Tag Archives: Cinema 4D
Updated Brooklyn Nets Promo
Wow! It’s been more than a month since I last updated my blog. I’ve been pretty busy freelancing at Fox Business Network creating on air graphics and teaching myself Cinema 4D. Now back to Cinema 4D! In the process of learning about extruding, lighting, texturing, and animating I figured that I was far enough along where I could actually apply what I’ve learned so far. So I decided to “update” the Brooklyn Nets Promo that I created in After Effects awhile ago. In the original version of the video the Brooklyn Nets logo is flat and there’s no real movement to it. In the new version, I replaced the flat Brooklyn Nets logo with a 3D version and there’s a lot of movement to it (basketball spinning and shield swinging from left to right).
The whole process was a very good learning experience, especially when it came to the integration of Cinema 4D with After Effects CC. I’m a big fan of how you can make changes in Cinema 4D, save the changes, and once you move over to After Effects the changes from C4D are almost instantly reflected. The only issue that I ended up having though was with the “in-box” shaders (textures) that came with C4D showing up in AE. For some reason AE doesn’t recognize the shaders and as a result you get a flat, dark C4D object in AE. I did a little research on the interwebs and this issue appears to be a bug between the 2 programs. The work around was outputting an animation sequence from C4D and importing the sequence into AE for final output. Below is a screen shot from the original video showing the flat 2D Brooklyn Nets logo. Hope you like the update. Let me know.
Back to Learning C4D – Adding Materials and Lights
Here’s the next step in the evolution of my Cinema 4D office. A simple light over the desk has been added as well as floor trim and crown molding which is conveniently not pictured (the profiles were created in Adobe Illustrator, imported into C4D, and extruded using the Extrude NURB). The windows were created using two Boole objects. I still need to add materials to the vase, desk, and the office chair. I’m kind of curious to see how the desk will appear when I assign a texture to it. I think that the texture on the desk will probably need to be mapped so that the texture is going in the right direction when applied to the desk.
In the next post I should be adding more textures, more lights, and shadows. This is getting a lot more fun the deeper I get into the tutorial.
Back to Learning C4D
It’s been awhile since I last worked with Cinema 4D so I figured I start with something simple so I could get used to the program again and continue with my Cinema 4D self-education. I decided to use a book called Cinema 4D Beginner’s Guide by Jen Rizzo for my reintroduction. Going through the book I found that some of the text was written in a confusing manner but having some prior knowledge of Cinema 4D helped me get through those issues. Despite a few glitches in the text, I would say that this book is a pretty good guide for a beginner so far. The initial exercise has been to create an office with furniture in it and in the process learn about the different kinds of modeling techniques that can be used with Cinema 4D. The book teaches you how to model using the building blocks of modeling – Edges, Faces, and Points. Once you’re done with that you move on to the “cool” modeling tools like Splines, NURBS, HyperNURBS, and Deformers. I’ve become a big fan of Deformer tools, one of which I used to bend a skinny flat box into the curved seat of the desk chair. Pictured above is the initial part of the exercise. I’ll be posting my progress every few days and hopefully ending up with a pretty cool short animation. After I’m done with this book I think that I’ll try Greyscale Gorilla’s Introduction to Cinema 4D which should take my C4D schoolin’ up a notch.
My First Cinema 4D Model
Here’s my first Cinema 4D model (top picture) created for a commercial by Core Studios for the Biscotti TV Cam. It’s an interesting thing to learn two 3D programs at the same time (the other program I’m learning is Maya). It’s definitely a good opportunity to compare the similarities and the differences of the two programs. Though I like Maya very much, I think that when my internship has concluded at Core Studios and my Maya class is over at Mercer County Community College I’m going to continue learning Cinema 4D and abandon learning Maya. To me, Cinema 4D is just as sophisticated as Maya but an easier program to learn. The other reason for this decision is the just released announcement that Maxon, the makers of Cinema 4D, and Adobe, the makers of After Effects, are integrating Cinema 4D and After Effects with an even tighter workflow than before. Once I get the knack of integrating Cinema 4D and After Effects I’m sure I’m going to be able to make some really interesting videos.
As soon as the commercial is online I’ll post a link showing how my model was used in the commercial. Stay tuned…