Cinema 4D tutorial - Animating with deformers (beginner)

Thor's back check it yo hey guys welcome back if you're new here my name's Shawn dove a motion designer from Melbourne Australia and today we're going to take a look at another cinema 4d quick tip in this one we're gonna get back to basics we'll set up a simple keyframe animation and then take advantage of the former's to enhance it creating some nice anticipation and fluid motion and then we'll get it ready to render out let's take a look we're gonna create eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar sophomores this is the little animation that we're gonna try and have a bit of a bit of a play with today so now the idea is that we'll define a bit of a texture at the start and we'll jump in the cinema will set up the shape give it some key frames to some basic animation we're gonna enhance that using cinema for these deformers and then of course that's render this bad boy out alright let's let's jump in we'll still have a bit of a play alright first up I'm starting in Photoshop I'm gonna set up a new little document here what we need to do first up is define our text a little example you just saw I had dope plastered on the side of a cube so let's just have a crack at setting up that exact same setup so I'm in Photoshop and I'm just gonna select something it's gonna select a slightly different font Georgio sans always sits nicely with me especially throwing that into italic look at that I really looking like we're we're good to go I'm just gonna Center it up in my frame and Scout it up my artboard here is 1920 by 1080 I'm not being too precious to fill it I'm just just making sure our text is nice and big hitting C on my keyboard to bring up my crop tool so what we want to do is crop in our canvas so we're far tighter on our text holding down alt or option at the same time while pulling on the opposite end will will scale them in uniformly just type I'm understand it come down a little bit so I'm trying to hear it's just create a little bit of a gap a little bit of a stroke around our text do the same with the sides let's pull them in once we're happy hit enter and something like that looks pretty good alright now what we can do let's save this we'll call this our dope texture we can leave that as a PSD that's absolutely fine nice so we've now got our texture that's going to be on this side of our cube but just to help make sure that we're not going to skew our text when we applied this to the side of a cube let's just come up and have a look at our canvas size what I like to do is just change that into pixels and what this is gonna do is give us some width and height dimensions and we'll use that as a bit of a rough guide to setting up our cube alright now that we've got that let's jump over into cinema and set up a new document and just grab ourselves a trusty cube now if I jump back into Photoshop for a second you can see the width of our canvas is one three four four pixels with a height of five eight eight so let's use these to set up our cube so first up one three four four now let's grab our X and scale it out a little bit and we can see that's our width that's the width of our cube and this is the one that we're gonna want to go one three four four I can then tab down into our wire jump back into Photoshop if you want to double check the height and it was five eight eight so let's go five hey I'm gonna give that same I'm gonna give that same dimension to our Z width as well with a cube so like I'm just gonna hit s to scale that back up into our frame and as I move around this now you can see we've still got that nice got that nice square square edge this is a perfect little rectangle beautiful it's gonna drop another cube into our scene so we get a bit of a sense of just the generic scale that a cube comes you know when we're not gonna need this nearly as big so now that we've so that we've set it up at the right ratio now let's scale it back down to a more manageable size sitting T on my keyboard to bring up the scale tool let's just scale this down not being too precious look it around 40 percent that's gonna be perfect we can then delete that other little reference cube and let's frame up our main cube if I can be on our keyboard you know see we've got very little geometry at the moment so let's just give this a little bit more so our X height this is our this is our longest edge so I'm going to give this a few more segments let's go 15 and 10 in both the X and Y in both the y and z side and actually in this X I might increase it a little bit something so a bit more uniform looks like 20 that's perfect all right don't no texture field here double click let's bring up a new texture let's rename this this is our dope let's jump into it and what I'd like to do here let's come down to our alpha let's enable that click on the three little dots here and let's navigate to where we saved our little image texture so with that selected I'm gonna open it no I don't need a created copy and that's perfect let's throw that texture onto our cube for a second from the reason we have applied this in the Alpha is now this is masking wherever our black text is on the cube when this texture is applied to our cube you can see it perfectly fits that face it perfectly fits the face of our cube that web set and that's why it's important to try and set your cube up to the exact same size that you've set your art board up for your reference text and what this allows us to do now is we have a second texture I was darken this off a little bit and I'll apply this to our cube or so and let's make sure our dope texture is on top and what we're gonna get now is that text showing back through thanks that other texture and why this is good is now we can add some reflection or just have a bit a bit more of a play with that with that new underneath texture which which we might do in a few moments all right nice I'm gonna drop a camera into our scene here and we want a frame we want to be looking perfectly at this front face let's look through our camera I'm just gonna zero out its rotation grab our cube hit s in the viewport to frame it up reflect our camera and you can see our rotation is completely zeroed out so now we can just zoom in a little bit frame it up in the center perfect and it come up two tags cinema 4d tags and just add a protection to our camera just so we can stay locked into this position now in the reference animation it was kept very simple that's exactly what going to try and do here we're gonna do some simple keyframe animation and then just enhance it using some of the deformers that cinema 4d offers I'm gonna save this for now great so now we're almost set up and ready to go great so now we're pretty much set up to start animating this little cube so with it selected I'm gonna jump into our coordinates we want to create this little spin we want to create this little spin reveal into the next face so let's grab our cube I'm gonna hit on our keyboard to bring up our rotation tools and with our cube selected I'm just gonna rotate a little bit because this is the this is the direction we need it to go and you can see in our coordinates here it's actually our pitch that's rotating so seeing zero there for a second and add a keyframe just to that pitch parameter now before we now before it does spin I want to build up a bit of that anticipation that we're gonna be using the deformers for but for now we're just focusing on this actual rotation so I'm going to add another keyframe to pitch at 10 frames in and all that's gonna do is just hold that for that initial 10 frames for us now my document at the moment is set up by default at 30 frames a second so we're gonna come all the way to 30 frames that's one second in our animation unless his rotate this -90 and add another keyframe i hate's watch that back holds for 10 frames and then rotates between frame 10 and frame 30 not looking all that flash at the moment but we've got a missile spin for us to have a bit of a play with alright so now we want to build in that anticipation so I'm going to come up to add to form is here and I'm gonna grab ourselves a twist deformer let's grab that and make it a child of our cube with that twist selected come over to its object tab and we're just gonna hit fit to parent and now as I start to increase this angle you can see it's fitting the size of our shape but it's not twisting the right way for us so let's grab our twist and we just need to rotate this around in this case I'm just going to need to rotate it 90 degrees reheat fit to parent and now you can see we're getting this great twist happening within this cube so I'm gonna zero out its angle and add a keyframe at frame 0 all right now let's scrub forward I'm gonna go to frame 10 which is the exact spot that our cube starts spinning from and now I'm just gonna increase our angle in the opposite direction that our cube is actually spinning so I'm gonna go 90 degrees now as I scrub back through these frames you can see we just get that little bit of anticipation as it whips back around so now but now we need it to ultimately ultimately rests and resolve clear with our dope Center in the frame there so it's come to frame 30 and I'm just gonna zero out our angle and add another keyframe now let's scrub through this that's looking pretty that's not looking too bad there's a few little pacing things that we could try and fix up there which we might do which will do it in just a moment I'm thinking but already that's under feel more interesting having that little bit of a whip right at the start all right let's grab our cube I'm gonna come in to our F curve time line now with just the cube selected you can see here but zoom out a little bit these three key frames are as 0 to 30 we can see we hold from 0 to 10 and then slowly easy ease between those next two keyframes what I'm thinking is I wouldn't mind it whipping around a little bit quicker and then easing in to its final position let's grab our keyframe at frame 30 and I'm just gonna stretch that Bezier handle and what this is gonna do is allow us to get into that position far quicker and more just and it'll ease into that final position that's not too bad we could potentially pull that back a little bit close up make that I'm not loving not actually loving that animation I'm gonna undo that a couple of times to remove that handle if we grab if we grab our key keyframe at frame 10 instead hold shift I'm just gonna increase our handle a little bit there let's have a look at that I might need to actually do both of these handles let's just just tidy that up a little bit it's feeling it's not feeling too bad alright alright this is something that this is something look not too bad I got that initial little spin and now what we want is we're going to hold this for a moment and then we want to push it towards our camera so I am thirty there with whoever fully resolved it's at frame 30 I think what we're gonna do is kick this off again from frame 60 that'll be one second of hold in between these two little these little moves we're setting up with the cube so let's grab our cube in this case I'm gonna hit e to bring up our move tool might find it easier to jump into your for years for a moment we're gonna be animating the Z position alright so at frame 60 let's add a keyframe I'm out of it let's do the exact same little setup we did before ten frames in let's add a hold keyframe and then at frame 90 I'm gonna push it towards that camera maybe something like minus 300 I'd be a little bit closer let's go - 250 add a keyframe scrub through beautiful it's gonna add a few more keyframes to our timeline here for us to keep playing with so just as we created answers a patient for our spin we now want to build in some anticipation for this push towards the camera let's go to frame 60 so we've got our cube this time I'm gonna grab ourselves a bend let's grab that I'm gonna put it beneath our twist but as a child to our cube and not the twist so you can see when I drop that in this is now just affecting the cube we're building up a bit of a bit of a stack of these deformers let's jump into the object tab of our bend it fit the parent and let's just increase our strength let's see which way is this bending now we can see it's certainly bending our geometry but not in the way we want it to we want this to bend backwards we want to get that a little bit of a a whip happening as it pushes towards us again so whether our band selected let's just rotate this around so it's facing the right orientation so look at that couple of rotations now we're able to bend this geometry I'm going to enable keep Y access length and this will ensure that doesn't stretch beyond the parameters of upset so that's zero added strength and frame 60 that's where I've set the keyframe on our cube to set that initial hold frame it's going to our bend and add a keyframe at the strength at 0% let's move to frame 17 I'm just going to push this back a little bit I don't want to distort it too much it looks like that's 75 75 degrees that's looking really good keyframe the strength and as we come forward to 90 let's zero that out add another keyframe let's just watch these let's just watch these first 90 frames back so we get that little bit of a spin in the cube we get two we get the anticipation from the twist and the bend and I think what we do what we're going to need is just for that to feel like it whips forward a little bit quicker let's grab our cube jump back into our F curve just using the number two to zoom out and the one to move across so let's grab that keyframe at frame 70 I'm holding shift just to grab the one handle let's move that across a little bit how does that look it might need that let's do the same with our Bend so now we've got that little bit of a delay as it sort of whips into that final spot hmm Bend push all right this is starting to feel kind of cool this is done to feel kind of cool wet it's got the couple of deformers it's now we're gonna go another second further let's just add a few more keyframes here so a few more keyframes to our timeline jump into our cube so a frame 90 is where we've pushed it forward here let's hold for another second so it's gonna bring us to 120 now rather than animating that rather than animating the position I thought let's just jump let's just grab another one of these deformers and have a bit of a play the one that I think always creates a really cool look and actually kind of get this inflated sort of finished is this verify so let's grab that bad boy and we'll throw that underneath our Bend as a child to the cube as well let's hit Fitz a parent I'm just gonna pull our strength down to zero at a keyframe at zero strength at frame 120 unless he's go ten frames forward let's give this something like it's got a little bit further let's go something like 60% of course we could push this all the way I'm gonna get a perfect circle but I'm just gonna leave it some around 60% we get these nice little still some reference to our cube there we'll add a keyframe we'll add a keyframe at frame 130 now let's just scrub through our timeline here so I want to hold it I want to hold on verify here for another second so let's go 140 150 160 there's our 30 frames keyframe it's strength at 60 let's give ourselves another 10 frames and we'll just pull that back down to zero all right let's watch this back we've got a spin and the twist that pushed forward with the bend now that's verify and it deflates itself and see we had a little bit of a jump between the start and the end that we want to create a nice little seamless loop here and the reason for that is we've pushed our cube forward in frame but we really need to push it back to end up at that final position so let's jump into our coordinates and we know that between frame 160 and 170 is where we're removing us verify by pulling back on that strength so let's go to let's do the same thing with our position let's go to 160 I'm gonna add a keyframe to our Z position - 250 go forward 10 frames I'm just gonna zero that out in a keyframe now you can see it both the start and the finish our position on that Z on that z axis is zero so that's perfect we're now starting and finishing at the exact same spot let's have a play and just have a quick look make sure that we're sort of happy with the movement we're getting so far at any point we can come in and tweak these keyframes maybe we want to just shift that bend along a little bit so it doesn't animate along perfectly with the cube all right nice this is starting to look pretty good alright so now we've got all our key frames set what we want to do is just further enhance them a little bit more by using these deformers the best way to do that is grab one of these jiggle bad boys let's grab that will again throw that beneath us verify as a child to our cube let's hit play now and see what we get we get an all this great jiggle for free might grab that Bend I don't think that looked quite as nice with the jiggle all right let's jump into our F curve I think instead we want to ramp into it a bit further we actually want to ramp into it a bit quicker there we go there we go all I did was just fixed the Bezier curves between our Cube pushing towards the camera and that band whipping it around so now it just whips into that position bang a little bit quicker and that's looking pretty good we get this nice shrinking as it blows up and collapses down from thats verify now you don't see it all the time but just especially when we go for that Bend you might have noticed we're seeing a little bit of a texture on this side faces of this cube now because of how we've set this cube up it's it's not pretty it's not projecting the texture very nicely onto those edges I'm actually gonna go to frame zero and jump out of my camera for a second just to remind you guys it's all stretched it's stretched on that side face but what the really fun thing is all this at the moment is just done on a primitive cube so at any point we could come in here and manipulate just turn the jiggle off before making any changes as that might um might not might not make the updates live in the viewport for you but at any point we can come in here and completely change the parameters of this cube and I think that's really powerful I think that's and just give you a heap of control with the flexibility but what I don't want is this texture applied to these side faces and because our cube is still a primitive I'm actually not able to select any of those faces just to demonstrate if I hit C to make the editable now we can start selecting our faces to make a selection I'm gonna undo that because ultimately I want to keep our cube as a primitive so a really great way to be able to make selections on a primitive is by using a correction to form a so let's grab that I'm gonna make this a child over a cube as well and just throw it on top of that twist and now now you can see when I've got our correction selected it's a net it's allowing me to make selections of our cube I'm gonna hit you L to make a loop selection and I'm just gonna make a ring selection just on the isn't that very edge Loup I'm gonna hit you F to make a fill selection and just fill that edge and just fill that side cap let's come up to select and just go set selection and let's do the same to the other side of our cube here just spinning around it got our correction selected I'm gonna remove deselect that selection tag so we don't overwrite it again hit ul to grab that outside loop you have to fill the cap come up to select and go set selection great so we've been out these two polygon selections we grab both of them gonna grab both of them and throw them onto the cube let's now grab our dope texture it's gonna make sure our color is 100% white on it so we're nice and bright and now just duplicate that disabling the alpha and I'm gonna drop that onto our cube that's gonna override everything because it's the topmost texture but now as I isolate that purely on one of those selection tags you now see that a cap is perfect white and it's exactly or after you can add one more texture to our cube just to give it that initial selection as well so now we can zoom around we're not gonna be getting any of that texture showing up on those side caps or side faces and jump into our locked off camera let's hit play again and just have another look you know re-enable our jiggle so we can get all that fluid motion back and great now when we now whenever we see some of those side faces not gonna get any other distorted text nice I think this is a this is looking pretty fun I'm gonna grab a disc and just pull this down beneath our cube you know scale this up a little bit and this cube is purely for us to catch some shadows and give us a bit of a ground plane on this to feel like a bit of a floating cube but at the same time very flat - scale this up a little bit more so we're going off our frame let's call this disc ground and I'll also throw in a background object to our scene as well let's make one last texture turn off both the color and reflectance and we'll just worry about the luminance throw that on to our background using command select that texture and duplicating it to our disk let's hit render and have a quick look at what we've got all right looking a little bit full out at the moment not quite what we're after we'll jump into our render settings I'm gonna use the physical renderer come down to the objects tab now I'm gonna deselect that default light hit render again alright we're looking a bit flat we're looking a bit flat and the reason for that is didn't want to use global illumination for this render I want it to be nice and quick so although we've been working in the color Channel I'm gonna disable that and enable our our luminance channel for both our dope top layer mask and also just those side caps as well so we really didn't hear the extra Lumina texture for our background and ground there but that's all right let's hit render again perfect our text is now showing up nice and crispy alright so we've got our ground we want to get some shadowing happening let's jump into our render settings again go to our effects tab and I'm going to include some ambient occlusion slide this over a little bit for a second hit render and you can see we're not really getting a heap showing up it still looks quite flat or we're really seeing is just that black text showing through on air you but if we change our maximum ray length in our ambient occlusion let's go maybe 600 hit render again and look at that we're now starting to see some of that we're now start to see some of that shadowing showing up in our actual image it's a little bit noisy at the moment it's a little bit noisy at the moment but what we could do is come over to our sampler if we change that to something like hi this is of course gonna increase the render time you're gonna get a far cleaner image so we might want to just turn that up for that final render so for now we'll keep playing with medium and that gives us some pretty fast feedback what I love about this is because we've increased that maximum rail length we get some shadowing running up the face of our cubit by the time we sort of get to the top we're bleeding off into the background again and I just think this makes for a really really great look so it was a really simple setup we grabbed our cube we animated its rotation its position and then just enhanced it by animating deformers around it using just a disc and that background to form ourselves a bit of a floating limitless world and then and then just by increasing that Ray length on that ambient occlusion that's how we're able to add back in those shadows and create something that feels really quite quite unique and and tactile at the same time you feel you could reach out and touch this thing and you can see we're rendering this and we're spinning out these frames in four seconds I think that's that's really great so once I rendered this out took it over into After Effects synched it up with a bit of a track and then if you like that little that little black look through that into After Effects as well it's the same clip just put a little invert on it all right so that's great we've got this great little looping animation 200 frames that jiggled áformer really just has that base layer enhancing all the other ones and then those correction deformers to be able to make selections on primitive objects I think that's it's a really powerful thing so hopefully you've been able to take away something from this one just a bit of a beginner's tip jump in and start using deformers to enhance your keyframe animation alright thanks guys hola I'll see you again soon Cheers those back if you want to see more of the god of render in 2020 don't forget to Like and subscribe a cheeky comment wouldn't hurt either even your local superhero needs a bit of an ego boost but the money the pressure because it's there for my blessings I feel like I'm pulling the Ferdie is back tell me I'm popping some from a design that's why I call it Bonin put pressure in the solid I wanted to fall in affection at something it because I got Palin's or eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar sabor my breath through the money the press will be calling for my blessings I feel like I'm pulling the Ferdie is back tell me I'm popping some form of design that's why I call it Bonin pressing the solid I wanted the effects and I summon it because acapellas or eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar eleazar sabor my

Channel: Sean Dove

Views: 40,783

Keywords: Cinema 4D, C4D, animation, tutorial, motion design, 3D

Id: xRCslbX_pMA

Length: 31min 12sec (1872 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 27 2019