Tips & Tricks, Textures, and Tutorials for Cinema 4D and Xpresso

Tag Archives: Tips & Tricks

Tip – New.c4d

Tip – New.c4d

Tips & Tricks – by: base80
August 22nd, 2005

When you open a new document in Cinema4d the whole thing is empty, very very empty.
If you want to have materials, lights and scene elements loaded at startup you have to create a “New.c4d” document containing those elements and materials in the Maxon/Cinema4d directory.
You can put whatever you want in this document and they will always be there when creating new documents.

Float Sliders (R.9.x)

Float Sliders (R.9.x)

Tips & Tricks – by: base80
September 6th, 2005

This is a nice little trick that can make your working day a lot more enjoyable.
In the attribute manager (AM) of Cinema4d 9.x you can right-click some parameters to change the input box to a fancy Float-Slider input.
This works like a charm in tags like Align to Spline and othe 0 to 100% inputs.
The trick is not always consistent and you can always go back to an input box.

float-slider

Color Temperature node. (9.5)

Color Temperature node. (9.5)

Xpresso, Tips & Tricks – by: base80
October 10th, 2005

Here is a tutorial about realistically coloring light sources using color temperature. Every light source has a specific temperature in Kelvin.
Cinema4d 9.5 has a nifty little node to help us convert these values to hues and it is called…Color Temperature as expected.
It is very simple and needs no explanation at all. Just enter a value and it gives you a color. Connect the output to the color of your lights and you will get the results you need.

color temperature xpresso
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Target the safe way (pre 9.5)

Xpresso – by: base80
October 15th, 2005

Target the safe way (pre 9.5)

A common reason for baldness amongst animators is the so called “Gimbal Effect”. It is a 180 degree flip in an unexpected direction. This happens when objects are rotated in multiple directions simultaneously. It actually exists in real life to,it is the reason a “power®ball” spins so fast.

In Cinema4d the gimbal effect is quite common when using a Target tag in a complex animation.
In the animation below you can clearly see the orange object flip halfway the cycle.

target-gimbal

Gimbal !!!

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“Super8” Rendering

“Super8” Rendering

Tips & Tricks – by: base80
October 26th, 2005

Remember the days our holidays where filmed in “Super8”. This amateur quality of film making has completely been lost, the faded colors, the jerky movements,.. until now.
This is a “Super8” render method for your 3d scenes.
I found the “method” last year during a wip where I made a camping scene…
Here is the result in small size, read on for the explanation and a bigger format.

Super8 by base80 camping scene
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