Book Image

Instant Cinema 4D Starter

By : Aaron Kaminar
Book Image

Instant Cinema 4D Starter

By: Aaron Kaminar

Overview of this book

<p>Instant Cinema 4D Starter is one of the most prevalent 3D packages on the market today. With an intuitive user interface, experienced 3D artists can learn how to use C4D very quickly and easily. Amongst other features, C4D's animation tools and bulletproof rendering pipeline make it a major contender in the field of 3D software.<br /><br />"Instant Cinema 4D Starter" is a book written by an experienced artist, for other artists. You will learn how to navigate the interface, and be given a basic understanding of how objects and hierarchies are structured in C4D. Then a step-by-step illustrated tutorial will teach you how to build a logo animation from the ground up.<br /><br />"Instant Cinema 4D Starter" provides a leg up for 3D artists that need to learn this powerful software. You will benefit from easy-to-understand instructions and informative illustrations. After being walked through the installation process, you will be taught the basics of navigating the C4D interface. This includes an overview of the different components of the interface, as well as some golden “rules to live by” that carry over throughout the entire application.<br /><br />You will then jump into Cinema 4D with a hands-on tutorial. The tutorial starts with importing vector artwork from a 2D logo. You will then learn how to clean it and build it up to a geometric 3D model. You will then use a free plugin to shatter the logo geometry, and a module named MoGraph to animate it. After animating the camera and lighting the logo, you’ll be ready to render your scene. The only thing left to do is leave the reader with some helpful links to important and helpful resources in the C4D community.</p>
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

So, what is C4D?


Cinema 4D is a powerful 3D application created by Maxon computing. It is relatively easy to learn and use. Despite this, it also has a host of powerful features that can be used to create dynamic and eye-catching 3D images and animations, quickly and efficiently.

Artists who have experience in other 3D packages can learn how to use Cinema 4D within just a few weeks, and learn it well enough for use on commercial projects. The user interface is very intuitive, but if the user has any questions about a given feature the help documentation is easily accessible and extensive.

Cinema 4D has a long list of advanced and powerful features. Artists can perform the full array of 3D tasks including modeling, texturing, animating, lighting, and rendering.

Cinema 4D also plays well with other applications, both 2D and 3D. Common 3D transfer formats such as FBX are supported. Render passes and 3D scene data are easily exported for use in compositing applications such as Adobe After Effects.

A 3D scene created in Cinema 4D and composited in After Effects

In the next section, we'll take a look at the various licensing schemes for Cinema 4D, as well as how to install the application.