October2005

ISSUE - OCTOBER 2005

LOTR, Star War s , Har r y Potter Potter,, Max Dennison has done it all. Read the inter view view with this talented Matte Matte Painter on pa g e 6.

Lear n how how to cr eate eate good good looking e ye textur textur es with Photoshop.

Photoshop. On pa g e 16 Mar k Gmehling will lead the wa wa y in this fantastic fantastic tutorial.

A shor t tutorial on the fr ee plugin “Re “Re plica” that that comes along with this issue written b y Chris Montesano on pa g e 30.

Page 3

Editors Notes

Page 6-11

Interview with Max Dennison by Tavy Ann

Page 12

C4D Quiz

Page 13-15

Splitting Faces by Oliver Wuensch

PAGE 16-18 Painting a Realistic Eye Texture by Mark Gmehling

PAGE 19-21 Introduction to Sketching by Blend

PAGE 22-29 Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Pt2 by Jamie Hamel-Smith

PAGE 30-32 Replica Plug-in Tutorial by Chris Montesano

PAGE 33-35 Basic Animation - Fading Objects by Bram van Gerwen

PAGE 36

Volumetric Clouds - A Mini Tutorial by Gerard Ciavatti

PAGE 37-38 Spotlight on Jens Kappelmann “Jeso”

PAGE 39-42 Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery

PAGE 43

Attack Team

Editor’s Notes Hello Readers and Attackers!

This past month we, 3D Attack, decided to bring to the community a radio show dedicated to CINEMA 4D. Although we did this on the spur of the moment and had many technical issues, I think it went fairly well. Our goal is to bring one 30-60 minute broadcast per week to our listeners.

We have lots of exciting and fun things planned for future broadcasts.

You can tune into 3D Attack Radio at www.3dattack.net/radio or subscribe to our Podcast http://www.3dattack.net/radio/3DATTACK-CINEMA4DNEWS.xml KEEP ON ATTACKING!

Eric_Heyninck: “BTW: another superb issue. Great to see Christiaan "Flingster" in there. He is without doubt the friendliest C4D users alive. Great modeling tips, SUPERB explaining of UV's etc, etc, but the best is...3DKiwi's comic.”

Scodigy: “Once again I found out about some things in some of the tools I had never even realized or looked at before today. Wonderful Issue, especially the Modelling tips.

Loved Fluffy's animation guide.

Splines in a Metaball object..whodathunk?”

3DKiwi: “Hi Guys. Great magazine.

The cartoon reminds me of someone I know!! Gave me a damn good laugh.”

The 3D Attack Team ***GOODIES FOLDER*** http://www.3dattack.net/goodies/ As most of our readers know, your goodies folder usually comes zipped with your magazine. We have decided to do the Goodies a bit different. You will now find your Goodies folder at http://www.3dattack.net/goodies/ for download.

This allows us to make changes to the Goodies folder easily, (if needed) and provide you with the access to the Goodies at all times.

Remember, the Goodies are copyright protected, as is the magazine.

These Goodies are for paying readers only. DO NOT redistribute your download link or your Goodies folder.

Reader Comments: Kalab: “Woohoo! Thanks again 3DAttack! Looks like another great issue.”

Jamesleaburn: “Great issue I especially like the UV unfolding tutorial. I liked the General purpose feel of the tutorials, technique rather than step by step tutorials. I like step by step tutorials too, before anyone says anything.”

Tutorial and Article Submissions If you would like to submit a tutorial or article, or have your software or plug-in reviewed by 3D Attack, please click on the following link for instructions: http://3d attack.net/3d Attack/viewtopic.php?t=1405 All submissions must be e-mailed to Attention: Tank at 3dattack@3dattack.net

Reviews If you would like 3D Attack to evaluate and review your product, or if you are a member of the press and would like to evaluate and review the 3D Attack line of plug-ins for CINEMA 4D, feel free to contact Thomas Pasieka at: 3dattack@3dattack.net Tutorials If you have any questions or comments regarding the tutorials within the magazine, please feel free to express them on or CINEMA 4D discussion forum at www.3dattack.net Contact Information 3D Attack 158 S. Saginaw St. Chesaing, Michigan 48616 - USA E-mail: 3dattack@3dattack.net

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attempts to do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as it applies in Michigan, USA. This applies for both 3D Attack material as well as any named artist contained in its publications. Although we read through all the tutorials and proof-read them for errors we cannot guarantee that they are 100% error-free and therefore cannot issue refunds based on those errors.

MrBraun: “ Another great issue: the best into best !!”

03

Interview

zBlur: zBlur is a post effect for Cinema 4D which can be used as an alternative to C4D's own DOF. zBlur does not cancel out other post effects, it does not require the Advanced Render module, and it supports reflections and bleed control. zBlur also has a preview window and a reference object that can make changes right in the editor.

LUMEN: LUMEN is a plug-in for Cinema 4D which provides a fast and efficient global illumination and special effects solution.

LUMEN creates an array of lights using a source object's points or polygons. LUMEN source objects can be any polygon object, spline, primitive, or primitive spline, and several light parameters can be controlled with information derived from bitmaps or procedural textures.

OLX: OLX is a Cinema 4D plug-in that replaces and extends Cinema's built in Object Library functionality. Not only does OLX support submenus, it also supports separate libraries for documents, scenes, objects, materials, render settings and layouts.

LSD: LSD is a post effect plug-in for CINEMA 4D that can be used to create stunning color/special effects. LSD gives you the ability to use a new created zBuffer or CINEMA 4D’s own zBuffer to colorize, desaturate, and/or add grain and noise to your pictures or animations.

For a complete list of 3D Attack Plug-in features, prices, videos, tutorials and screenshots visit our shop at www.3dattack.net/shop/

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

By Ta vy Ann had were Magic Markers, pens, and chalk pastels etc. I'm not sure whether they still use them today though. Indeed, I don't think I touched a computer to produce illustrations until I started in the Film Industry nearly ten years ago.

Interview

Max Dennison maxdennison.com

Tavy: Hi Max! Thanks for taking time from your schedule to share a little about yourself and your work with 3D Attack. Throughout the 3D community there is a growing interest in Matte Painting. It is an honour to have some time with one of the best in the industry. Why don’t we start with you sharing a little about yourself and your educational/training background?

Max: Thanks Tavy - It's a pleasure to be asked to contribute.

Nonetheless, I have always had a fascination with drawing details and examining what it is that makes an aesthetic appealing. Industrial Design of course gave me a great opportunity to broaden my skills in this area and to really start to dissect photographic illustration down into its component parts - i.e. understanding how to draw highlights, shadows, tone, form and line etc.

Once I'd finished my course, I set up an illustration business, specializing in photographic illustration - both industrial and fine art. I really enjoyed this, and it gave me a fantastic opportunity to expand my horizons and to start to develop my own style and to be able to draw and paint what I wanted without the con-

Well, my background has always been quite artistic. I grew up in a very 'artsy' family and I guess it rubbed off somewhat. I trained as an Industrial Designer back in the late Eighties and I think it was while at college that I really discovered my interest in Illustration and the way things work visually.

Despite it being a very 'Engineering' based degree course, the photographic illustration side of it appealed to me especially. Of course, back then, there was no computers to do it all for you, no Photoshop like it is today, and the first burgeoning releases of Alias and Wavefront were difficult if not impossible to get time on. All we

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

6

straints of a college brief. It also allowed me to explore what a commercial brief is and how to tackle a 'real-world' scenario if you like. This definitely helped me once I started as a Matte Painter.

Tavy: Max your portfolio is both diverse and impressive: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Shakespeare in Love, Peter Pan, Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, etc.

All of the fore mentioned films are great, but the Rings Trilogy, for me, was both awe inspiring and breathtaking. It was like watching a moving painting. While working on The Rings Trilogy you were the supervisor of the Matte Painting Department for Weta Digital. Can you tell us a little about your work with Weta and what it was like play such a key role in movie making history?

Max: My time at Weta was a fantastic experience. I was hugely fortunate to have joined the company at

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

Interview

By Ta vy Ann

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

a very early stage in the Rings production. Indeed I was the first Matte Painter on board and I believe the first Matte Painter that they had had in the traditional sense. So altogether I have to admit that it was quite daunting to turn up on my first day back in early 2000. At that point in time though, Weta was just coming to the end of Pre-Production and had only started a hand full of the enormous amount of Effects Shots that it would eventually produce.

Also back then; I don't think anyone really knew what he or she were letting themselves in for to be honest.

No one really knew whether the films would be the success that they eventually turned out to be, or indeed whether Weta could actually produce the quality and quantity of work that Peter Jackson expected.

To him, this was a labour of love and passion on a grand scale, and despite the fact that 3foot6 (The Rings Production Company) wanted all the effects to be done at Weta,

the company was still very, very small. So, on the back of The Frighteners and Contact, they needed to the huge number of talented people who could produce leading and world-class effects.

I became Head of Matte Painting during this period, and it was my job to build a viable department that could work in tandem with the all other teams in the company. It was also my job to make sure that we could economically produce the enormous amount of Matte Paintings that would be required and that we could cope with the vast environments that would be needed.

Very early on, I started to forge what would become a very strong relationship with 3Foot6's Art Department, whose employees included masters such as Paul Lasaine, Alan Lee and John Howe.

The latter two being the leading Tolkein illustrators in the world

7

proved an invaluable asset to have access to. Their vision would eventually shape the whole of Jackson's Middle Earth and become central to the entire aesthetic of the films. Paul has come from Disney and was a truly incredible artist in his own right.

To this day, I am humbled by the talent of these three gentlemen.

Despite the prolific (and I say this with authority) amount of work that they produced, one cannot imagine the quality of paintings, drawings, sketches, doodles etc that they delivered. Therefore, having them actively involved in the manufacture of the Matte Paintings at such an early stage proved to be the right idea. Through them, we could have a direct line to what Peter Jackson really wanted. They would produce the concepts, show them to Peter, and then hand them over to us. So at the outset of every painting, we would have a clear idea of composition, colour, and context.

To make matters slightly more complicated for us, we knew that Jackson wasn’t particularly enamored with the concept of Matte paintings. I guess he'd seen enough bad ones in his time and was nervous about using them so prodigiously in his films. One of the great things about Peter is that he had a very clear idea in his mind's eye as to what he wanted. He had the ability that a lot of Directors don't have and that is the ability to fully understand and interpret concept art and Matte Painting sketches. Just as one would do with a painting in a gallery, Peter could dissect what he liked and didn't like, and verbalise what he was thinking. Yet despite his nervousness, we started to produce work that 'seemed' to be what he wanted and thus he gave us more and more. In the end, I had up to six

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

Interview

By Ta vy Ann

Matte Painters working full time for three and a half years and producing Paintings for over 1500 Visual Effects shots.

Tavy: Concerning Lord of the Rings, one could ask enough questions to fill a book, but I will ask only one. In Return of the King when Gandalf and Pippin are approaching Minas Tirith and we get our first look at the White City, I lost my breath. This was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen. Can you share with us a little of what went into making that scene so magnificent?

Max: Yes, this shot was an eyecatcher! The painting was put together by a young American chap named Dylan Cole who joined us specifically for The Return of the King. Dylan is a great Matte Painter who is sure to do great things in the future, but this film was particularly special for him I think, and subsequently, he poured in an enormous amount of effort. The shot itself was part of what we called the Pelennor Fields environment. This meant that

it formed part of the entire digital landscape that existed between the White Mountains to the West and the Mordor Mountains to the East. In between, lay the Pelennor Fields - a vast stretch of flat shrub and grass land with a single road leading from the main gate of Minas Tirith straight across through the abandoned town of Osgiliath and then on towards the Black Gates leading into Mordor itself and the Gorgoroth Plains.

One of the ways that I liked to assign shots to artists was to let them have control or ownership over specific environments. This, I felt, would allow them to get thoroughly stuck in and involved in the environment, eventually becoming the experts and the point person for any inquiries relating to that environment.

This format worked very well on the whole I believe. However, due to the complexity and size of this environment, coupled with the vast number of shots that would use this work, I broke the work up between Dylan and myself, as there amounted too

8

much more work than one person could cover on their own.

With this shot in particular, it is only the second time that we have seen the White City; the first being in Film 1 when Gandalf approaches the city to investigate Bilbo's ring. However, this is a huge establishing shot of the city and one, which will set the tone for the rest of the film. The shot itself is constructed from many different elements. The citadel is a miniature, which was built by Weta Workshop. It is an incredible model about 12 foot high and superbly detailed. This formed the basis for the shot and it was photographed using a motion control move. This helped formalise the final camera move, which had been tracked from the original live plate. Once we had the camera move digitised, we were able to set up the digital environment in Maya. A low res Poly model was then build for the hills and the ground plain.

Once we had these elements, the fun part began. This was where Dylan could now start to paint the

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

By Ta vy Ann environment as a Matte Painting, using photographic stills taken from specific locations around the South Island of New Zealand, which was then projected onto the Geometry.

After a little back and forth, the CG Cyc (cyclorama) was approved and then the whole shot went down to the Compositing Department in order for them to 'comp' the live plate back into the shot. After a few final niggles were ironed out, the other remaining elements were placed in such as the flock of 'Grouse'.

Interview

Tavy: For all of the Star Wars junkies‌.can you give us a little insight on what you did for Return of the Sith? Were you pleased with the final result?

Max: Yes, I was delighted with the final result of the Revenge of the Sith. This was my first work on a Star Wars feature and I have to say that I was thrilled to have been asked to be involved with the show.

It was an incredible experience for me, not only to work on the show, but also to work along side some of the best Matte Artists in the world.

ILM has long since been the best VFX facility in the world and having worked there, I think I can see why.

The work that I was involved with was specifically to do with a couple of the planets. I completed Matte Paintings for Kashyyyk, Felucia, Coruscant, and Mustafar. In all, there were about 11 paintings, which I did, which ranged from establishing shots of the planets themselves, to shots of the landscape from the air and the ground.

Tavy: Your personal work is just as, if not, more beautiful and impressive than your professional work. With

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

such a busy schedule would you like more time for your personal work?

Let me rephrase that‌.With such a busy schedule when do you find time for your personal work?

Max: Unfortunately, I don't have a great deal of time any more for my own work, despite a strong desire on my part to do so. I find it's a double-edged sword in many ways.

Although I have been very lucky to be constantly working on one production or another, it means that by the time I get home in the evenings, I'm usually too worn out to sit down and start painting again. So something's must give unfortunately...

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

Tavy: What software applications are you currently using?

Max: I generally use Photoshop, Maya and Shake on a day-to-day basis. These give me all the flexibility I need to do most things. There are a few other off-the-shelf packages that I sometimes use, but mostly I use the three mentioned.

9

Tavy: Although Maya is your 3D application of choice, CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D are rapidly being used more and more in the film industry. Do you see a growing market for CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint?

Max: Yes, I certainly do. I think that software like CINEMA 4D is a great

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

By Ta vy Ann to share my thoughts and experiences. As regards advice, the best advice that I can give is strangely NOT to rely on computers. The best Matte Artists in the world are the ones who have the capacity to ‘see’ and draw.

Interview

One shouldn’t let a computer do it all for you and this is one reason that I have to say that one should avoid software that can allegedly ‘reproduce’ mountains, or seas etc, like the plague. It just won’t work.

Use your own experiences and skills, and hone them to be the very best that they can be.

Also, do lots of investigation and research in Matte Painting. Some of the Legends of Matte Painting are without doubt incredible. Many were trained fine-artists had the uncanny ability to be able to reproduce a photographic painting on glass with utmost precision and skill. A rare talent indeed.

Personal Artwork by Max Dennison

having a good quality camera if you are a Matte Artist is that you can achieve superb quality reference photo’s to use in your work. I have a huge reference database, and much to my wife’s distress, whenever we do get to have a holiday together, I tend to take photos of skies, trees, rocks, and buildings rather than ones of her….

Tavy: Are you currently working on any projects you can tell us a little about?

Max: At present, I have just started on some concept and Matte work for ‘X men 3’, so that should be quite exciting. I recently finished work on Harry Potter 4 – The Goblet of Fire

which was great fun, but there are some really exciting projects coming up which I’m hoping to be involved in.

Tavy: Thanks again Max. This was a real treat for 3D Attack and our readers. We will definitely be keeping an eye on what you will be doing next. One last question: As I previously stated, Matte Paining is growing in popularity and more and more artists are looking to delve into this area of the industry. Do you have any words of advice to lend to the thousands of aspiring Matte Painters in the world?

Max: It is my pleasure Tavy. I feel very privileged to have been asked

11

But this is still a highly valued skill nowadays. Directors are looking for more and more ways to tell visual stories and are asking Effects companies to constantly push the boundaries of what can be done. It is very important to remember that Photographic quality Effects are the common expectation in every FX production. And Matte Paintings are no exception.

There will always be a demand for great Painters, so try and be the best that you can.

Inter vie w with Ma tte P ainting Ar tist Max Dennison

By Ta vy Ann package to use. Although I don’t generally use it, I have seen it in action and am very impressed. The downside of all these packages are that there is so much to learn, and every one of them is competing for your attention.

Interview

I do use Maya as my 3D package primarily because it was the first one I picked up. And the amount of effort it has taken to get to a level that makes the package become transparent means that I am reluctant to dive headlong into learning a new one.

There are indeed lots of similarities between packages and lots of crossover apps, but I tend to find that people remain fairly loyal to their software package of choice.

There are those who would swear by 3DS Max, whilst other stick to SoftImage or Maya etc.

I guess the bottom line for anyone wishing to learn a new package is to investigate the pros and cons quite deeply. See what other people have to say, and what their own experiences are etc.

That way, one can make a much more informed choice as to what package that is right for you.

However, I digress. CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint are becoming ever more popular nowadays for a number of

reasons. I guess the main one is cost. One cannot argue with the cost of this app verses its versatility and secondly because you have a texture paint package working in tandem with the 3D Package. In a nutshell, it makes the whole process so much easier.

Tavy: With your busy schedule you surely have to take time for you.

When you’re not sitting in front of a

10

computer, what do you do for relaxation and enjoyment?

Max: When I’m not working on a show, I really enjoy traveling. I find it so relaxing and stimulating at the same time to be in a strange new country where one can lose oneself.

I have also recently bought a new Canon Digital Camera, and am finding that I’m photographing everything in sight. The great thing about

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By answering the simple question below and e-mailing it to 3dattack@3dattack you could be the lucky winner.

Question: Who won the third and final round of the “The Prize Fight” competition sponsored by 3D Attack and MAXON? (Hint! The answer can be found on our forum at www.3dattack.net.)

Send an e-mail with TRAINING in the subject line, the answer to the question above along with your real name in the email body to HYPERLINK "mailto:3dattack@3dattack.net" 3dattack@3dattack.net. You will then be pooled with the other entrants for a random drawing on November 1, 2005. Our winner will be notified via e-mail and on our CINEMA 4D discussion forum at http://www.3dattack.net *3D Attack staff and/or their immediate families are not eligible to enter and/or win the C4D Quiz.

Splitting Faces!

By Oli ver W uensc h Creating organic asymmetrical morph targets with the help of a 3D Attack Goodie XPresso.

each area a number of morphs ( the mouth for example: wide,narrow, smile, frown) is created by the artist and then linked to pose-mixer sliders, or even more advanced 2dimensional slider systems.

To be able to create asymmetrical facial expressions it is necessary to have two morphs for each facial expression. One for the left side, and one for the right side of the face.

Tutorial

Doing good facial animation has a lot to do with asymmetrical faces.

Symmetrical faces are beautiful, but boring, and the same applies for symmetrical facial expressions: they just are not natural. But, when creating characters in 3d, one recognizes pretty fast that it is easier to build, weight and rig a symmetrical character since you can mirror the second half of the work.

An easy way to add asymmetries is to add that to the character by using a copy of the mesh, deform it slightly and apply it as morph so you keep the symmetries underneath for the technical stuff.

But back to the topic:

This is relatively easy to achieve.

For the eyes you simply build both sides of the morphs as individual shapes. But when it comes to the mouth and the brows, it becomes pretty hard, since both sides combined have to create a symmetrical face, and especially in the middle of the face, where the morphs overlap the 2 morphs have to join so that there is no unwanted distortion.

I have created an XPresso, that will split a morph shape for both sides of the face into two asymmetrical shapes with the help of a vertex map. The XPresso can be found in the file "MorphsplitterExpresso.c4d" in the "Goodies" folder of this 3DAttack issue and is free to use for all 3D Attack readers. Here is a little tutorial on how to use this XPresso.

It can of course be used for other purposes then facial morph creation, too (Picture 01).

Facial animation usually heavily rely on morphs. To push the points of a copy of the characters face (and then use this as a morph target for animation) is the most direct way to deal with the complex details that make a human facial expression .In more advanced setups, the morphs of the face are split into separate areas (mouth, eyes & brows) and for

Here we have our basic , symmetrical head and a morph target "Smile", that has been sculpted with the help of CINEMA 4Ds slide-tool and the mesh-brush tool.

The smile shape is not really symmetrical, but looks good.Only the points of the mouth area have been moved, the eye-area's points remain unmoved to make it possible to mix different eye-area expressions with different mouth expressions (Picture 02).

Picture 02

The "Smile" head is hidden, the base-head selected. With the help of the rectangle-selection tool and the deactivated "Only Select Visible elements" option the left half of the face is selected in points mode (Picture 03).

Picture 03

Calling the "Set Vertex Weight" command from the Selection menu with a strength of 100% a vertex-map tag is created with a weight of 100% for the left side and 0% for the right side of the face.

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Splitting Faces!

By Oli ver W uensc h on the CINEMA 4D R9 Goodies CD. It has the wonderful feature (among lots of others) to be able to blur Vertex maps (Picture 07).

09). Create 2 copies of the default mesh in the object manager. Use Ctrl- drag in object manager to create the copies. Hide both copies (red dots) (Picture 10).

Picture 04

Tutorial

Picture 07

In the tag manager we select the Vertex map (the middle points of the head remain selected in point mode)an right-click the icon. A pop up menu appears and we choose "Blur/Curve" (Picture 08)

Picture 05

Again with the rectangle selection tool, the middle area of the face (where the overlap of the asymmetrical targets will appear later) is being selected in point mode.

Picture 10

Lets call the plug in "Tag Manager " from the plug ins menu.

Picture 08

In the dialogue that pops up activate the "Restrict to EditorPointselection" option and play with the strength settings until you have a reasonably blurred middle area, then hit the "Set" button (Picture

Load the file "MorphsplitterExpresso.c4d" from the 3Dattack Goodies folder of this issue into the file via the Object managers menu File-> Load Object.

(Picture 11) This will give you the Expression and a couple of dummy objects.

Picture 06 Picture 11

Tag manager is an awesome plug in from the sadly deceased "Bonderland" creator Klaus Karlhuber that can be found for free

Picture 09

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A remark: due to a limitation of XPresso, User data links to objects that are empty render the

Splitting Faces!

By Oli ver W uensc h Expression useless without a warning. So leave the dummy objects in the User data until you substitute the links with your own objects.

(Picture 12-13).

Picture 15

Picture 12

After unhiding copies for the left and the right side, we see that the XPresso has created 2 technically perfect matching asymmetrical morph targets. (Picture 16-17)

Tutorial

Picture 13

Drag the appropriate objects to the User data fields on the XPresso tag.

(Picture 14)

Picture 16

Picture 17

Picture 14

Then click the "Execute_Splitmorph" check box.

When the black cross vanishes and the check box the operation has successfully finished.

A note: all morph targets and copies that were used by the XPresso have been aligned on global coordinates of the base mesh by the XPresso.

(Picture 15)

A quick test with a MOCCA pose mixer object in point mode shows that the 2 morph targets join seamless in the middle. When both morphs are set to 100 percent they join to form the "Smile" target that we started with.

I hope this little XPresso is as helpful for those of you digging into facial animation as it is for me.

Happy face-splitting and Keep On Attacking.

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Olli Wuensch www.wuenschonline.de

Painting a Realistic Eye Texture

By Mark Gmehling

Painting a realistic eye texture (fast forward technique) with Photoshop (by Mark Gmehling)

between visible and invisible rulers by pressing Ctrl-H) (Pic_01). I create a new layer(Ctrl-Shift-N) and call it “eye texture”. I drag a rectangle

Hi there Attackers! In this mini tutorial I want to show you how to paint a realistic eye texture in a few minutes. I’m using Photoshop CS in this tutorial, but you’ll be able to follow all steps with Photoshop 4 as well.

No Photoshop skills needed! You should be able to follow even if you’re opening Photoshop the first, no let's say, second time.

Tutorial

Furthermore, there’s no tablet needed. In fact, this workflow hasn’t much to do with painting. I only work with selections and filters: First of all, I create a new file(Ctrl/N), call it “eyemap”, and decide what texture size I need to fit my animation needs. I choose a 1024x1024 pixel size which allows real close ups- resizing the map smaller later is no problem, in any case. Furthermore, change colormode to RGB, to make sure CINEMA will be able to read the file later.

Now I place some guidelines at 50% of height and width. You need to go to the View tab and enable Rulers, if they don’t show up automatically.

Picture 01

selection(M) across the whole document in the height of about half document . It is important that the selection snaps to the horizontal guideline to make sure it is centered vertically. You can finetune the dragged selection by going to Selection-Transform Selection- handles are added to the selection rectangle and allow you to adjust the size and position. I press “enter” to execute the adjustments, then I fill it (Alt-Backspace) 50% grey (RGB:127).

Now I add noise to this area by going to filters- noise- Add noise: I choose an amount of 30%, the uniform distribution and enable the monochromatic field in the Add noise filter attributes (Pic_02)

I doubleclick the ruler somewhere, and in the up popping window I set the Ruler Units to percent, so I don’t have to penetrate my brain with calculating the half size of the document.

Now I drag two rulers: one to 50% percent height and one to 50% width -the rulers snap to their position (By the way: You can toggle

needed circular shape: I go to Filters- Distort-Polarcoordinatesand choose the rectangular to polar option. It is important to deselect the current selection first (Ctrl-D), because the polar coordinates filter needs the whole quadratic canvas to act right (Pic_03).

Picture 02

After that I go to filters-BlurMotionblur, choose an angle of 90 degrees and a distance of 50 pixels.

The next filter I apply is responsible to bring the rectangle shape in the

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Picture 03

Next I go to Image- AdjustmentsBrightness Contrast and increase the contrast drastically to 95%.

Then I choose Filters againGaussian Blur and apply a blur of 3,5% to the Layer (Pic_04)

Picture 04

I create a new Layer call it “iris”-As I want a circular selection, I need to keep the mouse pressed a moment on top of the rectangle selection tool in the tool bar to make the other selection types appear. Then I just drag a circle -keeping the shift key pressed to ensure a 100%circled shape snap it to the middle of the document and fill(Alt-BackSpace) with a 100% black- the iris-area is roughed out. (By the way clicking D lets the fore- and background color snap back to 100% black and 100%white- pressing x- switches back and foregroundcolor).

Painting a Realistic Eye Texture

By Mark Gmehling

Now I apply Gaussian Blur to the “iris” Layer to make the look of the eye more believable. Make sure the selection isn’t active anymore (CtrlD) and go to filters- Gaussian Blur and apply a blur radius of 10 pixels (Pic_05)

(about 90pixels radius) –I make sure the selection is not active anymore(Deselect=Ctrl-D) before! Then I adjust the opacity of this layer in the layers menu (I end up at 63% opacity) (Pic_07)

rename it “eye texture variation” and rotate it about 45 degrees by using the transform command(Ctrl-T) and dragging outside the corners- I execute by pressing return and then change the “eye texture variation” layers Blend Mode in the Layer menu to darken or lighten. This results in a more interesting pupil noise (Pic_09).

Picture 07

Tutorial

Picture 05

Now I Ctrl-click (or apple-click) the “eye texture” layer and a selection appears- I add a new layer (CtrlShift-N) call it “edge” and go to EditStroke and choose a strokewidth of 30 pixels, 100% black and an inside location.

The outer stroke needs some blur too to look more believable- With the selection still active I go to Filters- Gaussian Blur- radius 20 pixels (Pic_06)

OK, that’s it for the basic-eyes texture so far. I’ve got a nice black and white texture that is a good start to generate different colored eyemaps.

Let’s give it some color: I ctrl-click (apple-click) the eye texture layer- the eye texture-layer selection appears- I create a new layer (Ctrl-Shift-N) and call it “blue color”. I choose a nice cold blue from the color palette and AltBackspace fill it.

After that, I apply the “Color” Blendmode to this layer and drag it under the “blend” layer. I finetune the color by using the Hue Saturation Adjustment under ImageAdjustments just by dragging the

Picture 09

For adding color changes to the pupil I create a new layer name it “color changes” drag it above the “bluecolor”layer in the layer manager and roughly draw some different brownish colors with the brush tool(B)- no tablet needed...because I (gaussian-)blur the colors instantly (blur radius about 8pixels) and set this layers blendmode to Color Dodge. After that I use the Image- Adjustments- Hue Saturation Sliders to get a nice variation (Pic_10).

Picture 06

To get a nicer blending I add one more layer (Ctrl-Shift-N) call it blending and add a rectangle selection- snapped to the center of the canvas (holding the shift key to ensure a 100% circular shape) and fill the circular selection (AltBackspace) 100% black.

(By the way: You can move the selection while dragging it when you use the spacebar too) After that, I blur it too with the Gaussian Blur

Picture 10 Picture 08

sliders till I’m satisfied. The result is a uniform colored blue eye (Pic_08) To add some color changes there exist thousands of different approaches- I do the following: I duplicate the eye texture layer

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When I look at the “finished” eye texture- the outer edge looks to drastic to me- out of endless possibilities to fix that, I choose a Hue / Saturation/ Lightness treatment with the colorize option enabled. I activate the edge layer, go to Image-

Painting a Realistic Eye Texture

By Mark Gmehling

Adjustments- Hue Saturation and change the saturation to 25, lightness to about +16, and the hue to a color that I like;) This adds another color variation and smoothes the edge appearance.

Tutorial

After that I drag the “iris” layer on top in the layer manager. The last step is to link all layers except the background by enabling the linkage field in the layer manager and transform (Ctrl-T) them smaller to fit the needs when mapping it onto a sphere back in C4D or any other 3D application.

When dragging the transform tool Handles, I keep the alt key pressed to center the transformation pivot point and additionally the shift key to keep the proportions (Pic_11).

Picture 11

Well, that’s it. Of course there are other ways to generate eyemaps in photoshop, but this method is quite easy and fast forward in my opinion.

I hope you enjoyed following this workaround and hope I inspired you to generate some custom eye textures. In the goodies folder you’ll find some eyemap-jpgs to have a closer look. If you have questions regarding this tutorial, don’t hesitate to post a thread in the 2D-Section (Sketch Pad) of the 3D Attack forum.

CU on board- Keep Attacking!

Mark Gmehling

18

Intr oduction to Sketc hing (Be ginner s)

By Blend Before I start this tutorial, I would just like to make it clear I’m by no means a professional 2D artists. I’m a car designer who loves and believes 2D sketches are a must passage before working on any project.

Tutorial

Sketching is a very personal way to put down ideas, work on the concepts, brainstorm and illustrate your projects. Sketching doesn't necessarily mean producing high end drawings, as you see in magazines or so. A sketch can simply be a bunch of lines over lapping... the main thing is the idea behind it.

With time and practice, you'll acquire enough skills to produce high end images, if that's your aim.

This first tutorial will deal with the basics... Mediums, perspectives, typical steps and logic to follow when you want to present a certain project.

boxes or guidelines help you limit your sketch and maintain a decent aspect/proportion. Some will be "normal" perspectives, that we'll use almost all the time, and some will be "twisted" perspectives, that we use to exaggerate for presentation purposes... a kind of showing off.

Fig.1, Fig.1a:

Fig.1 Fig.2

The eye level view is the most “realistic”. You represent the object as you would see it as a normal person standing in front of it. The bird eye level is a cool way to represent your object. Mostly used for cars or “air views” , this perspective is hard to get, but gives a nice result for presentations.

Lastly ,you should take into consideration proportions and the way your object relates to your depth of

PART I - PERSPECTIVES

There are different perspective views and approaches to draw an object. Depending on it's nature, concept and ambient you want put it in, the perspective of an object changes.

There are rules you can follow and books you can read, here we're going to cover a simple logical way to apply a perspective. Just as in 3D, every object is determined in space by a polygon that limits its volume. (In some 3d software you can decide to see something called the bounding box.) That's exactly what you should do when you start the base of your drawing. As you see in the following views, these

Fig.1a

Every item is in a box. The red line shows what is called the “bounding box”, the black lines are the “cutting lines” you add in order to shape your item inside of it. Fig 2: A perspective is a virtual representation of what you usually see by eyesight. Therefore, there are different ways of drawing it. As you can see we have what is called Worm’s eye view. Your eyesight is almost to the ground. This perspective is useful for representing buildings or monuments.

Fig.3

19

Intr oduction to Sketc hing (Be ginner s)

By Blend field. his brings us to the following image Fig.3: Here we can clearly see the relation between your eye sight and the surrounding objects: The horizon line, representing your eye sight, will be the base of the perspective of your object (see fig2). The background picture will define what your whole image looks like. Follow these directions to get a descent representation of what you’re drawing.

Tutorial

Fig. 4: There are different guidelines to use when drawing. The main 3 perspec-

Fig.4

tives are with 1, 2 or 3 vanishing points. Of course, having the 3 vanishing points technique is the hardest.

We will see a detailed application of these perspectives depending on

Fig.6

Fig.2

Another approach to get the right perspective can be using images as a reference. Just search on the net for an image that give you the perspective you need, and use it a reference to make the volume lines of your product. This technique is used by everyone, even the best artists out there. So there's no shame in giving it a try in the beginning!

PART II - SETTING YOUR LAYOUT Before you start sketching, you should know where you're heading, and what's the purpose of it. If it's a brainstorming session, well please feel free to draw everywhere, even on your nice clean white walls :D (ladies i'm just kidding!).

fully understand the volumes and

Fig.3

lines of your vehicle). (fig.2) 2- A 3/4 view (this is a descent a normal perspective) (fig.3) 3- A twisted view (helps you show off your skills and attracts people to

The point in sketching is fun and useful... I draw 24/7, when i'm on the phone, when i'm eating, when i'm in the sub heading to work, when i'm in the park... But when it comes to presenting an object or using your sketches as guidelines, a few considerations should be taken: Fig.4

Fig.5

the project we’re working on. An example we can give is the relation between an object and its environment, as we can see in Fig. 5 and 6.

An object in a certain space will obey to the space’s perspective

Ask yourself, what you need to show in this object. Study it, each product requires a different approach for presentation: For example, when you present a car you mainly focus on: 1- A side view (that's a must in car design. It’s the view that makes you

20

look at your design) (fig.4) 4- Detail view (in this 1, you focus on a specific part of your drawing that you want to explain or simply make people see)So, once you've thought of the views you want to use and the way to present your object, you're ready to start sketching.

Intr oduction to Sketc hing (Be ginner s)

By Blend

PART III - SKETCHING Ok! Now that we're done setting up everything, we'll pass to the rough sketching. In this tutorial we're going to sketch a concept sports car.

1st step, is to put down the basic shape. First we draw a cube that represents the perspective we want.

At this point, do not worry about details. What you need to do is understand your object, it's volume and shape. As you've noticed, these sketches should take a maximum of a minute (fig.6) (needless to tell you

Tutorial

Fig.6

guys: do not be afraid to waste many papers :D sometimes it takes hours to get the exact shape you want, sometimes from the first shot :) ) Let your pencil flow and start "building" your drawing. 2nd step, now that our rough sketch is done, and you have the general volume, take the last sketch you did, put another paper above it and redraw it a bit cleaner. Keep the important lines, and try to define it more. (fig.7) Repeat this until you are sat-

as in 3D, it gives more value to your project and helps you show your design. So, give give this part lots of attention. As you can see in this

Fig.10

steps we saw earlier.

In the next tutorial, we'll take the same car we did and render it using pen tone and pastel.

Fig.8

sketch, I did many things: (fig 8) 1. I’ve decided to "flip" my view, this can be done easily by just turning your paper and drawing above it. It might be a cool trick to get 2 perspectives in one. Secondly, I added many details such as the air intake, the lights, the door handles etc... etc...

The car is starting to take shape.

4th and last step. Well now that you added details, what you should do is, for the zillionth time, take it all and draw it again. Keeping it as clean as possible, this sketch will be used further on to make blueprints, or simply to be rendered with colors,

Fig.9

Fig.7

isfied with your drawing (proportions and general shape). This phase will allow you to prepare your sketch for adding details to it.

3rd step, once you're done with "cleaning up" the rough sketch, we'll pass to add some details to it.

Details are really important., same

digitally or traditionally. (fig.9) Now that you've got the basics, try to make different perspectives of the same car. follow the same steps, and once you're done, put it all together to get something similar to this view (fig.10) To conclude this tutorial, I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Don’t take sketching as a heavy thing. let it come naturally and don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time. You need time and practice to get good skills.

Practice as much as you can on the

21

TIPS AND TRICKS Faking Sketch And Toon... for this tips and tricks I thought of changing a bit from what we did earlier, and see something that relates a bit with CINEMA 4D ... having a Sketch and Toon like drawing can be really cool and neat in a presentation. Not all of us have the skills to draw great yet, use 3d good, or simply don't have a budget for buying the Sketch and Toon module... here's a simple way to make such renders, passing by C4D. Model your object in C4D and render it simply (no radiosity or any effect) Print a copy of it, and then with a black marker, just pass over the edges and make some cross hatching where the shadows are...And there you go, a descent "sketch" done with the help of 3d :D (fig 11) Might sound silly, but this very fast and easy trick helped me a

Fig.11

lot when I used to present stuff during my university projects! Keep on attacking...

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel - Smith

Tutorial

Welcome back everyone, let’s get to it!

Modeling the Oil and Fuel Caps Ok, the oil cap first; upon inspection of the reference photography, I can see that the oil cap is an 8 sided shape with curved sides. We will be using a cylinder to model it. Create a Cylinder Primitive with 2 height segments, and 16 rotation segments. We also want to change the number of cap segments to 1.

Position and resize it in the viewport using the model of the oil bottle and the underlay as a guide. Now, we could have started with a spline and lofted the cap object, or we could use HyperNURBS. In this case, I just want to model it the old fashioned way, a little bit of extruding and beveling…

Let’s do it! It’s a well known fact that when you create a cylinder in Cinema 4D, the caps are not connected to the hull (sides) of the object. After making the cylinder editable (C) you can choose the polygons tool and move some of the top faces if you don’t understand what we mean by ‘not connected’ The fix for this is to run the Optimize Command as soon as you make the cylinder editable. The optimize command allows you to enter a radius, and it checks every point in the mesh and if 2 points are within that radius, relative to each other, they are connected and made into 1 point.

So, the first thing we will do is select the upper loop of polygons on the side of our cylinder (U, L) (loop selection) so, after selecting them, we will extrude them a bit. (Image01) After extruding, we must switch to the Edges Tool and select every

the ‘Create N-Gons’ option selected.

That should clean up our mesh quite a bit. After beveling, run the optimize command again, that should make sure that everything is still connected. Now we can scale the top NGon and bevel the edges to our liking. (Image-03) In the images shown, I selected the inner N-Gon and scaled it a bit, then moved it up.

Then, I selected the loops of edges

Image 01

other edge around the polygons that we just created with the extrude function. We want to scale these in a bit, but we don’t want the height of them to change. For this step, I would like to use the ‘Axis Bands’ feature. By pressing Shift-V you can see the viewport settings in the attributes manager. On the ‘Filter’ page, you can see the option for axis bands.

Turn it on and you will now have these grey bands like webbing that connects the adjacent axes to one another. Clicking and dragging these bands will scale or move the object on those 2 axes only, perfect for this case. So, we want to scale the edges down on the X and Z axes while maintaining the Y size of the edges. (Image-02) After this step, we can bevel the alternate edges and with all the polygons selected, run the untriangulate command with

The result; after running the optimize command with the default settings of 0.01; your cylinder should be all ready for the next step. So, let’s make the cylinder editable and optimize it! (Optimize can be accessed by right clicking in the Points, Polygons or Edges Tools…

Image 02

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Image 03

and beveled them a bit. And for the Fuel tank. I will let you use the technique described above to create your own fuel cap. (Image-04)

Image 04

Modeling the Chain Guard The chain guard is an interesting piece, but it’s really simple. We will start with a cube and then add knife cuts to get the shape we want, all the while maintaining quadrangles and we will then drop it into our HyperNURBS Object for further smoothing and fine tuning. Start by

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel - Smith

creating a cube and positioning it in the right viewport so that it encompasses the chain guard area. Make it editable and position the 4 corners of it at the 4 corners of the chain guard. (Image-05) Once that is done, you will create 1 horizontal and 1 vertical cut using the knife

guard. You will need to set the plane to ‘ZY’ and then you can go ahead and make your cut. (Image-08) Now that the shape is looking good, we will create one of the details on

Image 06

claws in front. Go ahead and make those adjustments and you should end up with something looking like this: (Image-07) Select the 3 polygons at the front, extrude inner a bit

the side of the chain guard. I don’t want the model to become too complex, so we will just do the detail very roughly. With the chain guard object selected, press the ‘Q’ key to toggle the HyperNURBS on and off for this part, we will have it off so we can see the mesh better. Step 1; select the 6 polygons shown.

Tutorial

Image 05

tool in ‘Line’ mode. Make sure that the ‘Only Visible’ option is unchecked as we want to cut completely through the cube.

Try to follow the natural contours of the object. If you see an area of definition or an area where there should be a crease, try to make the cut there. After your first 2 cuts, move the points a bit so they fit the overall shape of the chain guard a bit more. (Image-06) The magenta lines are areas where you will want to make additional cuts. But first we need to make some adjustment along the X-Axis. By switching to the Top viewport you can see a clear view of how wide the chain guard should be and we can then proceed to move and scale the chain guard cube along the X-Axis.

Once you have tweaked the X position of the faces they you will see the chain guard start to take shape.

Notice that the chain guard is wider near to the oil bottle than near the

Image 08

Image 07

and then delete the polygons.

Repeat this for the rear end of the chain guard (right in front of the oil bottle) This will help to sharpen the edges a bit when we do our next step and drop the object into our HyperNURBS object.

So go ahead and place our chain guard object into our HyperNURBS Object. It smoothes out quite nicely, but its still too round at the top and base. We will fix this by adding a knife cut. Let’s select the knife tool, select the ‘Plane Mode’ and make a cut near the inner edge of the chain

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Step 2; use the extrude inner tool a bit to create an inner piece. Step 3; Scale the polygons to 0 on the XAxis. Step 4; (in the top view port) move the polygons along the X-Axis to place them so that they don’t bulge out anymore. (Image-09) And

Image 09

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jam Hamel - Smith

this is how your chain guard should look after it’s done! (Image-10)

that we just created and then switch to the top viewport and using the Extrude tool, (with the ‘Create Caps’ option checked) extrude it a bit, we don’t need to extrude it the exact amount as we will adjust that next.

So, once you have extruded the NGon, switch to the perspective viewport (F1) and move the 2 N-Gons along the X-Axis so that they fill the center of the chainsaw without intersecting the chain guard or the fuel tank too much. (Image-12) After switching back to the Right viewport,

Image 10

Tutorial

Modeling the Main Body This part of the model is going to be hidden by the other parts we will create later on, so it doesn’t have to be very detailed at all. It will be a simple extrusion with a rounded base. We will start in the right viewport and create an empty polygon object (Objects > Polygon Object) we will call this object ‘Engine Base’ Position the object around the center of the chain guard as this is the rough location of the center of the object. Start by selecting the ‘Create Polygon Tool’ and in the points tool, start to draw as shown. (Image-11) we will draw a simple shape that we will then extrude. Select the N-Gon

Image 11

Image 12

use the rectangular selection tool (with the ‘Visible Only’ option unchecked) and select the polygon that is shown and extrude it (remember to uncheck the ‘Create Caps’ option, we don’t want a cap in the middle of our extrusion) so that it lines up with the rounded piece at the base of the image. (Image-13) We will then return to the perspective viewport and select the 4 edges at the end of the extrusion we just created. The easiest way to do that is to Ctrl-Click the edges tool (this will convert the current polygon selection to an edges selection) after you have the 4 edges selected; you can now bevel them to get that nice rounded appearance at the base of our extruded polygon.

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Image 13

Select the bevel tool and choose ‘Convex’ as the type of bevel. I am going to use only 3 subdivisions for my bevel, but feel free to use more if you want to. (Adjust the number of subdivisions in the Attributes Manager with the bevel tool selected) Drag in the viewport to interactively bevel the edges. That’s it; we are done with that part! The only thing left to do is to add a Phong Tag to the object. This will smooth it out so you don’t see the individual faces. Right click the object in the Attributes Manager and choose Cinema 4D tags > Phong. Set the smoothing angle to 40 and we are good to go!

Modeling the Engine’s Cylinder (the part with all the fins on it) So far most of our parts that we have modeled have been quite organic, now we will create an object that is much more mechanical. Even though we can’t really see the cylinder that clearly, it can be seen very clearly from the right side.

We can’t see it from the top view, but we can use the top view to guess where the center of it is.

Typically, on an engine like this one that has only 1 cylinder, the spark plug is directly in the center of the cylinder. We can see the spark plug very clearly from the top and side,

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

Tutorial

By Jamie Hamel - Smith

and from the right viewport, we can get a good idea how big it is. There are 2 different groups of fins on it, but we are going to model them as if there were only 1 group of fins running the whole length of the cylinder.

(Just to keep it simple). The fins stick out of the actual cylinder, so we have to model the cylinder itself a bit smaller than the fins, we will then extrude the fins out of it.

Let’s start with my favorite primitive object, a Cube. Position it where the cylinder is using the top and right view ports as a guide (use the top for finding its position along the XAxis, and use the right to position it from the side) Make it editable ‘C’ and scale it to the proper size. Make sure to make it smaller than the fins.

(Image-14) Now we will use the power of Cinema 4D’s new and

remember that you can always enter the value numerically in the Attributes Manager. I had to use a very small value, so I did indeed have to enter the value numerically in the Attributes Manager. (Image17) The next step is selecting the loops of Polygons that we want to extrude to create the fins. Using the

Image 15

would be easier to bevel the existing cuts than to try to create a whole new set of cuts for the fins to be extruded from.

If we switch to the Edges Tool, we can use the Rectangle Selection Tool to select the loops of edges so that we can bevel them. (Image-16) once you have all the edges selected, we want to choose the bevel

Image 17

same technique as before, we will select the loops of polygons and then extrude them. (Image-18) The corners of the fins are not sharp at all; they are rounded quite a bit.

Image 14

improved knife tool once again. We are going to use the ‘Slice’ feature.

This option will allow us to create multiple cuts along a specified plane that are evenly distributed along the object. Select the Knife tool and choose the ‘Plane’ mode select the X-Z Plane and click the ‘Slice’ checkbox. Increase the number of cuts until it matches the number of fins roughly. Click once in the viewport to cut the object. (Image-15) Now we have to create another set of loops to extrude the fins from. It

Image 16

tool once again and this time we want to have a bevel with 0 Subdivisions. Drag in the viewport and you will see the selected edges split apart. You want the split edges to be the thickness of the fins. And also, you want the space in-between each pair of edges to be the thickness of the spaces in between the fins. If you are having trouble interactively dragging in the viewport,

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Image 18

To achieve this, we will switch to the top viewport, (F2) and use the Rectangle Selection Tool (with ‘visible only’ unchecked) to select the edges straight through the object.

Just drag the selection box over each corner and it will select the edges on the corners all the way

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel Smith

down the object. After you have them all selected, just do a bevel on them and that should be it! You will want a convex bevel with about 4 or 5 subdivisions. (Image-19) The next step is to switch to the Polygons Tool and select all (Ctrl-A) now right

a guide will help a lot.) Just scale and position it so that it shows you the curve of the boss.

Step 1: Create the N-Gon by adding an empty polygon object and using the create polygon tool.

Step 2: Extrude the N-Gon and make sure that the ‘Create Caps’ option is checked when doing so. If you check the top viewport, you can see exactly how much it needs to be extruded.

Tutorial

Image 19

click and choose the ‘Untriangulate’ function. Check the ‘Create N-Gons’ check box and press OK. This will clean up some of the extra edges and will leave us with our completed cylinder!

Modeling the Cooling Fan Boss This is the plate that connects the vented grill with the STIHL logo on it to the engine itself. If you look at the photo named ‘DSC08691.jpg’ in the reference photography folder, you can clearly see how it connects to the engine and then the vented grill bolts onto it. We are just going to model the boss for now, it’s a simple extrusion. I’ll start with an N-Gon and then extrude it, followed by a bevel on the inside part to get the rounded appearance. I’ll move very quickly for this part. (Remember when extruding to check the ‘create caps’ checkbox) You can create a Circle Spline Primitive to use as a guide if you want to. (Since I am tracing from the Left viewport and piece of the black handle covers the edge of the boss, a circle spline as

Step 3: Select the loop of edges on the inside N-Gon (select the N-Gon and then Ctrl-Click the Edges Tool to convert the selection to edges) Then use the bevel tool to add a convex bevel to the edges.

Step 4: Add a Phong Tag and set the angle to 40, or whatever you like. (Image-20)

We can then extrude it slightly (with ‘create caps’ on) and use the top viewport as a guide to let us know how much it needs to be extruded.

The next few steps will involve creating the central hub that all of the fins connect to. Simply use the underlays as guides and use a Primitive Cylinder to create the shape, but here is where we get a little tricky… we need to create a LatheNURBS Object with the same general contour as the fins, then use a Boolean to cut the spaces. This process is easier illustrated than explained, so I will use some images to explain the process.

Firstly, we need to create our LatheNURBS Object at the center of the area that we want to create the lathe. If you created a Circle Spline primitive to aid you in drawing the N-Gon for the boss, you can use this as your center. If not, just create the LatheNURBS Object and place it at the center of the fins area. We also need to rotate it -90 degrees on the B-Axis so that the Green Axis Handle points outward. (Image-21) Now we need to create a Spline Object (Objects > Spline Object.)

Image 20

Modeling the Starter / Cooling Fan Grill Now we will tackle the task of creating the grill on the left side of the Chainsaw. First we will select the NGon that we just created for the boss, and then we will select the split function to create a new polygonal object containing this N-Gon.

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Image 21

and send the spline object to the same position and rotation as the Lathe NURBS Object. The Transfer Function is what we will use to do this, Select your empty Spline

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel Smith

Object in the Object Manager and choose Functions > Transfer. The Transfer tool settings will appear in the Attributes Manager and you can drag the LatheNURBS Object into the object link box. (Image-22) This will tell the transfer function to send the spline object to the same position, rotation and scale as the

Now we will make the harsh corners of the LatheNURBS Object a bit nicer by using the chamfer tool. In the Points Tool, right click and choose the chamfer tool, then proceed to smooth out each point using the top viewport as a guide to see how curved each point should be.

Now, before you start to Boolean anything, we need to add some thickness to this part, and punch a hole in the object we derived from the boss.

Tutorial

Image 23

Image 22

LatheNURBS Object. Hit the Apply button and it should be done. Now we can switch to the top viewport (F2) and start to draw our lathe profile. (We will draw by selecting our empty spline object and in the points mode, Ctrl-Clicking to create points.)

Now, due to accuracy issues in our underlays and the fact that we are really following the left and right view ports for scale purposes, the top viewport will give you a rough idea of how far apart the points in your spline should be, but you will still have to switch back and forth between the top viewport and the left viewport to really position the points well. I like to use a linear spline and then add chamfers to it where I need curves as we did in part 1 while modeling the handle.

(Image-23) Now, once you have your profile roughly drawn out, you can fine tune the points in the left viewport by moving them along the Z-Axis. (Image-24) One this is done, drop the spline object into the

Image 24

LatheNURBS Object and you should have something looking like this; (Image-25) If you have a hole in the center of your lathe object, select

Image 25

the point closest to it and make its Z Position 0 using the coordinates manager.

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Let’s start by adding thickness to the lathe; I suggest that you cut and paste the LatheNURBS Spline object into a new file for clarity. We will be using the create outline tool.

Once you have your spline object in a new file, using the Points Tool, we will right click and choose create outline. Click and drag in the viewport to create an outline for our spline, you should see it develop into an enclosure. You want to create the outline so that it moves towards the center of the chainsaw (inward).

Once your outline is created, select the Spline in the Attributes Manager and uncheck the ‘Close Spline’ option. You should see an opening develop in the spline. The only problem is that if you drew the spline in the same order as I did, the opening is in the wrong place. We want this opening to be at the center of the Lathe object. To fix this, we must select the point closest to the center of the lathe (and the inner one) and Right Click and choose the command that says ‘Set First Point’.

This will change the order of the spline so the opening appears at the center of the lathe. (Image-26) Now that we have the spline with thickness and the opening at the right point, we want to double check the

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel Smith

Image 26

Tutorial

Z-Position of the same point that we did earlier and also the point that was created right inside of it when we created the outline. They should both be at 0 on the Z-Axis in order to ensure that our lathe is sealed at the center. (Image-27) We can now cut and paste the mod-

Image 27

ified spline back into our other file and place it in the LatheNURBS Object once again. It shouldn’t look any different, but now it has thickness, and this is vital for our next steps. We need to hide the LatheNURBS object for a while, so click the upper dot next to the LatheNURBS Object in the Attributes Manager until it turns red, this will hide it in the editor for now.

Now we will shift our focus to the left viewport and to the object ‘Boss.1’ that was created earlier in this section. We need to use the Bool object to cut a hole in this object. Looking at the left viewport, we can see that the boss.1 object actually has a

large hole in the center of it. Create a cylinder primitive with 1 height segment, 1 cap segment and the default number of rotation segments. Now, to keep things very uniform to OUR model so far, we will transfer the cylinder to the location of the LatheNURBS Object so that it’s at our center. This will give us a more uniform result than positioning it to the underlay. Once you have transferred the cylinder to the position of the LatheNURBS Object, we can adjust its radius to the size of the hole.

We can now create a Bool Object and use the cylinder as the ‘B’ object and the Boss.1 object as the ‘A’ object. Once you have done this, it’s no sense keeping the Bool object as an editable one, so we will check the ‘Single Object’ option as well as the ‘Hide new Edges’ option.

We can now select the Bool Object and hit the ‘C’ key to make its current state a polygon object. It should have created a Null object with our polygon object as a child. We don’t need this Null, so we can drag the polygon object out of the Null and delete the Null.

I want to use this opportunity to add a little more detail to the Boss.1 Object. Using the Loop Selection mode, (Keyboard shortcut: ‘UL’) we can select the 2 outer loops of edges and bevel them very slightly.

(Image-28) The next thing we want to do is to cut some slots in the LatheNURBS Object. We will make the LatheNURBS object visible again by clicking the upper dot once to return it to the Grey (default) state.

Now, we want to create an object that will serve as a ‘Cutter’ and then

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Image 28

duplicate and rotate it, filling all the gaps. Once that is done, we can Connect them into one polygon object and then minus them from the LatheNURBS Object.

I am using a Cube Primitive; once again we will transfer the cube to our LatheNURBS Object. By now you should see that I am really sticking to this ‘Center thing’ ;-) Once your cube is transferred, we will make it editable and using the points or polygons tool, move and scale its points or polygons so that it is the same shape as one of the spaces in the grill.

The reason that we are moving the polygons of the object and not the object itself is pretty simple; we want to be able to easily rotate the duplicates of the cube around the center

Image 29

of the LatheNURBS Object. Your Cube should extend beyond the edge of the LatheNURBS Object; (Image-29) now we will move on to the Duplicate command. To make

Modeling and Texturing a Chainsaw Part 2

By Jamie Hamel Smith

the task of rotating the duplicates of the cube easier and to make the model more accurate, we will use the duplicate command to rotate the cube while copying it. Return to the left viewport and rotate the cube so it occupies the first space. We now want to Zero the Axis of the cube to make it aligned with the world axis.

This will make our Duplicating task easier. Choose the ‘Object Axis Tool’ and in the coordinates manager, make all the rotation values Zero.

Once this is done, don’t forget to switch back to the ‘Model Tool’

Tutorial

Choose Functions > Duplicate. Your Attributes Manager should fill up with the numerous settings for the Duplicate command. They are too

Image 30

numerous to mention in this tutorial and are pretty much self explanatory, so I will just show you which settings to adjust: (Image-30) Once we have gotten everything duplicated, we need to connect them into one polygon object… actually we don’t NEED to, but I’d prefer to. It makes the scene neater and I’m sure it gives the Bool object an easier time anyway.

In the Attributes Manager, unfold the Null that cinema created to hold all of your duplicates and drop the orig-

inal cube into it. Now that we have all of our cubes in one Null Object, we need to select them all before using the Connect Function. So, if we right click the Null and choose ‘Select Children’, Cinema 4D will do just that, then we can right click the Null again and choose ‘Connect’.

We now have a single polygon object that has all of our copies as a part of it. Feel free to delete the null containing all of the copies.

Now, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS PART! This Boolean we are about to attempt is the kind of Boolean your parents warned you about! SAVE YOUR FILE! Once you have saved your file, you should be ok if Cinema 4D runs out of memory while trying to calculate this Boolean. Note: The default interpolation of a Bezier spline drawn in Cinema 4D is 5° this usually produces nice curves, but it can be a bit too much resolution when dealing with Booleans, HyperNURBS, Deformers etc… for this particular application, I definitely think its too much.

Fix this by selecting the spline that’s inside of the LatheNURBS Object and changing the Angle to something closer to 25° now that we have a more manageable mesh to deal with, we can create a Bool object.

As a further precaution, we are going to uncheck the ‘High Quality’ Option in the Boolean options in the Attributes Manager. (Users of R6, R7 and R8 don’t have to worry about this option) The high quality option produces a better result with fewer triangles and also takes longer and uses more memory. If a Boolean is ever giving you a hard time, and the high quality option is on, TURN IT OFF!

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Now then, at this point, we can place the ‘Cube-Cutters’ object into the Bool object, followed by the LatheNURBS Object. You should see the newly created object form.

Now if all goes well for this part, you can save and then turn on the high quality option. Remember to save first! If your computer doesn’t choke, your mesh should be much cleaner after enabling this option.

Now, for this case, there is no point in keeping the Boolean Object. We should just Right click it in the Attributes Manager and Choose ‘Current State to Object’. This will create a polygon object from the Boolean and we can delete the Boolean object and that will speed up our file a lot!

Well, it seems that I have run out of space in this issue. Be sure to look out for the next part of this tutorial in the next issue!

Cheers, Jamie Hamel-Smith (jamiehs)

Replica - Plugin Tutorial

By Chris Montesano

Hello Attackers. I'm going to introduce you to 3D ATTACK's latest plugin: Replica.

Tutorial

Replica is a general purpose dynamic cloning plugin. What this means is that it takes an input object (polygon or spline) and creates clones of a second object that are aligned to the input object's points or polygons.

If you have used LUMEN or LUMEN Lite (http://www.3dattack.net/plugins/) you will be right at home with Replica. The interface is almost identical. Replica is available from your "Plugins" menu. Clicking on the "Replica" command will create a "Replica" object. Replica requires two objects, an input object, and an object to clone. The input object must be Replica's first child and the cloned object is Replica's second child. The cloned object can also be a hierarchy.

Replica's properties consist of four sections: Object, Placement, Texture Variation, and Spline.

Image 01

The "Object" group displays how many replicas (or clones) have been created, the time taken for the replica creation and placement, and an option to create instances of the

cloned object, rather than a true duplicate. The "Placement" group has various controls for alignment and skipping. The "Align To" control will tell replica if you want the clones to be placed on the input object's points or polygon centers. If the input object is a spline this control is ignored. The "Target Type" control will allow you to point the cloned objects in the direction of the polygon normal (in point or polygon mode) or along the spline tangent, which will make objects flow along the curve of a spline.

The "Selection Tag" field let's you specify either a point or polygon selection tag (depending on the value of the "Align To" control) which tells Replica to limit the clone creation to that selection. The "Editor Skip" and "Render Skip" sliders tell Replica to place a clone at every nth point where n is the value of the slider in either the editor of the final render. Note that the "Editor Skip" value also affects editor renders.

The "Skip Offset" control allows you to specify the point at which Replica will begin skipping. Keyframing the "Skip Offset' value allows you to easily create some cool animations.

(See Image 02) Now for the fun part, the "Texture Variation" group. In this group you can specify textures to control the position, rotation, and scale of the clones. The textures can be any bitmap or channel shader, animated or static.The "Show Previews" option toggles the small texture previews in Replica's properties.

Turning them off can save a little calculation time for heavy scenes and will also free up some space in the Attributes Manager. The "Update Every Frame" option is necessary for using animated textures. With

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Image 02

this option enabled, the texture will be evaluated for every frame in the animation. For still images, or scenes where animated clones are not necessary, with this option off the textures will be cached internally which can help to speed things up.

Up to three textures can be specified, one each for position, rotation, and scale. All three offer Minimum and Maximum controls for x,y, and z values. You can also specify which material channel to use for each texture.

The "Spline Offset" control is necessary for applying texture variations to objects cloned along a spline. Replica will use a single row or column (determined by the "Orientation" control) from the texture to calculate the variations from.

The offset lets you specify the exact

Replica - Plugin Tutorial

By Chris Montesano

position of the row or column within the texture preview. This control can also be keyframed for some cool animation effects. (See Image 03)

I'm going to walk you through putting together a simple pin box with Replica. One thing you will need is an image or animation of what you want the pins to do. So if you want the pins to show someone's face, you'd need a depth map of that face. I have included a depth map of Otto's face made with zBlur (http://www.3dattack.net/plugins/) for this example. (Image 05) Image 06

In Replica's properties, change the "Align To" control to "Polygon" and turn on "Create Instances". We want the pins right next to eachother so raise the plane's width segments to 60 and it's height segments to 40.

That will give us 2400 pins (Image 07)

Tutorial

Image 03

Finally we have the "Spline" group.

Here are some advanced controls for working with splines as input objects. The first being "Use All Segments", which tells Replica whether or not to place clones on every segment of the spline.

With this option off, you can specify which segment to use. "Use Spline Points" will tell Replica to use the actual points that make up a spline.

With this option off, you can tell Replica exactly how many clones to place along each segment, with either Uniform or Natural distribution. Note that targeting spline tangents requires that the "Use Spline Points" option be turned off. Ok, enough of that, now let's make something cool! (Image 04)

Image 04

Image 05

First, let's create a new scene and build our pin. The pin does not have to be too detailed unless you're planning on doing some extreme close-ups. The pin I made is from a simple cube, which when put in a Hypernurbs object will look fine with a subdivision of 1 or 2. (Image 06) Now we have to create a surface to clone the pin along. A plane will be sufficient. My pin measures 60x1000x60, so my plane will have to be about 4000x3000. Once you create the plane add a Replica object to the scene. Drag the plane and make it a child of Replica. Then drag the pin and make it Replica's second child (right under the plane).

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Image 07

Next, create a new material. In the color channel, load "otto_z.jpg".

Drag this material onto the plane. in Replica's properties, drag the texture tag from the plane to the "Texture Tag" field in the "Position" section.

Now turn on "Set position" and click the "Update Preview Image" button.

This will build the internal cache used to store the texture. Now set the "Maximum" value for Y to 900.

You should now have a pin box representation of Otto.

Replica - Plugin Tutorial

Tutorial

By Chris Montesano

Image 08

I've included this scene, along with a complete pin box scene and some other examples for you to freely use.

duced or redistributed without written consent from an authorized representative of 3D Attack.

Remember: You can also use animated textures for instance you could animate the face in CINEMA 4D and use this animation as “texture” with replica. Using animated textures can produce some real cool looking examples. If you are have created a cool looking example using Replica then please post this on our forum for others to see.

Enjoy!

Chris Montesano The “Replica” plug-in accompanies October 2005 issue of 3D Attack The CINEMA 4D Magazine.

“Replica” is FREE to use, for both personal and commercial use.

“Replica” is copyright protected by 3D Attack and may not be repro-

32

Basic Anima tion - Fading Objects

By Br am v an Gerw en This is a basic animation tutorial for beginners. It handles a couple of simple and more interesting ways to fade objects in and out.

The Simple Fade

Tutorial

Let's begin with the most simple way of fading first, incidentally it is also the most boring method. Open the 'FadingSphere.c4d' file. This file contains a pre-setup scene by me so that we only have to concentrate on animating the shaders. The only thing you need to change is the save path to where you want the test animations to go.

So, as you can see, I've already used my modeling skills to set up the scene for you, a floor, a wall, three spheres, some lights and five simple materials. Right-click on the 'Display Sphere' object and give it a Display tag. Click on the new tag that appears behind the sphere and check the Use Visibility box. The parameter will become active enabling us to enter a value for it.

Instead of entering a value here, we will do that in the timeline. Right click on the word Visibility and select Animation -> Add Track. This will add a track on the timeline for the visibility value which will enable us to add keyframes to it and animate the visibility.

If you open the Timeline window, right now, you might not see the visibility track right away, just the objects with no tracks. To make the visibility track visible (pun intended) either go to Edit -> Show All Animated or Right-click on the Visibility word again in the tag and choose Animation -> Show Track.

The visibility will get the length you indicated in your Project Settings. In

this case I set it to 180, giving us a nice fade of 6 seconds at a framerate of 30. Next, right-click on the visibility track and choose New Key, a dialog will pop up asking you on which frame you want the key to be created. Create one at 0 and one at 180. Now click on the first keyframe, the properties for this key will be shown in the Attributes window. The Value field resembles the value of the parameter you are animating at that moment, in this case visibility.

Leave this key at 100%. Now click on the last key at frame 180 and set it to 0%.

Now, when the animation is rendered the object will fade to nothing in 6 seconds. I've already set up the output settings for the animation, so all you have to do is go into the render settings and change the save path where you want the animation to be saved. Now press Shift-R to render the animation or go to Render -> Render to Picture Viewer.

The Alpha Channel Gradient Fade This method is far more cooler, but also a bit more complicated. It is done by animating a Gradient shader in the Alpha Channel. First, I need to explain a couple of parameters from the Gradient Shader that will be animated. I will only explain the parts that we are going to animate.Iif you want to know what the rest means you can check it out in the manual (Page 794 - Gradient Shader). See Picture 1(next page) to see the explanations of the aspects that will be animated.

Click on the 'Gradient Fade' material. The shader in the color channel isn't important, it can be any texture or combination of shaders that you

33

come up with. We'll just concentrate on the animation in the alpha channel.

Enable the Alpha channel in the basic properties of the material and click on its tab that appears. Load a Gradient shader into the texture field at the bottom. It will now show you an initial picture of the gradient with some blur options. Ignore the blur options and click on the picture or on the bar that now says 'Gradient' to access the gradient properties.

We're faced with the parameters we've seen in Picture 1 (next page) and can begin to add some of them to the timeline for animating.

Right-click on the Gradient word and choose Animation -> Add Track.

Also add a track for Turbulence.

Note that adding the gradient adds tracks for all the parameters therein; Interpolation, knot position, RGB values, Intensity, bias. Before we animate some of them let's enter the static values we won't animate.

First, let me elaborate a little on what we want to achieve here. We want the sphere to disappear gradually from left to right, which means we need a linear 3D gradient which goes from left to right. We can't use the 2D gradient because that will wrap itself onto the projection of the texture tag of the Sphere and will result in awful seams and simply won't be a flawless fade. The 3D gradient, however, ignores the projection used and bases itself on the centre point (null) of the object.

From this point you can tell the shader where to start and end. Our sphere has a radius of 100, which makes it a diameter of 200. As I said before, we want the sphere to disappear from left to right on the X-axis of the object. If you look in the gradi-

Basic Anima tion - Fading Objects

By Br am v an Gerw en knot. Remember that the black knot waits 20 frames before it begins moving, to make the two knots move at the same speed ,in order to get a equal fade the white knot needs to stop 20 frames before the end. So make a key at frame 160 and give it a value of 100%.

Tutorial

This might all seem a bit vague till now, but to see what you have actually animated go into the shader properties of the gradient and open the timeline. Now when you grab the blue indicator at the top of the timeline and move it back and forth you'll see the knots moving on the gradient. To see the gradient animation preview, right-click on the preview window and choose Animate.

Choose it again to stop the preview.

ent shader properties you'll notice the Start and End parameters beneath the Cycle box. Both Start and End have three boxes boxes behind them representing X, Y, Z. As stated before, the center of the object is the null position, so to make the gradient start on the left of our sphere we need to enter -100 in the first field (X-axis) of the Start parameter. And to make it end on the right of our sphere we need to enter 100 in the first field of the End parameter.

Now that we have told the shader where to start and end, we can begin animating the gradient knots.

In the timeline you can see the parameters for both knots, identifiable by the number in the brackets, [1] representing the parameters belonging to the first knot and [2] representing those belonging to the second.

Click on the track for '[1] Position'

and add a Key at 0 frames, set the value for this key at 0%. We want the black knot to wait a second before it begins moving to the right to give the white knot some time to move ahead of it. Remember black resembles complete transparency and white non-transparent in the alpha channel. Ctrl-drag the key you just made to frame 20, you should see a little plus sign indicating the copy action.

Now the black knot can begin moving towards the right of the gradient So create a new key at frame 180 and give this one a value of 99,9% (the white knot will be at 100% at frame 180, this way they won't overlap). Next we'll animate the white knot position '[2] Position'. Create a key at frame 0 and give it a value of 0,1%, again to avoid overlapping, the black knot is already at 0% at frame 0. Next, we want the white knot to begin moving right immediately to get a head start on the black

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The alpha-channel fade is basically finished now, but looks rather boring if you render it now. So we'll make it a bit more interesting with a couple of minor tweaks. First we'll add turbulence to our gradient, breaking up the linear look of the fade. We've already added the track for turbulence in the beginning if correct, so add a key to it now at frame 0 and give it a value of 0%.

If we start the turbulence at a higher value, immediately it will give certain seams that will ruin our smooth fade. Create another key at frame 20 and give this one a value of 40%, giving an interesting variation to our fade. Ctrl-drag this key to frame 160, then Ctrl-drag the first key to frame 180 so the turbulence builds down again towards the end, avoiding additional seams.

When you render the animation now you'll notice that the fade looks grainy, meaning that the scale of the turbulence is set too high. This

Basic Anima tion - Fading Objects

By Br am v an Gerw en

Tutorial

parameter won't have to be animated, we can just set the Scale to 20% in the gradient shader properties.

We can further reduce the graininess by lowering the octaves to 1.

When you do this you'll notice the turbulence smoothing out even more, it will look very straight now but don't worry that is only in the preview window. Now to make the fade even more interesting we want the turbulence to move slightly by itself, this can be done by setting the frequency to 2, like explained in Picture 1 the beginning.

The fade animation will look great when rendered now. But because the black knot is at 99,9% and the white at 100% there will remain a small dot and that is annoying to us perfectionists. To remedy this we can simply animate the Intensity of the white knot and say reduce it to 0% in the last 5 frames.

So create a key at 0 frames and 175 with a value of 100%, then create a key at frame 180 with a value of 0%.

Now the white knot will be black at the end and will make our fade completely transparent at the last frame.

When you render the animation now you'll be able to witness the alphachannel fade in all it's glory.

The Alpha Channel Noise Fade Instead of a Gradient shader we can of course, use a Noise shader as well. The Noise fade is extremely

cool as there are many types of noise to be used and the implementation of this fade is far easier than the gradient fade.

Click on the 'Noise Fade' Material and load a Noise shader into the Alpha Channel. Click on the noise and in its properties set the Type to Electric and set the animation speed to 2, giving a reasonably calm animation. You can preview the noise animation by right-clicking on the preview and choosing Animate. Feel free to choose another noise type if you please.

We will make the noise fade by animating the High Clip and Low Clip sliders. The clipping controls give us an easy way to move the noise from complete white to complete black by moving them both in order from left to right. Right-click on the Low Clip text and add a track for it, also add a track for the High Clip slider. Move both sliders to the left and add a key on frame 0 for both tracks in the timeline, this way both keys will automatically have a value of 0%.

First we'll move the High Clip slider to the right, so create a key at 90 frames and give it a value of 100%.

We want the Low Clip to wait for the High Clip to reach 100% before it begins to move, so ctrl-drag the first key on the Low-Clip track to 90 frames. Then create a key at 180 frames for the Low-Clip and give it a value of 100%.

preview to see what you have animated, as you can see it goes from complete white to black animating cool noise in the meantime. We notice that halfway the animation the noise is dull grey to black, we want it to retain some more white areas till the end. This can be easily done by setting the contrast to 50%.

Animate the preview again to see the change. The noise will retain more white towards the end resulting in a less dull fade.

Render the animation again to the Picture Viewer for the final movie.

I've included a pre-rendered movie in the scene folder so you can check that one out if you want.

Of course this opens up a lot of possibilities, for instance try using the layer shader and animating multiple noise shaders and gradients on top of each other and you'll be able to create spectacular effects in notime.

For instance try cloaking/decloaking a ship with the gradient fade or materializing a ghost with the Layer shader using various animated noise layers or perhaps create flickering holograms. The possibilities are endless.

If you have any more questions regarding the more difficult fades using layers feel free to torpedo me with questions on the 3D Attack forum.

Have fun fading, Bram.

Use the Animate option again in the

35

Volumetric Clouds - A Mini Tutorial

By Gerard Ciavatti aka Archeo

Let's start the scenery with two terrain objects.

Size: X = 1660 m , Y = 270 m , Z = 2600 m Position of terrain 1: X = 0 m , Y = -127 m et Z = 1650 m Position of terrain 2: X = -1600 m , Y = -126 m et z = 0 m.

Add a third one, bigger: Image 02

Tutorial

Size: x = 2570 m, Y = 1200 m, Z = 4000 m Position: X = -1600 m , Y = 136 m et z = 1050 m.

And a floor object at Y = -220 m Let's light the scene with a light at: X = -4700 m , Y = 215 m et z = 1510 m with the following settings: Add a camera at X = -450 m , Y = 170 m et z = -960 m with a rotation of H = 45째, P = 0째, B = 0째 to observe the scene. "Render active view"

X = 10000 m , Y = 2000 m et z = 10000 m and place it at X = 0 m , Y = 120 m et z = 0 m. Add a nex material with a fog channel only. Set value to 2000 m and a brightness of 75 %. Better, but still no clouds. Add a last sphere to create them. Set the size to X = 8700 m , Y = 500 m and z = 8700 m, and place it to X = 0 m , Y = -31 m and z = 0 m, then make it editable. Add a fog shader (material Editor: File > shader > Fog). The fog shader allows volumetric fog.

When applied to the sphere, stick the texture (new tag > stick texture tag), then reverse the sphere typing 180 in the P value. This rotation is used to obtain clouds, and not haze at ground level. Click on the fog

Image 04

view. Now, clouds cover the mountain summits (Image 05) Sun has now disappeared behind the clouds, but can appear again using a lens effect (Lens > Glow > Star3). You can move the camera in the scenery until it doesn't pass out of the sphere containing the clouds. Place the camera at Y =150 m at frame 0 and at -166 m at frame 90 then record animation. You have the

Image 01

Should show this: (Image 02) Not stunning? Let's add a starry sky.

Create a 20.000 m radius sphere, and add a material with a starfield shader in the color channel (texture > surfaces > starfield), and copy this texture in the luminance channel.

Still not stunning? Let's add a bit of haze to the summits. Add a sphere:

Image 05

Image 03

material, then set the settings just as below: (Image 04) Render active

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impression to cross a stack of clouds. Decrease the T frequency if the clouds are too restless. Now you can experiment. Be warned that cloud shape decreases while the turbulence increases. A 10 to 25 % turbulence gives good results.

Artist Spotlight...

Jens Kappelmann aka “Jeso”

Name: Jens Kappelmann Age: 22 Occupation: Student Media Design Country: Germany

Spotlight

Software: CINEMA 4D, Photoshop, Freehand Website: http://www.jeso-art.de Favorite resources on the web: www.3dattack.net - www.c4d-forum.de

My name is Jens Kappelmann “jeso”. I was born on August 19, 1983 in Bielefeld Germany, were I am still living. Currently I am working in Media Design, and completing my education in digital and print media design. I’ve been doing this for 3 years and am not quite sure yet what I will be go into when I finish my education.

I started playing around with computer graphics in 1999. A friend of my father, working as freelancer for an agency here in Germany, showed me some graphics and I was hooked. I knew I had to learn how to bring my thoughts and ideas to the computer screen. Throughout my school years, I made the decision that I would pursue computer graphics as my career.

Years ago, after watching the movie Toy Story, I knew this was what I wanted to do, 3D. I thought and wondered how the makers of this movie were able to do what they did. I asked friends, read magazines, and finally stumbled upon short review of 3D Studio Max. I

3 37

was so excited that I order the demo from Yello Tech. After playing around with 3D Studio Max, I became very disappointed. I couldn’t do a thing with it! This experience led me to leave 3D alone for a while. About 2 years ago I learned of CINEMA 4D and tested it. After

Artist Spotlight...

Jens Kappelmann aka “Jeso”

Spotlight

playing around with it for a while, reading the manual and doing tutorials, I fell completely in love with CINEMA 4D. At this point, I can’t imagine my life without CINEMA!

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Best of CINEMA 4D Some of the best artists around the world using CINEMA 4D

Image: ME Artist: Jacob Saariaho (Cpt. Jack) Country: USA Date Created: June 2005 Website: www.cptjack.net Software: CINEMA 4D

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Image: Urban Sanctuary Artist: Corentin Seguin de Broin / SHTL Country: France Website: www.shtl.org Date created: 2002 - 09/09/2005 Software: CINEMA 4D R8.5 and Photoshop

Artist Comments: Lost in the urban confusion, this secret place is my peaceful rest. Inspired

by Tokyo city, started working on the concept in 2002. This scene became an obsession for me, so in my spare time I tried to improve it. First for my own pleasure, also for learning 3D, for better modeling, lightening, and then adding a few details. Think I'mdone with this image....well for now! http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=2 06623&highlight=urban

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Image: Beach House Artist: Juan Carlos Pèrez Ponce Country: Mexico Website: www.infograficagdl.com Date created: September 2005 Software: Autocad, CINEMA 4D and Photoshop

Artist Comments: Project to be built in Punta Mita, Mèxico.

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Image: Soil Critters Artist: Joel Dubin Country: USA Website: being overhauled Date created: 8-05 Software: Cinema 4d, Photoshop, Jenna, Path Deformer, DiTools Artist Comments: This illustration was one of dozens I've created for a textbook on Environmental Science. Renato Tarabella's Path Deformer plugin was

used in several places, including the earth worm, and the curled beetle larvae near the bottom of the image. Jenna Iterator was used to create the jointed legs and appendages on each of the insects. Iterator was also used to make the plate sections on the back of the sowbugs in the upper left, as well as the branching algae cutting through the image and the bacteria colony in the bottom inset. The snail shell was supplied by Aurety (thanks!) and was surfaced with procedurals using Aurety's online examples as reference.

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