Process and Production: Cinema 4D with Jay Payne

Contemporary 3d Software as a Design Tool

For the second week of process and production, the group is tutored by Jay Payne and will be exploring the use of contemporary 3d software for design purposes. The outcome of this workshop will result in a series of design experiments using Adobe Illustrator and Cinema 4d. The workshops will eventually experiment with rendering sample artwork, exploring dynamics and prototyping on Cinema 4d

During the Introduction of this workshop, Jay provided us with some inspiration links to help us develop our skills with 3d software. An inspirational link in particular was the Instagram feed of a user called Baugasm. Baugasm is a designer who set himself the challenge of creating a poster everyday for a year using Adobe software and Cinema 4d. He is currently on his second year for the challenge and has recently started creating pieces with motion, I think his work is really colourful and I love how each post differs from one another, below is an example of Their work. 

In the first workshop with Jay we will be creating artwork in Adobe Illustrator which will be imported into Cinema 4d to be edited and rendered. I personally don't have much experience with Cinema 4d so I'm certainly eager to learn some new tricks and experiment with the software. This session will mainly be a tutorial on the basics of C4d for those who haven't worked with the software before. To begin with we will be working on Adobe Illustrator to create a simple solid shape/logo design to be imported into Cinema 4d, I decided to use my 'Nythim' Logo which is a simple blocky vector of half a skull which is based on my art style and character. The logo consists of a single shape which will make the editing process on cinema 4d easier. However before I merge the file to C4d the illustrator file had to be saved to a much earlier version of illustrator. The reason behind this is down to cinema 4d having compatibility issues with later versions of illustrator. 

Before merging the file and working on the logo I created a project template that can render for print, the specified size for this template was standard A4 landscape (210mm x 297mm) with an image resolution of 300 dpi and antialiasing set to best.  

Once the file was merged onto C4d I used to extrude tool to add some thickness to the shape, I chose to make the thickness of the shape resemble a coin or pin badge, I thought any thicker made the shape look too blocky. Below is the transition of illustrator to C4d

After adding the extrusion to the shape we looked at setting up a background. When rendering the shape in it's current state the background is black and has no field of depth.  Using the floor and background tool can resolve this, allowing us to add a colour and a texture to the background in this case I chose a light grey colour. Next was to add a colour to the shape itself, I wanted a contrasting colour to the light grey so I decided to use a hot pink colour. 

Next we looked at adding a camera for rendering, we first framed our logo into a perspective view port of our choosing and added the camera using the camera tool. One thing to remember when using this tool is to make sure the camera is toggled off when panning or rotating the view while editing the shape. changing the view whilst the camera is still switched on will move the camera as well to the new perspective. However doing this is how you would adjust the camera's view port.

The last part before final render was creating some key lights to create shadows and make the shape look more realistic. The first light was placed behind the camera to represent a main light source, Jay explained that when using cameras outside he would make sure that the sun was always behind him to make sure he got the best shot. This trick is applied to our shape with the first key light. The second light added worked as a colour tinge to the shape and the shadows being cast, I chose pink for the colour tint giving the shape and shadow a slight pink glow.   

Below is the final rendering image for the logo, overall i'm pleased how it turned out and i am glad I was able to use Cinema4d and learn a bit more about the software. Perhaps in future projects I might incorporate Cinema4d into my projects.  

Finally we added animation by making the camera rotate 360 degrees around the shape. I steered away from the guide with this because i wanted the shape itself to rotate whilst the camera remained static. Reason being is that due to adding lights, the shadows wouldn't change when the camera rotates around. Instead I added a complete rotate motion to the logo looping every 5 seconds. Once complete I uploaded to Vimeo thus creating my first Cinema4d animation created from an asset imported from illustrator. Below is a link to this animation.