Working in Cinema 4D

[Gare]

One of our members asked a good question: "How do you extrude something in Cinema 4D?"

First, an extrude is made up of two components: a path (a spline, and it can be a compound path or a simple one), and an Extrude operation.

The Extrude operator is called a NURBs object, because it performs the extrude projection in 3D space using Non-Uniform Rational B-splines...in English this means the resulting extrude object looks smooth and uses B-spline patches and not polygons. Polygons in modeling suck, they're inflexible and the province of DXF files from almost 20 years ago!

So first, you go to Object>Create Spline. Choose your tool of preference. Alternatively, if you have a program such as Xara that can export to Illustrator format (I image Illustrator can do this, too), in a new document window, you just drag the file into C4D.

Now, for extrudes, the important thing is the view you use to create the spline because by default the Extrude NURBs guy wants to project from the front of the scene backwards. Your main window is by default a 3/4 perspective and you don't want to go drawing your spline path in this view. Instead, click the multi-view icon at top right of the main view window and then draw your spline in the bottom right pane, the front view by default.

To be continued because we limit ourselves to two image posts per entry on this forum...

-g-

[Gare]

Now it's time to add the Extrude NURBs operator (an invisible object) to the scene. Choose Objects>NURBs>Extrude NURBs.

1. Check the Object Manager panel at the top right. You should have an Extrude NURBs object and a Spline object.
2. Drag the Spline object icon on top of the Extrude NURBs object. It becomes a child of the Extrude NURBs operator. It should be indented and below the Extrude icon now, and you should see a shallow extruded object onscreen now. Click the toggle view icon on any of the four panels now to return to one main 3/4 view.
3. Depending on the size of the spline, it might not be extruded deep enough. Make sure the Extrude object's icon is highlighted and not the spline on the Object Manager panel—you want to tune the extrude and not the child spline path.

4. Go to the Attributes panel at bottom right and then click on the Object tab. Tune the depth up to taste.

The mike's open and I'm taking questions for the next fifteen minutes now...

-g-

[Gare]

Here's a small file, zipped, that Mac and Win users can check out in C4D.

The edges have a bevel; you do this on the Attributes panel...Fillet Cap, and the mountains here are a Landscape object.

My Best,

Gare

[IanB]

Thanks, Gare-it’s much appreciated.
I drew a Bezier shape and extruded it. No problems; I distorted the shape (in 3D) by dragging one of the arrows, but when I tried to add a texture, the coloured arrows disappeared. I couldn’t make the arrows reappear, which probably explains why I wasn't able to do any more. I’ll try again in the morning  and examine your file.

I’ll get there, eventually.

Ian

[Gare]

I'd stop dragging them arrows, Ian! The little red green and blue guys are not always intended for dragging—everything is context-sensitive in C4D...so if you've got a texture and not an object highlighted, you're adjusting the texture.

Context-sensitivity is one of the strengths of C4D...you can do an awful lot, but nope, it's not intuitive.

I'll post more tutes over the weekend.

My Best,

Gare

[Gare]

The greatest hurdle I've heard of in C4D when mapping textures is, "Where is the damned tool???" By default, you're in object selection mode, so here goes a brief tute on how to apply a texture, how to define UV coordinates, and then how to modify the mapping.

1. Create an object, and then on the Materials palette, choose File>Load Materials. Choose Basic.c4d, the set that ships with C4D...it has a lot of fun stuff.

2. Click+drag one of the thumbnails and then drop it onto the object in the viewport. This is the easiest way to apply a texture and by default it's mapped to UVW coordinates. You'll also see a tiny thumbnail of the texture on the Object Manager palette to the right of the object on the list.

3. Click the texture thumbnail and then look down on the Attributes panel. Click the Tag tab and you'll see there's a Projection drop-down. For this example I'm using a cube, mapping the basketball texture to it. A cube usually works well with cubic projection, so choose it.

More in a sec'

Gare

[Gare]

Here's the trick: with the object, not the texture, highlighted on the Object Manager list, click the tool second from the bottom on the toolbox, the guy that looks like an "L" made out of arrows with the tiny checkerboard. This is the texture mapping tool...you get nowhere using the object select tool...a texture isn't an object.

A yellow wireframe appears over the object and you can now use the scale, move and rotate tools at the top of the UI to move the texture mapping, not the object.

To further manipulate the object, go back to the object tool on the toolbox (the mapping wireframe will diappear).

I know, I know...this is neither intuitive nor simple.

My Best,

Gare

[Gare]

I see there have been 5 downloads of the example C4D file, but only Ian had asked for an example!

So:

1. Chime in and pipe up! This is a discussion forum, a free place to share, lurk if you like, but sharing is appreciated by all. As you can see, Barbara and I are not in it for the money.

2. Download the file here that shows a tricky use of splines (paths) and the LoftNURBs operation. The bottle is octagonal at the bottom, but tapers to a circle at the top. This requires some node mapping, but was very easy to do using Xara. You just export the paths to Illustrator format and then drag and drop the AI file into C4D's workspace.

By the way, all the textures are native functions of C4D, no bitmap images were used to keep the download size down. The scene would probably look better with environment mapping but clearly you can do a lot of texturing stuff, such as the Fresnel effect on the glass, right in C4D.

Yours along the X, Y, and Z axes,

Gare

[IanB]

Thanks for the tutorials, Gare.
I got extrusions to work, but couldn't navigate C4D's interface. Your new tutes are inspiring—very helpful. They made the attached doodles possible (I’m quite pleased with them). Sadly, the demo doesn’t allow work to be saved, so these are just screengrabs.

I’ve looked at several 3D apps and they’re all as baffling as C4D! One program was reasonably intuitive, but it didn’t have modelling tools, so it was back to C4D. 

It’s difficult to do simple things. For example, when you’re used to Illustrator’s Pen tool, drawing a basic shape with the spline tools in 3D programs is a pain. C4D has no pen tool; you click away with the arrow, but if you don't quite get it right and then want to change the shape, you have to fiddle.

Structure>Make Editable seems a logical choice for editing shapes, but when you click the points, or drag across to select them, nothing happens. Against your advice, I dragged the coloured arrows and it worked (the points moved, changing the shape), but when I tried later, it didn’t work.

When Bezier handles are available, the shape can be edited, but this doesn’t always work.

Interesting effects can be applied to drawn shapes by holding down modifier keys (Shift, Alt, Command, Control). I haven’t worked out how and when to use these commands, however.

The icons down the left-hand side remind me of the glyphs in Stargate SG! A ‘Bubble Help’ checkbox in Preferences activates labels, which tells you what they are, but the titles were of limited help; ’Inverse Kinematics’?

I’ll try your latest tips over the next day or two. The bottle is excellent; I’ll be useful if I can reproduce the shadows, background/floor and cork. By the way, both your C4D files decompressed, but they wouldn’t open; the Mac OS lists them as ‘Unix Executable’ files. I’ll have to investigate what that means; changing the program icon might help.

The ‘heart’ shape (A) was drawn with the spline tool. The distortions were probably created with the Quantize and Crumple items in the Contextual menu. I can’t be sure as I was experimenting and the effect just materialised!
The vase (B) was drawn with the spline tool and lathed.
The circular shape (C) was drawn in Expression 3.3, saved as an Illustrator file, dragged into C4D and lathed. It worked, but C4D seems to have problems with imported files. I'll investigate this further.
The ring shapes (D) are the shape (C) modified by changing the values in the Rotation palette (part of the Coordinates palette next to the Textures palette). The second ring (top, right) was copied and pasted and revolved etc, as shown.

More soon,

Ian

PS: in Safari, images don't display when you hit the Preview button.

[IanB]

Here's the second image (D)

[Gare]

Hi Ian and everyone else who wants a run-down on what MAXON simply calls an icon palette, specifically the vertical one:

Model-You need to choose this guy in order to move, scale and rotate objects you select in the scene.

Object axis-Use this on a selected object to define its center to then later scale the object, rotate the object and so on. By defalut, object's have an axis in their center, but you might, for example, want to rotate an object off-axis; you redefine its center and then go back to Model and then use the rotate tool on the top palette.

Points, Edges, Polygons-You first decide on the part of the model you want to edit, then use the Lasso Tool guy to do the selecting, then use the Scale, Move, and/or rotate tools to modify the lassoed area of the model. Models need to be converted (Make Editable) before you can do this stuff. The shortcut is to select the object and then hit C on the keyboard.

Selection mode-Use this to auto-toggle, or do like what I do, and choose your modes manually.

Texture-Use this to change the mapping of a texture as it's applied to a surface.

Texture Axis-Use this to change the orientation of the texture relative to the surface of the object to which it's applied. In most cases, the distinction between Texture and Texture Axis is trivial, similar to the difference between object and object axis.

Object-This is used in animation, primarily for un-screwing object axis if you've transformed a model (scaled or squished it or some such). This tool looks at the object axis and not the object itself when you do transformations. It might not be relevant when you begin using the program, but it's very handy to get a straightforward approach to animating objects.

-g-

[Gare]

I mentioned in an above post that Illustrator files can be drag+dropping into Cinema 4D's viewport (as long as you have a clear view of the Illustrator file in a folder window or the desktop and C4D is not maximized). You can do File>Merge to accomplish the same thing, but there's a big-time caveat here that has to do with any modeling program's word space coordinates and the reality that Illustrator files use PostScript page definitions as part of the coding.

In PostScript, Illustrator, and most Illustrator-compatible vector drawing apps, you begin a new document with a page orientation and an origin for measuring the page (in non-nerdy terms, where the rulers zero). PostScript conventions put the zero origin at the bottom left of the page.

What this can potentially lead to is a spline origin that doesn't align with the zero of C4D's world space. You see, all operators, the LoftNURBS, LatheNURBS, and so on, are created at 0,0,0 in C4D's world space. So you've created a spline you want to use in C4D in Illustrator, or exported from Xara or CorelDRAW in Illustrator file format, and well-adjusted adult artists usually don't draw stuff so it butts to the lower left of the page but instead work in the center! The result is that the path you bring into C4D isn't zeroed to the same coordinates as, for example, a LatheNURBs operator, and you get a hula hoop instead of a screw or vase.

There are two workarounds:
1. You make sure you export your Illustrator file with the path kissing the bottom left zero origin of the page.
2. You zero the path after importing it to C4D using the Model tool and the Move tool, and it really helps to go to both the side and back views to do this and you get very precise where you move it to.

I got a font for you all. Stay tuned,

Gare

[Gare]

As a gift to this mysterious community here who are downloading my files



here's a font, Vases. otf, that contains over 26 profiles that produce interesting models when you lathe the profiles. I suggest that you don't use C4D's text tool feature but instead type a profile in Illustrator or Xara, zero the damned thing according to PostScript specs, convert it to curves before exporting, and then go to town in C4D.

This is how the little lamp model above was built, using the lowercase "r" in the font.

My Best,

[Gare]

Here's a screen snag of how the octagonal bottle's splines need to be arranged, and the Illustrator file itself. Feel free to arrange the splines, loft 'em, have a ball.

Gare

[IanB]

Hi Gare,
Thanks for sending the Stuffit archive. Sadly, it still arrives on the desktop as a Unix Executable. What’s that?

I tried several ways of opening the file. I specified that files with c4d file-endings should open in Cinema 4D. I tried drag-drop, both in the Finder and into a C4D document and Opening from the File menu, but C4D always reported; ‘Unknown File Format’. I opened the file in ResEdit, but the file type and creator fields were empty. I opened the C4D file in a tect editor and the first 8 characters were ‘XC4DC4D6’. I entered ‘XC4D’ in the File Type field and ‘C4D6 in the Creator field. The file still didn’t open.

I tried a different tack and downloaded a C4D file from this site:
http://www.c4dtextures.com/modules/rmdp/
The file, named Material Test Scene, is a zip archive. After decompression, a folder appeared containing a folder full of images (which all opened on the Mac) and a .c4d file, a Unix Executable, but this one opened by dragging and dropping onto the C4D icon in the Finder. Double-clicking didn’t open the C4D file, perhaps because the file had no icon.

I found a thread in a web forum (to do with Blender I think) which perhaps gave a clue;

‘To avoid issues with a packed blend file, use a system similar to the OS X application setup where applications are just directories containing images, sounds and the unix executable.’

In other words, the C4D file (unix executable) should be contained within a directory (folder). That's my best guess.

Enough of this impenetrable geekery; let’s get back to 3D design.

Ian