Instant Cinema 4D Starter

Before you install Cinema 4D, you will need to make sure that you have all of the required elements, which are listed as follows:

Cinema 4D can be purchased directly from Maxon at www.maxonshop.com. Students can acquire a free educational copy of Cinema 4D studio, by providing student documentation.

You can order a copy of Cinema 4D to be shipped to your location. Alternatively, in certain countries, you can download a digital ISO file instead.

For larger facilities that require floating licenses or a third-party render farm solution, you will need to purchase the additional Maxon License Server application, as well as a single command-line license that covers an entire render farm.

Once you've acquired and mounted either a physical DVD or a digital ISO, launch the installer application (Setup.exe on Windows or Setup.app on Mac OS) and select the language of your choice.

After that you'll see an initial information screen, shown in the following screenshot. This provides some information about registration, the contents of the DVD/ISO, and additional contact information for Maxon.

Click on the Continue>> button and you'll see a registration screen. At this stage you'll be asked to enter personal, company, and licensing information as shown in the following screenshot:

Enter all of the information, as you would if you were registering your software.

If you would like Cinema to be installed only for the user currently logged in, leave the Register for option at the lower right set to its default value, Current User. Otherwise, if you want cinema to be available to all accounts on that computer, set the Register for option to All Users as shown in the following screenshot:

If you are using Cinema 4D at a facility that uses the Maxon License Server to distribute floating licenses, turn on the checkbox labeled Use License Server. Upon doing so, a floating window will pop up for entering license server information.

If you have a license.ini text file, you can select this file to automatically populate all of the license server information. Once all of the licensing and registration information has been entered, click on the Continue>> button. You'll then be prompted to select the application you want to install as shown in the following screenshot:

For now, select the CINEMA 4D option. We'll discuss the NET Render options a little later. Click on the Continue>> button. Another setup screen appears, with final options before installing.

The Optional tab allows you to install documentation and alternate language packs. When you are content with all of the installation options, click on the Install button and the installation process will begin. This takes a while, so be prepared to take a break. When the installation is complete, you should see a message.

If you'd like to jump right in and start playing with Cinema 4D, leave the Start Cinema 4D checkbox turned on, and click on the Finish button. Otherwise, uncheck this option and click on the Finish button to exit the installer. The first time you launch Cinema 4D, you have the option to follow some Quick Start tutorials. These can also be accessed via the main menu by navigating to Help | Show Tutorials....

In addition to Cinema 4D, you have the option of installing NET Render Server and NET Render Client. If you have multiple machines to render on, and you don't want to use third-party render farm software, the C4D NET Server and Client application can be used to create a C4D render farm under Broadcast, Visualize, and Studio licenses.

One machine needs to run the NET Server application, and any machine that will be rendering needs the NET Client application installed. The server machine is responsible for managing render jobs and tells the clients the frames that need to be rendered.

Distributed rendering will work only if there is a network-shared drive that is accessible by all computers involved as shown in the following diagram. All computers involved should also be using static IP addresses.

To install either NET Server or NET Client, re-launch the Cinema 4D installer. Follow the same initial steps as with installing Cinema 4D, but choose a different installation type.

After installing NET Render Server and NET Render Client, you'll need to configure them, so that the clients can see the server, the server can see the clients, and all computers can see the shared network drive. Now, follow these steps:

By this point, you should have a working knowledge about the installation process of Cinema 4D and are free to play around and discover more about it. If you also installed NET Server and NET Client application, then you have a Cinema 4D render farm at your disposal.

In the next section, we'll go over the user interface of Cinema 4D, and build an animated 3D scene.

The following screenshot shows a breakdown of the default layouts in Cinema. The interface is completely customizable, and there are many other palettes that are not visible in the default startup layout. However, these palettes are the most important elements for getting started.

There are a few palettes being listed in the following list:

Besides the palettes we just came across, there are some other palettes as well, defined in the following list:

As with every 3D program, there are hotkeys for orbiting, dollying, and tracking in the 3D windows. For most users experienced with another package you'll feel at home using the Alt key and a 3-button mouse. By default, you can also use keys 1, 2, and 3 if you only have a 1-button mouse. The following list depicts the default hotkey functions:

By default, a new Cinema 4D scene will display the main perspective view. To switch to 4-view mode, you can click on the window icon on the upper-right of the view, click on the middle mouse button in the perspective view, or use options in the Panel view menu to configure views.

A couple different ways to get to a split-view

In each of the 3D views you can set a display mode and a level of detail. The different display modes are as follows:

In all display modes, you have the option of displaying lines or polygonal edges. For full detail, use the Wireframe mode. For parametric detail, use the Isoparms mode. The following figure shows examples of some display modes:

One important thing to note about the viewer is that you can preview renders directly inside a 3D view. To preview renders inside a view, use the hotkey Ctrl + R. To toggle an interactive render region, use the hotkey Alt + R. You can also use the Render menu or the rendering portion of the top Command palette.

An interactive render region

Within a 3D view, many objects can be edited via interactive manipulation handles. For example, directly inside the 3D view, you can control a spot light's cone and falloff distance.

Adjusting a spot light's cone in a 3D view

Here are some simple rules that are applicable throughout the interface, and will save you a lot of time.

Control + click to Keyframe

To create a keyframe on any attribute, control/Ctrl + click (hold down the control key on your keyboard and click on the mouse) on the little circle next to that attribute. Alternately, to add a keyframe to multiple attributes, highlight the first attribute, control/Ctrl + click to highlight additional attributes, then control/Ctrl + click the little circle next to any of the highlighted attributes to add a keyframe to all of them.

control/Ctrl + click adds a keyframe

For this tutorial, we'll be using a free third-party plugin named Thrausi to shatter a 3D logo. Thrausi 1.22 is provided free of charge by Nitro4D, and Thrausi 1.36 is available for download for a small donation. Nitro4D also makes a more powerful commercial object-shattering plugin called NitroBlast.

Before we begin, we'll need to download Thrausi from Nitro4D's website and install it. The website address is http://nitro4d.com/blog/freebie/thrausi/.

If you would like to purchase NitroBlast instead, you can find that plugin at http://nitro4d.com/blog/donationware/nitroblast/.

We downloaded Thrausi 1.22, which comes in the form of a ZIP archive (Thrausi-1.22-R12.zip).

Extract the ZIP archive in the default fashion, creating a directory called Thrausi 1.22 R12. Move that entire directory into the Plugins folder of your Cinema 4D installation. The Plugins folder can be found in the following location:

The next time you launch Cinema 4D, you should have a working installation of the Thrausi plugin!

To import a logo from Adobe Illustrator (AI), make sure that the vector logo file is saved in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 or an earlier format.

To open the vector artwork in a fresh scene, you can use the main menu (File | Open...). To import the artwork into a scene that is already open, use the Merge... option instead of the Open... option (File | Merge...). Either way, browse to the AI file for your logo. When the logo first comes in, it will likely be off-center and the paths need to be organized before we proceed with modeling.

The logo imported into C4D, before doing any cleanup

First, let's center the pivot of the logo. Select the top group of the imported logo in the Object Manager palette. Launch the Axis Center dialog (Mesh | Axis Center | Axis Center). In the Axis Center dialog, turn on the options for Include Children and Use All Objects.

The Axis Center window, with options set

Click on the Execute button. The pivot of the main logo group will be moved to the center of the logo.

With the main group still selected, set the P.X, P.Y, and P.Z values in the Attribute Manager to 0. The logo now sits at the center of the scene.

The logo, with its pivot centered and placed at the center of the word

Next, we'll want to organize all of the paths that came in to prepare them for modeling. This involves the following three concepts:

We'd like to simplify our scene by combining splines that don't need to be separate objects. This will make everything simpler later on.

Now we'll create a background for the logo to rest on. However, instead of creating a simple flat background, we'll create one that the logo fits into like a puzzle piece. This will give us much more depth once the logo is shattered, and will serve as a background for the logo to read against. To create a background, follow the subsequent steps:

In some cases, you'll want to separate a compound path into multiple paths. To do so, select the compound path and use the Explode Segments command (Mesh | Spline | Explode Segments).

Once we are happy with the logo's splines, it's a good idea to rename them. To do so, select a spline in the Object Manager palette and hit the Enter key. You can use the up and down arrows to quickly move through and rename all of your paths. Once you are done renaming, hit the Enter key again or change your selection to finish renaming.

The Object Manager palette, before and after organizing our paths

Now it's finally time to start modeling.

Ordinarily, we would create an Extrude generator, place it in the hierarchy, and parent the spline to it. Here, we'll use a special trick to extrude each spline in half the time it would normally take.

There is one very important thing to note about bevels. By default, bevels grow outward from your original path. In many cases this can have an undesired effect since the overall thickness of your logo will increase and it will look different from the original vector art. To fix this, turn on the Constrain option in the Caps section of the extrude generator's attributes.

On the left, constrain left off. On the right, constrain turned on and the logo is preserved

We now have our shapes the way we like them. The logo is extruded and our bevels are set up nicely. Also, most of the extrusion slides into a compound shape that fills our background.

Now let's create and assign materials to different parts of the logo.

Edit the material as you want. You can select the material in the Material Editor, or double-click the Texture tag in the Object Manager palette. In the Basic tab of the material, you can turn different surface properties on or off, such as Specular, Reflection, and so on. Once a surface property is enabled, a tab appears for that property for further editing.

Our logo with materials assigned

Now it's time to shatter the logo using Nitro4Ds Thrausi plugin. Follow these steps to shatter the logo:

Each letter has been shattered and put into a MoGraph Fracture group. This is a special group that will allow us to assign MoGraph effectors to the shards. If you'd like to regroup the shards into different Fracture objects to better organize your scene, it's perfectly safe to do so.

Since we're not using dynamics for this tutorial, we deleted the Rigid Body tags from the Fracture groups. If you wanted to use dynamics to animate the shards, you could leave these tags for a start.

One thing you may notice is that the bevels of the logo no longer have sharp edges. That's because the phong shading angle is too high. If the phong angle is 80 degrees, then any polygonal edge with 80 degrees or less between adjacent face normal will appear smoothed. These properties are controlled by the Phong tag.

Now let's edit the phong tags on the shards:

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll be using MoGraph effectors to move the shards instead of dynamics.

Now we'll create a Plain effector to spread out the shards. Just follow the subsequent steps to create a Plain effector:

If everything is done correctly, you should see all your pieces floating forward. The Plain effector's linear falloff ensures that pieces closer to the front of the logo come out further as shown in the following screenshot:

Right now the pieces are only moving on the z axis. We'll need to scatter them slightly on the x and y axes, as well as give them some rotation.

Luckily, we set up the Plain effector so that the weight falloff gets recorded on the individual pieces, this value supports controlling other movement, rotation, and scale of the shards with additional effectors.

Let's create a Random effector that will inherit weight from the Plain effector. To create a Random effector follow the subsequent steps:

One cool thing about Thrausi and Nitroblast is that they create and assign a new material to the inner surfaces of the shards.

We're going to add a file texture to the color channel of that material by following these steps:

To change tiling or texture placement, you'll need to do so on the shards' tags. Since there are too many shards to do this manually, we'll use a contextual menu in the Material Editor window to select all of the tags associated with that material. Therefore, to change the tiling or texture placement, follow these steps:

The time has come to add animation to our scene. Before we add any keyframes, we'll set the frame rate and frame duration of the animation by following these steps:

Let's also set the final output resolution before we begin, so we'll see the proper aspect ratio represented while looking through and animating our camera. To set the final output resolution follow these steps:

The plan for our animation is to have the logo form over the course of a single shot. In the beginning, the camera will be off to the side and all of the shards of the logo will be floating out in space. As the camera orbits to the front, the shards will settle into place, revealing the logo at the end.

The logo needs to be fully built halfway through the animation. This will ensure that we can have a little camera drift at the end, and plenty of time to read the logo after it's formed. Let's set some keyframes on the Plain effector to block this out. Since the Random effector inherits the weight of the Plain effector, we won't need to set any keyframes on the Random effector at all.

Let's animate the Plain effector object. The Random effector will be animated indirectly as a result, because of the weight inheritance we set up previously. To animate the Plain effector, perform the following steps:

Let's build a camera rig which will allow us to get a nice orbiting camera move. We could simply keyframe a camera at the start position and the end position, but that would give us a linear move. Instead, we'll parent a camera to a null that will rotate to create an orbiting move.

The difference between simply setting keyframes on a camera's position (left) and parenting the camera to a Null object that is rotating (right)

Now follow these steps to parent a camera to a null that will rotate to create an orbiting move:

We've blocked out the animation of the shards. Now we'll animate our new camera rig. Remember, the only position we'll control on the Camera object itself is P.Z. We'll leave the P.X and P.Y attributes of the Camera object at 0 for the entire animation.

Now let's animate the Camera object. We'll work backwards from the frame when the shards land in their final position.

Now we'll set keyframes for the camera at the beginning of our animation by performing the following steps:

Finally, we'll add a little drift to the Camera object after the shards have landed, so there's still some slight movement while the audience reads the logo. Let's add a little drift:

The next step after achieving an animation that we're content with is to add light to our scene. We'll use a combination of a spotlight and global illumination. The spotlight will give us a nice key light, and the global illumination will fill in the ambient light in a realistic fashion. We'll use a target light rig to set up our key light. To light a scene follow these following step:

Looking through the light in a 3D view makes it easy to adjust your light. Let's set that up and fine tune our Light object.

Now, let's set up the Global Illumination (GI) object:

You will likely find that you want to tweak lights and materials to get the look you want. We turned the Light object's intensity down and tweaked its position once the GI was added to the scene. We also added a very slight reflection to the outer surfaces of the logo.

In production, you often need to render as quickly as possible. Some of the effects we'll use, such as 3D depth-of-field, could be closely simulated in compositing, thus saving a lot of time in the end. However, it's still a good idea to see how such effects can be achieved with the highest quality by applying them during your actual 3D render.

Let's set up some photographic effects on the camera. First, we'll need to switch the primary renderer to Physical. The Physical renderer option needs to be turned on to take advantage of certain effects. This option can be enabled through the Render Settings window by performing the following steps:

Now let's set up some effects on the camera. We'll add a focus pull with a shallow depth-of-field and slight chromatic aberration:

Now, let's animate the Null object to create the focus pulling effect:

After a few test renders, and a few more tweaks, we're ready to render the entire animation:

Now, hit render!

Render your animation. We're just going to render locally for now (on one machine). Use the Render to Picture Viewer command, either through the top Command palette or through the main menu (Render | Render to Picture Viewer).

In this section, we covered a lot of material very briefly. Any single aspect of the scene we've just created could be covered in extensive detail. Hopefully, this has provided you with a good start so that you can continue exploring all that Cinema 4D has to offer with more confidence.

Remember, if you have any questions about specific properties of an object, you can always find them in the help documentation.

As of R14 Cinema 4D Studio, it contains a Sculpting toolkit, which allows artists to interactively sculpt organic surfaces using a pen tablet. The pipeline for sculpting is similar to that of ZBrush. Artists can step up and down through levels of mesh subdivision to sculpt either broad aspects or fine details of their object.

Sculpted surfaces can be frozen as high-resolution meshes or baked as low-resolution base meshes with displacement and/or normal maps.

To access the Sculpting toolkit, you can use either the Layout pop-up menu in the upper-right of the C4D interface, or the main menu (Window | Customization | Layouts | Sculpting).

BodyPaint is a texturing module which allows you to layout UV texture coordinates for geometry and to paint on that geometry interactively in 3D. Similar to sculpting, BodyPaint provides an interface that lets artists intuitively use very powerful tools.

You can paint with either simple colors or with textures. You can paint in UV coordinate space or as a 3D projection. BodyPaint module uses layers with transfer modes similar to Photoshop, and you can export/import your projections to/from Photoshop for any painting that requires an added level of precision.

With the BodyPaint module, you can also paint on multiple properties of a material simultaneously. This means that you can use independent Diffuse, Spec, and Bump texture maps to paint all of these material properties at once.

To access the BodyPaint 3D painting or UV editing toolkits, you can use either the Layout pop-up menu on the upper-right of the C4D interface, or the main menu (Window | Customization | Layouts | BP 3D Paint [or] BP UV Edit).

Our sculpted model, now textured using BodyPaint

MoGraph toolset helps artists to create and control complex systems of instanced objects. What would be virtually impossible via traditional hand-keyed animation can be achieved with the use of just a few procedural objects.

Groups of instanced objects can be created via a MoGraph Cloner object. The Cloner object can create instances parametrically, for example, in a 3D grid, or based on the geometry of a polygonal or spline object.

Once instance groups are created, they can be manipulated via different MoGraph effector objects. There are many types of effector objects. Just to provide a few examples, a Sound Effector object can manipulate instances using an audio file, a Shader Effector object manipulates instances with a texture, and a Random Effector object can be used to randomly scatter instances. Effector objects can also be combined to create endless varieties of effects.

Adding a simulation tag to MoGraph groups is a fast and easy way to make your instances dynamic. When combined with a MoGraph Fracture object, this can create startling shattering effects.

Text filled with spheres using MoGraph, then procedurally animated using simulation tags

XPresso offers all of the power of expressions, but in an intuitive, node-based graphic interface. For artists who don't like to program or write code, this editor gives them access to the same powerful techniques accomplished through programming, except without writing a single line of code.

An XPresso expression that drives Thinking Particles.

Thinking Particles is a procedural particle system. Particles are created and manipulated using XPresso expressions. The fact that Thinking Particles are procedural means that a mastery of this particle system enables an artist to create virtually any effect they can think of.

Thinking Particles can also be combined with MoGraph toolset in certain cases.

A flocking particle system from the C4D example scenes

For hardcore users who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty writing code, Cinema 4D comes with a Python implementation. Python can be used to create plugins, scripts, custom MoGraph effectors, and much more.

As a higher-level programming language, Python's ease of use and portability has caused it to be adopted by software vendors and production studios alike. Python code that is based on standard libraries can be used in any software that has a Python implementation.

If you are interested in learning more about Python in Cinema 4D, you can find the documentation at http://www.maxon.net/en/support/developer-support.html.

Cinema 4D comes with a full suite of tools for simulating soft-body, rigid-body, cloth, and hair dynamics.

Simulation tags control dynamic attributes such as collision. Simulation objects can also be created for creating dynamic links between objects, or for creating dynamic forces. Cloth simulation can be applied to any polygonal object.

The sphere destroys a wooden crate through the use of dynamic simulation

Cinema 4D comes with a suite of tools for creating hair and fur. Aside from the obvious uses, these tools can also create effects such as grass.

Hair is manipulated by control curves that can be styled interactively. Hair can also be dynamic and interact with collision objects or forces in your scene. For fine tuning, a hair material allows artists to enable and texture attributes such as clumping, curling, and waviness.

Hair applied to our sculpted model, then styled using control curves

The Physical render engine can mimic real-life camera phenomena such as depth-of-field and chromatic aberration. All internal calculations happen in linear floating point color space and use real-world units. This makes it relatively effortless to achieve photorealistic effects.

The physical renderer mimics photographic phenomena, such as depth-of-field and chromatic aberration

Cinema 4D plays well with most major 2D and 3D applications. 3D formats for import/export include:

In addition to these formats, Cinema 4D can also export render passes to the following applications, with some being able to import 3D data for cameras and lights:

There are some other commercial sites you can surf into: