Cinema.4D.3D...ber.2004

Volume 01 Issue 06 October 2004 | $0.00

HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS ISSUE: THE PRIZE FIGHT

3D Attack and MAXON present “THE PRIZE FIGHT”! Information for the upcoming event on Page 3.

MAXON USA - CEO

Read the interview with Paul Babb (MAXON USA -CEO). Learn more about Paul, MAXON’s beginnings, CINEversity, and more on Page 4.

DIAMOND TUTORIAL

OCTOBER FEATURED ARTIST JANINE PAUKE Read the interview on Page 29!

Need to buy expensive diamonds? Why not create one of your own? Save cash and do it yourself on Page 33!

© Janine Pauke

3D ATTACK QUICK INDEX Headline PAGE 3

3D Attack and MAXON Present: “The Prize Fight” Contest

PAGE 4-6

Interview with Paul Babb - MAXON USA - CEO

PAGE 7-14

Camera Mapping Tutorial

PAGE 15

Business Graph 2.0 Plugin Review

PAGE 16-19

Interview with Anders Kjellberg aka Cartesius

PAGE 20-22

Clothilde Tutorial

PAGE 23-26

“Exploring Light - The shadows” - Tutorial by Rui Batista

PAGE 27-28

Rui’s Plugins Tested

PAGE 29-32

Interview with Janine Pauke

PAGE 33-36

Diamonds in C4D - Tutorial

PAGE 37-39

PyroCluster Comet - Tutorial

PAGE 41-45

C.O.F.F.E Lesson Part 3 - Tutorial

PAGE 46

Editor Notes

Interview with Paul Babb (MAXON USA-CEO) 3D players on the market at the time, but was not excited about where they were going.

Interview MAXON CEO, Paul Babb

by Thomas Pasieka, 3D Attack

Interview

Thomas: As CEO of MAXON-USA, can you share with our readers a bit about your background with MAXON? When and how did you become involved with MAXON? What's your 3D Background?

Paul: My father was a programmer, so I was exposed to computers at a very early age. When I was in my teens, my father and oldest brother opened one of the first computer stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.

They sold IBMs and the Apple II+.

When I was 16, they gave me a job in the tech department. Mostly I aligned the heads of 8" floppy disk drives and replaced or added fans for computers that were overheating and crashing the memory/processor chips (a common problem back in the day).

In college, I studied marketing and ended up in advertising for several years. In the early 90's I went to work for Electric Image. This is where I was first introduced to 3D animation. Shortly before Electric Image was bought by Play, I left to pursue freelance opportunities.

I did a lot of technical writing, white papers and interactive marketing. I was pursued by some of the other

In 1996, I was introduced to MAXON (a German company) and its product CINEMA 4D. The product was at version 5 at the time. What it lacked in features it more than made up for in its incredibly stable and fast architecture. I immediately knew this product had a future and offered to get them some feedback from studios and some press attention. This worked out quite well and in 1997, MAXON in Germany asked me to help them form MAXON USA. I started out with one employee in a very small three-room office. The first four years our sales and company doubled every year. The last three years, sales has still increased dramatically.

Thomas: CINEversity! MAXON is committed to education and providing training for students, schools, and the educational structure. Can you tell us a little about CINEversity, how it works, and what it has to offer?

Paul: From the beginning, I priced CINEMA 4D XL lab licenses at a price teachers and schools couldn't pass up. As well, students in a program that uses CINEMA 4D XL can purchase the software at a fraction of the retail cost.

You cannot master 3D without spending time with the tools. That was the heart of the program in the beginning - get the software into the hands of schools and kids.

Now, we're expending the program

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to include an online forum for teachers and students, free curriculum, training for teachers, contests, internships and more. It's working quite well. The idea is the same get the software into their hands and make them successful with it.

Thomas: CINEMA 4D is one of most innovative, cutting edge 3D Design applications in the CG industry. Can you give our readers some insight on MAXON's beginnings and the development of CINEMA 4D? Paul: The founders of Maxon Computer in Germany originally started the company writing instructional books for Atari and Amiga users.

Later they published magazines as well (ST-Computer and Kickstart).

The magazines facilitated the distribution of shareware and eventually software titles. One of the most popular was FastRay (the first incarnation of CINEMA 4D) on the Amiga platform.

As it developed, CINEMA 4D was winning every possible award throughout the European market and it quickly became the flagship product for MAXON Computer.

As the industry evolved and other operating systems were introduced, it became clear that it would be necessary to support other platforms.

MAXON enlarged the programming team and began to develop a crossplatform architecture for CINEMA 4D to work on both Windows and Macintosh. This new version was introduced in 1996.

Today, the improvements to and new features of each upgrade are

Interview with Paul Babb (MAXON USA-CEO) dependent on the feedback of our users.

Interview

Thomas: On August 10, 2004 Maxon announced Release 9 of its award-winning modeling and animation tool, CINEMA 4D. With more than 100 new features, this has to be one of the most exiting and impressive upgrades in MAXON history. What would like to share with our readers about CINEMA 4D Release 9?

Paul: As part of a continual focus on improving ease-of-use, Release 9 development has focused on refining many areas of the program as well as adding impressive new features such as cloth simulation, subpolygon displacement, N-Gons and more.

A completely re-engineered modeling core now includes full N-Gon support and additional tools to make modeling easier and faster. Some of the more noteworthy tools include improved polygon knitting and stitch-

plays freely configurable information directly in the editor as well as dynamic highlights to preview mode before they are executed. Probably the most notable addition for some

available, including HDRI, Global Illumination, and Subsurface Scattering. In addition to these powerful features, CINEMA 4D R9 includes Sub-Polygon Displacement.

Unlike normal displacement, which requires fine geometry to highlight texture detail, SPD uses optimized

character animators is the enhanced MOCCA module. The new Clothilde functions now make it easy to add clothing to characters as well as simulate any type of cloth.

algorithms to generate more details during rendering. The results are shorter render times, lower memory consumption and more exciting images.

Cloth dynamics ensure accurate collision detection and as the engine has been made specifically for simulating cloth, it's extremely fast. HardIK now offers more kinematics mode for perfect character motion.

Furthermore, Motion Blending will improve workflow tremendously as different motions can simply be blended into each other.

Finally, in an effort to help production artists work smarter and faster, while we already offer the most extensive support for Adobe's After Effects; rendering out multipass layers, and 3D lights and cameras directly to the program, CINEMA 4D now includes direct export of multipass rendering data to discreet's Combustion compositing application and Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system.

When used in conjunction with the extended FBX support, this feature makes it easy to capture simple motion and crate complex animations.

ing, as well as a brush tool that allows users to paint point deformations on a model (it's just like sculpting).

We've also added a HeadsUpDisplay (HUD), which dis-

This complete cloth dynamics system has been designed specifically to ensure fast collision detection.

The Advanced Render module has been enhanced as well. Advanced Render already boasts some of the most advanced rendering features

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Thomas: MAXON products, such as, CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D R2, are being used in the television, movie, and entertainment arenas.

Can you tell us about some of the projects, within these industries, where MAXON products are being utilized?

Paul: MAXON products have been used for and in Hero, Van Helsing, King Arthur, Spiderman, Spiderman

Interview with Paul Babb (MAXON USA-CEO)

Interview

2, Haunted Mansion, Cat in the Hat, Charlies Angels-Full Throttle, Star Wars 2-The Attack of the Clones, The Mummy Returns, Gladiator, Tomb Raider, the new ColumbiaTriStar Film Logo, the On-Air Packages for Comedy Central, Monday Night Football, Discovery Channel Canada, Lucky, Touching Evil, King of Queens, Def on Demand, Power Puff Girls Music Video, Chers "Song for the Lonely" Music Video, Inspector Gadget, The Emmys on CBS, TiVO, NBC, DirecTV, CBS NFL, Mad TV, Smart House, J.A.G., The WB, Fox Kids, The Fremont Street Experience and many more.

inspiring 3d artists that download our e-zine monthly?

Paul: Don't forget, 3D is an art form.

The technology is just another medium in which to create your vision.

To be successful, you have to master the tools, just like a painter or a sculptor. Don't forget to study the art

Most exciting for us is our close relationship with Sony Pictures Imageworks, which is currently using BodyPaint 3D for many exciting projects including the upcoming Polar Express and their full length animated feature film Open Season coming next year.

Thomas: What is MAXON's vision for the future? Where do you see MAXON headed?

Paul: Maxon will strive to make 3D easier and faster to use, so that production artists can keep creating dazzling visuals and be successful doing it.

Thomas: 3D Attack considers the CINEMA 4D Community at large friends. We will keep striving to bring them the latest MAXON/CINEMA 4D news through our forum at www.3dattack.net, and our monthly e-zine. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to do just this. It's been our pleasure. Do you have any words of encouragement/wisdom, or advice for the nearly 35,000 professional and

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theory and traditional art forms. The tools do not do the creating, the artist does.

Camera Mapping Tutorial Camera Mapping Tutorial

by Janine Pauke - www.3dfluff.com CINEMA 4D R9 is recommended, however most of the tutorial also works in 8.5 (with a few workarounds for certain parts).

R9 Tutorial

You will need a bittorrent client to download the files that accompany this tutorial. If you don't already have a bittorrent client, I suggest installing Azureus for Windows or MacOSX, a free java based client.

Download the bittorent file from this page and open it with your bittorrent client (if it doesn't open it automatically). Your client will then start downloading a zip archive which includes the video tutorial, final project files, example animations and the painting in .psd format. Due to bandwidth limitations I'm unable to host the files directly on 3dfluff.

Bittorrent works by sharing the already downloaded parts with other people so please leave your bittorrent client open for a few hours after you've finished downloading. The more people download the file and leave their client open, the faster other people can download it. For information on bittorrent go here.

UPDATE: The C4D Portal is now hosting the tutorial as well! Without bittorrent but with direct download links instead. So if you don't want to use bittorrent check out this link.

by Janine Pauke

or "camera projection". In Cinema 4D there is also a texture mapping method called "frontal mapping" which is essentially the same. The image is projected through the camera onto the geometry. However, with frontal mapping the texture has to be "stuck" to the geometry if you want to move the camera - either with uvw coordinates or a stick texture tag. It is also limited to just one camera.

as how to include an additional cg object and how to add some atmospheric effects. This tutorial is not meant as a complete step by step tutorial (it would be the size of a book and most readers would probably fall asleep before reaching the end). You should already know how to create polygon models, create and assign materials, deal with tags and so on. This tutorial is probably more suitable for advanced users.

Since release 8.5 there is an additional method called "Camera Mapping". There is no need to use UVWs or stick texture tags anymore - one camera, the "projection camera", is used to project the texture while any other cameras can be used to animate and render the scene.

There are two ways to make a 2.5D environment - either start with the 3D geometry then paint a matching image to project onto the geometry or first paint an image and then worry about the 3D geometry afterwards. In my case I did the image first.

The 2D bit

Camera mapping is mainly used for matte paintings in movies. These days matte paintings aren't just static flat paintings in the background.

Matte paintings can now be 2.5D they are projected onto 3D geometry which allows for much more complex camera moves and perspective changes.

See how it works I've done a video capture of the entire process in Cinema 4D R9 which you should watch first to get a rough idea of the workflow (download the bittorrent file above and watch "cameraprojection_videotut.mov").

Introduction This tutorial is about magically turning an image into 3D. Actually there isn't any magic involved but it is possible to some degree to turn a flat image into something 3D. The method is called "camera mapping"

The video is showing the basic setup with just a floor plane, a sky dome and a few landscape objects that are positioned to roughly match the mountains in the painting. In this tutorial I will go a bit more in depth and explain a few more things such

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When I speak about painting I don't actually mean painting in the traditional sense, for this tutorial I mostly used photos of mountains, snow and clouds and then painted over them to add or remove details. I also used a lot of adjustment layers in Photoshop to change the colour from daylight to night time. Here are a few stages from the original image to the final painting.

Camera Mapping Tutorial

by Janine Pauke

R9 Tutorial

ground and darkened only the brightest areas of the mountains on the left. I kept the mountains on the right a bit brighter since they're closer to where the light comes from. It may not be completely realistic, it just has to look good and be convincing. To edit and add extra details to the landscape, I switched off all the adjustment layers and only switched them on occasionally to check the night time result. I generally try not to reduce the contrast of any layer permanently. I always use adjustment layers. Once the contrast and colour information is lost you can't get it back. If you darken your image so that all the dark areas become complete black you can't brighten up those areas afterwards. They will become grey and the image levels look clipped. The same is true for brightening very bright areas. I also usually work with 16bits per channel instead of 8.

It doesn't help much with clipping but 16bit per channel images have more colour and brightness information inbetween 100% black and 100% white, this helps to reduce banding in large areas with soft gradients. I have included the finished painting as Photoshop file (resized to 1024x1024 and with 8bits per channel to reduce the file size) so you can check out all the layers yourself. The .psd is included in the bittorrent file above.

I started the painting with night time illumination in mind but I kept all the source layers as daylight. Instead I set up several adjustment layers for brightness, contrast, hue/saturation and levels to achieve the night time look. I used layer masks to apply the effect only where I wanted it. For example I darkened the top of the sky and the ground in the fore-

The standard preview size for textures in the viewport is 256x256 pixels which is far too small and blurry (the original size of the painting is over 3000x3000 pixels). On the Illumination tab of the material you can change the texture preview size to 1024x1024 (or bigger if your graphics card can handle it):

This should be big enough to see everything clearly in the viewport.

Small note: When loading a scene the colours for the texture display in the viewport may be reduced.

Now the 3D bit

This is because Cinema generates a copy of the texture just for the viewport display. This preview texture gets saved in the scene file so it doesn't have to be recalculated every time you open your scene (which would otherwise take a lot of time with many textures).

Start by creating a material and loading the painting into the luminance channel. You will need to load it into the color channel later on but for simplicity reasons just use luminance for now. Luminance will make it display with constant shading which is all we need for now.

However, to keep the scene file size small the texture gets compressed which results in reduced colours. If you want to revert the texture display back to its original state go to the material manager menu and choose Function > Render Materials.

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Camera Mapping Tutorial

by Janine Pauke (If it doesn't look exactly like this, have a look at the next paragraph about viewport shading).

Now rotate and position the camera so that the horizon is aligned with the horizon in the painting. Try to match the perspective as best as possible. Finding the right height of the camera is a bit of guesswork, maybe have a look at the side view and try to imagine what the angle between the camera and the ground would be. It doesn't have to be absolutely precise, the perspective in the painting probably isn't 100% correct anyway.

Sky and ground

R9 Tutorial

Start building your environment by making a sphere for the sky (don't use the special sky object) and a ground plane. Actually I used a disc for the ground but you could use a plane as well. Just make sure that the ground is large enough to meet the sky sphere on all sides.

The sky should be quite big and flat, not just a round sphere. The flatter you make it, the more of a 3D effect you will get when moving through the environment. The clouds will appear to be hanging low above the environment. So change the flatness depending on your taste and how low you want the clouds. Just make sure you don't make it too low, otherwise if the camera gets too close to the sky the texture resolution won't hold up and the perspective will be too extreme.

size, otherwise the painting will be squashed (press the calculate button):

Now assign the material to both the sky and ground and set the projection to "Camera Mapping": You won't be able to see anything in the viewport yet. That's because we haven't assigned a camera to the projection. As I already mentioned, camera mapping works by projecting the painting through a camera onto the geometry. So create a camera and rename it to "projection cam". Link the camera to the perspective viewport and drag it from the object manager into the "Camera" input field of both texture tags. Also make sure that the projection is set to the correct texture

Now duplicate the projection camera and rename the new camera to "render cam" and link it to the perspective viewport. Make both cameras invisible (upper visibility dot) so they don't get in the way.

There should be something to look at in the viewport by now and after doing a first rough camera aligning it should look similar to this in gouraud shading with lines: After this you shouldn't touch the projection camera anymore. If you don't trust yourself not to accidentally move it, assign a protection tag to it (File > CINEMA 4D Tags >

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Camera Mapping Tutorial Protection in the object manager).

You can now use the render cam to move around in the scene and get a feel for the 3D effect it creates.

A few notes about viewport shading

R9 Tutorial

If your viewport display looks nothing like in the screenshots above then that's most likely because the subdivision of the ground is not high enough to display the texture properly in the viewport. Increase the subdivisions for your ground object:

Higher subdivisions improve the viewport display of textures. This doesn't influence the rendered result though, the textures are always projected properly in the final render no matter how high or low the subdivisions are.

With Release 9 Maxon added a number of new shading modes to Cinema 4D. The most important additions are Gouraud Shading (Lines) and Constant Shading.

by Janine Pauke

"Constant shading" looks the same as "Gouraud Shading (Lines)" when using a material with 100% luminance. Maybe you're wondering why not just use constant shading to start with? The answer is that constant shading always displays the wireframe. I don't always want the wireframe visible though so that's why I choose to use gouraud shading and a luminance material. This way I can switch between gouraud shading both with and without lines.

The line shading modes are a great new addition, especially for camera mapping and matte painting.

Unfortunately in 8.5 there is no easy way to display shading and wireframe at the same time. A good workaround is to group your geometry, make an instance, make sure the instance is in the same position, assign a Display Tag to the instance and set it to display as wireframe.

The result is almost the same as using gouraud shading with lines in release 9.

This works perfectly because the ground in the painting is completely flat. If there wasn't a flat ground the situation would be more complicated and the placement would be more difficult to work out (probably involving a lot of trial and error). I continued like this for all other foreground mountains. If you look at the top view you can see how far the mountains will be stretching into the distance. So by projecting the splines you have already worked out where they would be placed in relation to each other:

The next step is to draw additional splines along the contours and folds. The result should look something like this:

Modeling the mountains Where to start... First of all switch back to the projection cam. You'll need to mainly model in this perspective and use the painting as a reference. After spending some time thinking about where to start I decided it was probably easiest to first roughly sketch out the mountains with splines. A good starting point in this case is to draw a spline around the base of a mountain and then project this spline onto the ground:

We're not actually using the splines to build the models, the splines are just guidelines to get a rough idea of the shapes. You can now set up one of the other viewports as perspective view and start building the mountains point by point, following the spline contours:

Use the create polygon tool or the bridge tool to connect the points:

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Camera Mapping Tutorial

Ctrl-drag one of the texture tags onto the new geometry and check out your first 3D mountain:

R9 Tutorial

More 3D mountains:

And here is the finished geometry I had to subdivide the one on the right to add more detail. I also added more geometry for the smaller mountains in the background:

by Janine Pauke

at the horizon. For many cases this is good enough. For more "advanced" cloud movement you can use layers or planes of clouds with alpha maps and position those in front of each other and animate them individually. However, this method needs more planning. When painting the sky in Photoshop, keep all the clouds on sperate layers.

This isn't always easy to do, especially if your sky is mainly based on one photo. It is difficult to sperate the clouds afterwards. If you plan to use layers for the clouds you need to keep this in mind right from the start when painting the sky.

Before animating the bone, you need to stick the texture to the sky object, otherwise the geometry will move but the texture won't move along with it. Select the texture tag on the sky object and choose Texture > Generate UVW Coordinates. That should take care of that. Also don't forget to fix the bone (right click the bone in the object manager and choose Fix Bones) before animating it.

Moving clouds

Adding an aerial

Cloud movement adds a bit of life to the otherwise static environment. I used a bone with a vertex map to deform the sky (yellow means strong influence, red means less):

Now let's combine this environment with an additional cg element. Why not put an aerial (or something else suitable) in the foreground.

The vertex map adds a soft falloff.

Rotate the bone and the clouds will appear to be moving, with the top clouds moving faster than the ones

Until now we've been using the painting in the luminance channel of the material. This is just a shortcut to make it easier to display in the viewport. We can't leave it in the

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luminance channel though. If you want to include other objects in the scene to cast a shadow on the geometry, you need to use the color channel...

...and apply a compositing tag to all the mountains, sky and ground (File > CINEMA 4D Tags > Compositing in the object manager) and switch on "Compositing Background":

The objects will still be rendered at 100% brightness but other objects (like the aerial) can cast shadows onto the environment geometry.

Camera Mapping Tutorial

R9 Tutorial

Unfortunately now the shading is looking different in the viewport.

Now that the texture is in the colour channel, the geometry is shaded and in this case mostly dark. You could use the Constant shading mode from the Display menu but the downside is that you would always have the wireframe visible as well.

There is a workaround though make an environment object and set the Environment Strength value to 100%:

by Janine Pauke

shadows (you could also set them not to receive shadows but this is quicker):

Now it should look like constant shading in the viewport. But don't forget to switch off the environment object for rendering (change the lower visibility dot in the object manager to red). Now the shading is back to what it used to look like earlier: Ground fog, snow particles and other finishing touches

Lighting the aerial To illuminate the aerial and make it cast a shadow, I positioned a blue light to the right to match the light direction and colour of the painting.

I set it to cast an area shadow. I also set it to only include the ground and the aerial so none of the other objects can cast or receive any

The only things left to do now are adding animated ground fog/shadows, snow particles, a nice camera move and actually render out the final result and maybe tweaking it in a compositing application.

For the ground fog (well it's not actually fog, it looks more like moving shadows).

I used a parallel square spot light without illumination but with visible light. The visible light uses a noise which is animated.

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If the effect isn't visible enough you can turn up the "Dust" parameter on the "Visibility" tab. The dust parameter makes visible light visible even when it is darker than the background (mainly useful for dark smoke effects and such). The light is pointing in the z direction and is scaled down on the y axis (using the Object tool - the one that actually scales the axis, not the Model tool) so that it's flat on the ground:

Camera Mapping Tutorial

R9 Tutorial

For some more atmosphere, add a particle emitter that is big enough to cover the entire environment:

To achieve a dense snowy atmosphere you need to turn up the number of particles a lot. I've set mine to 10000 particles in the renderer (and 1000 in the editor to speed up the redraw). Actually 10000 particles is the limit for a single emitter. Now that shouldn't stop you of course!

Just duplicate the emitter to get more particles. Apart from a gravity object I'm also using a wind object with animated wind speed to blow the particles around. This is the wind speed fcurve, the values vary between 0 and 50:

by Janine Pauke

can also be used to draw particles as lines with varying length, thickness, colour, opacity and more (you could even render them as lots of little arrows, the possibilities are endless).

To use Sketch and Toon, open the Effects page in the render settings and choose Sketch and Toon from the post effect popup. On the Main page, set the control level to "Advanced" to get access to all options. On the Shading page, switch off the shading for Background and Objects. Now go to the Lines page and uncheck all the line types and only switch on the Particles line type. At the bottom of the page there should now be a few options for the particle line type. Set the Velocity Scale value to 1%. This value controls the length of the particle streaks and the faster the particles move the smaller you should make the value:

When creating a Sketch and Toon post effect a "Sketch" material is created automatically. This material defines all the line parameters like thickness, colour etc. It doesn't need to be assigned to any object, it is used by the post effect directly.

Open the material. The interesting pages are Color, Thickness and Opacity. I've set the colour to a light blue and the thickness to 0.5 (this is measured in pixels). The Opacity is set to 70% and uses an inverted spline curve to reduce the opacity of the particle streaks along the stroke length:

Now all that's left to do before rendering the scene is animating the camera. I'll leave you to that. I've done two example animations (in the bittorrent file above, snowy_part1.mov and snowy_part2.mov) for inspiration. If you move the camera too high up or too much to the side you will probably see some texture stretching. If you want to know how to deal with this problem, read the part a bit further down about fixing projection problems.

To speed up the rendertime and display you should place a particle destructor object underneath the ground to kill any particles that have gone through the ground.

Now we just need to get the particles to actually show up in the rendering. What I tried to achieve is the streak effect you get from motion blur. There are several possibilities.

You could use little spheres with a luminance material or visible lights and motion blur to get the streak effect. However, if you're the lucky owner of the Sketch and Toon module, you have a very powerful particle drawing engine at your fingertips. Sketch and Toon doesn't just make cartoony looking objects, it

Lastly there is a lot you can do in compositing. You could change the levels, add more contrast, tweak the colours and maybe add a bit of film grain. I also used multipass render-

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Camera Mapping Tutorial

by Janine Pauke

ing so I could slightly blur the background to soften up the sharp lines between the mountains and the sky while keeping the aerial crisp. Here is a still from one of the animations after compositing:

R9 Tutorial

Fixing projection problems You're probably wondering what happens if you move the render camera further up or to the side.

What happens to the geometry that now gets revealed behind the foreground geometry? Parts of the foreground are projected through onto the background, the image is stretched and repeated and generally looks horrible. But there is a solution. If you notice these problems on one of the mountains for example, take the original painting and paint in the missing areas for only that mountain and use this new painting in a new material and assign it to just this mountain. Here is an example, the squiggly green line shows the edge of the first mountain. The texture gets projected through onto the mountain behind it. To correct this I've painted over the area in Photoshop and assigned this new painting to the mountain which showed the problem (see next picture).

Or if the situation is very bad, render out a still from the perspective that is showing the problems and correct all the problem areas in Photoshop.

Then make a new material with the new painting, set up a second projection camera from this perspective and assign the new material to those models or polygons that show the problem. To avoid seams you could also paint an alpha map to blend between the two paintings and only make the second painting show up in certain areas.

So to summarize: The more you want to move the render camera, the more you will have to set up additional projection cameras with additional paintings to cover up problem areas.

Random tips Use Layers! If you're doing a matte painting in Photoshop, don't merge everything down. Keep it on sperate layers if you can. If the list of layers gets too long, group your layers into folders. Now if for some reason you need to move an object to a different position you can just move the layers. If you had merged all the layers down you would have to repaint everything.

Janine Pauke

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Plugin Review

Business Graph 2.0

“Business Graphs” is a CINEMA 4D 6.3, 7.x or 8.x plugin for, well, Business Graphics. Producing business graphics can be a pain if you don’t have the right programs or plugins. “Business Graphs 2.0” is the plugin you might want to ad to your plugin collection if you have to handle this kind of data often.

by Thomas Pasieka

dow.

You are also able to save your data as CSV file and re-import them later to make changes or change the look of your chart.

The import functions are a little confusing at first because there is more than one way to open or import files.

Saving files/datas will produce a .bg2 files (businessgraph2).

There are 15 presets included within “Business Graphs 2.0” and this will give you the look you need.

If those 15 presets are not enough well, you can create your own.

Handling the plugin is quiet easy.

After just a short time of testing things out I was able to either produce one of the 15 preset charts or my own polygon/spline chart.

That is what you want - a fast and easy to use plugin without reading manuals for hours!

www.3dweave also offers tutorials and example files on this plugin and this should give the user the ability to even create charts with a personal look. Splines or even polygon models can be used to create your chart. You can import both XML or CSV data into “Business Graphs 2.0” or just enter those into the win-

Well let’s put it this way, those of you who do a lot of charts and business graphics will NOT be disappointed with this plugin! I would suggest you go to 3dweaves.com website and download their demo version of this plugin to test yourself!

“BusinessGraph 2.0” comes with a price tag of 60 Euros, but if gives

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you the ability to create stunning effective business charts within a couple minutes!

Get the demo here: http://www.3dweave.com/plugins/bg _demo_us.php Get the full version here: http://www.3dweave.com/plugins/bu siness_graphs_us.php Talk about your experience here: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=47 RATING: 4.5 of 5

Interview with Anders Kjellberg aka “Cartesius”

www.cartesiuscreations.com

by Tavy

Anders Kjellberg 3dArtist

Interview

Tavy: Hi Anders! Thank you for the opportunity to get to you and your work a little better. Our readers are always interested knowing a little about our artists background. Would you mind sharing a few details about yourself such as, where you were born, now live, are you married, children, etc.?

Anders: Hi Tavy, nice to be here!

Well, my name is Anders Kjellberg, I'm 35 years old and I currently live and study in Umeå, in the north of Sweden. I was born in the small town Vetlanda, but moved to Umeå in the early 90's to study at the university. I'm now enrolled as a doctoral student with the Department of Historical Studies and working on a dissertation on the late 19th century scientific research of the Aurora Borealis. In 2002 I married my lovely Sofia. Although we don't have any kids, we have a dog. A Smooth Fox Terrier named Huxley.

I'm also a moderator (together with Adam "kromekat" Benton) of the Renderosity CINEMA 4D Forum, something I'm enjoying tremendously.

Tavy: In the "About" section on your web-site, www.cartesiuscreations.com, if I may quote your words directly you say, "I don't consider myself an experienced artist."

Perhaps you haven't been doing 3D

for 10 years, but the work you produce looks as though you have much experience and definitely are highly skilled. Just how long have you been doing computer graphics/3D? What first interested you in this form of art?

Anders: I have been doing 3D graphics for about 5 years all in all.

My first experience with CGI was with a free copy of Strata 3D on the cover of MacFormat around 199899. I installed it and played around with it a bit but never really did anything substantial with it. Some time later I discovered Bryce and that was the turning point for me - I ordered a copy and started exploring the computerized three dimen-

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sional space. Bryce was my main application for a long time and I really liked that piece of software. It enabled me to do most of what I wanted at the time and although it had (has) a very quirky interface it suited me perfectly. What attracted me with 3D in a more general sense was sense of everything is possible, from gigantic space scenes to renders of bacteria. I was never any good at drawing, but with 3D I felt as my ideas came out more or less the way I wanted.

I still don't consider myself an experienced artist and maybe I feel that way because 3D is just a hobby for me so far, nothing I make money off.

I do think I'm past the newbie stage

Interview with Anders Kjellberg aka “Cartesius” though, so maybe I should change the description to "intermediate experience" :) Another reason I feel I have a long way to go is that I see so much amazingly good work being done by professionals that I can not even begin to grasp how they do it.

Interview

Tavy: Do you have any formal education or training in computer graphics?

Anders: No, no formal training at all. I once took a class in oil painting, but I was really lousy so I dropped out after a couple of weeks.

In general I'm very bad at drawing and sketching and whenever I do concept sketches for a scene, they look like they're done by a five year old. I therefore tend to do all my sketching and pre-visualization on the computer. I have always been interested in art and I have about a year and a half worth of history of art studies on a university level.

by Tavy

I can strongly recommend anyone interested in CGI to study the history of art. Virtually everything we do today in the computer has been done or explored by artists since the beginning. Whether it's lighting studies, composition studies or perspective studies. By studying the history of art I have really gained a lot of artistic experience, I think, and I'm still learning.

Tavy: Knowing a little about your background in 3D, your software application of choice is CINEMA 4D. Why CINEMA? What does CINEMA have to offer that other applications don't?

Anders: As I said earlier I started with Bryce and in retrospect I can see that the stuff I did with Bryce was rather odd. Not that I created weird things with it, but rather that I used what is basically a landscape modelor to produce everything but landscapes.

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In all the time I used Bryce I think I did 1 render of a landscape (some snow covered mountains). The rest were renders of various objects and characters. Unfortunately Bryce isn't the best application for serious modeling. You can come a long way with primitives and displacement modeling, but not all the way. I found myself frantically browsing the web for pre-made models I could import

Interview with Anders Kjellberg aka “Cartesius”

by Tavy

doing more and more with it. Later that year I got XL 7, and by that time I had unistalled Bryce, it was all CINEMA 4D from there on :)

Interview

What do I like about CINEMA? It's intuitive without being simplistic and I can model a simple object just as easily as I can tackle a more complex one. The workflow in CINEMA is amazing and suits my way of thinking very well. The whole application is designed with creativity and thus it also inspires creativity.

Last, but not least, it's rock solid crashes in Cinema are very rare indeed.

and I realized that if I wanted a specific object I couldn't rely on online resources, I had to start building them myself.

So in the fall of 2000 I was on a serious hunt for an application to complement Bryce and since I was on the Mac my options were pretty limited. I tried demos of virtually all 3D applications available for the Mac at that time, including Lightwave, Pixels 3D, FormZ, Strata 3D and CINEMA 4D. Of these I quickly developed a special eye for CINEMA 4D. CINEMA allowed me to go straight into the creation of things without stopping either work- or mindflow.

The interface was intuitive and the tools just what I needed. I got CINEMA 4D XL 6 on a student license in April 2001 and originally I used it solely as a modelor for Bryce, exporting my models as *.obj.

Eventually I started to grasp the potential of CINEMA 4D and started

Tavy: Most 3D artists find a niche where they work the best. Whether it be modeling, texturing, lighting, product and package design, architecture, character modeling, etc. You do most of the fore mentioned and do it well. Where do you think you excel the most? Where's your niche?

Anders: I'm still trying to find my niche, I think. I'm a hobbyist and I do 3D just for fun, and thus I have the rare opportunity to really explore the various aspects of 3D. If I feel like giving product design a go, I can spend a month or two exploring this without feeling bad because I really should be doing this or that instead. I have found my niche in the sense that I am fascinated by the real world and most of my images try to depict this fascination.

Some are into science fiction, some into fantasy or the cartoony style of 3D, but for me it's the real world with all its wonderful objects that is the main inspiration.

If I were to rank my skills I would say that I feel pretty confident in the modeling area, a bit less so when it

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comes to texturing (although BodyPaint is helping a lot) and my lighting setups are usually more down to pure strokes of luck than anything else!

Tavy: When looking over your work what stands out to me the most are your characters. Let's look at your character "Oculus Medicus". WOW! Modeling, lighting, texturing, are all fantastic! What can you tell us about this work?

Anders: Character modeling is something I've been doing more and more lately. There's something extremely tempting with the organic form but it is also very, very difficult to represent with polygons. "Oculus Medicus" was my contribution for CG Talk's Machineflesh challenge and took about three months from concept to final render. It was a lot of fun to do and it forced me to be unusually disciplined when approaching the challenge. I started with a very rough concept sketch and proceeded to build the scene in

Interview with Anders Kjellberg aka “Cartesius”

by Tavy

For the moment I have a job at my university to write the dissertation, but it's a disturbing thought that I'm probably better at 3D than I am at history! The dissertation is scheduled to be completed some time next year and after that we'll just have to see what happens.

Interview

Tavy: Are you currently working on any projects that you can tell our readers about?

layers. The instruments were first, followed by the hands and then the head. Body and environment were the last to be modeled. I wanted a lot of the impact of the final render to depend on the lighting so I spend quite a lot of time on that (although in retrospect I think the image is much too dark).

me to cover up some very nasty seams, especially on the hand.

For texturing I used a combination of SLA, BodyPaint 3D R2 and Adobe Photoshop 6. I did all my UVediting in BP (you gotta love Interactive Mapping and Relax UV!) and then exported my template for painting in Photoshop.

Anders: I hope I can one day make 3D graphics for a living, but the market is tough. I have gotten some job offers, but since I'm still on the student license it's a sort of Catch 22 for me - I'm not allowed to make any commercial work with CINEMA, but in order for me to afford the upgrade to a commercial license, I would need the pay from these jobs. I hope to find the cash to upgrade to a commercial license eventually, but since I'm not a rich man it will probably take some time.

I swapped textures between the two apps frequently - changing something in BP and saving it meant the texture was instantly reflected in Photoshop, which is a very nice feature. I also used BP's amazing Projection Painting, which allowed

Tavy: Although you are not currently working as a professional 3d Graphics Artist, do you see the possibility of this in your future? And what are you doing for a living at the moment?

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Anders: I'm not working on anything major at the moment. I have some stuff I have piled up that I'm taking care of: writing a "making-of" for a French website on "Oculus Medicus" for instance, and I plan to write some more tutorials, and eventually start a more serious cooperation with an established CG website.

Other than that I do what I usually do, namely doodle on the screen, participate in speed modelings here and there, and wait for inspiration to start a new project. I have some ideas lurking in the back of my head but nothing solid yet.

Tavy: Anders, it's been a pleasure getting to know you a little better. Do you have any last words you would like to leave our readers with?

Anders: Thank you, the pleasure is all mine! Last words? Observe the world around you and never underestimate the details. Observe everything you see, make mental notes on how the drain pipes look after 10 years outside, how the wrinkles in the face of an old lady tells a story and how the sign nailed to the wall displays its rust pattern. Also, remember that a good model or render can be ruined by lack of details.

It's the details that makes an object, both organic and non-organic, look convincing.

Clothilde Tutorial - Creating a Flag

by Georg Niedermeier [06]

Clothilde is the brand new and long wanted feature to MAXON´s awesome product line. Clothilde is part of the MOCCA2 module and allows complex, yet quite easy to manage, cloth-effects. It is not a dynamics engine, though it can also be used for softbody tricks and even car crashes.

[02]

Set the cut-options in the AttributesManager to these values and hit ´apply´ [04]. Now we have added some more edges [07]

In this tutorial I want to show how to create a hanging flag.

First of all change the Project Settings to somewhat 200 frames Maximum, because we want to see it move a little longer [00]

[07] [03]

[00]

Tutorial R9

[04]

Create a plane. [01]

For we don´t want to keep those 4point-polygons [08] we´ll triangulate it [09]

[08] [01]

In order to fix the cut select any other tool like Live Selection.

Now we have added some edges.

[05] [05]

Now hit ´c´ in order to make it a polygonal object. Select the edges as shown [02] and cut it with the ´Edge Cut´ function [03].

Set the cut-options in the AttributesManager to these values and hit ´apply´ [04].

Select the edges as shown [06] and cut it once again with the ´Edge Cut´ function [03]

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[09]

Clothilde Tutorial - Creating a Flag

[10]

[14]

[19]

Click the Clothilde-Tag twice and make these settings: [20]

It should look like this: [15]

Now we need to subdivide these polygons again [11].

by Georg Niedermeier

Tutorial R9

[15]

We have done this to ensure a better behavior of the flag cloth, because if it´s not properly subdivided the cloth won´t allow a realistic way of hanging down loosely.

[20]

[11]

Unlike other cloth objects that really would require it, we won´t use the CNurbs-Object, because the edges are not soft enough with that.

Select it with Rectangle Selection [12]

The fixed points will be marked with a special color. These points will not move in animations [21].

Put a Clothilde-Tag right at our polygonal object. You will find it in the Object-Manager: [17]

[12]

[21]

and activate ´Subdivide´ using these settings: [13 - 14]

You can click play to see that something´s already working.Hit the ´back´-button [22].

[22]

[17]

The Clothilde-Tag looks like a curtain [18]

Put the object into a HyperNurbs [23] and apply these values: [24]

[18]

In order to fix our flag on its position you need to select the very left row of points as shown [19].

[13]

[23]

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Clothilde Tutorial - Creating a Flag As our last step we´ll create some flagstaff. Make one that fits your flag (most likely a lengthy cube or a cylinder) and move it to the fixed points [27].

[24]

Click the Clothilde-Tag and make these settings: [25 - 26]

[27]

Tutorial R9

Give it a Collider-Tag [17 - 28]

[17]

[25]

[28]

To make the flag hang down, quietly set wind strength to zero (ClothildeTag Forces-Tab). This is the reason why we needed the many subdivisions. It is necessary to gain a better hanging look. BTW, to avoid a rubbery appearance of your cloth, make almost zero or zero use of specularity in textures.

[26]

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by Georg Niedermeier

“Exploring Light” 2 - The Shadows Here we are again, now on the second part of the lights article. In the last issue I talked about lights. In part 1 I said that shadows are just as important as lights. Now you will see I wasn't exaggerating. Shadows help to create depth and establish size and position relations. If you don't believe me, check out this image: [00]

by Rui Batista

[05]

[02]

seen from the light, with the "depth" from the depth map. If it is "nearer", it is in light. If it is "farther", it is in shadow. The hard shadow simply uses a ray-tracing method. For each point "hit" by the camera, it shoots a ray to each light. If that ray intersects any object, the point is in shadow.

The area shadow uses the same method as the hard shadow, but instead of shooting one ray, it shoots several rays to an arbitrary area around the light.

Tutorial

[00] [03]

This image is well lit, no doubt about it. But can you tell where each red sphere is in relation to the floor and to each other? You could, if the image had shadows like this one:

[04]

[01]

[01] Shadows also help in defining the shape of objects and add contrast to an image. Now that we know how important shadows are, lets take a look at what types of shadows we have. CINEMA 4D has three types of shadows: soft, hard, and area shadows. They are very different and each has advantages and dis-

advantages, of course. [02] [03] [04] Lets see how each one works.

The most complex of them all, is the soft shadow. For each light that has soft shadows turned on, CINEMA 4D takes a snapshot of the scene from the light point of view. It is not a real render. CINEMA 4D simply calculates the distances of all points "seen" by the light and creates a depth map, ranging from white (nearer) to black (farther). [05] When rendering, CINEMA 4D sends rays from the camera. For each point it hits, it compares its "depth",

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Now we start to understand why each shadow has a certain memory requirement and a specific calculation speed. Soft shadows need to create a bitmap for each light that uses them, so they require more memory.

All calculations are pre-made, before the real render ever happens, so they are fast. Hard shadows require no additional memory because they simply perform calculations, but they have to perform that calculation for each and every point seen by the camera, so they are slower. Area shadows use a similar method used by the hard shadows. Since more calculations are involved, area shadows are the slowest of them all.

Unfortunately, it is also the more realistic shadow, but we will see how to speed up area shadows later.

On the Shadows tab, the top part of

“Exploring Light” 2 - The Shadows

[06]

Tutorial

the parameters looks as follows: [06] These settings apply to all types of shadows. The Density parameter defines the transparency of the shadow. If the shadows appear too dark and you don't want to add more lights to lighten the scene possibly, ruining all the composition of the scene - simply lower the Density parameter.

The Color parameter defines the color of the shadow and it defaults to black. But, in real life, shadows are rarely black. Actually, they usually have a slight bias to the complementary color of the light that produces the shadow. At other times their color are a result of the composition of the surrounding lights. So feel free to mess up with the shadow color and you will get much more realistic or artistic results.

If the Transparency parameter is set to on, transparent objects (set by their material) will cast shadows that take the transparency color into account. But this will increase memory requirements (the depth map will also stop the color of the objects, besides their depth). If the Transparency parameter is set to off, all shadows will be opaque.

Since this parameter is on by default, higher memory requirements are also set by default. If you are getting memory errors while rendering and you don't require transparency to be showed on shadows, turn this parameter off.

The Clipping Influence parameter takes into account the clipping of the

[07]

light, if set. So, no shadows are calculated outside the clipping limits.

Below these parameters we have the soft shadow parameters [07].

They will only be available if the shadow type set for the light is Soft.

The first parameter, Shadow Map, allows us to define the size of the depth bitmap. The higher numbers provide higher resolutions, providing finer shadow details and a harder shadow edge, but also require more memory. There are several predefined sizes, but the user can always set its own sizes in the Resolution X and Resolution Y fields. Usually, everyone sets both parameters to a similar value, but nice effects can be achieved by setting different values for these parameters.

A higher value on the Resolution X will create sharper shadows on the lateral sides and softer shadows on the upper and lower sides. A higher value on the Resolution Y will create softer shadows on the lateral sides and sharper shadows on the upper and lower sides.

What if we need a more accurate shadow , but still want a softer edge? Then we simply increase the Sample Radius value. While soft shadows rely on a bitmap, if there

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by Rui Batista

wasn't any sampling, the shadow edges would look pixelated. So, by default, a sample value of 3 will slightly blur the shadow edge.

Higher values will soften the edge even more, but render times will increase, sometimes drastically. If you want to speed up your render and you can get away with a rougher shadow edge, lower the Sample Radius value. With lower shadow map resolutions increasing the Sample Radius will also provide a more accurate shadow.

Now, lets speak of the Bias of a shadow. This is a commonly misunderstood and, hence, ignored parameter, but it is quite useful if

[08]

used correctly. Due to the way the soft shadows are calculated, the shadow never really touches the object, even when it is placed on a surface [08]. The Bias values (be it Relative or Absolute) will make the shadow approach the object as much as possible. The distance of the shadow origin from the object is very dependent on its distance from the light source. So, the Absolute Bias option, if turned on (default), will allow CINEMA 4D to disregard that distance. If turned on, the Bias will adjust itself, depending on the light distance, but this is not wanted (it is only there to maintain compatibility with older C4D files).

If we can make the shadow

“Exploring Light” 2 - The Shadows approach the object by lowering the Bias, why would we want to

[11] [09]

[12]

Tutorial

increase it? Because, as usual, there is a drawback with lowering the Bias. We can get self shadowing when the object casts shadows on itself! [09] Why does this happen? As I

by Rui Batista

lights (Distant and Parallel) and since these lights have an infinite width and height, it would be impossible to create a shadow map for those. The Parallel Width value allows us to define a finite space that will produce a shadow. If the shadows from a parallel light stop abruptly, simply increase the Parallel Width value, but the Shadow Map resolution may need to increase too to maintain details on the shadows.

The Outline Shadow is a graphical effect that I, honestly, never used and I doubt anyone ever used, but its there and you can feel free to try it out. But please, if you find a useful use for it, let us all know :-) [14]

are considered to be in light [12].

The sampling method applied to the shadow map will create the patterned effect that is associated with self-shadowing.

[15]

[10]

explained earlier, the soft shadow is calculated by creating a depth map from the light [10]. Then, when rendering the "seen" points are compared, in terms of depth, with the previously calculated depth map. If the resolution for the map is not high enough, many "seen" points can end up being compared with the same "pixel" of the depth map. For instance, point A is considered to be in light. Point B will be compared with the same "pixel" (d5) of the depth map as point A but, since it is further away, it is considered to be in shadow [11]. Both points C and D

Increasing the Bias, the initial depth map calculation will be taken a little closer to the light so, all points A, B, C and D will be considered to be in light. This way we can surpass the self-shadowing problem. [13] The Parallel Width parameter is necessary because we have parallel

[13]

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The size of the Shadow Map (its pixel resolution) is spread out along the aperture of the light. [14] So, if the light cone is very white, to get a reasonably detailed shadow, a large shadow map is required. [15] This will be expensive, in terms of memory. But what if we really need a wide angle light, but only the center of the

“Exploring Light” 2 - The Shadows [16]

illuminated area really need shadows? Must we use an extra large shadow map even if the majority of it will be wasted? [16] No! That is what the Shadow Cone options are for. You can define a smaller cone and the shadows will only be gener-

Tutorial

[16]

ated inside this cone. [17] The Soft Cone option assures that an object only partially inside the Shadow Cone still produces a soft/fading shadow limit, instead of being harshly cut off.

Finally we reach the Area Shadow options. The Area Shadow Width parameter defines the size of the virtual light "bulb" that sends out the light rays that will produce the shadow. This size is completely independent of the light parameters and it only serves for shadow calculations. So, a higher value will create a larger virtual light, hence, a softer shadow. Lower values will create

crisper shadows. Setting this value higher will also increase render times so, beware.

The Area Shadow Samples parameter defines how accurate the calculation of the area shadow will be.

Because only a few rays are calculated, some sampling is necessary and this parameter determines how much sampling will occur. Lowering this value will increase drastically the speed of the area shadow calculation, but will also produce visual noise. Keep it as low as possible without compromising image quality.

What? Aren't there any specific parameters for hard lights? Nope there aren't. The only thing you can define, besides Density, Color, Transparency and Clipping Influence. is the quality of the edge of the hard shadow. That is defined in the Antialias options of the Render Settings. For a smooth edge, Best antialiasing must be chosen, otherwise a "stair-step" effect may show up. Finally, as this article is already very long, I will add just a few advices concerning shadows: - Don't turn shadows on for all lights.

Besides slowing the render speed and possibly increasing memory requirement, they will create visual clutter. Turn the shadow on for the main key light and, eventually, a less dramatic shadow for one or two auxiliary lights.

- Creating a cluster of low intensity lights with soft shadows will reproduce a virtual area shadow that is faster to render but at the expense of more memory.

- Lowering the Area Shadow Samples will increase dramatically the Area Shadow speed calculation and the noisy artifacts will not be

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by Rui Batista

very noticeable if the shadow is projected on a patterned surface. If the surface where the shadow is projected has a flat color, higher values will be required. On animations, higher values are also required, otherwise flickering noise may show up.

- Try not to use hard shadows.

Besides requiring Best antialiasing (slower) they are slower to calculate and they are not very natural. Hard shadows are best suited for technical illustrations or non-photographic architectural renders.

- Observe the world around you and verify for yourself that shadows rarely are black or grey. Mess with shadow color and density and nearradiosity effects can be achieved at a fraction of the usual render time.

- Be careful with parameters that increase render time. Namely: Sample Radius, Shadow Map size, Area Shadow Width and Area Shadow Samples.

- It is possible to create a light that only emits shadow without affecting the brightness of the scene. This is tremendously useful for compositing a scene. It requires a little bit of COFFEE, but I will provide Crew Reynolds (responsible for the COFFEE articles) with such code for it to create a nice looking tutorial.

And that's it for now. Feel free to contact me at the forum or directly to my mail (rui_mac@ruimac.com) if you have any questions about lights or shadows. See you in the next issue of 3D Attack “The CINEMA 4D Magazine” Rui Batista

RUI’s Plugins - Tested 3DPack/Align&Distribute

PLUGIN REVIEW

Simple to use, this plug-in will allow you to easily align a group of objects by their axis centers along a chosen axis. Most helpful is to bring all of the objects in a group to the same Y axis level.

You have the option of aligning too the highest Y value or the lowest within a group. You can also align the objects on an averaged center of the group. One very nice feature of this plug-in, is its ability to distribute the items in a group. Toss your objects out roughly where they need to be, align their centers in the x and y axis, and then distribute them over the z axis to get a nice straight line of perfectly aligned objects.

Pros: Simple, easy to use Enhances workflow Cons: Overly simple GUI, icons and presets would help.

by Crew Reynolds

More useful perhaps is the ability to enter the print size in the units of your choice, say 8in x 10in at 300 DPI, to arrive at the require pixel dimensions of 2400px by 3000px.

Once you've got your calculation made, press a button and the render settings are set automatically. I can see this being very useful for those needing to produce renders for the print industry. Rui recently announced that he has nearly completed version 3.

Cons: Minor bugs not effecting usability (Bullet point character on a PC comes out as a Yen symbol and the fields are too short to see the full XYZ values).

Doesn't work on multiple selected items, one at a time.

Pros: Simple, easy to use Intuitive design

The "Aligner" is a souped up version of the 3DPack's Align&Distribute. It has a much expanded user interface. Since it works with multiple selected objects vs. requiring objects to be grouped first, this plugin flows very well. I can select several objects, align them on the average Y axis value, average the X axis centers, and distribute them precisely along the Z axis all in one step.

Very fast and useful.

Cons: Changing the units (cm/in) should automatically recalculate the measures Rating: 4/5

Rui has several plug-ins that are geared toward the print industry.

CalcSize will give you the ability to calculate the render settings required to produce a specific print ready image.

You provide the DPI, height, and width and the plug-in will calculate the print document's dimensions.

Pros: Improvement over the transfer function, Stable, easy to use

Rating: 3.5/5

3DPack/CalcSize

Aligner

3DPack/PSR This plug-in allows you to copy the (P)osition, (S)cale, and (R)otation of an object and apply to another object. Rui wrote this plug-in to overcome a lack of functionality in the native "Transfer..." function.

The PSR clipboard allows you to store and reuse up to 10 PSR values. You can copy and paste just the rotation if you like or any combination of the PSR values. I had never used the transfer function before testing this plug-in, so I personally don't have a need for this added functionality. If this is something that can enhance your workflow , it may become a very valuable tool for you.

Docs didn't mention the requirement that objects must be under a group.

Requires items to be within a group vs. multiple selected objects

Rating: 3/5

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Pros: Super easy to use Works on multiple selected items Cons: Icons and presets would help workflow Rating: 4.5/5

Find&Replace This plug-in will appeal to those of you working on large projects with many objects or materials. Could you use the ability to step through every object that starts with "Leg*" or every object that uses a material named "Marble"? You'll have the ability find and replace names, extend or modify names by appending a serialized number automatical-

RUI’s Plugins - Tested

PLUGIN REVIEW

ly, and the ability to mass change one material to another wherever it is found. One thing that is missing is the ability to find and replace an object. The plug-in is designed to help you mass update your objects (names/materials), not change geometry. The scope of your changes can be constrained to a hierarchy, a specific level in a hierarchy, or the whole document as you need. As an added bonus, the plug-in can mass hide and show your objects by name or wildcard search.

Pros: Comprehensive find and replace features. Improve workflow for large projects Cons: Next feature doesn't open up the hierarchy automatically. Doesn't provide object replacement Rating: 4/5

CMYK Shader This shader plug-in adds the ability to set material colors using a CMYK color value. This one is targeted at those rendering for the print industry. For this use, it performs a valuable service. While you could convert the CYMK color value to an RGB color value using some other program like Adobe Photoshop and manually entering it into the standard color shader, why do that when you can work with CMYK color values directly in Cinema 4D? Pros: Simple, seamless, and intuitive.

Improves workflow for print industry Cons: None Rating: 4.5/5

by Crew Reynolds

SpeeDisplay Rui has come up with a unique way of speeding up the editor display times for those of you with lots of geometry to deal with. An illustration will help highlight how cool this is. Let's say you've got 400 trees in your "Forest" group and your display is really bogging down. Even a wire frame mode isn't cutting it. Besides, you want to work in shaded mode on some of these trees but the display time is just killing you.

SpeeDisplay is a plug-in (XL7) or an expression (R8.x) that you can use to interactively change an object's LOD (level of detail) based on how far it is from a "proximity" object.

In R8.x you would place the SpeeDisplay expression at the "Forest" group level, turn on "use only children" flag, and assign the proximity object to the name of a null, cube, or other object to use as a tool. You would then move the proximity object near the objects in your forest that you would like to see in full detail and the SpeeDisplay expression handles the rest. It automatically sets the LOD for every object in the group so that those nearest the proximity object are gouraud shaded while those 100m away drop to the isoparm LOD. Even with a lot of geometry, this operation is very fast. You are given the ability to work with your target objects fully shaded while the surrounding geometry remains visible but at a lower LOD. R8.x has builtin the ability to change the LOD for the currently selected object to a higher level than the unselected geometry. SpeeDisplay is an enhancement to that functionality allowing you to interactively set the

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LOD for all objects in a defined work area rather than just the one selected object.

Pros: Unique, clever functionality.

Easy to use and fast.

Cons: The existing view port LOD settings in R8.x may be enough for some.

Setup was frustrating, docs could improve that Copy/paste of expression doesn't work fully. You must open each expression and hit OK to gain the display tag.

Rating: 4/5

If you have different experiences or informations about Rui’s plugins then please go ahead and share them with us on the forum.

Just follow this link and post your ideas on how to make something better or what kind of trouble you have with a certain plugin. The more people share their knowledge the better the plugin gets! http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=47

To get Rui’s plugins just visit his site here: http://www.ruimac.com/

Interview with Janine Pauke

by Tavy Ann

school when I was 17, I moved to Frankfurt, and so far I haven't regretted that decision (nobody has ever asked me about my school degree, not even once). Now I live in the UK.

www.3dfluff.com

Janine Pauke 3dArtist

Interview

Tavy: Hi Janine! Thanks for taking time out of you schedule to share a bit about yourself with our readers.

You and your work are highly respected not only in the CINEMA 4D Community, but throughout the CG/3D community as well. Why don't you tell us a little about you.

Where you born, where you now live, etc.....?

Janine: First of all thanks for picking me for an interview! I was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1981. Just before I was supposed to finish

Tavy: What first interested you about 3D? Janine: Actually it's all my mum's fault. When I was about 13 I got my first Amiga and started playing around with paint programs, but nothing serious. One day my mum brought home a program called Dali.

I have absolutely no idea why. I think she liked the chrome spheres and the checkerboard on the cover.

I don't think anyone has ever heard of this program. It had quite a complicated workflow (I don't think it had a 3d view) and back then rendering was extremely slow, but somehow I managed to actually

29

produce a few simple models with textures on them. That's what got me interested in the first place. Then I played around with a cover CD version of Real 3D for a little while until I somehow came across CINEMA 4D 1.5, and that's where it really started. I think I was 14. I started sending in my images to a German Amiga magazine. I actually came second in a contest with one of my images and won a PC! My family would have never been able to afford one so I was over the moon.

And that's when I started working with the PC version of CINEMA 4D. Tavy: Do you have any formal training/education in CG/3D? Janine: No, and I never learned anything else. I'm completely useless at anything other than CG. Everything I know about 3D I

Interview

Interview with Janine Pauke

learned from the CINEMA 4D manuals, tutorials on the web, books, and by watching other people. Watching someone model a head with box modeling was a real eye opener for me. Before that I mostly modeled with primitive objects and loft nurbs, extrude nurbs etc. At that time MAXON was working on CINEMA 4D R6 as well and I started modeling with HyperNURBS and that's actually when I really learned modeling.

Tavy: What are you currently doing for a living?

Janine: I finished working on Alien vs Predator as a digital matte painter a few months ago and right now I'm freelancing - which is great because now I have time to work on a new demoreel and other projects.

Tavy: Most artist have sources of inspiration. What are yours?

Janine: Actually there's no single source of inspiration... I like browsing cg galleries. I find that

by Tavy Ann

very inspiring. Recently I've become very interested in digital painting and matte painting as well, so I've been looking at a lot of matte paintings. I also have all 3 books about the art of Lord of the Rings. They're extremely inspiring. I can really recommend those. Not just for matte painting but also for creature modeling.

Check for: The Art of The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings)

by Gary Russell on www.amazon.com Tavy: Let's talk a bit about CINEMA 4D. Throughout the years your name has been associated with MAXON and CINEMA 4D. Can you share with our readers a little about your relationship with MAXON and CINEMA 4D? Janine: That's a long story. I'll give you the short version. I was already a fanatical CINEMA 4D user when I started working part time for MAXON as a tutorial translator from home. After a while I moved to

30

Frankfurt and visited MAXON. They asked me if I could take over the phone while everyone was gone to Cebit, and so I did. I quite enjoyed doing a bit of tech support as well, and when one of their tech support guys left MAXON they asked me if I wanted to be employed permanently. That's when I was 17. Everything just fell into place for me.

Interview

Interview with Janine Pauke

I didn't have much of a clue how it all happened myself and I'm very grateful to MAXON. So I was working in tech support for a year and a half, I think, and then moved over to the graphics department. I created many of the example scenes, renderings, did a bit of layout, and also wrote parts of the manuals. After a while I wanted to move to the UK. I begged them to let me work in the

UK office and succeeded. I was very happy.

I left MAXON UK in 2003 when I got the opportunity to do an interesting freelance project, but I'm still a betatester now, and CINEMA 4D is my main 3D software, not just because I've been using it for so long, but also because I'm convinced that it has a great future to look forward to.

Tavy: You know, as well as the entire CINEMA 4D Community, that MAXON has announced its 9th generation of CINEMA 4D. What are your thoughts on Release 9?

Janine: Release 9 may not look much different, but under the hood there have been a lot of changes, especially for the modeling. I've been using Release 9 for a while now and have already forgotten what it was like to model in 8.5. I already take the viewport filter and the new shading modes for granted as well. My absolute favorite new modeling tools are the interactive loop and ring selections,

31

by Tavy Ann

the knife tool in loop cut mode and the close polygon hole tool. And of course, ngons in general.

Tavy: What other applications are you currently using?

Janine: Apart from Photoshop for matte painting, retouching and web graphics, I've also played with Zbrush2 (I wish I had more time for it!). Zbrush2 works perfectly together with CINEMA's new sub polygon displacement. I used Maya and a bit of Renderman when I did matte painting for Alien vs Predator at the Moving Picture Company, but that was only temporarily.

Tavy: Are you currently working on, or do you have any future projects you would like to tell us about?

Janine: Right now I'm working on a training DVD together with Matthew O'Neill (Mash). We're trying to do a different approach - instead of doing a DVD for a general area like modeling or rendering, we're doing them for more specific everyday topics.

The first DVD will be about design

Interview

Interview with Janine Pauke

and visualization which includes a bit of everything - some of the new modeling tools in R9, lighting, HDRI, how to tweak a rendering in Photoshop, a bit of animation and maybe even a bit of Sketch and Toon. It's still in the works at the moment but when it's done we're going to put up some information on www.3dfluff.com or there might already be information by the time you're reading this.

Tavy: Let's face it! The CG world has been dominated generally by men. In recent years, more and more women, highly skilled women as yourself, have been coming on the 3D scene. Do you have any advice or inspiring words for women who want to venture into 3D? Janine: Find a boyfriend that can do all the cooking and cleaning for you!

That's the only woman-specific bit of advice I can think of. There aren't many women in online cg communi-

by Tavy Ann

ties it seems, but in my experience so far, there are a lot of women working in cg. I was surprised by the amount of women working at the Moving Picture Company, most of them were working in compositing but also animation, texturing, matte painting...

I'm sure the percentage of women in cg is going to become even bigger over time and I don't think it's anything special anymore these days.

Tavy: Janine, once again, thank you so much for sharing with our readers. It's truly been a pleasure. Do you have any last words you would like to leave our readers with?

Janine: Only one word: Ngons! I can't imagine life without ngons!

32

Diamonds in CINEMA 4D Girl's best friend!

Hello and welcome to my first tutorial. In this tutorial I want show you how to make your girlfriend happy.

As everybody knows, women love jewelry and especially diamonds.

Now you can go and buy one, or you can create it by yourself. And this is exactly what we want to do!

by Kolja Lauterbach aka Mr. Marodeur

from the "Objects->Create Spline>Linear" menu. Then we create a shape like the image. <pic01> Your Spline doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but you should create eight points to get the right form

Tutorial

(pic02)

First some requirements: I'm working with CINEMA 4D R8.2. If I'm using a R8-specific function, I try o describe a little workaround. While I'm writing the tutorial, I noticed that the functions in R9 can be very different, please look in the handbook on how to use them. Also I'm planning to use a HDRI for environment, you can download one from http://www.debevec.org/Probes/, but it's not essencial.

To understand the structure of the brilliant cut see the reference image.

There are many types of cuts and shapes, but we want to do the

Brilliant Cut with a faceted, straight Girdle.

OK, lets start. Open up CINEMA 4D and switch to the Modeling layout if you like. Next we should switch to the front view. We do this by selecting "Camera->Front" in the View submenu. We choose "Draw Linear Spline" from the splines symbol or

(pic01)

mode (Menu "Tools->Points") and select the second line of points with the "Rectangle Selection" tool (menu "Tools->Rectangle Selection"). <pic03> Make sure you have selected all points including those hidden.

later. Make sure you create the spline counterclockwise. By the way, it's a lot easier in the "snap mode".

In the next step we create a "Lathe NURBS Object" from the nurbs tab (menu "Objects->NURBS->Lathe NURBS") and drag the previously created Spline-Object on it. Set the Object Property "Subdivision" of the Lathe NURBS to eight, because the brilliant cut requires eight steps around. Now, you can delete the Phong and the UVW Tag from the Lathe NURBS Object in the object manager, they’re only in the way. If we switch to the perspective view, we can see that our diamond is taking shape. <pic02> Now that was easy! Next we have to do something a little more difficult.

To do a "little" finetuning, we have to make the Lathe NURBS editable (hit key "C" or menu "Structure->Make Editable"). As we can see, our diamond has become a pure polygon object.

Next we want to create the Crown.

We switch to the "Use Point Tool"

33

(pic03)

Therefore you have to deactivate the "Only Select Visible Elements" at the Active Tool Manager. Next we have to turn the points about 22.5 degrees horizontal.

Now we should have something like this. <pic04> We switch to the "Use Polygon Tool" mode (menu "Tools>Polygons") and select the polygon rows above and under the points we selected before. <pic05> Now we triangulate the selected polys (menu "Structure->Triangulate").

For this actions I recommend the right mouse button. All relevant functions are in the popup menu.

You can use the right mouse button a lot to make the work easier and faster. Now we can see, that the top

Diamonds in CINEMA 4D

by Kolja Lauterbach aka Mr. Marodeur

Element" tool (menu "Tools->Move") to make the polys planar <pic07> OK, here's a little hint: all functions can called with hotkeys. In this

(pic04)

(pic08)

(pic07)

Tutorial

example its "E" for move and "T" for scale. You should use them to improve your working speed...

(pic05)

polygon row is correct, but the lower row needs some work. We switch to the "Use Point Tool" mode (menu "Tools->Points") again and select the upper two point rows. We turn them 45 degrees back.<pic06> The upper part of our diamond is nearly finished, we only have to do

(pic06)

some point adjustment. We switch back to the select the "Use Point Tool" mode (menu "Tools->Points").

We have to select the second line of points again. We use the "Scale Active Element" tool (menu "Tools>Scale") and the "Move Active

Next to the so called Pavilion and the Girdle. As you can see in the reference picture, we have to subdivide the structure to get some more facets. We select the two edges that will become our Girdle. We do this by switching to "Use Edge Tool" mode (menu "Tools->Edges") and selecting one section of the upper and one section of the lower ring with the "Live Selection" tool (menu "Tools->Live Selection"). Then we can use the "Edge Loop" tool (menu "Selection->Edge Loop") to select the complete ring around the diamond <pic08>.

>Spline Primitive->Circle"). Adjust the "Radius" in the Basic Properties, that the circle match the diameter of your diamond (outline it...) <pic09>.

Next we switch to the "Use Point

(pic09)

Tool" mode again (menu "Tools>Points"). We choose "Live Selection" (menu "Tools->Live Selection") an select the points shown in the next image <pic10>.

Make sure you select all points, not

Next we divide the lines three times. We will use the "Edge Cut..." tool (menu "Structure->Edge Cut...") for this. In the following dialog enter three into the Subdivisions Field, then click OK. If you don't have R8 you have to subdivide the lines manually.

Now we should use a guiding object: Switch to the top view and create a "Circle Spline" from the Splines Button (menu "Objects-

34

(pic10)

only the visible. After that we have to add some more points to the

Diamonds in CINEMA 4D

by Kolja Lauterbach aka Mr. Marodeur

selection <pic11>. We're doing this by holding down the Shift Key and selecting the next points. We can save the selection by clicking on the

slider to about 90%. If we don't do this we wont receive any shadows later. By the way, 100 percent transparency is physically not possible.

We switch to the Specular-tab and enter 30% into the "Width" field and 100% into the "Height" field. Here we have to choose the specular mode: (pic12)

Tutorial

(pic11)

menu "Selection->Set Selection".

We see that we've got a Selection Tag on the object. From now on we can easily restore our selection by clicking the tag and choosing "Restore Selection". We deselect the Selection Tag before we go on.

Now we want to use the "Scale Active Element" tool (menu "Tools>Scale").

Make sure that the Y-Axis is locked!

We scale the selected points that match the circle we've created earlier. This has to be exact, because we will get shading artifacts if the diameter isn't correct. If the points are in place we make a new selection and select the points shown in the image (it's important that we create a new selection, deselect all other points!) <pic12>.

We save it to another selection Tag. Then we scale them like the other points that hit the circle. Next we scale only the Y-Axis to zero. If we have done everything right, we've got something like this <pic13>.

Let's check our diamond for shading artifacts and do some scale adjustments at our saved point selections.

If there are problems with artifacts,

If you want to render your diamond alone without environment, plastic gives the better result because of the stronger highlights. If you're planing to put the gem into an environment, choose metal. That results in a very clear look of our diamond <pic14>.

(pic13)

check for the second point row we've adjusted earlier. Try to move the points to the middle of the crown (vertically). We re-name our object to avoid confusion by setting up the rest of the scene. We can also delete the guiding circle.

That was the hardest part, the rest is pure fun! Now we will create the most important thing that makes a diamond: the material. We create a new material (menu "File->New Material"). As an alternative we can use the BhodiNUT Volume Shader Banji, but in my opinion the "standard" shaders are a lot easier to handle and more flexible.

First we click on the Basic-Tab in the Attributes manager and check Color, Transparency and Specular.

We go to the Transparency-tab and activate the option "Fresnel". Then we enter 2.4 into the "Refraction" field and reduce the "Brightness"

35

(pic14)

At last we assign the shader to our diamond. We do this by dragging our material straight onto the object.

Now it's time to see what our diamond looks like...

We render the perspective view by clicking first into the perspective window, then clicking on the "Render Active View" button. Hmm, that's a little boring and if you have chosen metal on the Specular-tab it's very dark. Lets add an environment to our scene. We should create a "Sky Object" (menu "Objects>Scenes->Sky"). If you render the scene now you will notice that our gem its getting more brilliance.

Diamonds in CINEMA 4D The last step is to create a material for the environment. We create a new material (menu "File->New Material") and go straight to the Illumination-tab. If you've loaded a HDRI Probe file from http://www.debevec.org/Probes/, you have to convert it via the plugin "Convert HDRI Probe".

Tutorial

Load your converted HDRI into the channel. If you don't have the final render plugin, you don't have to worry. You can use a normal JPG as well. You will get it from http://www.debevec.org/Probes/, too. Assign the material to the sky object and render the scene again... <pic15> Wow! That's cool! You will see, the more objects you create and put into the scene, the more our diamond sparkles and shines. If you have

by Kolja Lauterbach aka Mr. Marodeur

(pic15)

(pic16)

more than one gem in your scene, play around with the colors and try to arrange them, so they affecting themselves. Or you can use the diamonds to create some wonderful jewelry <pic16>.

Now that's it!

Happy Rendering!

Kolja Lauterbach (Mr.Marodeur)

ADVERTISING

36

Creating a Comet with PyroCluster

by SionCross (fire1_shadow)

How to make a comet with PyroCluster Hello 3DAttackers!!! In this tutorial we make a comet/meteor setup with some changes on the basic PyroCluster materials...hope you have some fun :

(fire2_global)

PyroCluster Tutorial

Just create some basic stuff: (Environment-light, 2 PyroClustermaterial, PyroCluster-volumetracer and 1 emitter) Put the Pyro-volumetracer on the environment-light so that we can render the Pyromaterials! (fire2_age)

Double click the Pyro-volumetracer and set the render mode from Crispy to Hazy! (for some faster renderings) Rotate the emitter in 180° in pitch and make a copy from the emitter.

Rename the 2 emitters (e1 and e2)

(e2)

Position e1 (100 units in Z) and e2 the opposite way (-100) just to make better changes to the Pyro-materials which we will rename fire and smoke. Put fire on e1 and smoke on e2!

Now lets adjust the fire-material a bit. Set on global under settings form user to fire and lower down the luminosity to 75%.

Go to the age tab...and set it like pic."fire1_age".

And on the shadow tab as pic."fire1_shadow".

age as pic."fire2_age" Under shape put the radius to 110! and noise as pic."fire2_noise" (fire2_noise)

(fire1_age)

(e1)

Now make a copy and rename it fire2...and make some changes in global as pic."fire2_global"

37

and now some on the smoke one.. set on global the settings from user

Creating a Comet with PyroCluster

by SionCross

(smoke2_age)

to smoke and make some changes as pic."smoke1_global" make changes on the age as pic."smoke1_age" (smoke1_global)

PyroCluster Tutorial

around) "We have now 2 different materials to test them on the comet" The materials are ready, time to make some changes on the emitters! !!NOTICE: all changes on the emitters are dependent on the emitteranimation you have (the speed they are moving)!!

(smoke1_age)

We make a little 2 point spline-path in the side view "only in Z (the start point at 0,0,0 and the end point at 0,0,4000)!

(e1)

Now create a null-object rename it “Comet” and add a align to spline expression-tag! make a copy, rename it “smoke2” and make some changes too!

Global as pic."smoke2_global" Age as pic."smoke2_age" (smoke2_global)

Click on the tag and under spline path "drag&drop" the spline too!

Check the hook at tangential and the axis must be set to Z. Go to frame 15 and rightclick position on the align to spline expression-tag chose"animation - add keyframe" to generate a key...go to frame 75 set position to 100% and add a key!!

Select e1 and make changes as pic."e1" Select e2 and make changes as pic."e2"

And maybe lower the radius a bit...or leave it as it is (just play

That's it...now set e1 and e2 to 0,0,0 and "drag&drop" them under comet...play the animation! (please be sure you are at frame 0; where the comet is at 0,0,0)

38

(e2)

To get a better look make a turbulence-field; set the size to 500,500,1000; set strength to 50% and move it back in Z (-400) and

Creating a Comet with PyroCluster add it under the comet.

For a better glow create a light; set it visible and make some changes as pic."light"

by SionCross

You can also change the color to a bit more orange or yellow.

Position it back in Z (-100) and put it under the comet too!!

Now we have a bit more turbulence on the smoke and a light glow on the comet...feel free to make changes and contact me if you have problems or questions or post it on 3DAttack!!!

PyroCluster Tutorial

Here is the comet with fire1 and smoke1 (pic.01) And one with fire2 and smoke2 (pic.02) (if the light is to high for you lower the outer distance to 150!)

(light)

Hope you had some fun with this Tutorial. Keep on ATTACKING!!!

Sion Cross

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39

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Tutorials! That’s what we want from YOU! If you would like to submit a tutorial you have written, or you think our e-zine is lacking in a certain area, or have a great article idea, feel free to contact us at 3dattack@3dattack.net.

Currently our e-zine reaches over 30,000 readers monthly, and we are growing steadily! You could be part of the e-zine!

If you are a plugin writer and want your Plugin reviewed by the 3d Attack Team please feel free to contact us! We will be happy to evaluate and write about your plugin.

It is also possible to advertise in our e-zine. We have different sizes and conditions to fit everyone's needs!

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Hello there Attackers!

Recently 3D Attack™ has had to make some difficult decisions. The most difficult of these decisions was the fate of our magazine. The August and September issues were downloaded over 30,000 times each. That’s 60,000 downloads at 24 mb each in two months.

Producing a magazine of this caliber takes money and much time.

Not only do we need to purchase a new server for the heavy traffic, but also put our tutorial writers on the payroll. These skilled men and women have been giving their time and talent to the entire CG community free of charge. Their dedication is priceless, and now is the time to thank them for all of their hard work.

Drop a line to: 3dattack@3dattack.net

The 3D Attack™ Team

On our forum, at www.3dattack.net, we’ve had a poll running for a few weeks asking whether we should charge a small fee for the e-zine, accept donations, or discontinue it.

The majority voted for a small fee.

Donating will be an option, but we begin charging $2.99 USD in November or December.

We think this is a competitive rate compared to the price tags on other magazines. Nowadays you usually pay around $6 to $12 for a printed magazine, and what you get is a magazine packed with advertisement you didn’t ask for, or only 5% of the content is CINEMA 4D related. We believe (and we are not alone in our beliefs) that our readers shouldn’t be bugged with too much advertising and little CINEMA

40

ALIVE!

4D content. We strive to bring you in depth C4D based tutorials, interviews, reviews and articles.

Your input is valuable to us and we need that input following the release of each new monthly issue. Please continue to give us your feed back via e-mail or on our forum.

3D Attack’s future hold more than just the e-zine and forum. We are currently working on an E-Shop where you will be able to purchase plugins, video-tutorials, textures and even artwork, along with our e-zine!

We hope you, the readers, understand why this decision had to be made. We hope that you will support our decision and help us to continue on with bringing the e-zine to the CINEMA 4D community. In return, we promise to give you the best CINEMA 4D related magazine there is!

We would like to thank those people who have already donated! Thank you so much! Every cent will be wisely spent and we will not disappoint our readers. We would also like to thank our many members on the forum who help to provide a professional C4D community with us!

If you would like to donate please visit www.3dattack.net.

At the bottom of the page you will see a Paypal Sign.

Just click and follow the instructions.

The 3D Attack Team

C.O.F.F.E.E Lesson Part 3 Lesson 3: Plugin the C.O.F.F.E.E!

Tutorial

We've started with the basics of the C.O.F.F.E.E. language in lesson 1 and then applied them by building a C.O.F.F.E.E. expression in lesson 2.

As promised, this month we will pull all of that together into a C.O.F.F.E.E. menu plugin that actually does some work for us. Right off, I want to give credit to www.nthd.org and their member known to me only by his alias "_cory". Cory's original stairMaker plugin is my starting point for this lesson. His original code has been updated to work with r8.1+ and some enhancements have been added.

Before I get started breaking this code down for you, I want to thank Rui Batista for two things. Rui sells C.O.F.F.E.E. based plugins of his own design which can be found at http://www.ruimac.com many of

by Crew Reynolds

which are reviewed in this issue.

He showed me that you really can make some useful plugins with C.O.F.F.E.E. even beyond the menu type. Rui has gone on to create a CMYK shader as well as an interactive LOD controller expression (SpeeDisplay) both of which were written in C.O.F.F.E.E. Aside from this, Rui was also helpful in getting me through some recent rough spots in learning C.O.F.F.E.E. At this point, if you have not yet downloaded the C.O.F.F.E.E. SDK, please go and do that first. You will find them in MAXON's Plugin Café at http://www.plugincafe.com.

You need to know that MAXON hasn't updated the C.O.F.F.E.E. documentation past version 6.302.

There were a few undocumented updates in v8.1 that threw me regarding how to create primitive objects. The StairMaster plugin

uses the 8.1+ method which won't work for pre-8.1 folks. In the code, I will point out how to overcome this so you don't get stuck.

In order to follow along, you will need to download a copy of the finished plugin. I am going to break it apart and discuss the most important parts. You may download this plugin from C4D Café where I hang out rather than list it here and have you type in. Between the discussion below and the commented code, I hope this will help you to understand how to build a basic menu plugin with dialog entry. The file can be found at http://www.c4dcafe.com/L3/StairMas ter.html NOTE: The code discussed below is not in order of actual execution. It is laid out in the order that best makes sense to develop an understanding of how it works. Please look at the ADVERTISING

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41

C.O.F.F.E.E Lesson Part 3 finished plugin to see how the pieces fit together. The order of execution is important.

Tutorial

Maxon did a wonderful job making Cinema 4D extensible via plugins.

To do this, they provide access to special plugin classes that we can make instances of and register with the main application. One of those classes is called MenuPlugin. To create a new plugin for the menu, the following code is executed: class MyMenuPlugin : MenuPlugin { public: MyMenuPlugin(); GetID(); GetName(); GetHelp(); Execute(doc); } The line class MyMenuPlugin : MenuPlugin says that you are creating a new class called MyMenuPlugin and that it should be based on the structure of the class MenuPlugin. In object-oriented programming (OOP) this is called inheritance. The new class that is generated is called a subclass of MenuPlugin.

The parent class (MenuPlugin) is called the superclass. All of the properties and methods of the superclass are available to the subclass. It is this ability to inherit functionality and extend it that makes object-oriented so powerful.

In the code snippet above, we also see a public declaration of the functions we intend to code. This is called the public interface to the class. A function within a class is called a method. GetID() is an example of a method in the MyMenuPlugin class. We know from previous lessons that functions

by Crew Reynolds

are great for modularizing code to make it easy to test and reuse.

Methods are no different. Think of a class as a sort of function library.

When you inherited the MenuPlugin base class, you got a full library of methods and properties in the deal.

Properties are variables stored inside the class that you have access to.

It helps to have a visual at this point so open Cinema4D and create a cube. The itself cube is NOT a class. The cube is the product of a class called CubeObject. It is said to be an instance of the CubeObject class. The CubeObject class has properties (called attributes in the user interface) like height, width, length, position, rotation, and scale.

These values belong to that one cube and stick with it for it's whole life. If you create a second cube (a new instance of class CubeObject), it would have it's own copy of data accessible via the class properties.

Both cubes have the same set of properties because they were created from the same class although the values of those properties vary from cube to cube.

That's OOP in a nutshell. What it means is that Maxon has already provided all of the guts necessary to plug your custom code into their menu. All we need to do is inherit that ability and add our own changes. The following bits of code will fill in the methods that we declared in the public interface.

These are MyMenuPlugin(), GetName(),GetID(), etc.

Let's take a look at code necessary to register a plugin. // Be sure to use a unique ID obtained from www.plugincafe.com

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when creating // new plugins. This one was registered just for the StairMaster plugin. var PLUGIN_ID = 1016467; //Reference the super class of MyMenuPlugin MyMenuPlugin::MyMenuPlugin() { super(); } //Get ID for registered plugin MyMenuPlugin::GetID() { return PLUGIN_ID; } //Get Name. Function called my C4d to display name in pulldown MyMenuPlugin::GetName() { //Define name and return var name = "StairMaster"; return name; } //Get Help: Function defined for help.

MyMenuPlugin::GetHelp() { var help = "This is the StairMaster plugin. You help documentation can go here."; return help; } //Main function of plugin. This is executed when the plugin is selected.

MyMenuPlugin::Execute(doc) { //When plugin is selected, pop-up dialog box. var d = new(MyDialog); d->Open(-1,-1); } // Big difference here. The main() function for a plugin only // executes at load time -not- on every refresh like a C.O.F.F.E.E. // expression does. main() { //Register plugin in pulldown menu Register(MyMenuPlugin);

C.O.F.F.E.E Lesson Part 3 Println("StairMaster demo plugin"); }

Tutorial

At this point, we've got the code together to hook our plugin into the menu. Next we need to define what the dialog box looks like. There are actually two ways to do this: Resource files or direct. We are looking at the direct method in this case.

It is possible to build resource files that describe the contents of the dialog box. If you plan to sell your plugin, I suggest that you look into this method. It allows the contents of the dialog box to remain in an external file that can be modified. The strings used in the dialog can be placed in a separate file to facilitate multi-language support. In this example, we just need to see how a basic plugin is constructed so resource and string files are not used.

Much like the MenuPlugin class, Maxon provides a class for building a dialog box. They take care of the hard stuff for us. All we need to do is create our own class by inheriting the methods and properties of the superclass called GeModalDialog.

Look in the C.O.F.F.E.E. SDK for the class GeModalDialog. You will find that this class is based on class GeUserDialog which is in turn based on class GeBaseDialog.

When you create a class based on GeModelDialog, you inherit all of the methods and properties of the super classes up the chain. When you read the following code, you will see references to methods like AddGroupBeginH() and AddEditNumberArrows().

by Crew Reynolds

These methods were defined several layers up in the GeBaseDialog class. If you can understand this class hierarchy, it gives you in-sight into how all of the classes in the C.O.F.F.E.E. SDK are built.

Knowing this will help you get to what would initially seem like hidden functions. Let's look at how these concepts apply to building a dialog box.

The code below defines the public interface to our new class MyDialog.

We declare the list of methods that we intend to code later on. class MyDialog:GeModalDialog { public: MyDialog(); CreateLayout(); Command(id,msg); } Every class has a "constructor" method which is called to initialize the class instance. Since we are using an inherited class, it stands to reason that there are constructor methods at each level of the class hierarchy up to ours. To call the constructor of the super class in GeModalDialog, we execute the Super() method. This is necessary to get things initialized properly so that we can create our dialog box.

MyDialog::MyDialog() { super(); } The CreateLayout() method is called

by Cinema 4D just before the dialog is displayed. We declared this method when we defined the class above. Now we just need to put the code in that executes when the method is called.

As you are reading the following code, keep in mind that every gadget (field, text, etc.) will have a han-

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dle which you define. For example, in the following code you will see that a horizontal group is being added and has been given a handle of 100010. There are a few rules of thumb. Start with 100010, assign handles sequentially, and never use the same handle twice.

Example: AddGroupBeginH(100010,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); Read through the following code with this in mind. The title is set, a horizontal group is added, static text and an edit field with arrows are added, the initial value of the edit field is wet, and the group is closed.

This is done once for each horizontal group. The first horizontal group is commented. The rest of the fields are not because they follow the same pattern.

MyDialog::CreateLayout() { //Set the title of the dialog box SetTitle("Stair Parameters"); //Start a horizontal group (so the name and form blank line up) //This group is for the "number of steps entry box" //id,flags,rows,title,groupflags AddGroupBeginH(100010,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); //Add descriptive text for form entry AddStaticText(100011, 0, 0, 0, "Number of steps", 0); //Add an entry form field for entering numbers //id,flags,width,height AddEditNumberArrows(100012, 0, 100, 15); //Set the default, minimum and

C.O.F.F.E.E Lesson Part 3 maximum for the number //id,default,min,max,step SetInt(100012, 5, 1, 100, 1); //End the horizontal group AddGroupEnd(); //Start another horizontal group for the total height AddGroupBeginH(100020,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); AddStaticText(100021, 0, 0, 0, "Total height", 0); AddEditNumberArrows(100022, 0, 100, 15); SetInt(100022, 500, 1, 10000, 1); AddGroupEnd();

Tutorial

//Start another horizontal group for the width AddGroupBeginH(100023,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); AddStaticText(100024, 0, 0, 0, "Width", 0); AddEditNumberArrows(100025, 0, 100, 15); SetInt(100025, 500, 1, 10000, 1); AddGroupEnd(); //Start another horizontal group for the thickness AddGroupBeginH(100026,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); AddStaticText(100027, 0, 0, 0, "thickness", 0); AddEditNumberArrows(100028, 0, 100, 15); SetInt(100028, 10, 1, 10000, 1); AddGroupEnd(); //Start another horizontal group for the depth AddGroupBeginH(100029,BFH_RIG HT,1,"",0); AddStaticText(100030, 0, 0, 0, "Depth", 0);

by Crew Reynolds

AddEditNumberArrows(100031, 0, 100, 15); SetInt(100031, 100, 1, 10000, 1); AddGroupEnd(); //Make another horizontal group for the ok/cancel buttons AddGroupBeginH(100040,BFH_CE NTER,1,"",0); AddDlgGroup(-1); AddGroupEnd(); //When done, return true return TRUE; } The GeModalDialog class provides the OK and CANCEL buttons automatically. Whenever any button is pressed on a dialog box, the Command() method is called passing in the command button's id number and any messages that need to be passed through. This method is also called when the values of the edit fields are changed in case you need to react to those events. For this example, we are simply going to react to the OK button being pressed and kick off the createStairs() function. Notice that I didn't call this one a method. Class methods are functions exposed to the outside world through the interface defined when the class is declared.

There are going to be some functions that carry along with the class that are not available to the outside world directly. These are sometimes called private methods but I prefer to call them functions. Don't get hung up on that. It's a naming issue. If I say that class XYZ has method ABC(), I should expect to see that method in the class interface. If I say class XYZ has function DEF() then I know it's not a public

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method and therefore will only be available to the internal code within the class.

MyDialog::Command(id,msg) { // Read the values of each field from the dialog by // specifying its handle. var numberofsteps = GetInt(100012); var totalheight = GetInt(100022); var thickness= GetInt(100028); var depth = GetInt(100031); var width = GetInt(100025); switch(id) { case 1: //if successful create some stairs createStairs(numberofsteps, totalheight, thickness, depth, width); GeEventAdd(DOCUMENT_CHANGED); GeEventAdd(REDRAW_ALL); } return TRUE; } And, finally, we have the code that we've been trying to get to all along.

The following code creates a new group of objects in the shape of stairs using the variables pulled from that dialog box. This code could be anything you need it to be. In the case on Rui's Align&Distribute plugin, there would be a function that steps through the selected objects and changes their position.

In the BoltClassic plugin that can be found in the plugin café, there would be a function to create a noisy spline between two points with a circle lofted over the spline. What happens when the OK button it pressed is what makes the plugin useful.

C.O.F.F.E.E Lesson Part 3

by Crew Reynolds

In many cases, that's the easy part.

The part that is a little less straightforward is how to get the plugin attached to the main application. I hope that the discussion above has helped to make that task seem a little less daunting. In fact, this plugin can be used a template for the majority of menu plugins that you would want to write.

Tutorial

You will need to download the finished plugin as suggested earlier so you can see the plugin in action.

Refer to the actual plugin to see the createStairs() function. Add to it, modify it, replace it with whatever you like.

How about rotating the steps around a central cylinder to make a spiral staircase? Anything is possible.

Here are a few final tips to help you along: "Keep a copy of the SDK on your desktop for easy reference. "

Open the console (shift+F10) so you can see any error messages.

Within the code, you can println("a message") anywhere in the code to help you debug. " Use the console's Plugin menu to reload the C.O.F.F.E.E. plugins. This allows you to make changes to the source copy (.cof) on the hard drive

and then refresh the copy loaded in Cinema 4D without having to close and reopen the application.

If all else fails, read the SDK. If THAT fails, please feel free to send an email to me at 3Dcrew@c4dcafe.com and I'll do what I can to get you up and running.

COMING SOON! In November of 2004 we will launch the 3D Attack Shop. Initially the shop will host our CINEMA 4D Magazine, but over the next few months it will go through many updates. In the future you will be able to shop for many of your CINEMA 4D needs.

• Texture Packs • Video Tutorials • Models • Artwork • Plug-ins • HDRI Be looking for an announcement in the November issue of 3D Attack the CINEMA 4D Magazine or on our forum at www.3dattack.net.

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Editors Notes...

Hello there Readers and Attackers!

Once again, the 3D Attack Team thanks you all for your dedication and support. Without our readers and forum members, we wouldn’t be able to bring you quality educational tutorials, great artist interviews, and software and plug-in reviews. We look forward to bringing you the best we have to give. THANKS! If you are currently not a registered member at www.3dattack.net or haven’t checked out some of the new things happening on the forum, check out a few of the following links: 3D ATTACK and MAXON - “THE PRIZE FIGHT” http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=2214 DECEMBER COVER CONTEST http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=2248 SPEED MODELING CHALLENGE http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=42 SHOWCASE / GALLERY http://3dattack.net/Showcase/ Take a moment and look over what some our readers and forum members have to say about 3D Attack: JC - “Another great edition !!!

Congrat's to all, it's a really good job.

Kay Tennemann and Macling interviews WOW!, an amazing light lesson by Mr Rui Batista, The S&k tutorial by Aaron, and so many other things !! Thanks to all !”

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on the most impressive and useful issue so far, some great stuff in there. Sorry for being so lax but I'll immediately post a link to the 'zine from my site! Cheers” Hanzo - “wicked! cool work, I always love these and it's my birthday on the 12 so I feel like I just got a big fat present thanks guys...”

Griffoso - “Hello 3dattackers!!!

Thank you for inviting me ..although I am not a c4d user yet I am so to be ..I will learn a lot I am sure and so happy to be a part of the Family here !! hope to be posting a lot ...although I have to warn ya...I have a serious illness.....RUN MOUTH DISEASE!!..lol..talk to you soon and I am just now browsing your site and members Images ..nice work here too!!”

GREAT FORUM THREADS http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=2236

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