Book Image

Cinema 4D R14 Cookbook, Second Edition

By : Simon Russell, Michael Szabo
Book Image

Cinema 4D R14 Cookbook, Second Edition

By: Simon Russell, Michael Szabo

Overview of this book

<p>Cinema 4D is a 3D modeling, animation, and rendering application developed by MAXON. It is becoming the most popular 3D design program in the world and learning it now will only help you become a better and more valuable designer in the 3D design industry. It is capable of procedural and polygonal sub modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, rendering, and common features found in 3D modeling applications.</p> <p>This book provides all the Cinema 4D knowledge you need to become well-versed with the software in the form of short recipes, which get straight to the point about what you need to know to start designing great 3D projects.</p> <p>Cinema 4D R14 Cookbook, Second Edition will guide you towards becoming an adept 3D designer, giving you all the tools to succeed in the field of 3D graphics. The book is set up to gradually introduce more sophisticated topics the deeper you go, and by the end of it you'll have a great working knowledge of the program. Early on you'll learn the basics of the program, and then jump right into how to start creating your own 3D objects to use in your designs.</p> <p>Along the way you'll learn how to set up lights, cameras, and materials to turn your work into something that feels more like art and design. Towards the end of the book you will be introduced to powerful tools like Xpresso, Mograph, Particles, Sculpting, and Dynamics to take your work to the next level. You'll be impressed by how easy it is to design top quality work once you lay the foundation for the entire program through this book. By the end of this book, you'll have opened new creative doors and given yourself the opportunity to be a more successful and versatile designer.</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Cinema 4D R14 Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Combo #2 – dynamic stage lighting


Picture an assignment of having to create a concert or live performance in Cinema 4D. You can imagine lights spinning around at different angles creating a lively environment. Instead of positioning and animating these lights by hand, we are going to resort to MoGraph and some handy effectors to do the job for us. The Spline effector and the Formula effector are the main components of this recipe. With the right combination of effectors we will clone lights instead of objects and cause them to rotate and pivot around to create the feel of a concert's light setup.

Getting ready

Open the Stage_Light.c4d file from the C4D Content Pack and build your scene with this recipe.

How to do it...

  1. Our star stands upon a star and needs to be lit, and a simple 3-point light setup isn't going to cut it. Use the traffic light to hide the Star Stage, Floor, and Figure objects for now, so that we can focus on our lights. We want to fit the lights around the stage and have them...