Intro to Cinema 4d Lite - Overview (1/5)

hello everyone i'm evan abrams and in this video and the other videos in this five part series we're going to be taking our first steps into cinema 4d lite this is the version of cinema 4d that comes included with your installation of adobe after effects i've been using cinema 4d more in tutorials on this channel so i thought we should get a series together so that anyone can get started with this application especially if they've never opened it before this first video in the series is going to be an overview of the interface and the controls so you can find your way around we'll also cover the basic functions that we'll use throughout the series in later videos we'll get more specific into different topics like modeling and generating geometry animating your objects or groups of objects and then texturing and lighting and finally rendering out your beautiful works i've tried to break this up into a manageable series of videos and break those up into helpful chapters so please enjoy those in the description below if you have any specific questions while you're watching any of these videos please let me know in the comments and i'll try to help you out and if this is the kind of thing that you like to learn make sure you subscribe so you catch the rest of the series as it comes out now this prologue is getting a little bit heavy so let's take our first steps into cinema 4d light let's start at the start with how to open this thing up and what we're looking at once we're in here conventionally when we wanted to launch cinema 4d light we've had to start from within after effects the reason i want to point this out is that usually the first time you run the app it may need to do a license check opening through after effects at least the first time seems to confirm what the license manager is looking for namely whether or not you have an active creative cloud subscription to do this we can create a new maxon cinema 4d file from the project window or timeline by right-clicking and selecting the option from the flyout menu or we can find the same option from the layer menu at the top either way after picking a place to save the file cinema 4d will launch and will be greeted with this interface this is being recorded with build 26 so if yours doesn't look like mine it could be that the ui has changed since recording or you're on an older version however you can always search for the cinema 4d app and find the install location to get to it directly if you want and i would recommend that you do the more resources that you have available when you're working in any 3d app the happier you'll be i'm recording this series on an msi creator z17 so i'm a little bit spoiled for resources we're seeing the nvidia geforce 3080 ti card and intel i9 processor hard at work rendering and updating the viewport but i recommend you take every advantage you can get and keep the number of apps open at any one time to a minimum just be warned because we're using the lite version we're going to need after effects eventually when it comes time to render and export but that's the last video of the series so one thing at a time to start our tour of the interface and basic functions we should look around by moving our view of objects in this big viewport space i'll start by importing an existing model into the scene so we can have something interesting to look at to import geometry we can go up to file merge project then i'll select this lovely rendering of a statue and after dialing in the size it should be we can plonk it in right here and we're good to go i should also mention that because the tools in cinema 4d lite are very stripped down very paired back you may find that you'll be importing geometry way more than you'll be creating it so it's worth knowing this basic merging function up top in order to get around quickly i like to hover my hand over the one two and three keys up in the corner of the keyboard these are the keyboard shortcuts associated with navigation by default holding one left clicking and dragging around will move us around left right up and down holding two while clicking and dragging will move us towards and away from the point that we've clicked you can see this little hash mark out on the screen remember that if we're clicking and that hash is on a model we're gonna be moving in and out from that point not just free floating around in space we're gonna be moving towards that point but not through the thing that we've clicked on holding three while clicking and dragging will orbit us around the point that we've clicked in 3d space similar to that zooming in and out it's contextual so what you've clicked on is what we're orbiting around with these three shortcuts we should be able to get anywhere we want in this perspective view and of course this is not the only way that we can view our scenes click up here in the top right of your view to this little square within a square and we'll pop out of the single view into the four views that are typical of any 3d or cad drawing software top right left and respective this is where you'll be very happy to have plenty of screen space to look at i'm quite comfortable with this golden ratio monitor on the msi here especially because i tend to work in one view at a time if you have a mouse with a middle button you can click that will either expand the view that you have selected or return to the four view so you can really quickly go from four to one to four back into one zooming in and out to make the most of what screen real estate you have it's important to know though that all these views are navigated exactly the same way as we just did in the perspective view holding one will help us move horizontally and vertically by clicking and dragging holding two will move us towards and away and even holding three will tilt the view if you would like now if you've made a mistake with your view and it looks bad or strange use command shift zed to undo the change to just the view or access the menu at the top of the view to go undo view this happens to me really often so hopefully this tip will save you some frustration one more thing about views and navigating if you're on a touch sensitive screen like this one you may enjoy a more natural and humanistic way of finding your way around touching is clicking so we can hold the one two or three buttons and touch the screen and move around but if you just get two fingers in the mix now we can pinch to move and swipe around just like you would on any kind of tablet display while we're talking about the views we can change what we're actually going to see in the views under display we can choose what form of shading we want to see on our objects usually we'll be toggling between garage shading and then garage shading but with lines so that we can enjoy the actual little lines little wireframes that make up what objects are out here under options we can also turn on or off various levels of detail that we might want in these viewports if we're working out light placement for example having shadows on will help us get a much quicker feel for how shadows are falling in the scene i'll add a little light into the scene just so you can see how that might look as we move it around what detail you need to turn on and off is going to change as you're working but i hope this gives you that foundational control so you can at least find your way around to look at the things you want to work on now it's not enough to look at things we want to change things and for that we need tools all of our tools and commonly accessed windows are arranged around the middle space by default they are grouped into some common categories and while we can customize all of it the way this is laid out by default is actually pretty helpful when it comes to thinking about what we're doing in here but by far the best feature for finding anything you want is up in the top left or you can access it by hitting shift c and that'll call open the commander anything you can name can be called up in the commander just start typing i wish this existed in every app every program every room every cupboard of my house the big downfall there is that you need to first know the name of what you want and particularly you need to know what cinema 4d would call that thing it's for that reason that i want to point you to the second best thing in here the help file that's right a tutorial about how to use cinema 4d is going to tell you to use the help file have i lost my mind no because whenever i have a problem or confusion about some small edge case or corner of this app i can find very detailed explanations of things in the help file maxon has one of the best if not the best help features ever created searchable interlinked cross-referenced it is terrific and you should not overlook this as the first place to look when you feel lost or you need more details or something is not working the way you intended but let's have a look at some of the toolbars some of the groupings and we'll get into these common functions so you can start making some cool stuff on the top line we have buttons that will change how we're going to interact with the objects in our project here we can choose what features of a 3d thing we actually want to touch this is often called a mode for example we might move the entire model around or we could just move a vertex of the model or just an edge or just a face or we could grab the texture that sits on the surface of the model so we would say we're either in vertex mode model mode these buttons up here help us pick which mode we want to play in so if you need to make granular changes to something this is where we can look to get access to the specific feature you want to modify we can even change where the axis of a model is located just like you would with the pan behind tool in after effects this can be used to change the point that something rotates around scales from or is referenced to up here is also where you're going to find the toggles for snapping and the many options for snapping this is great for precision work that needs to adhere to a grid and would you look at this i've turned on snapping but notice there's no snapping happening now if this happens to you it's often because you need to define what grids and what features are being respected when it comes to snapping so come into the snapping options but when you want to modify what mode you want to play in this is the place to do that at the left we have the selection tools and the basic transformation tools we can choose how we want to select things by holding down when we click on this first box currently set to live selection in fact anytime you see a little triangle below an icon know that there are more things hidden under there for you to get into just hold down that mouse button and they'll expand out for you you may want to draw a rectangle to select many points or use the lasso or the polygon selection with many options when it comes to mass selection under that we also have the loop and ring selection and see how it selects say loops and rings of points the point of these kinds of tools is to take away some of the tedium of selecting manually and makes the process a lot more manageable once we have things selected we usually want to move rotate and scale them in some way so those tools are next down the list but we commonly access them with the er and t keys respectively you'll be using these the most as you compose scenes and point lights exactly where you want them that means you'll probably have your hands hovering near the one two three ert keys when working so you have quick access to these most common functions these things are so common that they're also readily available on the gizmo whenever you select something in the view see how we have the statue selected and we know it's selected because these little three arrows appear at the axis of that thing switching into the rotate tool you can see it's now three circles and we switch to scale and it's three cubes this gizmo is really important to work with and understand clicking on any one of those specific arrows rings or cubes will only change in that selected axis it's a great way to get a lot of control over what's happening between each axis you can see that there's a little corner here clicking on that will let you change the object only in those two axes otherwise when you click you're going to be moving that thing in whatever plane is relative to the view i'm a very careful person so i tend to only work in one axis at a time when i move rotate or scale anything and if you want to be even more careful you can hold down shift while you click and drag and that will change the value by regular increments these are all just ways to have a little bit more fine control and comfort when you're manipulating objects also over here we have the spline pen i do find it strange that it's over on this side of the screen by default but that's where it is so if you ever need to draw a spline you'll find this works just like any other pen tool you've touched with one exception that is of course that the points and handles are in 3d space as i draw out here in the perspective view looks nice and normal cool curves but when we go into the four view notice that the line has been drawn kind of floating out in space typically when we want to draw splines we'll most likely be using one of those other four views the top left or right so that we can have a little bit more control and know where it's going to show up i recommend you draw it in one view and then move the points in the others to get it into the 3d orientation that you would like now we move our attention over to the right bar and that is of course where we find all the buttons for creating things anything that we want to generate is represented over here and there is a lot things like primitives cones cubes spheres maybe something more wacky like a terrain object or maybe something less wacky like a plane we've got generators to help make geometry from other geometry we've got effectors that can help us make changes to large groups of geometry and of course we're missing a lot of things from these categories we only have two effectors they're great but there's only two of them and we only have access to a tiny sliver of the mograph module in the fracture object but there is a lot that we can do with just this light set of toys which we'll discover as we continue on the series now down at the bottom of the stack is the make editable button you might think dang all these things are already pretty editable what do you mean well if you have a cube this is a parametric cube meaning it's defined by width and height and depth and how many subdivisions each face has and those attributes can always be changed and updated but if we make it editable we're changing it to being defined by vertexes and while we can't change the width and height in the same way we can now grab any point or face or edge and move them manually this is one of the ways we get into modeling objects from scratch starting with basic geometry and then pushing points adding cutting subdividing pushing until the rough geometry starts to look a lot more like the specific thing we're trying to capture we'll touch much more on these kinds of modeling methods in later videos but again this is the button we would click if we want to turn a parametric object into a collection of vertices now let's continue our tour to the neighbor of those buttons the object manager here you'll find a list of all the things that are in your scene everything that is in the space will be represented here in a hierarchical format that's a really important concept that we're looking at all the things that are in the scene hierarchically meaning we can nest things inside of each other to group them with or suborne them to each other let's say i have these six cubes i can move them around freely by selecting each if i were to place most of those cubes under one of the cubes in their hierarchy you can see that now they are under because they have these little lines and if i were to move the topmost cube the rest of them follow this is similar to a parent-child relationship that we would have in after effects these cubes here are all on the same level of each other but they are one level under the first cube this is really important to understand because this is how we use generators deformers mograph systems and many many other things for example if i wanted to make a sweep i need to create the sweep object and then place splines inside that sweep which will inform the sweep object's shape turns out it really is what's inside the counts and in this case the objects that are inside the sweep are informing what that sweep is what level things are on in the object manager tells us how the objects will relate to each other and we can change that relationship by moving things in the hierarchy up down in out we'll get more into the specifics of this in later videos and how it affects different objects for now get comfortable navigating this object manager and moving things around in this hierarchy and you'll be in good shape this is also the place where we can apply tags to objects tags are like adding extra properties or behaviors onto an object we might use a target tag to make a camera always look at an object no matter where we move it we might use a protection tag to prevent something from moving so we don't accidentally bump it around the scene if you want to apply a tag simply right click on it and then you can start typing the name of the tag that you want and it'll be filtered into the list it's really similar to that commander feature we talked about before for now i just want you to know if we're talking about applying tags this is where we come you don't need to memorize them all just kind of collect your knowledge about them as you experience them we'll be using the object manager in some way in literally every video in the series so i hope this is enough groundwork so you know what it's all about when we start doing things to get even more granular about any objects tag deformer material anything at all we want to look down to the attribute manager that's usually found below the object manager and you can see that it changes contextually as we select different things it's also important to know that at the top of the attribute manager we see these little tabs right under the name of what we're selecting these are various categories of attributes if you're ever lost in a tutorial if they're talking about attributes but you don't see the ones that they're talking about you just might not have the correct tab open and these tabs are also hierarchical so you can see that we have the phong tag in here and by selecting it we're now on another level it's deeper it's nested down more tabs are showing up so it keeps going deeper and deeper into specific things but we can also go up up up up shallower shallower you see these arrows we've got forward backward and up up will take us up one level in the hierarchy to select the attributes of what is above us in the hierarchy click it enough times and you will reach the project level or you can reach that by hitting command or control d these are the settings for the entire project should you ever need to modify the units the frames per second the maximum time of the project any project level thing this is where you can do that this is really useful when we need to add more frames to the animation or we want to conform the project to a certain frame rate it's also really important to remember that just like in after effects everything is made of properties here in cinema 4d everything is made of attributes because everything is made of attributes we can change those attributes over time which is how we end up with animation and that's a good reason to talk about the place we do animation the timeline running along the bottom of the interface here this is that timeline the temple of animation might not seem like much right now because it's hiding all of its light under a bushel so click on the little diamond over here on the left side and you'll expand the timeline now we're gonna see the dope sheet a representation of all the keyframes on all the attributes that we've added to the dope sheet this is where we're going to manipulate attributes over time just like we manipulate properties over time and after effects using keyframes which are the same as keyframes wherever you find them that concept remains the same if you want to set keyframes on an attribute just click the little circle next to its value you can see that changes its color then you might scroll through to a different time enter a new value click that little toggle again when you look at that you've set some keyframes we're going to be covering this in much more detail down the road in a separate video so don't worry if it's not clicking for you right away for now i just want you to see that the theme of hierarchy again exists here in the timeline space you can see attributes nested within groups you can twirl down twirling into them and if you twirl even further eventually we pop out into a little graph editor this will look like the value graph in after effects because it's a value graph you can even switch to only c graphs by going into the curve editor along the top of this window we have tools for selecting just what we want and making bulk changes selecting any single keyframe will bring up its attributes over in the attribute manager and double clicking any keyframe is going to bring up its value for doing really exact changes but as i said we're going to get into that separately in its own video what's important to know right now is that this is the place we're going to come to in order to view and granularly change what is happening over time being able to navigate to and navigate around the dope sheet and curve editor is going to be critical so remember how do we move around a view one two three we can use those same tools to navigate around in here as well getting conversational with this space is going to help you create animation quickly and efficiently so i recommend you get comfortable navigating this space just as much as i recommend people get comfortable navigating the graph editor in after effects there's one more window you want to get comfortable with and that's going to help us put a fresh coat of paint on any of these objects that is the materials manager there it is and this will have all the materials that are available in this project yes it's a little bit strange these are not objects and therefore not found to the object manager but they're unique enough to need their own little drawer here we create new materials modify existing ones double-click on a material and that'll bring up its attributes in a unique material editor window though it can all be accessed in the attribute manager as well here we can pick which channels we want to turn on and tweak them all endlessly to the point of madness but don't worry again this is going to get its own video later on for now it's worth knowing that this is the place the materials live and they can be taken from here and applied to objects by clicking and dragging to the object manager or the viewport once you apply them you're going to see a tag for those materials selecting the tag double clicking on it it's going to bring up the materials attributes and modifying a material will change everywhere that material is applied this is another important concept of having original sources and instances of that out in the world so changing the original impacts all of the instances all at the same time and that brings us into the end of the tour i hope this has been enough of an overview that you're comfortable opening this up navigate around finding the pieces that you want to make use of at this point don't worry if it all seems pretty abstract starting something new it's going to be confusing for a little while my hope is that this is enough of a foundation for you to come along in the next few videos in the series you can find your way around in the next video we're going to be starting up a little project by creating some geometry and building out a little scene these videos will drop a few weeks apart so make sure you subscribe so you know when that comes out and in the meantime if you have any questions please do let me know in the comments if you want to get at me in other places find me on twitter find me on instagram i'm on behance as well at ec abrams on those places really anywhere else on the internet so until next time stay creative be kind to each other and i'll see you all around the internet

Channel: ECAbrams

Views: 29,686

Keywords: adobe after effects, after effects, adobe, after, effects, fx, mograph, motion graphics, motion, graphics, vfx, visual effects, instruction, tutorial, tut, how to, how, to, help, tips, tricks, after effects tutorial, motion graphics tutorial, vfx tutorial

Id: ANofDVcR9pI

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022