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Posts Tagged ‘Cinema 4D’

After Effects technology preview: Part 1

Published by Chris Meyer, lynda.com author | Friday, April 5th, 2013

Adobe has started to reveal some plans for its next generation of pro video tools. Using a prerelease version of After Effects, I’ve recorded two hours of videos for lynda.com to keep you ahead of the curve. Over the course of a few blogs, I’ll fill you in on some of the interesting features that are on tap. First up, the new integration between After Effects and CINEMA 4D.

Live 3D pipeline between After Effects and CINEMA 4D

A couple of weeks ago, Adobe and MAXON issued a press release announcing a “strategic alliance … to bring creative professionals new levels of digital media content creation.” Buried inside that release was the intriguing statement that “As part of the alliance, both companies are expected to collaborate and engineer a pipeline between Adobe After Effects software and CINEMA 4D to give users a seamless 2D/3D foundation.” Now we can finally see what they were hinting at.

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Tags: Adobe, After Effects, Chris Meyer, Cinema 4D, Post-Production, Video
Posted in 3D + Animation, Video | No Comments »

How to use XRefs in CINEMA 4D, and why they’re a good idea

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

Efficiency and flexibility are not just marketing terms, they’re what make motion graphics achievable. Creating moving images is incredibly labor intensive, and once all that labor is done, you still have to hit the render button and wait to preview the result. Being efficient is crucial to meeting deadlines.

Creating a workflow that allows you to swap and modify key elements at any point in the production process is what XRefs are all about. An XRef is a special object that points to a scene file much in the same way a print program, like Illustrator, points back to a master image and uses the original file from the hard drive for printing. Visually, the XRef appears to you as a single object, but it actually represents all the objects in the scene that it’s pointing back to. This means that you can make changes to that scene file, and any XRef that points back to it will automatically update. This also means, since R13 XRef objects allow you to reference a CINEMA 4D file as a single object, that you can manipulate an XRef from an entirely different scene, thus allowing for distributed workflows where one person is modeling while another person animates. This makes for a very flexible way to work.

In this week’s Design in Motion video, I’ll show you how to add an XRef into your animation, and I’ll show you a real-life scenario where having XRefs set up allows me to easily swap two cars in a chase scene, with two completely different cars—all without having to update my animation. If you’re new to XRefs, this tutorial quickly breaks the process down to help you get started. XRefs have made last-minute director swaps quick and easy for me many times, and they can save you, too!

The overall XRef experience has been significantly improved in CINEMA 4D R13. To learn more about those improvements, check out my full CINEMA 4D R13 New Features course on lynda.com. If you are a lynda.com member, make sure to check out chapter five, where I discuss R13 workflow additions, including a specific video on the Xrefs format rewrite.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion weekly series on lynda.com
• All CINEMA 4D courses on lynda.com
• Courses by Rob Garrott on lynda.com

Tags: Cinema 4D, Design in Motion, Rob Garrott
Posted in 3D + Animation, Video | No Comments »

Creating distressed metallic type in CINEMA 4D

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

Controlling how your objects look in 3D really boils down to asking yourself one important question: What is my object made of? How you answer that question becomes your guide for how you will create the materials that you apply to your objects in 3D. The Material editor in CINEMA 4D has an array of buttons that can be confusing until you start thinking of them as answers to that one most important question.

In this video I dig into the Material editor and show you how to add texture and color to your object using the Color channel, and Specular highlight. To add the distressed look, I show you how to use a Bump channel (found in the Basic tab of the Materials editor) to add in gritty noise, Diffusion to simulate light reflection, and Displacement to add physical surface indentations and deformations. Together, these properties can be manipulated to create a great looking metal material that can be applied to standard type.

When your distressed metal type is done and you’re ready to learn more about materials in CINEMA 4D, my CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training, and CINEMA 4D: Designing a Promo courses have chapters that will help you understand how to create and control your materials better.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion weekly series on lynda.com
• All video courses on lynda.com
• Courses by Rob Garrott on lynda.com

Tags: Cinema 4D, Design in Motion
Posted in Video | No Comments »

After Effects and CINEMA 4D: Styling animation to communicate emotion

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Animation has a way of connecting with a viewer that is very different than a still image. The power of a still image or illustration lies in its composition and content. Animation on the other hand, adds timing and movement into the mix, and these elements are an important tool you can use to communicate with your audience.

The speed and direction that your graphic elements move in tell your viewer information that adds to the overall content and composition of your piece. If your object moves quickly and comes to a sudden stop, then, that could be combined with a dark, intense composition to communicate a sense of drama and action. Smooth, fluid movements could work well for romance, or even a somber mood. Sharp, punchy moves are great for comedy.

This kind of subtle animation is all about control. Both After Effects and CINEMA 4D have excellent graph editors that will allow you to really express emotion through your animation. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out this week’s Design in Motion tutorial titled Styling animation to communicate emotion (embedded up top), then check out my CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training course, or After Effects Apprentice 03 by Chris and Trish Meyer. Both courses have chapters that go into detail about controlling your animation with curves.

Interested in more?
• The complete Design in Motion weekly series on lynda.com
• All video courses on lynda.com
• All courses on After Effects and CINEMA 4D on lynda.com
• Courses by Rob Garrott on lynda.com

Tags: After Effects, animation, Cinema 4D
Posted in 3D + Animation, Video | 2 Comments »

Shading type with gradients in CINEMA 4D

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Often times creating type is the bread and butter for motion graphics artists. But like plain old bread and butter, it can get a bit stale. When that happens, gradients are a great way to freshen up your stale type.

A gradient is simply a transition from one value to another. This can be from one color to another, or from light to dark. When used properly, gradients can be used to pump up the legibility of your type, and to make the text really leap off the screen.

Using gradients on text in CINEMA 4D boils down to understanding how textures are applied to objects. This can be a difficult concept to understand, but it’s crucial to getting control of the look and feel of your objects in 3-D. There are three main tools that help you manage the projection of textures on to the surfaces of 3-D objects: The Texture Tag, the Texture Tool, and an often overlooked command in the object manager called Fit To Object. These three elements will give you tremendous control over how your objects appear to the viewer.

For more on this, check out CINEMA 4D R12 Essential training. Chapter six has some great movies on creating and manipulating textures.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion series on lynda.com
• All 3D + animation courses on lynda.com
• All by Rob Garrott on lynda.com

Tags: 3D + Animation, Cinema 4D, Design in Motion
Posted in 3D + Animation | No Comments »

Using dynamic simulations to create animated type in CINEMA 4D

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

The idea of dynamic simulations has gotten a lot of attention lately. Dynamics allow an animator to create very realistic motion and collisions with objects without using key frames. Nearly every 3-D software package has some kind of module dedicated to this. That being said, dynamics can be somewhat unpredictable by nature, so they’re not entirely flawless. Similar to setting up a stack of dominoes or a Rube Goldberg machine, dynamic simulations just don’t always give you what you expected. This can make them very challenging to use in production, and it often has designers and animators asking themselves what exactly it is they can do with dynamics. With so much unpredictability, what problems can they solve?

The answer is, really, quite a lot! Dynamics can be great addition to your tool kit if you’re willing to accept a bit of unpredictability in your animations. In this short project I’ll show you how to use dynamics to animate some text being knocked over. Using key frames, this kind of animation would be very time consuming, and it would be even harder to make it look convincing. Luckily, CINEMA 4D’s dynamics engine is really easy to use, and allows you to apply these techniques to a variety of different projects.

For more on the important basics of using the CINEMA 4D dynamics engine, check out chapter 14 of my CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training course.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion series on lynda.com
• All 3D + animation courses on lynda.com
• All by Rob Garrott on lynda.com

Tags: 3D + Animation, Cinema 4D, Design in Motion
Posted in 3D + Animation | 2 Comments »

How to create a camera shake in CINEMA 4D

Published by Rob Garrott, content manager, Video | Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Welcome back for another Design in Motion! This time around we’re going to have some fun in CINEMA 4D building a camera rig that will give you the ability to add very convincing multi-directional camera shake that is easy to control. Camera shake is an important component of animation. Just like motion blur, it adds a lot of realism to your movements.

Last week I introduced you to the idea of expressions in After Effects. CINEMA 4D also has an expression language—in fact—CINEMA 4D has three expression languages; Xpresso, Coffee, and Python. Don’t be alarmed, though—we won’t be writing code. We’re going to use the Xpresso language, which is a visual, node based way of making connections between objects and parameters.

Even though we’re building an easy to use camera rig, really, this technique is largely about the idea that you can use the Xpresso language to control objects and animation.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion series in the Online Training Library^®
• All 3D + animation courses in the Online Training Library^®
• Courses on CINEMA 4D in the Online Training Library^®
• Courses by Rob Garrott in the Online Training Library^®

Suggested courses to watch next:
• CINEMA 4D: Rendering Motion Graphics for After Effects
• CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training
• After Effects CS5.5 New Features

Tags: 3D + Animation, Cinema 4D, Video Editing
Posted in 3D + Animation | No Comments »

3D training round-up at lynda.com

Published by Megan O. Read | Friday, May 7th, 2010

There have been a lot of new releases in the 3D category at lynda.com lately, with more to come.

First-time lynda.com author Rob Garrott was just in town recording a new project-based course using Cinema 4D training. Rob has worked in the industry for 17 years as an art director, animator, editor, and an instructor at Art Center College of Design teaching 3D motion graphics, compositing, and motion design.

Rob Garrett on the lynda.com live action set.

Veteran lynda.com author and channel manager for 3D and video, George Maestri, just wrapped up recording new Maya 2011 training. Maya 2011 is a really significant upgrade, and George’s new training will explore the numerous upgrades and functionality.

George Maestri in a lynda.com recording booth.

Jeff Bartels’ AutoCAD 2011 New Features course was released recently, and covers all of the new and cool features AutoCAD 2011 has to offer, from transparency, to the new 3D surfaces, to hatch creation. Look for more AutoCAD training from Jeff soon.

The highly anticipated Rhino 4 Essential Training by Dave Schultze was released this month, and is proving to be an exciting addition to the Library. In addition to building with the curve, surface, and the solid, members can learn how to create shoes for their robots and watch as their sketches come to life.

And in case you missed the New Deal Studios, Visual Effects Creative Inspirations documentary that was published in February, you might want to check out how this visual effects house uses Rhino and other 3D applications to create models, miniatures, and other computer graphics you will probably recognize from major motion pictures like Shutter Island, and The Dark Knight.

Tags: 3D + Animation, AutoCAD 2011, Cinema 4D, Dave Schultz, George Maestri, Jeff Bartels, Maya 2011, New Deal Studios, Rhino 4, Rob Garrott
Posted in 3D + Animation | 5 Comments »