C4D rookie trying to bend a stubborn X-shape!

Maxon Cinema 4D

C4D rookie trying to bend a stubborn X-shape!

Posted by Marije Van der nat on February 20, 2009 at 3:31 pm

Hi all,
Hope someone can be of some help. I’m a real After Effects junky, but now I need a logo that’s REALLY 3D, and, as I found out today, I just can’t find my way around Cinema.
What I need is this: An X-shape, extruded. Then I want all of the x’s legs to bend towards you, as if it were some kind of claw.

I created a text spline, typed in ‘X’, made it editable, extruded it, so far so good.
But: when I try to bend the X, it just folds like you would fold a peace of paper, instead of making a nice round curl, I guess because the front plane has to little segments. I don’t know how to add segments to the front and backside of the X.

Any help would be much appreciated!
TIA,
Marije

PS: I’m working in C4D 9

Marije Van der nat replied 17 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 10 Replies
10 Replies

Marije Van der nat
February 20, 2009 at 4:19 pm

I sort of got it, but it looks awfull! How can I fix this?
Randy Johnson
February 20, 2009 at 7:10 pm

You can make more segements with the knife tool or go back to your spline and extrude nurbs to do it.

Make your X and make the spline editable. in the attributes change the interpolation to uniform eight should be ok. Then you want to put that into your extrude nurbs. In the tab that has the cap options scroll down and where it says NGON change that to quads. Then place the extrude nurbs in a null with the bend deformer. That should give a clean bend.

Also make sure your antialas is on best.

/randy
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 9:20 am

Hi Randy,
Thank you so much!
It’s already looking so much better than what I did last week.

There’s just one thing: I can’t find anything called NGON in the cap section, or any other section. Guess that’s exactly what I need to make it look smoother?

Anti-alias probably goes somewhere in the rendersettings?
TIA!

Marije
Randy Johnson
February 23, 2009 at 9:27 am

AA is in both the general tab and its own tab in the render settings window.
a href=’https://i1.creativecow.net/u/60959/ngon.jpg’>
here is the NGON you can change to quads for a really dense mesh. The more polys the better your bend Deformer will work.

/randy
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 10:50 am

This is the result so far. Could use some more polygons, but can’t find how or where…

O sorry, just saw your response. Gonna try that first.
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 10:55 am

Looks like you’re working in 10 or so… I’m in 9. And this is what I have under CAPS.
No NGONS….

Also, I’m not sure what you mean with the Anti-Alias… is it the dots you can turn off, or red, or green?

Almost there, and your help is very much appreciated!
Thanks a million,

Marije
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 11:00 am

I think I found it. This is where I have to increase the quality, in the text-object properties.
Already looks so much better.

Thank you so much for your help Randy!
Marije
Randy Johnson
February 23, 2009 at 12:10 pm

Red can be fixed with more subdivisions
Green is your phong angle
Blue you need to add one or deduct one from your spline subdivisions.

Looking at the amount of bend if you could easly box model this but that will make it more complicated to animate.

Or even easyer is have to helix splines crossing each other a square in a sweeps nurbs would get this too. Again a little hard to animate later.

/Randy
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Thanks Randy!

Client decided he wanted something like this:

No need to animate, it’s going to be a logo. But the helix-thing would be a nice option for a logo animation! I saw a tute somewhere here on Cow about that, so maybe later….

Thanks for your time!
Marije
Marije Van der nat
February 23, 2009 at 1:14 pm

I mean of course this

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