Corrugated Pipes with the Spline Wrap Deformer and a Cloner

February 21, 2013

Close up of the wrapped pipe on an organic spline

This Five Minute Tip was inspired by one of my YouTube viewers. The viewer in question (Sean) asked what techniques I would use to create corrugated pipe that’s easily repeatable and can be deformed along a curving path. I immediately thought of using a MoGraph Cloner to repeat the pipe segment, a Connect object to glue the pieces together, and a Spline Wrap deformer to make it follow the pipe. (more…)

Instances with Different Materials

February 14, 2013

Instances with Different Materials

Instances are powerful objects in Cinema 4D. They allow you to copy or “clone” an object while maintaining a link to the original. This works out well for perfect copies of objects, but what do you do if there’s variation in the materials of these instances?

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Simple Gobal Illumination in Cinema 4D

February 7, 2013

Final render in the Cinema 4D Interface

In this tip, we explore a few quick settings for creating a nice, evenly lit, Global Illumination based, lighting setup for your models in Cinema 4D. This isn’t a replacement for other full lighting rigs, or even a replacement for putting the proper time when lighting a scene, but it’s a quick start.

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Projecting Splines on a Surface

January 23, 2013

Drawing the spline from the top view

Many of my Five Minute Tips come from a place of exploration; sometimes I find a tool (or remember a tool that I used once) and think to myself, “Wow, that would make a good Five Minute Tip video!”. The Project tool Five Minute Tip is just that kind of tip. I used to use this tool a lot when working at my last job where I would need to enhance architectural models with extra features… but I digress. This week’s tip focuses on this “Project” tool and how it can be used.

The Project Spline Tool

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Piles of Objects Using MoGraph

January 10, 2013

Assorted objects on the ground

This tip focuses on the fact that simple rigid body dynamics can be used in the Broadcast Edition of Cinema 4D with some simple techniques. The Broadcast Edition of Cinema 4D includes rigid body dynamics tags but curiously, they don’t work with regular polygonal objects. So why are they there and what can we use them for?

The available dynamics tags in "Cinema 4D Broadcast"

Check out the rest of the post for more info, some still images and the short video tutorial.

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Sesame Seeds with a Cloner

January 3, 2013

Default randomization of the seeds after adding an effector

This tip focuses on the placement of sesame seeds on a baked treat.

One of my readers commented on my Constraining Objects to a Surface tip and mentioned that he’d found it particularly useful. He also referenced placing sesame seeds on a burger bun and I immediately thought of achieving that effect using the MoGraph Cloner. Granted, there are many circumstances under which the subsequent tip won’t be ideal but I think it could be a real time-saver.

Check out the rest of the post for some still images and the short video tutorial.

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