Chris Smith
Forum Replies Created
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Here you go:
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com/C4Dobjects.zip
I added a few other of my objects.
The one for you is called ‘CS_Shake!’.
Unzip these and put them in your Cinema4D/Library/Objects folder. Then in C4D just go to the object library pulldown menu and you’ll see them.
CS_KinoTube is just an Area light set as a cylinder and rescaled to be like a Kinoflo tube used a lot in lighting.
My fav: Last night I made ‘CS_KinoSquare’
It is made for quick artistic lighting for motion graphics. Try making a scene. Create a floor, create a torus and some extruded and fillet’d text. Add CS_KinoSquare from the object library. Throw a semi reflective material on the floor and objects you made.
Render. You’ll see it already has a specific look. The sliders are self explanatory. ‘Intensity’ sets the overall intensity. ‘Rim level’ sets the relative intensity of the rim light to the the rest of the lights. ‘Fill level’ sets the intensity of the 2 side fill tubes. ‘Height’ simply moves the whole rig in the Y so you don’t have to zoom out of your shot or switch cams to mess with moving it up or down. ‘Rotate’ rotates the whole light rig so you can quickly spin it to get the lighting angles you want. ‘Size’ adjusts the distance and scale of the tubes, so in one slider it can go from a small square of tubes to a large square of tubes. This is good obviously for larger scenes, but even for small scenes especially with a floor object, increasing the size takes light of the floor and keeps it more on the objects. ‘KeyBias’ animates the front key light tube left or right relative to the rig so that you can get more modeled lighting.
‘seen in reflections’ and ‘seen in render’ are just handy switches that trigger the same settings on all 4 tubes.
None of KiniSquare is rocket science, but it allows you to light stuff incredibly quickly and very artistically.
enjoy.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
BTW, if you’re getting C4D and you do graphics, I cannot plug this enough:
maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/modules/mograph/mograph_e.html
The new ‘mograph module’. It is insane and a dream for a 3D app.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Did you get this by hitting the ‘tutorials’ button on the left?
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
TP? It’s ‘Thinking Particles’. If you’re using the demo, then it won’t have it, it’s a separate module. Oban requires TP to work.
If the plug-in is it’s own plug-in and isn’t an xpresso tag using particles, then yeah, install it and it should hopefully do the same thing. But make sure it aligns the objects to the normals of the host surface so they all face outwards.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
It’s really easy with the noise node. Basically create a null. On this null, create a user slider set to use ‘percent’. On the null create an Xpresso tag. In Xpresso, Drag the null object into the Xpresso window twice. Put one on the left and one on the right. From the one on the left, Click the output port, goto user data and select your slider you created. From the one on the right, click the input port and add what you want to modify. I would at least think the 3 position channels (X Y Z).
Create a time node, a noise node, a range mapper node, and 2 math nodes.
Basically you want the time output to go to the time input of the noise node. BUT pass it through a math node first set to multiply. Whatever you set your multiplication value to increases the FREQUENCY of the noise. Now pipe the output of the noise node into another math node set to multiply. This second multiplier will change the AMPLITUDE of your noise. Now pipe the output of this into the 3 inputs of your Null positions you made. This is simple at first, but you will eventually want to do this x3 (meaning a noise node for each thing) but set the seed to the noise node different on each so they aren’t equal.
Now what you want to do with the range mapper is basically pipe the output of your user slider into it and have it map 1 – 100 to a useful number to pipe into the 2 math node’s second input.
So once you tweak all of this, one slider say called “Shake!” will make a null go from still to more violent. Then all you do is parent your object to this null so it takes on the qualities of it.
But eventually you may want extra sliders called “Amplitude_MAX” and “Freq_MAX”. So that say you key frame this SHake slider perfectly, but you realize you don’t like how fast or extreme the effect is, your 2 other sliders are master controls to temper the effect without having to rekey. These Max sliders will basically set 2 more math nodes (set to multiply) so they can scale the effect.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Quick thought. Break it up into 3 parts. The straight cylindrical part is cylindical mapping, then make a selection of the polys on the end and assign a copy of your material to it with the selection restricting it to the end but set it to sphereical mapping.
Other thought:
Use TP or the free plug-in OBAN to align small cylinders to the main object. If set it to align to normals, all the little tubes will stick straight out from the surface at the angle of the poly’s normal. Then select the ‘particle geomtery’ object and hit ‘c’ to make it real objects instead of instances. Then use these objects in a boolean object with the original surface to cut the holes.
OR
The new “Mograph” module will easily align cylinders to the surface and maybe with the shader effector do all the work on it’s own.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
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Do you meen to roto out hair from a shot or to create the shape of hair from scratch?
If it’s to create the shape, it’s probably best done in Illustrator because of all of it’s tools.
If you’re trying to roto out hair, I wouldn’t bother unless it’s clumpy or rounded. It’s best to look at the individual color channels of the image and see which has the highest contrast to the BG video around the hair. Crush this with levels and use it as a matte to isolate the hair form the image. You will probably have to do this in a few layers to get it all clean.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Search the archives for ‘muzzle’. It’s been asked many, many times so you should see lots of good advice. Often it’s called “muzzle flash”.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
You may be able to set up a map to use in Particular to define where you see the particles. Or use a handful of small emmitters carefully placed inside mattes to give the illusion it started as a person’s shape.
OR Maxon’s new MoGraph plug will do this almost instantly in true 3D:
https://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/modules/mograph/mograph_e.html
You could always do it before by instancing particles to geometry, but with this it’s a few clicks.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com