Cinema 4D: Ultimate Mastery

Introduction to Maxon Cinema 4D

• Overview
• Overview of Cinema 4D
• The Cinema 4D interface
• The Camera and object views
• Customising your workspace

Modelling

• Creating a manipulating primitive shapes
• Creating and understanding splines
• Creating Nurbs
• Shapes and parameters
• Deformers
• Polygon modelling tools
• Creating and applying textures
• Adding text and company logos
• Importing Adobe Illustrator paths

Creating a scene

• Adding a floor object
• Adding the Sky object
• Adding lighting
• Light textures, projections and shadows
• The material manager
• Creating new materials
• Concepts of colour, transparency, reflection…
• Applying a material to an object
• Changing a materials mapping
• Applying video textures to objects

Animation

• Timeline concepts
• Setting keyframes
• Animating objects and cameras
• Editing animation sequences
• Creating an animation path for your object
• Animating the camera
• Rendering the animation
• Animating Nurbs
• Multiple cameras
• Animating the light

Rendering / Exporting

• Rendering a view
• Rendering settings
• Rendering for print
• Rendering for video
• Rendering with alpha channels
• Creating a render queue
• Importing and exporting from other 3D packages
• Rendering your project to different formats (MOV, Image sequences & Quicktime VR).

Customising the interface

• Tailoring cinema 4D for you
• Intelligent working methods
• Filtering out surplus information

Rendering

• Lighting schemes
• Improve quality
• Enhance realism
• Vastly reduce render times

Modelling & Materials

• Deformers
• Optimising meshes
• Volumetric
• Body Paint 3D
• Introduction to UV maps
• How to use Body Paint 3D to create textures
• Camera mapping your new models flawlessly into existing imagery
• Projection Painting/Texturing
• How to leverage Adobe Photoshop to really enhance the texturing process.

Animation

• Animating everything
• F-Curve control
• Particle systems

Motion Graphics using MoGraph

• MoGraph objects
• Cloner, Matrix, MoInstance
• Tracers and MoSplines
• Fracture
• MoGraph effectors
• Creating simple animations
• Audio animations
• Formula
• MoGraph text animations
• Selections in MoGraph

Simulation of Natural World Dynamics

• Rigid and soft bodies
• Colliders and ghosts
• Forces

Cloth Simulation

• Creating and simulating
• Colliders and Belts
• Fitting cloth to figures and shapes
• Fixing points

Caching Dynamic Simulations

• How caching things speeds up

Workflow and previews

• Managing/resetting the cache

Advanced Rendering

• Creating a multi-pass render
• Motion graphics using MoGraph
• MoGraph objects
• Cloner, Matrix, MoInstance
• Tracers and MoSplines
• Fracture
• MoGraph effectors
• Creating simple animations
• Audio animations
• Formula and scripting
• MoGraph text animations
• Selections in MoGraph
• Extrude and PolyFX
• Simulation of natural world dynamics
• Rigid and soft bodies
• Colliders and ghosts
• Forces, motors and springs
• Hair and fur simulation
• Creating hair and fur
• Properties and animation
• Styling and controlling
• Creating more than hair
• Cloth simulation
• Creating and simulating
• Colliders and Belts
• Fitting cloth to figures and shapes
• Fixing points
• Caching dynamic simulations
• How caching things speeds up workflow and previews
• Managing / resetting the cache
• Scripting with Xpresso
• How Xpresso is different to real scripting and its limitations
• Creating animations and relationships
• Using formulas to create common motion and animations
• Common effects and solutions that use Xpresso
• Thinking particles
• Setting up basic thinking particles using Xpresso
• PStorm and PBlurp
• Controlling particle flow
• Colliders and attractors
• Sporning animations from collisions
• Making sparks and cracks
• Breaking Objects Apart
• Thrausi and XBreaker
• PyroClusters
• Simulating fire and smoke
• Using the volume tracer
• Inverse kinematics and rigging
• Creating bones and binding them
• The basics of an IK Chain
• Creating muscle and skin
• Painting and Weighting
• Setting up a basic leg-rig
• Compositing
• Using the compositing tag for video
• Compositing 3D objects using video or images within cinema 4D
• Advanced rendering
• Getting the best results from the
• Standard or Physics renderer
• Creating a multi-pass render
• How to use the compositing tag with object buffers
• Creating the correct formats fordiffering compositing workflows
• Scripting
• Overview of the role scripting can play in your workflow
• Explanation of the languages used:
• Python, C++ and COFFEE
• Animation, GUI or Plugin?
• Resources for learning scripting