Transfer. The

Transfer tool settings will appear in

the Attributes Manager and you can

drag the LatheNURBS Object into

the object link box. (Image-22) This

will tell the transfer function to send

the spline object to the same posi-

tion, rotation and scale as the

LatheNURBS Object. Hit the Apply

button and it should be done. Now

we can switch to the top viewport

(F2) and start to draw our lathe pro-

file. (We will draw by selecting our

empty spline object and in the points

mode, Ctrl-Clicking to create points.)

Now, due to accuracy issues in our

underlays and the fact that we are

really following the left and right

view ports for scale purposes, the

top viewport will give you a rough

idea of how far apart the points in

your spline should be, but you will

still have to switch back and forth

between the top viewport and the

left viewport to really position the

points well. I like to use a linear

spline and then add chamfers to it

where I need curves as we did in

part 1 while modeling the handle.

(Image-23) Now, once you have

your profile roughly drawn out, you

can fine tune the points in the left

viewport by moving them along the

Z-Axis. (Image-24) One this is done,

drop the spline object into the

LatheNURBS Object and you should

have something looking like this;

(Image-25) If you have a hole in the

center of your lathe object, select

the point closest to it and make its Z

Position 0 using the coordinates

manager.

Now we will make the harsh corners

of the LatheNURBS Object a bit

nicer by using the chamfer tool. In

the Points Tool, right click and

choose the chamfer tool, then pro-

ceed to smooth out each point using

the top viewport as a guide to see

how curved each point should be.

Now, before you start to Boolean

anything, we need to add some

thickness to this part, and punch a

hole in the object we derived from

the boss.

Let’s start by adding thickness to the

lathe; I suggest that you cut and

paste the LatheNURBS Spline

object into a new file for clarity. We

will be using the create outline tool.

Once you have your spline object in

a new file, using the Points Tool, we

will right click and choose create

outline. Click and drag in the view-

port to create an outline for our

spline, you should see it develop

into an enclosure. You want to cre-

ate the outline so that it moves

towards the center of the chainsaw

(inward).

Once your outline is created, select

the Spline in the Attributes Manager

and uncheck the ‘Close Spline’

option. You should see an opening

develop in the spline. The only prob-

lem is that if you drew the spline in

the same order as I did, the opening

is in the wrong place. We want this

opening to be at the center of the

Lathe object. To fix this, we must

select the point closest to the center

of the lathe (and the inner one) and

Right Click and choose the com-

mand that says ‘Set First Point’.

This will change the order of the

spline so the opening appears at the

center of the lathe. (Image-26) Now

that we have the spline with thick-

ness and the opening at the right

point, we want to double check the

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Image 23

Image 24

Image 25

Z-Position of the same point that we

did earlier and also the point that

was created right inside of it when

we created the outline. They should

both be at 0 on the Z-Axis in order

to ensure that our lathe is sealed at

the center. (Image-27)

We can now cut and paste the mod-

ified spline back into our other file

and place it in the LatheNURBS

Object once again. It shouldn’t look

any different, but now it has thick-

ness, and this is vital for our next

steps. We need to hide the

LatheNURBS object for a while, so

click the upper dot next to the

LatheNURBS Object in the

Attributes Manager until it turns red,

this will hide it in the editor for now.

Now we will shift our focus to the left

viewport and to the object ‘Boss.1’

that was created earlier in this sec-

tion. We need to use the Bool object

to cut a hole in this object. Looking

at the left viewport, we can see that

the boss.1 object actually has a

large hole in the center of it. Create

a cylinder primitive with 1 height

segment, 1 cap segment and the

default number of rotation seg-

ments. Now, to keep things very uni-

form to OUR model so far, we will

transfer the cylinder to the location

of the LatheNURBS Object so that

it’s at our center. This will give us a

more uniform result than positioning

it to the underlay. Once you have

transferred the cylinder to the posi-

tion of the LatheNURBS Object, we

can adjust its radius to the size of

the hole.

We can now create a Bool Object

and use the cylinder as the ‘B’

object and the Boss.1 object as the

‘A’ object. Once you have done this,

it’s no sense keeping the Bool

object as an editable one, so we will

check the ‘Single Object’ option as

well as the ‘Hide new Edges’ option.

We can now select the Bool Object

and hit the ‘C’ key to make its cur-

rent state a polygon object. It should

have created a Null object with our

polygon object as a child. We don’t

need this Null, so we can drag the

polygon object out of the Null and

delete the Null.

I want to use this opportunity to add

a little more detail to the Boss.1

Object. Using the Loop Selection

mode, (Keyboard shortcut: ‘UL’) we

can select the 2 outer loops of

edges and bevel them very slightly.

(Image-28) The next thing we want

to do is to cut some slots in the

LatheNURBS Object. We will make

the LatheNURBS object visible

again by clicking the upper dot once

to return it to the Grey (default)

state.

Now, we want to create an object

that will serve as a ‘Cutter’ and then

duplicate and rotate it, filling all the

gaps. Once that is done, we can

Connect them into one polygon

object and then minus them from

the LatheNURBS Object.

I am using a Cube Primitive; once

again we will transfer the cube to

our LatheNURBS Object. By now

you should see that I am really

sticking to this ‘Center thing’ ;-)

Once your cube is transferred, we

will make it editable and using the

points or polygons tool, move and

scale its points or polygons so that it

is the same shape as one of the

spaces in the grill.

The reason that we are moving the

polygons of the object and not the

object itself is pretty simple; we want

to be able to easily rotate the dupli-

cates of the cube around the center

of the LatheNURBS Object. Your

Cube should extend beyond the

edge of the LatheNURBS Object;

(Image-29) now we will move on to

the Duplicate command. To make

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Image 26

Image 27

Image 28

Image 29

the task of rotating the duplicates of

the cube easier and to make the

model more accurate, we will use

the duplicate command to rotate the

cube while copying it. Return to the

left viewport and rotate the cube so

it occupies the first space. We now

want to Zero the Axis of the cube to

make it aligned with the world axis.

This will make our Duplicating task

easier. Choose the ‘Object Axis Tool’

and in the coordinates manager,

make all the rotation values Zero.

Once this is done, don’t forget to

switch back to the ‘Model Tool’

Choose Functions > Duplicate. Your

Attributes Manager should fill up

with the numerous settings for the

Duplicate command. They are too

numerous to mention in this tutorial

and are pretty much self explanato-

ry, so I will just show you which set-

tings to adjust: (Image-30)

Once we have gotten everything

duplicated, we need to connect

them into one polygon object…

actually we don’t NEED to, but I’d

prefer to. It makes the scene neater

and I’m sure it gives the Bool object

an easier time anyway.

In the Attributes Manager, unfold the

Null that cinema created to hold all

of your duplicates and drop the orig-

inal cube into it. Now that we have

all of our cubes in one Null Object,

we need to select them all before

using the Connect Function. So, if

we right click the Null and choose

‘Select Children’, Cinema 4D will do

just that, then we can right click the

Null again and choose ‘Connect’.

We now have a single polygon

object that has all of our copies as a

part of it. Feel free to delete the null

containing all of the copies.

Now, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO

THIS PART! This Boolean we are

about to attempt is the kind of

Boolean your parents warned you

about! SAVE YOUR FILE! Once you

have saved your file, you should be

ok if Cinema 4D runs out of memory

while trying to calculate this

Boolean. Note: The default interpo-

lation of a Bezier spline drawn in

Cinema 4D is 5° this usually pro-

duces nice curves, but it can be a

bit too much resolution when deal-

ing with Booleans, HyperNURBS,

Deformers etc… for this particular

application, I definitely think its too

much.

Fix this by selecting the spline that’s

inside of the LatheNURBS Object

and changing the Angle to some-

thing closer to 25° now that we have

a more manageable mesh to deal

with, we can create a Bool object.

As a further precaution, we are

going to uncheck the ‘High Quality’

Option in the Boolean options in the

Attributes Manager. (Users of R6,

R7 and R8 don’t have to worry

about this option) The high quality

option produces a better result with

fewer triangles and also takes

longer and uses more memory. If a

Boolean is ever giving you a hard

time, and the high quality option is

on, TURN IT OFF!

Now then, at this point, we can

place the ‘Cube-Cutters’ object into

the Bool object, followed by the

LatheNURBS Object. You should

see the newly created object form.

Now if all goes well for this part, you

can save and then turn on the high

quality option. Remember to save

first! If your computer doesn’t choke,

your mesh should be much cleaner

after enabling this option.

Now, for this case, there is no point

in keeping the Boolean Object. We

should just Right click it in the

Attributes Manager and Choose

‘Current State to Object’. This will

create a polygon object from the

Boolean and we can delete the

Boolean object and that will speed

up our file a lot!

Well, it seems that I have run out of

space in this issue. Be sure to look

out for the next part of this tutorial in

the next issue!

Cheers,

Jamie Hamel-Smith (jamiehs)

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2By Jamie Hamel Smith

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Image 30

Hello Attackers. I'm going to intro-

duce you to 3D ATTACK's latest plu-

gin: Replica.

Replica is a general purpose

dynamic cloning plugin. What this

means is that it takes an input

object (polygon or spline) and cre-

ates clones of a second object that

are aligned to the input object's

points or polygons.

If you have used LUMEN or LUMEN

Lite (http://www.3dattack.net/plug-

ins/) you will be right at home with

Replica. The interface is almost

identical. Replica is available from

your "Plugins" menu. Clicking on the

"Replica" command will create a

"Replica" object. Replica requires

two objects, an input object, and an

object to clone. The input object

must be Replica's first child and the

cloned object is Replica's second

child. The cloned object can also be

a hierarchy.

Replica's properties consist of four

sections: Object, Placement, Texture

Variation, and Spline.

The "Object" group displays how

many replicas (or clones) have been

created, the time taken for the repli-

ca creation and placement, and an

option to create instances of the

cloned object, rather than a true

duplicate. The "Placement" group

has various controls for alignment

and skipping. The "Align To" control

will tell replica if you want the clones

to be placed on the input object's

points or polygon centers. If the

input object is a spline this control is

ignored. The "Target Type" control

will allow you to point the cloned

objects in the direction of the poly-

gon normal (in point or polygon

mode) or along the spline tangent,

which will make objects flow along

the curve of a spline.

The "Selection Tag" field let's you

specify either a point or polygon

selection tag (depending on the

value of the "Align To" control) which

tells Replica to limit the clone cre-

ation to that selection. The "Editor

Skip" and "Render Skip" sliders tell

Replica to place a clone at every nth

point where n is the value of the

slider in either the editor of the final

render. Note that the "Editor Skip"

value also affects editor renders.

The "Skip Offset" control allows you

to specify the point at which Replica

will begin skipping. Keyframing the

"Skip Offset' value allows you to

easily create some cool animations.

(See Image 02)

Now for the fun part, the "Texture

Variation" group. In this group you

can specify textures to control the

position, rotation, and scale of the

clones. The textures can be any

bitmap or channel shader, animated

or static.The "Show Previews"

option toggles the small texture pre-

views in Replica's properties.

Turning them off can save a little

calculation time for heavy scenes

and will also free up some space in

the Attributes Manager. The "Update

Every Frame" option is necessary

for using animated textures. With

this option enabled, the texture will

be evaluated for every frame in the

animation. For still images, or

scenes where animated clones are

not necessary, with this option off

the textures will be cached internally

which can help to speed things up.

Up to three textures can be speci-

fied, one each for position, rotation,

and scale. All three offer Minimum

and Maximum controls for x,y, and z

values. You can also specify which

material channel to use for each tex-

ture.

The "Spline Offset" control

is necessary for applying texture

variations to objects cloned along a

spline. Replica will use a single row

or column (determined by the

"Orientation" control) from the tex-

ture to calculate the variations from.

The offset lets you specify the exact

Replica - Plugin TutorialBy Chris Montesano

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Image 01

Image 02

position of the row or column within

the texture preview. This control can

also be keyframed for some cool

animation effects. (See Image 03)

Finally we have the "Spline" group.

Here are some advanced controls

for working with splines as input

objects. The first being "Use All

Segments", which tells Replica

whether or not to place clones on

every segment of the spline.

With this option off, you can specify

which segment to use. "Use Spline

Points" will tell Replica to use the

actual points that make up a spline.

With this option off, you can tell

Replica exactly how many clones to

place along each segment, with

either Uniform or Natural distribu-

tion. Note that targeting spline tan-

gents requires that the "Use Spline

Points" option be turned off. Ok,

enough of that, now let's make

something cool! (Image 04)

I'm going to walk you through put-

ting together a simple pin box with

Replica. One thing you will need is

an image or animation of what you

want the pins to do. So if you want

the pins to show someone's face,

you'd need a depth map of that

face. I have included a depth map of

Otto's face made with zBlur

(http://www.3dattack.net/plugins/) for

this example. (Image 05)

First, let's create a new scene and

build our pin. The pin does not have

to be too detailed unless you're

planning on doing some extreme

close-ups. The pin I made is from a

simple cube, which when put in a

Hypernurbs object will look fine with

a subdivision of 1 or 2. (Image 06)

Now we have to create a surface to

clone the pin along. A plane will be

sufficient. My pin measures

60x1000x60, so my plane will have

to be about 4000x3000. Once you

create the plane add a Replica

object to the scene. Drag the plane

and make it a child of Replica. Then

drag the pin and make it Replica's

second child (right under the plane).

In Replica's properties, change the

"Align To" control to "Polygon" and

turn on "Create Instances". We want

the pins right next to eachother so

raise the plane's width segments to

60 and it's height segments to 40.

That will give us 2400 pins (Image

07)

Next, create a new material. In the

color channel, load "otto_z.jpg".

Drag this material onto the plane. in

Replica's properties, drag the tex-

ture tag from the plane to the

"Texture Tag" field in the "Position"

section.

Now turn on "Set position" and click

the "Update Preview Image" button.

This will build the internal cache

used to store the texture. Now set

the "Maximum" value for Y to 900.

You should now have a pin box rep-

resentation of Otto.

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Image 03

Image 04

Image 05

Image 06

Image 07

I've included this scene, along with

a complete pin box scene and some

other examples for you to freely use.

Remember: You can also use ani-

mated textures for instance you

could animate the face in CINEMA

4D and use this animation as “tex-

ture” with replica. Using animated

textures can produce some real cool

looking examples. If you are have

created a cool looking example

using Replica then please post this

on our forum for others to see.

Enjoy!

Chris Montesano

The “Replica” plug-in accompaniesOctober 2005 issue of 3D Attack -The CINEMA 4D Magazine.“Replica” is FREE to use, for bothpersonal and commercial use.“Replica” is copyright protected by3D Attack and may not be repro-

duced or redistributed without writ-ten consent from an authorized rep-resentative of 3D Attack.

Replica - Plugin TutorialBy Chris Montesano

32

Tuto

rial

Image 08

This is a basic animation tutorial for

beginners. It handles a couple of

simple and more interesting ways to

fade objects in and out.

The Simple Fade

Let's begin with the most simple

way of fading first, incidentally it is

also the most boring method. Open

the 'FadingSphere.c4d' file. This file

contains a pre-setup scene by me

so that we only have to concentrate

on animating the shaders. The only

thing you need to change is the

save path to where you want the

test animations to go.

So, as you can see, I've already

used my modeling skills to set up

the scene for you, a floor, a wall,

three spheres, some lights and five

simple materials. Right-click on the

'Display Sphere' object and give it a

Display tag. Click on the new tag

that appears behind the sphere and

check the Use Visibility box. The

parameter will become active

enabling us to enter a value for it.

Instead of entering a value here, we

will do that in the timeline. Right

click on the word Visibility and select

Animation -> Add Track. This will

add a track on the timeline for the

visibility value which will enable us

to add keyframes to it and animate

the visibility.

If you open the Timeline window,

right now, you might not see the vis-

ibility track right away, just the

objects with no tracks. To make the

visibility track visible (pun intended)

either go to Edit -> Show All

Animated or Right-click on the

Visibility word again in the tag and

choose Animation -> Show Track.

The visibility will get the length you

indicated in your Project Settings. In

this case I set it to 180, giving us a

nice fade of 6 seconds at a framer-

ate of 30. Next, right-click on the

visibility track and choose New Key,

a dialog will pop up asking you on

which frame you want the key to be

created. Create one at 0 and one at

180. Now click on the first keyframe,

the properties for this key will be

shown in the Attributes window. The

Value field resembles the value of

the parameter you are animating at

that moment, in this case visibility.

Leave this key at 100%. Now click

on the last key at frame 180 and set

it to 0%.

Now, when the animation is ren-

dered the object will fade to nothing

in 6 seconds. I've already set up the

output settings for the animation, so

all you have to do is go into the ren-

der settings and change the save

path where you want the animation

to be saved. Now press Shift-R to

render the animation or go to

Render -> Render to Picture Viewer.

The Alpha Channel Gradient Fade

This method is far more cooler, but

also a bit more complicated. It is

done by animating a Gradient shad-

er in the Alpha Channel. First, I

need to explain a couple of parame-

ters from the Gradient Shader that

will be animated. I will only explain

the parts that we are going to ani-

mate.Iif you want to know what the

rest means you can check it out in

the manual (Page 794 - Gradient

Shader). See Picture 1(next page)

to see the explanations of the

aspects that will be animated.

Click on the 'Gradient Fade' materi-

al. The shader in the color channel

isn't important, it can be any texture

or combination of shaders that you

come up with. We'll just concentrate

on the animation in the alpha chan-

nel.

Enable the Alpha channel in the

basic properties of the material and

click on its tab that appears. Load a

Gradient shader into the texture field

at the bottom. It will now show you

an initial picture of the gradient with

some blur options. Ignore the blur

options and click on the picture or

on the bar that now says 'Gradient'

to access the gradient properties.

We're faced with the parameters

we've seen in Picture 1 (next page)

and can begin to add some of them

to the timeline for animating.

Right-click on the Gradient word and

choose Animation -> Add Track.

Also add a track for Turbulence.

Note that adding the gradient adds

tracks for all the parameters therein;

Interpolation, knot position, RGB

values, Intensity, bias. Before we

animate some of them let's enter the

static values we won't animate.

First, let me elaborate a little on

what we want to achieve here. We

want the sphere to disappear gradu-

ally from left to right, which means

we need a linear 3D gradient which

goes from left to right. We can't use

the 2D gradient because that will

wrap itself onto the projection of the

texture tag of the Sphere and will

result in awful seams and simply

won't be a flawless fade. The 3D

gradient, however, ignores the pro-

jection used and bases itself on the

centre point (null) of the object.

From this point you can tell the

shader where to start and end. Our

sphere has a radius of 100, which

makes it a diameter of 200. As I said

before, we want the sphere to disap-

pear from left to right on the X-axis

of the object. If you look in the gradi-

Basic Basic AnimaAnimation - Ftion - Fading Objectsading ObjectsBy BrBy Bram vam van Gerwan Gerwenen

33

Tuto

rial

ent shader properties you'll notice

the Start and End parameters

beneath the Cycle box. Both Start

and End have three boxes boxes

behind them representing X, Y, Z.

As stated before, the center of the

object is the null position, so to

make the gradient start on the left of

our sphere we need to enter -100 in

the first field (X-axis) of the Start

parameter. And to make it end on

the right of our sphere we need to

enter 100 in the first field of the End

parameter.

Now that we have told the shader

where to start and end, we can

begin animating the gradient knots.

In the timeline you can see the

parameters for both knots, identifi-

able by the number in the brackets,

[1] representing the parameters

belonging to the first knot and [2]

representing those belonging to the

second.

Click on the track for '[1] Position'

and add a Key at 0 frames, set the

value for this key at 0%. We want

the black knot to wait a second

before it begins moving to the right

to give the white knot some time to

move ahead of it. Remember black

resembles complete transparency

and white non-transparent in the

alpha channel. Ctrl-drag the key you

just made to frame 20, you should

see a little plus sign indicating the

copy action.

Now the black knot can begin mov-

ing towards the right of the gradient

So create a new key at frame 180

and give this one a value of 99,9%

(the white knot will be at 100% at

frame 180, this way they won't over-

lap). Next we'll animate the white

knot position '[2] Position'. Create a

key at frame 0 and give it a value of

0,1%, again to avoid overlapping,

the black knot is already at 0% at

frame 0. Next, we want the white

knot to begin moving right immedi-

ately to get a head start on the black

knot. Remember that the black knot

waits 20 frames before it begins

moving, to make the two knots

move at the same speed ,in order to

get a equal fade the white knot

needs to stop 20 frames before the

end. So make a key at frame 160

and give it a value of 100%.

This might all seem a bit vague till

now, but to see what you have actu-

ally animated go into the shader

properties of the gradient and open

the timeline. Now when you grab the

blue indicator at the top of the time-

line and move it back and forth you'll

see the knots moving on the gradi-

ent. To see the gradient animation

preview, right-click on the preview

window and choose Animate.

Choose it again to stop the preview.

The alpha-channel fade is basically

finished now, but looks rather bor-

ing if you render it now. So we'll

make it a bit more interesting with a

couple of minor tweaks. First we'll

add turbulence to our gradient,

breaking up the linear look of the

fade. We've already added the track

for turbulence in the beginning if

correct, so add a key to it now at

frame 0 and give it a value of 0%.

If we start the turbulence at a higher

value, immediately it will give certain

seams that will ruin our smooth

fade. Create another key at frame

20 and give this one a value of 40%,

giving an interesting variation to our

fade. Ctrl-drag this key to frame

160, then Ctrl-drag the first key to

frame 180 so the turbulence builds

down again towards the end, avoid-

ing additional seams.

When you render the animation now

you'll notice that the fade looks

grainy, meaning that the scale of the

turbulence is set too high. This

Basic Basic AnimaAnimation - Ftion - Fading Objectsading ObjectsBy BrBy Bram vam van Gerwan Gerwenen

34

Tuto

rial

parameter won't have to be animat-

ed, we can just set the Scale to 20%

in the gradient shader properties.

We can further reduce the graini-

ness by lowering the octaves to 1.

When you do this you'll notice the

turbulence smoothing out even

more, it will look very straight now

but don't worry that is only in the

preview window. Now to make the

fade even more interesting we want

the turbulence to move slightly by

itself, this can be done by setting

the frequency to 2, like explained in

Picture 1 the beginning.

The fade animation will look great

when rendered now. But because

the black knot is at 99,9% and the

white at 100% there will remain a

small dot and that is annoying to us

perfectionists. To remedy this we

can simply animate the Intensity of

the white knot and say reduce it to

0% in the last 5 frames.

So create a key at 0 frames and 175

with a value of 100%, then create a

key at frame 180 with a value of 0%.

Now the white knot will be black at

the end and will make our fade com-

pletely transparent at the last frame.

When you render the animation now

you'll be able to witness the alpha-

channel fade in all it's glory.

The Alpha Channel Noise Fade

Instead of a Gradient shader we can

of course, use a Noise shader as

well. The Noise fade is extremely

cool as there are many types of

noise to be used and the implemen-

tation of this fade is far easier than

the gradient fade.

Click on the 'Noise Fade' Material

and load a Noise shader into the

Alpha Channel. Click on the noise

and in its properties set the Type to

Electric and set the animation speed

to 2, giving a reasonably calm ani-

mation. You can preview the noise

animation by right-clicking on the

preview and choosing Animate. Feel

free to choose another noise type if

you please.

We will make the noise fade by ani-

mating the High Clip and Low Clip

sliders. The clipping controls give us

an easy way to move the noise from

complete white to complete black by

moving them both in order from left

to right. Right-click on the Low Clip

text and add a track for it, also add

a track for the High Clip slider. Move

both sliders to the left and add a key

on frame 0 for both tracks in the

timeline, this way both keys will

automatically have a value of 0%.

First we'll move the High Clip slider

to the right, so create a key at 90

frames and give it a value of 100%.

We want the Low Clip to wait for the

High Clip to reach 100% before it

begins to move, so ctrl-drag the first

key on the Low-Clip track to 90

frames. Then create a key at 180

frames for the Low-Clip and give it a

value of 100%.

Use the Animate option again in the

preview to see what you have ani-

mated, as you can see it goes from

complete white to black animating

cool noise in the meantime. We

notice that halfway the animation

the noise is dull grey to black, we

want it to retain some more white

areas till the end. This can be easily

done by setting the contrast to 50%.

Animate the preview again to see

the change. The noise will retain

more white towards the end result-

ing in a less dull fade.

Render the animation again to the

Picture Viewer for the final movie.

I've included a pre-rendered movie

in the scene folder so you can

check that one out if you want.

Of course this opens up a lot of pos-

sibilities, for instance try using the

layer shader and animating multiple

noise shaders and gradients on top

of each other and you'll be able to

create spectacular effects in no-

time.

For instance try cloaking/decloaking

a ship with the gradient fade or

materializing a ghost with the Layer

shader using various animated

noise layers or perhaps create flick-

ering holograms. The possibilities

are endless.

If you have any more questions

regarding the more difficult fades

using layers feel free to torpedo me

with questions on the 3D Attack

forum.

Have fun fading, Bram.

Basic Basic AnimaAnimation - Ftion - Fading Objectsading ObjectsBy BrBy Bram vam van Gerwan Gerwenen

35

Tuto

rial

Let's start the scenery with two ter-

rain objects.

Size: X = 1660 m , Y = 270 m , Z =

2600 m

Position of terrain 1: X = 0 m , Y =

-127 m et Z = 1650 m

Position of terrain 2: X = -1600 m ,

Y = -126 m et z = 0 m.

Add a third one, bigger:

Size: x = 2570 m, Y = 1200 m, Z =

4000 m

Position: X = -1600 m , Y = 136 m

et z = 1050 m.

And a floor object at Y = -220 m

Let's light the scene with a light at:

X = -4700 m , Y = 215 m et z =

1510 m with the following settings:

Add a camera at X = -450 m , Y = -

170 m et z = -960 m with a rotation

of H = 45°, P = 0°, B = 0° to observe

the scene. "Render active view"

Should show this: (Image 02)

Not stunning? Let's add a starry sky.

Create a 20.000 m radius sphere,

and add a material with a starfield

shader in the color channel (texture

> surfaces > starfield), and copy this

texture in the luminance channel.

Still not stunning? Let's add a bit of

haze to the summits. Add a sphere:

X = 10000 m , Y = 2000 m et z =

10000 m and place it at X = 0 m , Y

= 120 m et z = 0 m. Add a nex

material with a fog channel only. Set

value to 2000 m and a brightness of

75 %. Better, but still no clouds. Add

a last sphere to create them. Set the

size to X = 8700 m , Y = 500 m and

z = 8700 m, and place it to X = 0 m

, Y = -31 m and z = 0 m, then make

it editable. Add a fog shader (materi-

al Editor: File > shader > Fog). The

fog shader allows volumetric fog.

When applied to the sphere, stick

the texture (new tag > stick texture

tag), then reverse the sphere typing

180 in the P value. This rotation is

used to obtain clouds, and not haze

at ground level. Click on the fog

material, then set the settings just

as below: (Image 04) Render active

view. Now, clouds cover the moun-

tain summits (Image 05) Sun has

now disappeared behind the clouds,

but can appear again using a lens

effect (Lens > Glow > Star3). You

can move the camera in the scenery

until it doesn't pass out of the

sphere containing the clouds. Place

the camera at Y =150 m at frame 0

and at -166 m at frame 90 then

record animation. You have the

impression to cross a stack of

clouds. Decrease the T frequency if

the clouds are too restless. Now you

can experiment. Be warned that

cloud shape decreases while the

turbulence increases. A 10 to 25 %

turbulence gives good results.

Volumetric Clouds - A Mini TutorialBy Gerard Ciavatti aka Archeo

36

Tuto

rial

Image 01

Image 02

Image 03

Image 04

Image 05

3

My name is Jens Kappelmann

“jeso”. I was born on August 19,

1983 in Bielefeld Germany, were I

am still living. Currently I am work-

ing in Media Design, and completing

my education in digital and print

media design. I’ve been doing this

for 3 years and am not quite sure

yet what I will be go into when I fin-

ish my education.

I started playing around with com-

puter graphics in 1999. A friend of

my father, working as freelancer for

an agency here in Germany,

showed me some graphics and I

was hooked. I knew I had to learn

how to bring my thoughts and ideas

to the computer screen. Throughout

my school years, I made the deci-

sion that I would pursue computer

graphics as my career.

Artist Spotlight...Jens Kappelmann aka “Jeso”

Spotl

ight

Name: Jens Kappelmann

Age: 22

Occupation: Student Media Design

Country: Germany

Software: CINEMA 4D, Photoshop,

Freehand

Website: http://www.jeso-art.de

Favorite resources on the web:

www.3dattack.net - www.c4d-forum.de

Years ago, after watching the movie

Toy Story, I knew this was what I

wanted to do, 3D. I thought and

wondered how the makers of this

movie were able to do what they

did. I asked friends, read maga-

zines, and finally stumbled upon

short review of 3D Studio Max. I

was so excited that I order the demo

from Yello Tech. After playing

around with 3D Studio Max, I

became very disappointed. I could-

n’t do a thing with it! This experi-

ence led me to leave 3D alone for a

while. About 2 years ago I learned

of CINEMA 4D and tested it. After

37

3

Artist Spotlight...Jens Kappelmann aka “Jeso”

Spotl

ight

38

playing around with it for a while,

reading the manual and doing tutori-

als, I fell completely in love with

CINEMA 4D. At this point, I can’t

imagine my life without CINEMA!

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

39

Image: ME

Artist: Jacob Saariaho (Cpt. Jack)

Country: USA

Date Created: June 2005

Website: www.cptjack.net

Software: CINEMA 4D

40

Image: Urban Sanctuary

Artist: Corentin Seguin de Broin / SHTL

Country: France

Website: www.shtl.org

Date created: 2002 - 09/09/2005

Software: CINEMA 4D R8.5 and

Photoshop

Artist Comments: Lost in the urban confusion,

this secret place is my peaceful rest. Inspired

by Tokyo city, started working on the concept in

2002. This scene became an obsession for me,

so in my spare time I tried to improve it. First

for my own pleasure, also for learning 3D, for

better modeling, lightening, and then adding a

few details. Think I'mdone with this image....well

for now!

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=2

06623&highlight=urban

41

Image: Beach House

Artist: Juan Carlos Pèrez Ponce

Country: Mexico

Website: www.infograficagdl.com

Date created: September 2005

Software: Autocad, CINEMA 4D and Photoshop

Artist Comments: Project to be built in Punta Mita, Mèxico.

42

Image: Soil Critters

Artist: Joel Dubin

Country: USA

Website: being overhauled

Date created: 8-05

Software: Cinema 4d, Photoshop,

Jenna, Path Deformer, DiTools

Artist Comments: This illustration

was one of dozens I've created for

a textbook on Environmental

Science. Renato Tarabella's Path

Deformer plugin was

used in several places, including the earth

worm, and the curled beetle larvae near the

bottom of the image. Jenna Iterator was

used to create the jointed legs and

appendages on each of the insects. Iterator

was also used to make the plate sections

on the back of the sowbugs in the upper

left, as well as the branching algae cutting

through the image and the bacteria colony

in the bottom inset. The snail shell was sup-

plied by Aurety (thanks!) and was surfaced

with procedurals using Aurety's online

examples as reference.

43

© 2004-2005 3D ATTACK TM