CINEMA 4D

RELEASE 11

3D FOR THE REAL WORLD

Quickstart Manual

CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart

CINEMA 4D Release 11

Quickstart Manual Programming Plugin programming Product management Quickstart writers Layout Translation Christian Losch, Philip Losch, Richard Kurz, Tilo Khn, Thomas Kunert, David OReilly, Cathleen Bastian, Per-Anders Edwards, Paul Everett, Aleksander Stompel,Sven Behne, Wilfried Behne, Michael Breitzke, Kiril Dinev, Reinhard Hintzenstern, Eduardo Olivares, Nina Ivanova, Markus Jakubietz, Hendrik Steffen, Jens Uhlig, Michael Welter, Thomas Zeier Marco Tillmann, Bernd Lutz Glenn Frey, Sven Hauth, Dirk Beichert, Fabian Rosenkranz Oliver Becker, Oliver Krawczyk Scot Wardlaw, Luke Stacy
Copyright 1989 - 2008 by MAXON Computer GmbH All rights reserved. This manual and the accompanying software are copyright protected. No part of this document may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of MAXON Computer. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the program and this manual, MAXON Computer assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the program or from the information contained in this manual. This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. The content of this manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by MAXON Computer. MAXON Computer assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this book. MAXON Computer, the MAXON logo, Sketch and Toon, CINEMA 4D, Hyper NURBS, C.O.F.F.E.E. are trademarks of MAXON Computer GmbH or MAXON Computer Inc. Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, PostScript, Acrobat Reader, Photoshop and Illustrator are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated registered in the U.S. and other countries. Apple, AppleScript, AppleTalk, ColorSync, Mac OS, QuickTime, Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the U.S. and other countries. QuickTime and the QuickTime logo are trademarks used under license. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. LightWave 3D is a registered trademark of NewTek. 3D studio max and 3ds max are registered trademarks of Autodesk/Discreet Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark only licensed to X/Open Company Ltd. All other brand and product names mentioned in this manual are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies, and are hereby acknowledged.

Contents

Welcome to CINEMA 4D... 2
1. Introduction..... 2 2. Whats new in CINEMA 4D R11.... 3 3. General Information / Interface.... 9 4. Sample Images.... 19 5. Quick Tutorial Arranging Objects.... 21 6. Quick Tutorial Modeling.... 29 7. Quick Tutorial Materials... 36 8. Quick Tutorial Lighting... 46 9. Quick Tutorial Animation.... 52 10. Quick Tutorial Rendering.... 61 11. Quick Tutorial Multi-Pass Rendering... 68 12. Quick Tutorial XPresso.... 75 1. Introduction.... 82 2. General Information / Interface.... 83 3. Sample Images.... 85 4. Quick Tutorial The Paint Wizard... 86 5. Quick Tutorial First Painting Lesson.... 88 6. Tips & Tricks.... 92 1. Introduction.... 95 2. General Information / Interface.... 95 3. Sample Images.... 98 4. Quick Tutorial Global Illumination... 100 5. Quick Tutorial Caustics.... 104 6. Quick Tutorial Depth of Field... 106 7. Tips & Tricks..... 108
Welcome to BodyPaint 3D... 82
Welcome to Advanced Render (Optional module)... 94
Welcome to PyroCluster... 110
1. Introduction.... 110 2. General Information / Interface... 111 3. Sample Image.... 112 4. Quick Tutorial 10 Steps To Glory... 113 5. Quick Tutorial Optimize and Animate... 116 6. Tips & Tricks..... 119 7. In Closing..... 119 1. Introduction.... 121 2. General Information / Interface... 121 3. Sample Images.... 124
Welcome to Sketch and Toon (Optional module).. 121
4. Quick Tutorial Outlines.... 126 5. Quick Tutorial Shaders and Tags... 130 6. Tips & Tricks..... 134
Welcome To NET Render (Optional module)... 135
1. Introduction.... 136 2. General Information / Interface... 136 3. Sample Images.... 136 4. Quick Tutorial Installation / Interface... 137 5. Quick Tutorial Jobs and Administration... 139 1. Introduction.... 142 2. General Information / Interface... 142 3. Sample Images.... 143 4. Quick Tutorial Rigid Bodies.... 144 5. Quick Tutorial Soft Bodies... 147 6. Tips & Tricks..... 148

Welcome to Dynamics (Optional module)... 142
Welcome To Thinking Particles (Optional module)... 150
1. Introduction.... 150 2. General Information / Interface... 151 3. Quick Tutorial Particle Snow.... 154 4. Quick Tutorial Objects as Particles.... 157 5. Tips & Tricks..... 163 6. In Closing..... 163 1. Introduction.... 165 2. General Information/Interface (Joints and Rigging).. 166 3. Quick Tutorial Forward Kinematics / Inverse Kinematics (FK/IK).. 171 4. Quick Tutorial Visual Selector... 174 5. Quick Tutorial PoseMixer... 177 6. Quick Tutorial Morph Tool.... 181 7. Quick Tutorial Muscles... 183 8. Quick Tutorial VAMP.... 186 9. Quick Tutorial Dressing.... 191 10. Quick Tutorial FBX Import / Export... 195 1. Introduction.... 199 2. General Information / Interface... 200 3. Sample Images.... 201 4. Quick Tutorial Fur.... 202 5. Tips & Tricks..... 213
Welcome To MOCCA (Optional module)... 165
Welcome to HAIR (Optional module)... 199
Welcome To MoGraph (Optional module)... 214
1. Introduction.... 215 2. General Information / Interface... 215 3. Sample Images.... 218 4. Quickstart Tutorial.... 218 5. Tips & Tricks..... 223 1. Introduction.... 225 1. Introduction.... 228 1. Motion Layer.... 234 2. Animation Layer... 238
Welcome To 3D Ghosting... 225 Welcome to Projection Man... 228 Welcome to Non-Linear Animation in the Timeline.. 233
Note: As a result of continued product development, differences between the current and printed documentation with regard to referenced files can occur. The most current versions can be found on the product DVD included in your order, or can be downloaded from the MAXON website or via the Online Updater.
Chen Shih Wei - Sunglow Design Studio

Welcome to CINEMA 4D

After you have worked through this tutorial you will have a good basic user knowledge which you can apply to future projects.
Dave Brinda - www.brinda.com

1. Introduction

No matter if youre just checking CINEMA 4D out or if you already own your own copy of CINEMA 4D or one of its complete XL or Studio Bundle packages, you already know about the incredible things CINEMA 4D can do. We have been working very closely with our customers for several years now in order to satisfy their needs and wishes. This has lead to the creation and introduction of new functionality, according to their needs. These ideas and concepts are then creatively implemented to satisfy the needs of our customers and those of the 3D markets. No matter if you work in the field of print, advertising, design, visualization or film, CINEMA 4D gives you all the tools you need to make your ideas reality. The intuitive interface and the ease with which CINEMA 4D can be learned makes entering the versatile world for 3D a snap. Whether you need character animation (MOCCA module) or a cartoony look of your renderings (Sketch and Toon module) CINEMA 4Ds modular setup lets you customize it to suit your needs. CINEMA 4D places a link between your job or hobby, and your creativity in the palm of your hand. You can create what your fantasy demands. CINEMA 4D will be your dependable partner.

The Attribute Manager manages the attributes of each object or tool. This is where you can change the strength of the HyperNURBS subdivision (more about that later) or an objects visibility in the editor window. The objects coordinates can be found here as well as the tool setting such as the radius of the live selection and the Only Select Visible Elements option.
The Coordinates Manager lets you place, rotate or scale your objects. Enter the values in the given fields and confirm your entry with the apply button or simply press the return key.
The Material Manager is used to display and manage all of a scenes materials and 3D shaders. Textures and parameters can be modified in the Attribute Manager or the Material Editor. Double-click the material to open the Material Editor to make changes to its individual material channels. Illumination strength, type of specular, strength of bump and more can be adjusted here as well. Well cover this in detail in a later chapter.
By default, CINEMA 4D starts with four open Viewports. You can, however, add any number of Viewports to your layout. You can view your scene in different modes ranging from gouraud shading (includes any lights you have placed into the scene) to quick shading (displays your scene using only a default light, not lights you have placed into the scene), wire frame and more. This lets you adapt your editor window layout to your needs or your computers processor speed.
The Icon Palettes stretch down the left side and across the top of the editor window. The horizontal palette contains the tools you will be using most often, depending on which module you are using at the moment. If you are using the Modeling Layouts, for example, tools needed to work with polygons, edges and points will be displayed. You can use one of the standard layouts or create your own Icon Palette. CINEMA 4D lets you choose which layout you want to work with.
Now we will concentrate more on CINEMA 4Ds icon palettes to get you a little more familiar with them. The following explanation will refer to the colored icons on the next screenshot. The image shows the left icon palette. At the very top you can see the previously mentioned predefined layouts. Below that we have the (green) Make Object Editable button. This function lets a primitive be transformed using points, polygon or edges. The editability of primitives is limited until they are transformed! You can determine size and number of segments but you cannot make any polygonal transformations. Next we have the Use Model Tool and Use Object Axis Tool (red icons). You can move, scale or rotate a selected object or rotate it around its own axis. The next three (blue) icons represent the Use Point Tool, Use Edge Tool and Use Polygon Tool. Use these tools to either move, scale or rotate an objects points, edges or polygons or edit the object with CINEMA 4Ds integrated tools. The next (purple) icon lets you choose between point, edge or polygon selection.

You can now adjust the objects angle by using the Rotation Rings on the Rotation Ball. Drag the blue Z-axis ring down 150 degrees.
Repeat this step for the other HyperNURBS object but only to 50 degrees.
Position both hemispheres as pictured using the Move function:
Here you can use the aforementioned locking axis function and switch to using the world / object coordinate system.
Now create a sphere and move it into a position almost completely covering both hemispheres.
Using the Scale function you can resize the sphere to fit inside the two hemispheres.
Congratulations! You have just created your first modeled object.
You can increase the HyperNURBS objects subdivision to give our model a smoother look. Simply select the respective HyperNURBS object you want to smooth and set the Subdivision Editor in the Attribute Managers Object menu to a higher value. The parameter Subdivision Renderer is only responsible for renderings in the picture viewer.
CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart Materials
Our eye still looks a little blind. Well change this in the next chapter by adding a pupil texture. Before we do that, though, wed like to give you some more modeling tips. Adjust the influence of HyperNURBS: Select both cubes and several polygons in the Object Manager. Press the V key on your keyboard, select the Structure menu and click on Weight HyperNURBS. If you now click anywhere in the editor window with the left mouse button and drag the mouse to the right you can determine the strength of the HyperNURBS for the selected polygons. If you are not satisfied with the result and have unclean edges try this function in the Use Edge Tool mode. This will give you better results. You can also simultaneously press the. key while dragging in the Viewport. If you should want to select points that lie within an object or if you have Only Select Visible Elements deactivated and want to avoid accidentally selecting points on the backside of the object simply activate X-ray. You will find this function under display / x-ray. This lets you see through the object and see every point (Polygon / Edge). Accidental selection of hidden points is thus not possible and you have an excellent overview of the inner points of the object which would normally not be visible from the outside.

Double-click on the dot again and it will turn green, which makes the objects visible again independent of the visibility settings of any parent object. The dot directly below has the same function except that it affects the rendering. Once you have made the eyelids invisible and have rotated the view a little the eyeball should look as follows:
Switch the visibility of the HyperNURBS objects back by clicking again on the dots next to the object in the Object Manager, making them gray. Click on the Texture Tag at the right of the Object Manager next to the object. Its the material that we applied to the eyeball. You can recognize it in the mini preview of the texture in the Object Manager.
Once you have selected it you will see its parameters in the Attribute Manager. Adopt the settings you see in the next screenshot:
We have just aligned the texture on the eyeball mesh by changing the Length X and Length Y parameters. The offset setting put the texture in the correct position. If you rotate your view again you will see that the iris texture is positioned correctly.
Tip: If you want to undo an accidental change to the view just press Ctrl+Shift+Z. This function is useful if you have inadvertently rotated the perspective view instead of the editor view. You can also select edit / undo view in the main menu of the editor view. Our eye may be able to look at us now but the eyelids still make it look a little too gray. We will change a couple of settings that will give the eye a reptilian look. Create a new material (Material Manager / File / New material) and double click the new material. This will open a dialog window for the material where we can make the necessary changes to this material. Click on Color in the material channel and copy the settings of in the following screenshot. Click on Color in the material channel and copy the settings in the following screenshot.
We will give the material a green tone and lower its brightness to 50%. Check the box next to the Bump channel. Click on the little light gray arrow in the check box next to the word Texture and select Noise.
Click on Noise and on the following dialog page set the global and relative scale factors each to 30%. This reduces the size of the bump-noise mapping which will result in a finer depiction of the bump map. Check the box next to Displacement and repeat the previously mentioned steps for the bump channel but set the global and relative scales each to 150%. This will increase the size of this channel. Click on the word Displacement to return to the displacement channels main menu.

The light now falls at an angle onto our object (If this is not visible in the Editor it may be due to the fact that your display mode is set to Quick Shading (uses a single default light source) instead of Gouraud Shading (uses all scene lights)). Of course the exact position of the light is strongly dependent upon the cameras angle. Unfortunately the light is not casting a shadow, letting the figure look like its floating. CINEMA 4Ds lights have an advantage over real light in that you can choose which kind of shadow, if any, they should cast - a plus for any studio photographer. In the General menu of the Attribute Manager, set the lights shadow to Shadow Maps (Soft). We dont want the shadow to be completely black so well make it a little transparent. In the Shadow menu, set the shadow density to 50%. Select 1000 x 1000 as the shadow map. Render the scene.
CINEMA 4D offers three types of shadows: RayTraced (Hard) a shadow with sharp edges, Shadow Maps (Soft) a shadow with soft edges and Area a shadow that becomes softer the further its away from the object, resulting in the most realistic shadow effect. Try the other two shadow types. Careful, the area shadow can take a long time to render! The larger shadow map allows the shadow to be rendered more accurately. The lights cone is a little too small. We will change this as follows: Switch to the details menu in the Attribute Manager and set the Inner Angle to 30 degrees and the Outer Angle to 100 degrees.
You will see the result in the editor right away. You can also edit the lights cone by dragging the orange handles (If your graphics card will support it you can set the editors display mode to Enhanced Open GL with activated shadows. Generally speaking, OpenGL offers a much more precise depiction of your scene and gives you an impression of how the shadows will fall).
Now were happy with our key light. Next we will create a more even lighting by brightening our figure a little from the other side. Create another light source in the scene and name it Brightener. Place it at the following coordinates: X= -360, Y=225, Z=-230 and at an angle of H=-20, P=-10 degrees. Select Area as the type of light. Since the brightness of the lights in the scene is additive, we must dim the brightener a little. Reduce the Intensity in the General menu to 40%. This area light illuminates the figure from a different angle and softens the contrast somewhat. It wont cast a shadow since this would cause crossing of the shadows and make the object look bad.
The scene is now pretty evenly lit, but we want to give it a little more pep. Create another light source, name it Color and, in the Attribute Manager, set its type to Infinite. Set its color to turquoise and set its H angle to -160.
CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart Animation
Edwin Arellano, nedwin.cgsociety.org
The position of an infinite light is irrelevant since it always lights your scene in the direction of the Z axis. This is why we will leave it at the point at which it was created. It gives our Amphibian an interesting color edge and sets him off of the background a little. Your scenes mood can be changed by simply changing the color of some of the lights used.

The compositing tag makes it possible to assign an image buffer to one or more objects in the scene. Assign a compositing tag to the cone as well. Activate the second buffer.
The sphere and cone are now in two separate image buffers, 1 and 2. Now we have to activate these buffers in the Render Settings. Add 2 Object Buffers by selecting them from the Multi-Pass. menu. For the first, leave the ID set to 1 and set the second to 2. Render the scene and open the new file in Photoshop.
At first glance nothing has changed in the Photoshop file. There are still only five layers. Where are the new objects? They can be found in the channel palette. An Alpha Channel was created for each object. An alpha channel is a gray scale image used to cut out objects in the image.
Select the Refraction layer in Photoshop. Choose select / load selection. Set Channel to Object Buffer 1.
We just loaded the buffer channel as the selection. Various image editing options will now be limited to the area within this selection the sphere. Call up image / adjustments / hue / saturation. Click on Colorize and set the Hue to 240 and the saturation to 100.
Only the sphere will be colored. Since it consists mainly of refractions, we chose the respective layer in advance.
Multi-Pass really comes to shine when its used with animated scenes. What Photoshop does for single images, compositing programs do for animations. After Effects and Combustion are two of these programs. Editing software such as Final Cut lets you edit image layers as well. CINEMA 4D works with all of these programs, partly over special export plugins which offer an extensive number of settings. You can change a color in a 15-minute animation in seconds.
12. Quick Tutorial XPresso
Expressions let you set dependencies for object properties. In other words, you can use rules to automate a scene: When object A performs action B object C should perform action D. MAXON created XPresso so you dont have to enter these expressions manually. XPresso is a graphic interface which puts an end to the cumbersome act of typing code. XPresso lets you create expressions using drag & drop which is simple (and can even be fun) and offers enough functionality to be able to solve just about any problem. We will now take a look at what this problem solving looks like. In this tutorial we will build a kind of telescopic arm. Open a new scene. Create three cylinders (objects / primitives / cylinder). Rename them into cylinder_small, cylinder_medium and cylinder_big. In the Attribute Manager set the radius of cylinder_medium to 45, the radius of cylinder_small should be 40.

4. Quick Tutorial The Paint Wizard
The BodyPaint 3D Paint Wizard takes a lot of preparatory work off your hands and lets you begin texturing / painting in seconds. Before we actually start painting the object we would like to show you how quickly you can start painting, just in a few steps. Create a cone primitive (objects / primitive / cone). Switch to the predefined standard layout BP 3D Paint.
Click on the Paint Setup Wizard icon
and select the Next button twice, the Finish button once and to exit the BodyPaint 3D wizzard click on Close. At the left of the command palette select the Brush Tool for Painting Textures
and drag the cursor over the cone while pressing the left mouse button. Voila!
Aside from the fact that you will never have a need for a cone with a white mark on it, this simply demonstrates how BodyPaint 3D works. Now well get to the heart of this tutorial. Open the file QS_BP3D_Startl.c4d. Say hello to Claude, our guinea pig for the day. In the course of this tutorial we will alter the color of his right eyelid a little and apply a bump layer in elephant-look to his skin. Select the predefined standard layout BP UV Edit at the top and to the left of CINEMA 4Ds main editor window. Click on the BodyPaint 3D Wizard Icon so we can make the necessary preparations to the texture.
Click on Deselect All in the window you just opened and apply a white check mark to the eyelid right object only.
We have just determined that a texture should be created only for the right eyelid object. Click on Next. Leave the settings in the next window the way they are. The selection Single Material Mode would create a texture for each object individually. If the box is not checked all objects will share one texture surface. Click on Next again. In the next window check the bump channel. The color channel is selected by default. You can double click the little gray boxes next to each texture channel and assign each channel a base color.
Since Claude likes elephant gray we will leave the boxes the way they are. Leave the rest of the settings the way they are and click on Finish, then on Close in the next window. The basic textures have been created and we can start painting. If you have experience with earlier texturing methods and the time it took to even get started BodyPaint 3D will seem like a blessing to you. BodyPaint 3D saves you a lot of time. Now lets move to the second part of the tutorial: the UV-meshes and the first brush stroke.
5. Quick Tutorial First Painting Lesson
At the bottom left of the Material Manager (and other Managers) you will find the texture we just created, right next to Mat in the Material tab.
This is the default name for a new texture. Of course you can rename the texture if you like. The first material is the color layer and the second is the bump layer (at the top of the window you will see the abbreviations which refer to these layers C for color and B for bump). Now Select the Use UV Polygon Edit Tool symbol.

5. Tips & Tricks

Dont make your life more difficult than it has to be (which doesnt just apply to working with Thinking Particles) and make use of the object library where you will find the most important Thinking Particles Nodes already assigned to objects and with simple interfaces which, in most cases, will save you a lot of time. Organize your setup. XPresso and / or Thinking Particles setups can become very complex. It helps to keep your setup organized as they are being created. Nodes can be grouped and good annotations will definitely help if you dont want to wonder what in the world you did when you created this scene three weeks ago. Dont forget that particles can increase the size of your scene dramatically. If you create an emitter that generates 10,000 objects and 10,000 polygons in every frame even the fastest computer will drop to its knees (figuratively, of course). We recommend you work with the faster preview functions until the very end of your project before assigning particles to geometry.

6. In Closing

We have reached the end of our Thinking Particles tutorial. You have carefully tested the waters and we hope you stayed in. Maybe our little demonstration has encouraged you to move on to bigger and better things. Go ahead and experiment! Have fun! As we mentioned at the beginning, Thinking Particles can be very complicated but the most complex setup begins with a single node. If you take it step-by-step it will only by half as bad as you think.! On that note, we hope this little tutorial has helped you on your way to a (particle) stormy future!
CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart MOCCA

Welcome To MOCCA

This is the Quickstart Tutorial for the MOCCA module, a collection of tools especially for character animation.
3D character animation is a complex subject. It not only challenges the software but the animator as well. Almost anyone can quickly create a character that moves in one way or another, but a convincing character animation requires quite a bit more work. The animator needs to know the theory behind character animation before he or she can judge whether or not the animation is good or bad. So before we pounce on the MOCCA palette we would like to quickly go over the 12 principles of character animation. These 12 rules were developed back in the 1930s by Disney animators and can almost be applied 1:1 to modern 3D animation. They are useful not only for characters but for just about anything you animate. Anyone who is serious about character animation should stick these rules to the ceiling over their bed (and get rid of whatever else that is up there now ;o). A convincingly animated character will then be only a matter of patience. Squash & Stretch every organic object deforms in some matter when it is in motion. Squash and stretch is the exaggeration of this effect when a character is in motion. Staging is the setting up of an animation. This includes lighting, camera angle, effects and slow motion. Anticipation Expectation of a reaction to an action is known as anticipation. Pose to Pose / Straight Ahead these terms describe two animation techniques. Pose to Pose sets two important key poses and the time between is then filled. Straight Ahead sets one key after the next straight ahead through time. Follow Through / Overlapping the impetus or the overlapping of movement of a body parts. Ease In / Ease Out an object begins to move slowly, reaches its top speed and slowly comes to a halt. Curves In nature almost every movement is described as curves, no matter if its a swinging arm or the rotation of a head. Secondary Action movement that is created by movement of another object. Timing the speed with which an action is executed. Exaggeration can be used in many instances: Arms that are being stretched too long when a character is hanging from a cliff, eyes jumping out of their sockets to help demonstrate a shocked expression. Appeal a characters impression, look and nature. Personality like an actor, a good animator must be able to make his character express himself.

4. Quick Tutorial Visual Selector
Next, well take a look at the Visual Selector, which is designed to save you time when selecting your characters controller objects. Suppose youve fully rigged your character and youre ready to animate. At the top in the Object Manager, you have your hand and foot targets, and nested deep within the hierarchy are the Morph tags, Pole Vectors, hip and head joints, target for eyes, and so on. Finding the various controls can slow you down substantially while you are animating. As a character animator, youll want to concentrate on the essentials so that you can quickly take the next step without having to rummage around for the tools you need. This is where Visual Selector can help. With Visual Selector, you only need to search for the controllers once: when you create your Visual Selector interface. Start a new scene (File/New) and add a cube (Objects/Primitive/Cube). In principle, it doesnt matter which object you choose because the Visual Selector tag can go on any object. In the Object Manager, right-click on the cube and choose Character Tags/Visual Selector to add a Visual Selector tag to the cube. The Visual Selector interface opens automatically. Here we can see the default Visual Selector background with a character in front in a typical character setup pose with enlarged hands and feet.
In the following text, the abbreviation VS for Visual Selector is used. The purpose of VS is to place the individual controllers required to animate the character onto the corresponding parts of the picture. For example, a right hand controller should be placed on the right hand in the picture. Best of all, you can drag and drop the controllers directly from the Object Manager onto the picture in the VS interface. Virtually any type of object can be dragged into VS. You can leave the visual representation as it is or assign a different icon or color to the object. Create a cube, a sphere (main menu/Objects/Primitive/Cube and Sphere) and a null object (main menu/Objects/ Null Object) and drag them one by one from the Object Manager into the VS interface.
The object icons appear as a layer on top of the character image. Drag the icons around on the character image to wherever you want them placed. Move the mouse pointer over one of the icons and click and hold down the right mouse button. You now have two possibilities. Either press the left or right cursor key to change the icon, or press the Up cursor key to open a window containing all the available icons, where you can choose which one to use. The color field (currently white) in the left part of the window lets you change the icons color. At the top in the main VS interface youll find a Tag tab. Click this tab to access the VS settings. Here you can give a name to the VS, swap the background image for your own rendering and change the aspect ratio and size of the VS. On the Tag tab youll also find a hotspots page. Clicking on this takes us into the settings for the hotspots youve created.

If the cloth object is to collide with another object, as is the case with the t-shirt and the body, the other object must be assigned a collision tag. Select the characters body (polygon object Body) in the Object Manager with the right mouse button. Select Clothilde Tags / Collider Tag.
CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart HAIR
Now the t-shirt knows that is should not pass through the character. Its about time that we gave the shirt its proper shape. Select the cloth tag and switch to the Dresser menu.
In the dresser menu you will find everything you need to make clothes fit. The other menus deal with the cloths behavior. Select Set next to Dress State. This is like a security measure. We can recall the shirts initial state in case we dont like the position of the shirt or if we want to add a breast pocket, for example. Switch to Use Polygon Tool mode and select the polygons on the sides (the ones created by the bridge tool). Alternatively you can select Selection / Invert Selection in the C4D main menu - since the front a back side of the shirt should still have been selected, this can save you time.
These polygons will serve as the t-shirts seam. Clothilde will do this for us as well. Select Seam Polys in the Dresser menu and set it to Set. The seam is still a little too wide. Click on Dress-O-Matic and look what happens with the T-shirt.
The seam will be pulled together in accordance to the Width value. It doesnt necessarily match the shape of the characters body, though. The Steps value determines how exact this fit will be. After setting the Init. State, click on Relax. Now other forces such, as gravity, will have an effect on the T-shirt which makes it sag on the characters shoulders. Place a Cloth Nurbs into the scene (Character/Cloth NURBS). Make the t-shirt a child of this object.
Cloth nurbs acts similar to a HyperNURBS object: it smooths the geometry which was subordinated to it but with a slightly different algorithm which works better for cloth objects. Additionally, a thickness can be specified for cloth nurbs fabric objects. Set the Thickness to 1 in the Attribute Manager and the subdivision to 0. Create a HyperNURBS object and make the CNURBS object to a Child object of this HyperNURBS object. Now the CNURBS object will concentrate on the thickness of the cloth and the HyperNURBS object will take care of the t-shirts edges. The character should be clothed now. Of course there is still some fine-tuning necessary to make the t-shirt behave properly in an animation. As you can see, though, the first steps werent that difficult.
10. Quick Tutorial FBX Import / Export
The FBX file format is used by most 3D programs to import and export files. It can be used to exchange complete scenes and animation files. It is a standard format for motion capture. Motion capture is the recording of human (or animal) motion using special sensor systems. The files can be assigned to just about any virtual character using the FBX file format. Maybe you want your character to behave just like you? If so, pay close attention to the following information about FBX. Lets assume you have a character with a complete skeleton and has the correct strengths but you dont want to animate it manually. You want to use an animation that has already been created, maybe a walking animation. Motionbuilder is a software that was conceived for this purpose. This program lets you assign movement data to a character. Since CINEMA 4D cant read this file format the character must be exported as an FBX file. Select Edit / Preferences / Import-Export / FBX Export. Here you can determine what it is you want to export. In most cases the default settings can be used.

This is a very simplified version of a city scene in which a camera is animated to move in slightly to the buildings. Play the animation once (small green arrow below the Viewport). You can see how the angle of view changes. In traditional matte painting we would have a simple zoom in which the angle of the front building would not change in relation to the others. Our buildings, however, still need to be textured. Each building could be textured individually (which would normally not be much work for just three objects) or you can use Projection Man (e.g. if you had five hundred buildings staring at you waiting to be textured). Our scene contains two cameras. In order for Projection Man to be able to open Photoshop, the correct path to the Photoshop executable file must be entered in CINEMA 4D. Open the C4D Projection Man preferences menu (main menu: Edit / Preferences / Projection Man). Enter (or navigate to) the location of the Photoshop.exe file on your computer. Lets take a closer look at our scene.
The first camera (Camera projection) is the camera that Projection Man will use to project a painted image onto the surfaces of the buildings. The second camera (Camera animation) is the camera through which we just viewed the animated approach to our buildings. We must now let Projection Man know which objects it should use for the projection. An this is how its done: Make sure you return your animation to frame 0. Select Window / Projection Man from the main C4D menu. In the window that opens, select all three cube objects and drag them onto the Camera projection object above (same window). Select Coverage Render from the selection menu that opens.
Enter the location to which you want to render the.psd file and click on OK. Confirm the prompt that follows with Yes.
CINEMA 4D will now automatically start Photoshop and will open the rendered Projection Man image. You can either start painting in Photoshop right away or create a new layer and create your matte painting. In order to get to know how Projection Man works, edit your own image to look like the one below. Of course you can use your favorite colors if you want.
After you have finished modifying your image in Photoshop, save the image. Use the current name and location otherwise CINEMA 4D will not be able to locate the image! Return to your Projection Man scene in CINEMA 4D. In the Material Manager, at the bottom left of your interface, you can see that Projection Man has automatically created a new material. Double-click the material and switch to the Luminance channel in the window that opens. Tip: Projection Man creates the texture automatically in the Luminance channel. This ensures that the scene remains completely unaffected by lights. After all, the scene is supposed to assume the color and brightness traits of your painted texture. This, however, can be changed by either deactivating the materials Luminance channel and loading the.psd file into the Color channel or by changing the Projection Man default settings in the CINEMA 4D preferences menu so the.psd file is automatically loaded into the Color channel. We are now in the materials Luminance channel. Click on the small triangle next to the Texture parameter and select Reload Image. This updates the texture and includes the changes we just made in Photoshop. Now close the Material Manager and your scene should look like this:

Never mix up the Motion Source and Motion Clips functions. The Motion Sources are located at the left of the Timeline and the Motion Clips are located in the Timeline itself. The latter are merely links to the original sources. This means that the source contains the actual animation data and the Motion Clips (with which the animations are mixed and can be stretched or expanded in the Timeline) simply reference this source but themselves contain no animation data. This can also be seen in the Attribute Manager after selecting a Motion Clip. The Attribute Manager contains a Source field in which the source for that particular Motion Clip is displayed. This way, several Motion Clips can use the same source (non-destructive animation).

2. Animation Layer

The Animation Layer System is a powerful yet easy to learn tool for managing and mixing animation using layers. Open the file QS_AL_Start.c4d. Again we see our trusted monkey head, however without any animation applied to it. And again we will animate the monkey head with typical monkey-like movements. If you havent already done so, switch to the predefined Animation layout. Select the Monkey Null Object and select Animation / Add Animation Layer from the C4D main menu. Our Null Object has just been assigned a Motion tag. In the Attribute Managers Motion System tab we can see that the current layer is 0.
The check mark at the left of the Level 0 parameter indicates that layer 0 is the active layer. You can begin animating right away. Create a couple of simple movements by moving the slider to a desired frame, moving the head and saving a keyframe. Although how the monkey head moves is irrelevant we suggest you use a standard left-to-right movement for now.
Once you have finished setting all your keyframes click on the Add button in the Attribute Manager. If you do not see this button it is probably because the Motion tag or Null Object are not selected. Simply select either the Monkey Null Object or its blue Motion tag.
If you have done everything correctly a Layer 1 should have been added after clicking on the Add button. Layer 1 will automatically be made the active layer. You will also notice that the keyframes we just set are no longer visible but the monkey head still moves in accordance to these if the animation is played. This is due to the fact that, in contrast to the Motion System, the Animation Layer System adds keys with each layer without deleting the previously created keys. In our case the previously created keys are not visible because they belong to Layer 0, which is not currently active. Create a few new movements (of course with new keyframes) and play the new animation.
Both layers will now be mixed. You can add any number of additional layers. Each time the keyframes will belong to the layer that was active when they were created. After setting keyframes on three separate layers we will have three separate animations that will be mixed. If, for example, we created a left-to-right movement on Layer 0, an up-and-down movement on Layer 1 and a left-to-right shaking of the head on Layer 3 the animation could look like this: