C4D Spinning Avatar Tutorial

[+Os. 407370]

Spinning Avatar - Part 1

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Animation1.gif

This is the first of a three part tutorial on making a spinning Avatar using Cinema 4D.

Part 2 - Textures

Part 3 - GIF

So lets get started:

1 - Open a new file in C4D

2 - Insert a TUBE
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image1.jpg

3 - Change the attributes to the following settings:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image2.jpg

4 - Left click on the TUBE so that it is highlighted in white, then CTRL+C and CTRL+V 3 times so it should now look like this:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image3.jpg

5 - Adding KEYFRAMES to make it spin. The little key under the number 80 will apply a keyframe. Do the following for all 4 TUBES by clicking on them individually:
A - CLICK ON FRAME 1 - Add KEYFRAME, then click APPLY
B - Click on frame 90 - add KEYFRAME, then click APPLY

Should now look like this for all 4 TUBES:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image6.jpg

6 - Click on FRAME 45 for each TUBE then apply one of the following settings:

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image12.jpg http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image11.jpg http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image10.jpg http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image9.jpg

SAVE then click on the PLAY button under the figure 75 to see the magic.

I have attached the scene file so you can see where I did stuff.

Part 2 coming sooon.

CHEERS

[+Os. 407370]

C4D Spinning Avatar - Part 2 Textures

There are millions of variations of texture that can be applied to any surface of any object in a C4D Scene. I will explore a few of them in this part of the tutorial.

The most basic textures are the ones built into C4D like a DANEL.

To select a DANEL use the MATERIAL EDITOR:

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image13.jpg

THE RED SHINY BALL is the texture. Left click on the DANEL then CTRL+C then CTRL+V 3 times to produce 4 identical red balls.

Colour : If you double click on the danel you will bring up the MATERIAL EDITOR:

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image14.jpg

THE DIFFUSE and SPECULAR are basically layers of colour to give different effects. The REFLECTION increases or decreases the amount of light the surface reflects.
Try changing these settings to see what effects are created. Some of the effects are very subtle and will not be visible in small AVATARS.

ROUGHNESS adds another texture to the surface, again play around with the settings to see what effects are available.

There are a million C4D textures that can be downloaded for free, Google is your friend. The standard C4D user will have hundreds of materials collected just like brushes for Photoshop.

I have played with the settings for all 4 DANELS to produce this:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image15.jpg

To apply a material to each of the TUBES just drag the DANEL from the MATERIAL EDITOR all the way across the screen on top of the TUBE object, do this for all 4 TUBE objects.
They should now look like this:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image16.jpg

SAVE the file and press PLAY, you should see that each element has now had a texture applied.

The whole image looks a bit bare as there is no background. Let’s add some other elements to fill it up a bit.

FLOOR is added by:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image17.jpg

As you will see the FLOOR is too high and cuts off the TUBES as they rotate. You will have to adjust the level of the floor by dragging the GREEN arrow down to allow for the travel of the rotating TUBES:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image18.jpg

The floor can have a texture applied so pick one of the ones that you have already made and drag and drop onto the FLOOR element. If the material has a reflective attribute then the whole scene will be reflected. Like this:

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Animation2.gif

As you can see the rings disappear into floor because I have not lowered it enough.

If the floor texture does not have a reflective attribute then adding a light and some shadows can be effective. The light can be added by:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image19.jpg

Using the GREEN arrow on the LIGHT element raise it above the TUBES, TRY DIFFERENT HEIGHTS TO SEE THE EFFECT IT HAS ON THE SHADOWS. The light settings should look like this but try experimenting:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/Image20.jpg

A single frame looks like this with the shadows on a mat texture:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/407370/tut1/1_0025.png

The FLOOR on this example has no texture applied to it.

OK that’s a lot of information for this part of the Tutorial, have fun experimenting with the settings.