Creating Abstract Wire Art in Cinema 4D (no Plug-Ins)

hi and welcome to the poly box today we are going to create a nice abstract way art which in the end after your textual and lighted it might look something like this now for this to actually work you're gonna need release 21 because we're gonna use the feed forces object which is not available in release 20 unfortunately and below so there might be ways to do it in other releases but we are going to use the field forces object so you are going to need release 21 for this which is an exciting new feature especially for stuff like this so let's the talk around the topic too much and get started for this experiment we're going to use the Platonic object and change it to dodeca ADA because it just looks interesting now the field forces object works with vectors and this is not a vector this is a polygonal object so we need to create vectors coming from this object for that we are going to use the volume builder object drag it below so we get voxels and this has a new volume type field where you can change the generation type basically from scientists in sphere to vector and now we have created vectors from our object now at any point you can visualize what your particles do in the object which is recommended because it's kind of hard to see what these vectors actually do especially the direction and the color etc it gets really convoluted so for this reason I always just add a quick emitter just to emit particles inside my object but we need more particles so let's just increase that and as you can see right now it does nothing the reason for that is that we just generated vectors we're not applying forces to the to the particles here so to do that we need to add the simulate forces food force object now we need to tell the feed force object where the vectors are actually coming from so go to your field force object and drag your volume builder object inside of it and choose volume object now we told the field forces object that we want to use the vectors generated by the volume builder as force so we're going to increase the strength now otherwise we're not going to see much let's go to 150 and if we shoot our particles inside now you can see that we get a reaction from the particles because now we're actually applying forces to the particles but 150 is too much so let's reduce that to let's say 25 that looks better all right this is of course not the effect we're looking for but this is what I meant with visualizing it so for now you can hide the volume builder object because all the vectors that are happening are going to just going to be displayed by the feed forces object anyways so go to display and just increase the vector count to something that looks useable something like maybe five percent and disable display vector links so all the vectors look the same all right now we don't have that mess because if we don't if we have both objects activated at the same time we basically get double the vectors which is just confusing all right as I said we don't have the effect we wanted yet because for now the products are just bouncing bouncing away from the object so what we do next is we go into the volume builder and create a random field and let's double check it's not actually inside the volume builder and inside the feed force object because that sometimes happens and that's grew stuff up and just drop it below in the volume build as well so now we have a random field in the volume builder and it's creating creating a random field inside this box which is not what we want because we want the random field to actually generate vectors inside the volume we already have so go inside your volume builder go to random field and change the creation space from box to object below now the random object only creates vectors inside the the shape we already have which is the Platonic object so if we disabled the Platonic object like this we don't get any vectors at all now for now this is only well creating random fields or random vectors inside this object but we want to kind of cross it which is exactly what we're going to do because we are going to change the random field mode from normal to cross and now we get a an interesting mixture of the base object the directions of the base object in the random field now if we shoot stuff inside it can the not strong enough or it's not working because we need to change the field force velocity type from AD to velocity which basically just changes the direction of an object I offer particle to set absolute velocity which basically overrides any kind of velocity or direction a particle has in the first place so I'm not really sure why this happens but as soon as we changed the field force from ad ad to velocity to set absolute velocity this particle emitter refuses to work which is now why we are now going to switch to something that we needed to do anyways but I was planning it for later so just edit your emitter and get a matrix object now what we're going to do is we're going to create particles on the surface of of our base object but instead of the standard particles we just use we're going to use thinking particles now don't flip out there's not going to be much expresso we need some but only two nodes and a connection to make this work because many people flip out when they have thinking particles including me but it's actually really easy so take your matrix object and switch switch the mode from grid array to object and drag your platonic object inside and now change it from generate matrices only to thinking particles all right and now as you can see we are creating particles on the surface of our platonic object it doesn't look like it because the volume building gives gives the vector sum let's call it depth as you can see it's inside but if you look at the object it's straight on top of it all right change that back cross all right now to make this work just go create a expresso tag on top of your matrix object and type into the search field pass and take the P pass which is basically the particle pass and then get force take the P force object connect this go into the P force object and drag the field force inside of here which basically just tells the thinking particles pass that the field force object should influence the particles and that's that's about it so now if we simulate this you can see we get some strange movement but we get movement now this is obviously not strong enough so we're going to a feed force object and just increase the strength to something stronger until we get something that that works for us now it doesn't look good yet but it's going to going to get better don't worry let's go with 500 maybe yeah that looks great all right now the noise is way too small as you can see we can't really see any swirl eNOS in the noise so go back to your random field object and just increase the size of the noise until you get something that looks like it might work now this is a good coloration of the vectors and now if you play this you can see we get this swirly effect the particles just flowing around inside inside the noise this is of course not enough objects not even close not enough particles so just go back to your matrix object and increase the count to something at just a lot of particles now the problem is here we only see these shitty boxes but we can actually just hide the matrix object and still see the particles flowing hit play and you can see the particles are flowing around inside inside of the object now an interesting thing about the field generation is that the box the size doesn't only influence the scientist and field but also the generated vectors if you hide the field force object and show the volume by the object and you decrease the voxel size you can see that we get a ton of vectors be careful with that because you might actually crash it crash your cinema for you with that so let's just reduce this a bit maybe three this looks healthy I guess and just hide the volume builder again go back to your field force and maybe increase the display line density until you get something that that you can work with we hit play again we now get a more detailed animation basically because we just have more vectors that cinema can work with just for the sake of it because we we're looping pretty fast here increase your frame time of your project to something like 200 for now and now you can see your vectors flowing inside your object very very very nicely what I noticed when working with with this is that the the vectors don't really like hard corners and polygons so what I recommend is always getting a bevel deformer putting it below the object and just smoothing your poorness out or something that you think just still looks great and increase the subdivision to like three five something something around that area and don't forget to put it back into the volume builder and correct the order if we play the animation now you might see that the particles just flow better around they don't get stuck as much they still get stuck but this is something you can't really you can't really avoid but it's not it's not a big deal it still works okay so now how do we get the spaghetti or the wire outside of just removing particles this is where mograph comes in we go to mograph and get the tracer and we direct a matrix object this doesn't have to be here into the tracer and now if we play this you can see we get these nice splines swirling inside the object and this is what we are going to use to get our wire effect this is the point where you can really really really preview what you're actually getting per hiding everything and then just playing around with settings so you might you might think this is - these words are too big so just go back into your random field object and just decrease the size and play the animation again and you get way way way way smaller smallest words now but I think we still don't have enough we still don't have enough particles so go back to your matrix and just increase the count I'm gonna double it now 400 particles is not really much and play again and we get a really nice effect now this is a lot of swirls and I really like this effect and before we proceed let's just save our project because yeah the next thing is where you might crash your cinema4d if you have too many if you have too many polygons going on so if you have ever worked with a trace object you know that it just generates splines of course and what we can do with splines is just use them in a sweep so take your sweep place the tracer inside and get whatever you want in this case we're going to use a simple circle decrease it in size because otherwise we get polygon mess and decrease the number of offsides on the on the spline otherwise you will crash your system pretty fast because it's a lot of polygons being generated then ready to drag your circle and set the sweep and we get the effect we're looking for I think the spline is way too big still though so let's go to one maybe maybe even lower 0.8 this is just something you have to you have to configure because it's you know your creativity and as you can see we still have these ugly corners and ugly edges inside the thing which we really don't want this is where you go back to your tracer again and you can change like just like in every other spline you can change the spline type inside the tracer as well and for this kind of project the cubic spline works pretty well and the akima spline works pretty well the b-spline sometimes work some sometimes work something sometimes it doesn't this is just something you have to just to try out just pretty creative and as you can see we don't see it we don't really see an effect right now but if you change the intermediate points to something like adaptive and reduce the anger to something like 10% you can see we get way smoother splines now but this is not smooth enough for my taste so we're going back to the circle and now just increase the subdivisions again until you get something that you think you can't really see the polygons to is enough most of the time but this really doesn't look smooth enough for me yet so let's reduce the angle again is looking way better sometimes you have to you have to redo the simulation to actually get correct effects in this case so I recommend disabling the sweep otherwise you are going to calculate sweeps in real time which is slowing down your system really really fast so disable the sweep do your simulation again stop at whatever point you like like no and able to sweep again hope cinema doesn't crash and we still have edges inside it now this is a thing with the detail and the amount of vectors you have the less vectors you have the more edgy edgy your splines are going to be so you have two choices either increase the volume build a detail to something ridiculous and you get way way way way Singh with the vectors as you can see if we create create the sweep now these vectors are looking way smoother but the other way to do is to do this is make the tracer only track a sample every so Insull steps so right now it's making a point for the for the spline every frame but if we increase the sample step something like five you can see that it only disabled the sweep don't forget that you can see that it kind of strings along it's probably easiest to see if we disable them if we decrease the matrix object count something very low and now you can see it kind of creates a smoother spline because it's only creating a intermediate point every five frames you can see the spline interpolating differently as soon as a new point is generated now you can overdo this of course you can do something like 25 which is only one point every second but at this point you're losing all your detail in your in your spline it can be a great effect if that's what you're after this is the great thing you can just be creative so let's increase our count again let's see what happens now yeah now you can see it's just kind of a mess but it can still look great so this is just something you can experiment with a lot which is amazing this is the power of the new field force object you can just do so much creative stuff with it that has never been possible before in cinema but I don't like this effect too much right now so I'm just going to reduce the trace of sample steps again to something like five maybe Oh disable the sweep that the simulation flow let it flow let it flow let it flow well that was too much all right and now we can enable our sweep again let the program calculate for a second and then we have one nice object now this is still not detailed enough but again if you're not doing a close-up like this you're not going to notice but if you want if you want the detail just again go to your volume builder decrease the voxel size and let it calculate again right let's see what we have way better way smoother now keep in mind that this also changes the look of your of your vectors the particle are going to move differently because they might come into contact with vectors that haven't been before so this is all not really something you can control too much it's more like playing around with settings until you get something that you think looks great all right I still think and want more swirls in this so I'm going back to my to my let's go to to go into the random field make it visible so I can see what's happening and make it smaller something like 450 maybe now you can also change the noise type of course but something I notice is that purlins really seems to work best because others they just don't healed they often clump a lot but nonetheless you can get really interesting yourselves look at this blister turbulence just just make some mess out of the mesh it's not really visually stunning I think I I don't know something like for annoying noise can yield some interesting results but you have to scale it up most of the time something something below 500 is not really usable just let it calculate a lot of noises just also seem to trap the particles so they don't move anymore as you can see here they just stopped moving but that's not really a problem as I said uh-huh yeah I'm not really a fan of that let's just go to standard Perlin noise where is it there we go nope disable the sweep as always and play again let it flow let it blow and that 200 frames all right this is also something you just have to have to live with there's a couple of things you can do like you can you can smooth out the vectors adding a vector smooth but you should just leave it here now you can as you can see you're just slowing down your particles a lot which you can also solve by then normalizing the vectors and you get really fast vector movement we have to be careful with that go to your field force and reduce it now this was too much as you can see it's just something that you just have to play around with but now we're not getting any more trapped particles because we smoothed out the particles where I don't have like particle stats or vectors that force each other into each other so the particles gets got stuck they just move along the surface really smoothly and there is no particle getting stuck just by adding a vector smooth and a vector normalize to your geo construction this is the particles are not moving fast enough to actually get a good result out of it all right stop nice now of course at any point because we're working in parametric still here you can go back to your platonic and change something or increase the bevel to something more drastic so you get a rounder shape and it's just going to change what you're doing with your objects 180 all right and enable your sweep and bam you get a nice looking object now if you want to render this that's like only one way to do it that I know of and this is unfortunately unfortunately not an animation it's just still like a static object if anybody knows the solution to getting the tracer to actually render correctly please let me know because right now even if we if we cache the mograph object and bake it which basically gives us the particle movement and we can't cache the tracer we kind of can't render this we can render it in the viewport a naval sweep we can render it in the viewport but as soon as we go to the image viewer or the picture here we get this result because the tracer is not actually inside the picture view it's just inside the real-time viewport but we can make a still and this is really easy just take your sweep clone it and current state to object and delete this and now we have this ready object if we hide everything else just go solo you can see we have a ready to render object now that we can render in the picture view and yeah this is basically it I hope I hope you liked the tutorial if if yes let me know in the comments subscribe like the video and of course as always if you have any questions comment down below and ask away I'm always trying to help and yeah enjoy your cinema4d session and your new feed first object [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Polybox

Views: 7,023

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: CINEMA 4D, C4D, Rendering, Tutorial, Tips, Tricks, Polybox, English, Stylized, Maxon, Abstract, Field Force, Volume Builder, Vectors, Voxels, Art, Field, Volume

Id: eEUZHUBf1Rs

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2019