Process and Production: Cinema 4D with Jay Payne Lesson 2

Contemporary 3d Software as a Design Tool Lesson 2

For the fifth week of process and production we resume with Jay Payne for out next lesson on Cinema4d. This session will be exploring dynamics and particle systems proposed for randomised design. The outcome of this workshop will be a series of design experiments using Cinema 4d. 

To begin with we were shown a graphic designer called Gmunk who is one of the top visual and design directors in the world, after briefly looking at his site, his portfolio is remarkably impressive and one piece I loved in particular was 'Ora Summoners HALO'. Personally I think this work gives of a futuristic cartographical appeal to it which I think looks great, this is a style I have wanted to experiment with for a very long time and something I intend to create within the following year after the formative deadline. Below are two examples of this style. 

Part 1 Sphere in a Striped Tunnel:

Twisting Geometry

Our first task was to create a elongated textured tube that has reflective spheres fall and bounce through it, this will be my second animation created using Cinema 4d so far. To begin with, using the rectangle and extrude tool I extended the shape and removed both end caps to create a square tube. Next I added a twist modifier resulting in the whole tube having a gradual twist throughout an example of this can be seen below.

Creating a material

After we added the twist to the tube, we then implemented a checkered texture adjusted to make a striped effect which was then applied to the extruded shape. The two colours I used for the stripes were the dark and light grey colour swatch from the colour scheme of my art style. This stripe effect gives a really interesting optical illusion effect especially when looking inside the tube. 

Creating a sphere

Next we created a sphere set inside of the tube, this will be the asset that will be multiplied using the emitter tool to create the cluster of spheres that will bounce and flow through the tube. Using the same texture used for the tube but with a hot pink instead of dark grey, I added a reflectance legacy and a fresnel texture to make the sphere reflect as it falls through the tube.

Adding a camera

I placed a camera with all the position and rotation settings set to 0 this puts the camera's view to facing inside at one end of the tube. Afterwards we adjusted the render settings to 1000 x 1000 px with 300dpi this is to render a jpeg image which is shown below.

Adding Particles and dynamics

Now that we have the tube and sphere textured, it's time to create an animated render. Using the emitter tool on the sphere, created a duplicated cluster shooting out in different directions, I then adjusted the position speed and rotation of the tool to make the spheres shift towards the inside of the tube. Next I added a collider tag to the extruded shape and a ridged body tag to the sphere so that the sphere cluster would bounce off the walls of the tube instead of clip through it. At this stage however the project's gravity was set at 1000 meaning the spheres had some weight to them when floating and bouncing through the tube. Changing the gravity to 0 fixed this and made the animation more fluid. 

As an additional option, I changed the shape of the rectangular tube to a hexagonal tube, this made the tube look more open, I personally thought the rectangular shape looked too claustrophobic in comparison. Below is a render of the outcome, for this outcome I increased the gravity of the project to 4000 to make the spheres roll down the tube instead of float and bounce off

Side note, due to being ahead of the class and Jay, when I got to adding the particles and dynamics the spheres shot out of the wrong end. I bursted out laughing because I personally thought I had messed up the animation and for some reason I found seeing the spheres at the angle shown below shooting out of the tube was hilarious!

This first animation task was rather fun to create, I enjoyed working with some more tools I didn't initially know about. Below is a link to the final rendered first animation 



Part 2: Generative Textures

The second animation task was rather interesting, we created a random wave texture on a flat plane shape sized at 1000 x 1000, using a displacer modifier attached to the plane and adding a noise shader with the global scale set between 400-500, I chose the half way mark at 450, this resulted in a low poly mountainous/canyon wave texture which can be seen below.
   

Adding Material

Just like the first task with the tube and spheres we added a checkered texture onto the wave to add a really interesting appearance to the waves, after this we added a subdivision surface onto the plane in order to smooth out the waves, however I chose not to do this because I really liked the blocky low poly design of the texture. Below is a very angular render of the plane with the checkered black and white texture. 

Adjusting Material Mapping

The next bit created a really cool effect, using the texture tag on the materials list I was able to adjust the tiles to my suiting, seeing that I wanted to keep the blocky low poly look I actually changed the subdivision surface editor to 0 instead of 3 (the higher the number on this setting, the smoother the texture will be), This resulted in this jaggy striped wave that I thought resembled a low poly Grand Canyon. this can be seen in the screenshot below.

Adding a new material (Gradient)

Next we changed the material from a striped checkered pattern to a gradient. I thought this looked awesome, I loved how the lighter colour looked like it was glowing in contrast to the darker colour, you can see an example of this from a screenshot I took below. Afterwards I changed the colour of the gradient to a dark purple and bright fiery orange with the addition of a dark purple background for rendering. 

After the final render the waves actually went rather rounded more fluid which is shame because I preferred the blocky texture. However with the combination of the purple and orange colours it reminded me of a lava lamp. I believe the reason why It rendered like this was due to adding the subdivision tool. Below is the final rendered animation of this task I like that the motion has a rather randomised jittery flow to it.  



Part 3 Particle Post Modernism:

The final task we did for this workshop helped us understand the Particle tool. To begin with we created 3 shapes, 1 square with the dimensions of 70 x 70 and 2 thin strips with the dimensions of 2 x 200 and 200 x 2. Next we created 8 separate materials set to luminance only and with different colours consisting of; light grey, dark grey, yellow, orange, light blue, dark blue, white and black.

Afterwards we duplicated the 70 x 70 square poly by 7 and applied each coloured material to each poly (except white this is for a background later on) whilst keeping the second and third square black.

Adding an emitter

Next we applied an emitter and dragged all of the poly shapes into the effect. The emitter was then adjusted to 60° x 60° with a particle birth of 20 x 20. A stop emission was then set at 200 frames with life at 500 and speed set to 100, this allows the effect to emit each poly in a vertical direction, instead of horizontal. afterwards I added a variation to the speed and scale, ticked show objects & instances and previewed the animation. Below is a top down view of the effect taking place (second screen shot is a rendered preview)

 

I liked the outcome of this but honestly I am not a massive fan of the colour scheme. Perhaps next time I would either stick to a colour theme such as fiery bright red to orange colours, or tweak and edit the existing colours a bit. it does however remind me of low poly confetti. Finally I added a Motext with the position co-ordinates set at X=0, Y=800 and Z=0. A camera with the position set to X=0, Y=850 and Z=0 alongside a rotation set at H=0, P=90° and B=60° to give a top down angle for rendering. A white background added at the end so the black and grey poly shapes didn't blend in with the final render.

          

Overall I really enjoyed this workshop, the cinema4d tasks are rather engaging and i'm always eager to learn more about the software. After the formative deadline and presentation i'd love to attempt at creating my own animations and assets to on future projects.