Using Split Disconnect and Subdivision to Make Complex Surface Details in Cinema 4D

hi guys this is Mike in this cinema4d modeling tutorial I'm gonna show you how to make complex shapes using split disconnect and subdivision surface a lot of times when you're making a model you want to be able to add in some details and we're in this tutorial I'm gonna show you how to add in some paneling on a model and give it some fine-tune details go to primitives and choose a capsule go to NB or in your keyboard to bring up garage shading lines and zoom in a bit and let's go to our Z orientation and I want to add in some segments into the height so let's stretch this out a bit it's gonna pull this just want to make it a little bit longer and let me go back to my capsule and add in some height segments seems about right see you on the keyboard to make this editable let's go to f2 on the keyboard for our top view and like I said I want to add in some surface detail and say I want to make some type of generator or turbine you want to add in some kind of a sci-fi panel and so we don't want to do is I'm going to go to select and let's make sure I'm in edge mode select and I'm going to come down here where it says path selection so we know we have our center line here and say we want to add in sort of a just a detail here go to our center line go about three over and it looks like I made a mistake let me just back up try that again go over one okay so we have this path selected and if you go into perspective mode you can kind of take a look at this let me zoom in a bit and so what I want to do is I want to go to my select and I want to go to fill selection and so when you hover over your highlighted selection from your edges you can just click on this right in the center and you can see that now it selects the polygons within your edge and what we can do is we can add in or we could use split or disconnect I'm going to use disconnect for this particular in this particular case so you're going to go to mesh commands and disconnect and you can see as you pull this up it's disconnected from our original model now we still have one object but it's just this part is disconnected I'm going to go to subdivision surface holding down option and I'll put our capsule within the subdivision surface and if i zoom in you can see what's happening with our smoothing it's gonna hide this you can see how that turns out okay so now what I want to do is I want to go to my normal scale and if i zoom in a bit you can see how this scales in just a little bit uniformly along its normals you just want to give a little bit of a gap here let me zoom out and now what I can do is I can go down to my I can go to my edge mode and if i zoom in a bit you can see that we have our edges selected for both the original main part of our capsule and are disconnected part so if I hide the subdivision surface or hide that like you can see how both of these edges are selected and what I want to do is now go to our extrude tool and wait we can extrude down and you can see what this does if i zoom in a bit and we can extrude down this way let me undo I want to take a look at this again okay I want to extrude in a different way instead of using the extrude where you can just click and drag I want to command click and drag within this axis you can see this arrow that we have here highlighted click and hold and drag downwards and what that's gonna do is it's going to give us a bit of a seam here within our our object and we can extrude one more time bring this down a bit now let me zoom out and you can see how this looks let me render and you can see now that we have this surface now disconnected from our object it gives us this a really nice seam especially when you add in some ambient occlusion really give some really nice details to your object so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to my capsule I'm gonna go to my polygon mode let me zoom in a bit and I want to go to select whoops I didn't mean to pull that off select and I want to go to select connected and that's going to select all these other polygons but not the rest of the object because be disconnected in and we can just pull this up a little bit you can see how this turns out now now you can do all kinds of different ideas and designs on this and so what I want to do is I want to go to my polygon mode and let's zoom out a bit and I want to add in say some maybe some type of stand here for this generator so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to loop mode you will and let's put this like say here and this might actually be useful if I go to the side our side view let's put one here and here so we selected these two loops and what I'm going to do is I want to go to my rectangle selection let's make sure we have tolerance selection checked and I'm gonna hold down option oops excuse me hold down control and let's deselect these ones at the top let's go our perspective mode and I think I want to deselect one more group of polygons so I want to select these just these two right at the top okay with these selected what I want to do next is I want to split these off from this particular object instead of using the disconnect the split what we'll do is we'll create a copy of the selected object but it won't delete away from the capsule so what I'm going to do is I'm going to right-click I'm gonna come down here where it says split you can press you p on your keyboard now I want you to understand that this split the object will be underneath in the object manager and it will be the capsule dot one and so what we can do is if I go with this capsule and I want to hide this you can see that our capsule is still unaffected from our object so there it's not split off at all and you can see this if I go to if I hide our subdivision surface so if I go back to my capsule split the object that we split off I'm going to command a I'm gonna select all of the polygons and make sure you're in polygon mode and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to extrude our object but instead of extruding say if i press e on the keyboard and i extrude excuse me make sure this is selected and say I extrude you can see that it extrudes along its normals so if I hold down command and then drag downwards it's going to make this extrusion straight down and then what I can do is I can press T in this axis holding down shift so we can move in ten degree increments until we get to zero now we have a flat surface in which to work off of and now what I can do is I can extrude down one more time and let me do an inner extrude as well so extrude it enter I'm just gonna bring that in say you around there so if I put this in a subdivision surface and say for an example I select these two objects option G now we're in a null and if I do a quick render see now that we have this object and it's disconnected from our or it's split technically from our capsule so it's just a few different techniques combined into one in order to give us different options when we're one more modeling so let's continue doing a few different things and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna zoom in a bit and we have our or capsule and I'm gonna call this base just so I don't get confused and maybe I'll call this generator but really I'm just really different just demonstrating so I have our base and say I want to go to KL maybe I want to put in a edge cut here kind of gives us a little bit more of a of an edge and if I hide my generator you see that we have this open this completely open hole here and something that would have been useful as if I used when I extruded down we had a you know we will have sort of a back face to it but you know create cap on our extrusion but that's okay we can do a few different things here we can go to our base let's turn off our subdivision surface for a moment you will and make sure we're in edge mode we can select just zoom in just make sure I select the correct loop do the same thing over here and in fact let me do this one at a time I think that would probably be better I can extrude this but let's go to our let's go to our edge angle let's maybe Bend this in a bit maybe bring this down as well and then what you can do is you can add in another cut say around here let's take a look at the subdivision surface see what we get not too bad and now if I go to my generator pull this out and that's zoom out a bit and we can do a render you can see how that turns out and I'm gonna do the other side as well so I finished up the other side of the base so let's continue making another detail within our surface of our model we'll use the same technique let's go to the side view it's good a loop and make sure on our polygon mode and let's select a few polygons here in this loop and I'm going to go to my life selection tool holding down control let's deselect these polygons and let me add in a few here and deselect here now this doesn't have to be exactly the way that I have it my pattern that I have but something similar deal in the keyboard to extrude but we're gonna go inwards and I'm a extrude again pull this down and extrude one more time just to give a nice edge at the bottom I'm going to zoom in I'm going to disconnect so I'm going to go to mesh commands disconnect and let's go to our line mode ul on your keyboard and let's select let me zoom in so I can see a little bit better let's go to extrude and we're gonna have an edge angle of 90 and I want to extrude in so kind of bends underneath the model and towards the inside you will and I want to go to select boundary loop for our loop selection select again for our area that we disconnected we're going to go to extrude and we're gonna extrude so we Bend in a little bit something like this now let me zoom out let's give it a render you can see that we have this nice little edge that goes up around our insert or this inset that we have and you can increase your subdivision surface in your editor so when we go to our render our viewport it's a little bit smoother such try another technique let's go to our our side view select our generator and what I want to do is I want to go to my rectangle selection polygon mode let's select these polygons and let's do a disconnect let's zoom in we're gonna do something the same that we did before so we're gonna go to line mode you well and I want to take off the Select boundary loop deal on the keyboard and I'm just going to extrude inwards select again on this side extrude inwards again and if you go inside your model and kind of see how that is how that looks let's do a render oops excuse me move that out of there let me pull back so you could see a little bit better if you do a render you can kind of see this edge but it's going to look even better if you go to say an ambient occlusion that's when things really start to look pretty nice and you can see that we have a nice edge here that goes along musuem out a bit and you can add in these details just like I did with all the other parts of our model of our model so let's do something similar over here let's go to our side view let's do a rectangle selection let's select these polygons here make sure I'm in polygon mode and you will and I'm gonna select or deselect right at the top here go back to our side view L which will give us our enablement elation tool for our axis go to E and let's just pull this back to this edge right here L again T and if I go to perspective mode you'll be able to see this will the result a little bit better and this axis I'm going to pull this back around here looks good and if I go to my side view again rectangle selection let's select these polygons in fact let's select just this part and we're just going to pull this back a little bit something like here and maybe I want to put in a little bit of edge sharpening so KL and this maybe put a cut here and a cut here and maybe one here see how that looks dual render looks pretty good the only thing I want to do is maybe split this off or disconnect this this one edge let's put a subdivision surface on okay so one other thing I want to do and you can do a bunch of different of your own experiments but what I want to do is I want to go to my side view to side view again rectangle selection and I want to select say these polygons here so kind of have an insert into this area maybe select these see how that looks so maybe I want to insert a little bit just like I did here and we have this little connection in this bend here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to extrude extrude that in a little bit pull this back down and then one more extrude to tighten up that bottom let me zoom in mesh commands disconnect edge mode you will and let's zoom in some so I could see a little bit better d we have our 90 degrees I'm going to pull this in you well sure we have select boundary loop D pull that in zoom out so now we have this detail that comes across here and you can add in as much detail as you like just like we've been doing maybe you want to add in something similar to what we have over here and say we go to mesh commands disconnect me zoom in a bit and maybe I want to use the scale normal and just kind of bring this in a little bit go to you well go to our edge and let's select if we can select this loop might be a little bit difficult considering where we are here better this might be a little bit tricky since we're gonna be extruding up and in so it might have to extrude go to polygon mode select select connected and then maybe pull this down command click and drag try that again and you can always scale this a little bit as well let's do a render that's looking pretty cool and let's pull this back a little bit so you can do these techniques on all of your objects and maybe you can actually put in a little bit more definition here on your base so what I mean is maybe go to your maybe select these polygons down here at the bottom so I'm going to go to my side view and turn off our tolerance selection go to my perspective view command click and drag let's go to ul let's take off our select boundary loop select this and select this and we can do an extrude I give it more of a chunkier base let's look at the sub D and we can put in some edge cuts just to sharpen up this base a little bit so put one on either side let's put one down here as well and one here let's take a look at our sub D and that's giving it more of a more of a base make sure we do the other side as well so right at the bottom on either side and one here and one here let's pull back out and do one last render so as you can see we can add in a lot of detail and a lot of complex shapes and you can continue adding in different details interlocking shapes but as you can see we really just started off with just a capsule and using the split disconnect and sub D you can quickly start making a lot of complex shapes and of course you can do a lot more than this but just experiment and play around with different these techniques on your own models I put a link in the description to download project files you can also go to astronomic 3d comm to download project files from this tutorial and all the tutorials that i've made so far thanks for watching

Channel: Michael Balchaitis

Views: 79,618

Keywords: Cinema 4D, Modeling, Split, Disconnect, Subdivision Surface

Id: RgEYB_h8r0Q

Length: 30min 6sec (1806 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018