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Building a person in C4D out of blocks??
Hi there, I’m currently learning Cinema 4D and had a question in the off chance that someone may be able to offer advice. I am wanting to build a scene where I will need to create an object that looks like a person is made from small long pieces of wood, maybe 1cm x 1cm by whatever length. There is a game called Jenga – this is the concept. The final result would be similar to a person made from wooden building blocks (or lego blocks etc). This model would then need to be placed into a photo and lighting etc matched.
Can someone give me a rough rundown on how best to approach this? ie, is it a matter of painstakingly creating polygon shapes with nurbs etc and materials for each stick and crafting the shape of a person manually or can you somehow magically use a polygon shape of a posed character to give you the final result?
Must sound very confusing to anyone reading this but any advice would be great!
Thanks very much, Kevin
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8 Replies
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Cinema comes with a number of primitive objects which can be interactively sized. In this case you would probably use the cube primitive and it would be a matter of sizing and moving/rotating them into position. If it’s for a single still that would be the easiest way to do it. If you want to have a lot of positions, or character animation, you would use joints or IK tags to create a character rig.
Cinema has a primitive called “figure” that’s similar to what you’re talking about. It’s a model of a wooden posing dummy. If you make it editable you will see a good example of the sort of heirarchy you’d want to use for rigging.
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Once you have got a character rigged in the right position you could use the cloner object to fill the rigged character using the clone to object setting.
In the cloner set your object as the characters mesh and make the mesh invisible. You can control the way the clones fill the characters space and even animate if you wish.
“Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians”
Che Guevara
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Hi Adam, thanks for you input. I’ve never posted anything on a site like this before and it’s just so great that people can help you in this way. I do think I’m in for a time consuming manual job though. Some has suggested the mograph cloner with a shape but I’m not sure there’s enough control there. thanks again
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Hi Jethro, thanks for your help. I’ve played around with the cloner like you’ve suggested but I’m not sure that there’s enough control over the way that your cloned objects fill the shape you select. I need to replicate the way that the game ‘Jenga’ works. it uses wooden pieces 75mm long by 14h x 25 wide. the blocks are stacked side by side in rows on top of one another and each alternate row must rotate at 90 degree angle to the other. the blocks can not go through one another either. Do you think this kind of control is possible with the cloner and mograph?
Thanks again for your help, Kevin
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https://www.infinitas-solutions.com/jenga.zip
This is the best I could get using mograph and rigid body to prevent overlaps. However, I feel you are going to need more control.
“Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians”
Che Guevara
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Hi Jethro, I’ve had a look at the file you uploaded and the way you did it was an improvement upon where I’d got to with the cloner. Like you said though, i think i’ll be needing greater control over the way the blocks are stacked etc and i will need to create a result that has a more orderly grid like feel. So looks like it will be block by block for me then.
Thanks very much again for your help, I appreciate it.
Cheers, Kevin
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Don’t forget that if it is a still you are after you can fake it with the use of masks and a cloner. Might need some keyframing to achieve the look you’re after but still possible.
“Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians”
Che Guevara
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Hi, yes it is a still that I’m after. We want to create the person out of jenga sticks and then put them into real world photograph. Can you elaborate more on what you mean?
I was thinking that I would have to build the jenga person row by row snapping them to a 10x10x10 grid. A big job. I was going to pose one of the cinema characters in the pose I wanted with the background photograph scene camera mapped behind. Then I was going to build the character out of jenga row by row from the bottom up with the direction of the rows alternating between the X and Z directions I will also need to remove random jenga sticks to add realism to the scene.
I’m mainly a retoucher by day, but I’ve been learning by tutorials over the last year of so and love what cinema 4D can do when combined with retouching. So I’ve got a basic understanding, but lack any proper experience to draw on. Enjoying the learning curve though…
Thanks again for your ongoing help. Kevin
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