Isometric Low Poly Autumn Scene - Cinema 4D Tutorial

hey what is going on guys this is Eli for my box graphics and this time we are going to create this low poly fall scene it is inspired by the game Overland which has an amazing art style so that's a great source of inspiration so if you like what you're seeing here I can recommend checking out that game but for now let's stick with cinema 4d and try out this very simple style so does this beginner-friendly and also shows how easy it can be to get a very strong result with just simple techniques okay just one last thing before we start the tutorial is we just want to give a quick shout-out to our sponsor Skillshare Skillshare is an online learning community for creators with over 25,000 classes on design animation business and more Skillshare is the perfect place to learn from creators you already love like this one from Jake in motion whether you want to boost your creativity or career skill share is the perfect place to keep you learning and thriving join the more than 7 million creators learning on Skillshare by following the link down in the description where you can get a free 2 month premium membership Premium Membership is more affordable than other platforms at less than $10 a month and gives you unlimited access so you could join the classes and communities that are right for you big shout out and big thanks to Skillshare for making this video possible anyways let's just get right into the tutorial so in cinema 4d the first thing we can try is creating a cube object which will be the floor let's make this a bit bigger on the sides so a thousand centimeters by just a hundred centimeters high and let's make it square like this we're also going to enable the garage hitting lines so we can see the lines at the edges and we're going to add more of these so let's go with a 5 on every side except in the middle one which will be just two this gives us this kind of geometry now we're going to deform this a bit let's try this with the ffd deformer which we can drag under the cube object and we're going to click fit to parents so that's exactly the size of the cube but just to be safe we're also going to scale this up just a tiny bit so it is bigger than the cube because we will have multiple deformations on the cube and we also want the FDD former to see other deformations when things get out of bounds of the purple lines so with this set up like this we can go back to the ffd settings let's set the grid points to something like four and every side that should do and now to make the adjustments we can go inside of the point mode and let's also go to the rectangle selection tool so it is easier to select a group of points like this and now we can just manipulate the position of these points to adjust the landscape so for example we want to select all these then lower these so the landscape is going down on this side maybe we wanted to go up on this side like so and let's also make it a bit less straight on this side Oh something like that if you don't like the purple lines showing up when you're done you can also hide these with double-clicking this dot so it turns red so that hides it's in the viewport now we want this to be a bit rougher because now it's still very smooth so let's create a second deformer which will be the displacer drag it under the cube object and also under the FDD former but still have a child of the cube object and we're going in this shading tab and let's add a noise shader let's change the type to cell noise that's a lot of squares which also helps with the low poly look so it isn't as smooth anymore and we're also going to increase the contrast of this maybe so let's scroll down and increase this to something like 70% for example and you're also going back to the object tap in here let's make this just a bit bigger so 15 centimeters that makes it a bit more rough on the sides as well okay so that's the basic landscape for now you can adjust this to your liking it's just what I had going so now we can go ahead and create some props for this landscape so let's start off with a tree maybe this is also quite simple we can start with a cylinder object that we're going to set the rotation segments to just five of these so that makes it very rough on the edges like you could see it was smooth and now it is rough we're also going to decrease the radius of this to something like just maybe 10 centimeters doesn't have to be that thick because the trees are quite small let's raise this a bit and also make this longer with the yellow handles okay so when that is done you can press C on the keyboard and now we want to select the top polygons so we can do that with the live selection tool maybe like this now he'll try to move this you can see it is not connected with the rest of the cylinder so let's go and undo that and we'll go in any point mode and select all of the points which you can do by pressing command or ctrl + a so that selects everything and now let's right-click and optimize now if we go back in the polygon mode they should be connected okay so that's good so we have these top ones selected now let's scale this down just a bit so it is smaller at the top than at a bottom of the roots now if we want to branch off on the tree I think it is the easiest to make a split object of this so what these top polygons selected we can right click and split these off so you have to go down in the menu and click on split this creates two objects so one with the polygons still selected and all the other ones being available as well and also one below it with just these polygons so let's just continue with the full tree and I'm going to branch off an interaction by holding command or control on the keyboard again and just moving it somewhere where you want it to like this and back to this and maybe also scale it down so it is pointed towards the end now I'm going back to the other object so we just have these polygons let's select these and we can do the same thing so that's quite easy to use and actually before I do this I can do it a second time so let's split this one as well like that and have D selected as well like this so that's a simple way to create a tree you can also select the points at the very bottom which you can't see but I can select 3 or 4 and I'm going to scale this up just a bit so we have a bit more thickness at the bottom okay so that's the basic stuff for a tree we're going to group this together already so things stay clean and now we have to add leaves you could do this in many ways but to stick with the style of Overland which is quite simple we're just going to create a polygon object let's raise this up so we can see the scale of this so maybe we want this to be something like 15 centimeters just a small square let's make this editable so we can select this point or any one at every side that you're just going to move this one to the left a bit so that gives us a very simple leaf shape very simple so we want many of these now that's easy to do with a cloner object so let's go to mograph cloner and drag the polygon inside of it inside of here we are going to set in the mode to grid array let's go with three by two by three so that's three on every side except in the height so that gives us this grid now they are very spread out so let's just go with 15 centimeters and steps so make sure that still is the same that gives us something like this which is not okay but we're going to add a random effector on this so let's go to mograph effector and add the random effector make sure you have the cloner selected while doing this if you hadn't you have to go to cloner and make sure the effector is inside of here by dragging it inside of there so let's go to the random effector its settings the defaults on the positions is just fine actually we don't need the scaling on this you could if you want to but we're going to add a bit of rotation on this so something like 30 degrees on every site can do so that's a bunch of leaves and you're just going to randomly place them close to the branches you can also rotate these cloners to make it a bit more different okay maybe it's also a good idea to place the materials on here already before we create multiple trees like this so let's go ahead and create this down here by double clicking in this field and we're going to start with the color for the tree we don't want the reflectance channel being enabled we just want flat colors so let's go in the color Channel and for the tree it will be a very dark brown so that's simple let's drag this on everything that has the tree on there so all the cylinders in this group get this material let's also group the leaves together which makes it a bit easier and you're going to create a new material for that as well also the reflectance can go and this one will be a bright orange it's very bright you wouldn't think it matches but it does ok so I'm going to group this once more as a full tree and I'm going to move this to this side and now before making multiple copies of this I'm also going to add some bushes at the bottom of this so that's a totally different technique so let's go in a different view which we can do by clicking this button at the corner here let's go to the front view for example we're going to draw manual lines so let's go with this pen tool and just anywhere you can start drawing that you're going to make something that represents a flat Bush so you can follow along or try your own thing it doesn't matter how big it is just make sure it is closed on this side by clicking again on the first point now with these lines we want this to turn into a solid shape which we can easily do with the loft object so let's create that and drag this point inside of there and now we can go back to the treaty mode and see how it looks you can ignore the lines right here it doesn't matter but you're just going to scale this down a bit because it is a bit too big let's place it close to the tree so we can see how big it actually is and I'm also going to create a material for this before making multiple copies so let's disable the reflectance and for the color we can go with an orange a dark brown again let's also add a gradient on top of this but you're going to set the mix mode to multiply so it goes from black to this darker color and inside of here we are also going to change the type to a duty vertical let's try and drag this on this object so we can see how it looks and up to your preference you can also switch the gradient by right-clicking and selecting invert gradients and that gives it in this kind of look so now it's easy to make multiple copies of these and rotate these to get a bit of a different look they can also intersect if you want to it doesn't really matter you actually want it to look at the trend 'm okay so something like this could do you want a bit of variation in this let's group all of this together again and you're going to call this a bush and I'm going to place this inside of the tree object so we can copy this all together and have multiple of these you can also scale this down of course so I'm just going to stick with something like this for now so now let's go ahead and add some more details on this for example we can add some abstract grass on this which we can do with a simple sphere object actually let's raise this up so we can see it and I'm going to make this editable straightaway by pressing C let's go to the scale tool and just stretch this upwards and I'm also going to scale this down on a zone because it's very big right now I think something like this is okay so let's make a copy to decide and rotate it so when you have multiple of these you can just group these together and call it grass I'm going to make a cloner object again and drag this inside of there and we want to clone this on the surface of this cube floor but right now we have the full cube so it would also clone on the sides that means that we need some kind of thin surface of just the top so let's make a copy of the original cube like this I'm going to make sure I have everything selected inside of it right click and pick connect objects and delete now we can go ahead and select everything at the top so just these top polygons let's invert the selection by pressing you and I on the keyboard you should see everything else is yellow now and just press Delete to get rid of it we're also going to hide in this object because we don't want to see it we just want the geometry for the cloner so back in the cloner we can go in the object tab and set the mode to object and now we can drag the surface in the object field you can also see the grass is laying down right now which we don't want we can easily fix that by just disabling align clone so that makes it point up always even at the steeper angles but right now it is a bit too simple it's all facing the same direction so let's go ahead and create a new random effector for this one as well let's go to the parameters we don't need anything with the positioning because it's already random in the position but we can enable the scaling and make this a uniform scale so it doesn't stretch in any direction but it's just scaling on the whole thing let's make this just a scaling of point two so that's a very small scaling let's also enable the rotation maybe something like just 40 degrees on the H value okay let's also create a material for this grass which is kind of different we can disable the reflectance again and we're going to make this quite dark actually but we're also going to add some transparency to this so let's enable that and we're going to set this to something like maybe 75% and you can drag this on the group of grass or the cloner so let's see that gives us a softer look that with the lighting it will be totally different also for these bushes I think I will rotate the gradients so let's invert it again like this okay so it's still very simple without the lighting but let's keep it for the next step first we're going to add more details which can be pebbles for example we can do that with a platonic object let's go ahead and raise this up again make it editable and in the polygon mode we can right click anywhere and change to the brush mode and just brush over the shape to make it a bit more random and pointy but let's not overdo it let's put it to the floor and scale it down so we can see what kind of size we want of the pebbles doesn't have to be very big okay so now we can create a new clone again drag it inside of there and we're also going to set the mode to object again and use the same surface area we had for the grass but this time we want to change the positioning of course we can do that by changing this seed and also we can change the count to something more like 30 of them I think this seal is nice-looking but also we don't want them to be exactly the same on every part so let's add a random effector as well and in here we don't want a positioning again but we want scaling for this one it can be a bit stronger so for example let's go with 0.8 and I'm also going to add a rotation to this which can be 360 degrees on every side okay so we can see we have very large ones right here so I'm going to scale down the main part an egg object right here so let's make sure we keep grouping everything so that was the grass this is the pebbles that's great material for this again no reflectance and just a bash or brownish look one more thing we can do is adding some kind of larger rocks you could do the same thing as with the platonic object but to get a different look I like to just use a cylinder object again with some like six rotation segments we can also make it a bit larger and make it editable we're going to optimize all the points against so the top is connected with these sides and let's select these top polygons and just use the rotation tool to rotate them like this okay so that's one kind of larger Rock I'm also going to create a second copy of this which can be a bit smaller I'm going to create a new material again so this is kind of similar to the pebbles but maybe we can make it just a bit different to have variation I would go with something a bit darker let's drag it on top of there one more thing I would like to add is a shack right here you could do that with anything you like of course we have multiple tutorials on buildings but let's keep it simple right here by just adding a cube object let's stretch it out a bit we're going to add two segments on the z-axis so we have this line in the length and we're also going to add something like let's say eight segments on the x-axis now let's make this editable and select all these lines at just the top also if the axis is in our way you can press Alt + D to hide it make sure you unhide it when you're done but Alt + D let's raise this up like this and now we can select the polygons on the roof like so let's go to the extrude tool by right-clicking and selecting extrude and we're going to start extruding if the top of your Shack is not connecting like this you need to set the maximum angle to something like 91 degrees or something because if it is lower you can see we have this kind of a v-shape at the top which we don't want okay now let's go to the loop selection tool again the easiest way to get this is pressing U and L on the keyboard and let's select this sides loop and we're going to X through this once more so we have a bit of roof at the sides now let's select these two front polygons right click and let's make an inner X through something like this could too but I'm going to lower this point so it is a bit more square you can also scale it up if you want to in one direction and I'm going to move this down and then extrude this inwards like this so that's quite simple but I'm also going to do is selecting these edges right here you can also do that on the other side but I'm not going to render this so I'm just going to stick with this that's right click again and select the bevel tool and I'm just going to click and direct like this this gives us two edges instead of one so now I want to select the polygons in between these that's easy to do if you go to the polygon mode but before clicking you hold ctrl or command on the keyboard and that turns it into this selection now we can use X through 2 again to sing this in a bit so that's quite simple let's move the SHAC as an object towards the side that maybe angle it a bit so it sinks in the floor let's create a new material for this one again no reflectance this can be a dirty greenish color I'm also going to add some kind of noise on top of this which can also be from a dark brown color to that greenish colour let's also make the mix trend a bit lower of course so we can see the original color below it so now one material we are missing is the floor one this one is a bit more complicated so let's disable the reflectance again for the color we are going to add multiple layers so we don't need to set the base color we just create a texture in here make sure you select a layer and let's go in there by clicking the thumbnail the first shader we are going to add to this is a gradient so let's add gradient go inside of there and you're going to set this to 2d circular we're going to play within the brownish colors again so that's a brighter color let's go to something darker so still quite bright but you shouldn't mind let's go outside of this shader with this button and we're going to copy this so right click on their copy shader and just right click again and paste shader so that gives us this duplicate inside of the layer hierarchy we're going inside of this again and change this to 2d vertical like that you can play with the opacity of this so it kind of mixes together now we're going to add some noise on this because this is very smooth so add a noise shader let's go inside of here and maybe we can use the pixel noise for example we can also play with the low clipping and the high clipping to get a different result so for example a bit higher on the low clip and a lot lower on the high clip that also inverts the colors so with that we can set this to multiply for example and also lower the opacity so we get these spots on there let's drag it on the cube object so we can see the dirt stains which is nice but I also want to add some kind of wrote on this and that's kind of different you can use multiple techniques to do this but what I found to be the easiest way is just doing it with the material again but we're going to create a second one for this so let's go inside of that disable the reflectance again for this one we can use the color like this so even brighter actually bit softer also let's also add a noise on this may be something like Luca can work which is a rougher noise we're going to increase the contrast so it is stronger let's go outside of here and also lower the mixed ring again so it isn't as obvious something like 5% will probably do also we don't want this to be applied on the full cube so if we drag this it is overriding it but we can add an alpha channel to this so it only shows on certain parts so we're going to add a gradient texture on this which can remain the 2d you we are going to start with black go to white somewhere at the middle we're going to change this to a darker gray but not fully black back to white and end with black again also try to space this a bit more evenly if they aren't so like that okay we're also going to set the projection mode from UVW mapping to just flat which is easier so now you can see it is also not as stretched but it is repeating itself so we don't want this to tile so disable that that gives us this two lines of roads which is kind of the right size already but we don't need it to go at the sides here so with the object selected and the material selected we can go in this texture mode and you can move it around so let's also rotate it maybe and I'm going to erase this until it stops showing at this side here at the bottom something like that so that's a nice Road one more thing you could add on this is a car for example I'm not going to show you how to create this in this tutorial because that's a whole thing on its own but you can check out my personal channel for that tutorial we will link it in the description or put the information button at the top let's just copy this car which you can create with my tutorial and paste it in this scene we're going to scale this of course so it is a bit of an proportion I'm going to change the color of the blue because it doesn't really fit the team so let's go with something more dark what we can also do is adding some lights on this car I'm going to do this as a first thing because it's a bit more complicated and then we can finish off with the whole lighting of the whole scene so let's create a spotlight and we're going to change the type to a parallel spot let's rotate this so it points towards the front like so you can also scale this down it doesn't need to be that huge that you're going to try to line this up with the headlights of the car in here let's go to the settings for example we want this to be a kind of orange color we're also going to make this visible light by making it an inverse volumetric light and let's also go to the visibility tab and we're going to set the inner distance so it reaches the ground you can see that with this line right here let's make a duplicate to the other side okay so now this scene looks very dark so we're going to add in the main light which will be an infinite light let's go to the general tab again it doesn't have to be that strong so maybe something like 70% is just fine let's also change the color to something more in the yellow spectrum we're going to add a hard shadow to this or you could use any shadow if you want to and we're going to rotate the slightly define where the Sun is coming from so right now it is pointing from the front to the back of the scene you can see that with this yellow dot right here so I'm going to rotate it so it looks towards the left side and that's also angled it down just a bit so maybe something like 30 or 40 degrees on this axis it's something you can experiment with I'm going to enable my interactive render region so you can see the changes while I'm working on it so now it's still very dark especially with no background so maybe we can add a background already a background object and create a material for this it doesn't matter if it has reflectance because it doesn't show but let's disable it anyway and we're going to set up a gradient for this which will be to the circular let's stay with the brownish colors again let's go to something darker at the sides but I don't want it to go all the way to the edges because you can see it doesn't really show the dark color at the top and decides so let's open the more specific values of the gradient by pressing this wrangle and I'm going to move this not do something close to 65% at the knot position let's drag it on the background to make it show and there we go so right now it is still looking a bit dark on the sides and a bit bland so let's add more lights but first we can also add some kind of environment that helps with some shadows we're going to make this dark brown again actually and make this something like 30% and strength it doesn't make that much of a difference but it is a nice thing to play with we're also going to add an omni light so that's just the default one let's raise this up quite a lot so above the trees even let's make this dark brown again which will mostly affect these shadows so if I disable this you can see the shadows go back to black and when it is enabled you have more of this brownish color it doesn't need any shadows so we can just keep it as it is but I'm also going to create a second Omni light and keep it somewhere closer to the middle of the scene it's way too bright right now so let's go and make this a different color first of all so let's go with something more yellow and warm and I'm going to make this just 50 percent or something another thing we can do is going into your Endor settings and adding the ambient occlusion effect that also helps with some shading but right now we still have this very dark sight right here so I'm going to add one more Omni light and just place it at the front lower side so make sure it's below the landscape because we don't need any more light at the top otherwise it gets a bit too much and I'm going to change the colors again to stay in the team and let's just make this 40% and strength okay so the last thing we can do is adding the camera objects let's look through it and I'm going to make this a zoom camera so we can get this miniature effect again of course you can keep playing with the infinite light so I think the more you angle it the more interesting looks you get of course right now it is not perfect it's actually quite difficult to get the exact results in terms of colors and contrast you want in cinema 4d so what I recommend is just making a full render of this image and then you can modify it in Photoshop for example or you can go in the filter tab right here and enable the filter and play with some of these values anyway this was the quick way of showing you guys how to make this if you want to take a look at the full scene I created before which is a bit more detailed and we find you can check that on our patreon page together with all the other files also if you created something of your own using our tutorials you can show us on Instagram or Twitter and what that being said I hope you learned something new today and I will see you in the next video

Channel: MOBOX Graphics

Views: 27,830

Rating: 4.968348 out of 5

Keywords: mobox, after effects, tutorial, vfx, motion graphics, after effects tutorial, motion graphics tutorial, after effects modern, after effects motion graphics, after effects motion design, after effects tutorial motion graphics, C4D tutorial, beginner cinema 4d, cinema 4d doughnut

Id: GbY6qbF5hdE

Length: 30min 46sec (1846 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019

Reddit Comments

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that nice tutorial... I have tutorial youtube channel created just two days ago and your video inspired me to create high-quality videos