Noob working with Maps (ie the planet earth)

[Randy Johnson]

This is all about controlling your layers during the composite. I would create everything 3D then mix them later.
Start with your maps.
Here is a great tutorial that includes links to all the textures for your globe. Its a free tutoiral but you need an account.
https://www.cmivfx.com/
Borders and city markers I approach with a Vector map of borders placed in an extrude nurbs and then deformed into a sphere. (I can’t post the link right now as my computer is away on service)

Odds are you are going to have to make a couple versions of each for low and high res.

You will want to make one version of volumetric clouds to fly through. A) it looks cool B) it covers your transition from low to high res. However it takes forever to render and is extremely difficult to fake.

Then in your compositing just blend the layers as you want to see them since they should all have the same camera movement is should go smoothly.

Here is what came to mind when reading your post. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY

/Randy

[Elin Grome]

thanks Randy, thats helpful..

I think i shall probably lave

Can anyone tell me more Re. actually drawing splines/sticking objects on the surface of a primitive… so that i can align & animate objects on the surface of my globe…

ta

Elin

It’s all the those pesky details :p

[Randy Johnson]

There are a few ways to stick things and make them move together.
The best way that works well for a globe is to take advantage of the Hierarchy of the Object manager.
For example: if you place both the globe and your city markers as children of a Null you only need to animate the null. You can then expand this idea so you have specific NULLS parented to the globe and others sharing the same parent as the globe and so on depending how much there is. And aligning them to start with using the transform tool, or mograph, or writing the diameter of the globe.

Mograph cloner in object mode sticks stuff to object easly.
Another way is to use PSR constraint tag from mocca. There is a good section about this on the Flabio tutorial when he is sticking the TP emitter to his foot.

As for splines…. what kind of splines? Are you refering to the borders again or the animation paths?
All map splines I would set up in illustrator then import to C4D. Animation Paths I would create by hand in C4D.

/Randy

[Elin Grome]

thanks randy – that gives me plenty more to get on with…

since i have you can i sneak in 2 more quick ones:

• if i take a primitive then deform it, then stick it in a cloner object it reverts to the default shape, even if ive made it editable… :S is this normal? how do i get around this?

• is there a quick way to swap primitives; ie a cube for a sphere etc…

• and one more just to push my luck! in c4d, and 3d in general – does size matter? i mean if im making a scene with “large” real world objects should i make these objects larger? Im thinking at some level, that as long as relative sizes are accurate, then it doesnt matter – but then I wonder if the camera optics mean that the size does matter?

thanks again 4 all ur help, im sure ill be back for more, but ill do my best 🙂

Elin

It’s all the those pesky details :p

[Randy Johnson]

*The cloner takes the object. So you need to make a “current state” of the deformed object or place the deformer and object in a null (not as parent-child) and place the null in the cloner this is not a good solution if you need to make the cloner editable later. I would as always create a duplicate copy and hide it in case you need to revert to to it.

*To swap between objects is pretty much a manual thing depending how the scene is put together. This is where instances are great to work with. They are limiting in some ways but you can move them independantly from each other yet they all follow the leader. They can also be controlled nicely from xpresso.

*Size is relative here. CM, MM, M all the same in cinema. If you go to small you will find the viewport cuts the corners off stuff but generally while rendering with C4D the scale really play no role. This answer changes with different render engines like Maxwell render where it is simulating light based on real world references.

Keep in mind that there always like 5 good ways to solve these workflows in cinema.
/Randy

[Elin Grome]

thanks again!

It’s all the those pesky details :p