Cinema 4D Tutorial - Create Wax Type Using Collision Deformer Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from amazon.com in
today we are going to learn how to
create some fun waxy text inside of
cinema 4d let's learn how alright so
this is what we're gonna be making today
this waxy little type kind of
thingamadoodles so let's go ahead and
make it so we're going to create a new
project here and let's start off by
creating a letter and let's just choose
the letter A we'll just do one for now
let's adjust the alignment to middle and
let's choose a more interesting font
here you can choose whatever font you
like but I'm going to choose where are
you culture is our culture ista I just
like the nice little appendages here
nice little blocky appendages think
that's what you call them and let's just
make this a little bit deeper yeah
that's good so now what we're going to
do how we're going to create this waxy
type is by allowing this letter to
actually push through and deform a plane
so let's first create a plane and we'll
just switch the orientation of negative
Z so it's actually facing this is the
front face there and that's looking good
and let's just make this a little bit
bigger 800 by 800 and looking nice and
let's just move our a down so what I
want to do is allow this letter to push
through and almost look like it's
pushing through a curtain or cloth and
kind of moving and distorting this plane
and kind of imprinting the profile of
this letter into and stamping it into
this plane object so what we can do for
that is using a handy to form a call to
collision deformer and I love these
little icons because they try to give
you a hint as what the heck each of
these do and the collision to form or
the icon for word is a sphere that looks
like it's Clyde into a plane and kind of
creating some ripples so let's go ahead
and let's explore come on with me as we
explore the
collision deformer so just as any other
de former to actually have an effect in
object we need to make it a child of
said object and that's going to be our
plane object here and the first thing we
need to do is how this deform works you
need to define an object that you want
this collision to former to interact
with so what object you want to collide
into this plane well that's going to be
our mode text object so we're just going
to go ahead drag and drop our mo text
object under the objects field here and
there is this thing called a solver and
basically what a solver does is the type
of collision that you want to do do you
want to have an object intersect and
collide with another object or something
else and right now for what we want to
do we actually want this object to be
look like it's inside of an object and
as we push it forward looks like it's
trying to you know come out from behind
a curtain or you know if you raise your
foot and lift the bedsheet or something
you can kind of make out your foot your
toes something like that so we're going
to do is make this a the B inside of the
object and then when it passes through
stretch the object out so once I do
inside stretch you can see that as I
move the letter A it is stretching and
looking like it's bulging the plane from
the inside it's almost like an alien
where the aliens trying to bulge through
the stomach that just got gruesome
really quick alright no more references
to that so what we're going to do is you
can see that if I turn off the
visibility here and I rotate you can see
we got a little ball G doodle right
there but that does not look like an A
so what we need to do is if I go to my
display you can see that we have very
little geometry very little polygons to
actually define the shape of the a so
what we can do is just crank up the
width and height segments like 110 to
110 and with that uh without that added
geometry we can now see a well more
well-defined profile or shape of our
letter A
and right now it's actually still pretty
chunky as you can see so we can do two
things to smooth this out
one being bringing in a subdivision
surface and then just placing or playing
underneath that note that's going to do
is smooth things out by subdividing
everything hence the name subdivision
service and then we can do one other
thing and that is by using what's called
the smoothing to former it's very aptly
named and basically what this moving to
former does is if I place this
underneath the plane and below the
collision deformer so we want the
collision of former to happen and then
the smoothing to former so it's very
important the smoothing comes second
after the collision and what that does
you can see immediately boom just moves
everything out and then we have this
stiffness value that we can adjust to
adjust that level of smoothness so about
you know 88 something like that we get
some nice smooth edges get a little bit
of rippling happing so maybe bring that
down a little bit more and now you can
see we have a really nice smooth letter
A and we can adjust how far this gets
pushed through and this is you know this
could be good for like embossed text and
stuff like that but we're not doing that
but you can kind of see how that this
collision former can do just that
so what we're going to do is try to
bring back some of the details on this
object so what we're going to do is one
thing that's actually really neat and
that is using under the object tab here
in the collision to former is this
fall-off tab and what this does is
allows you to choose fall-off based on a
few different methods the one I like to
use is the Collider and it basically you
define the fall-off of this collision
deformer based on a distance from the
collider object to our letter a so I'm
just going to do that choose that and
immediately you're not going to see
anything change we have the fall-off
distance this is again the distance from
our Collider shape we also have strength
and you can see as I'm just in this
stuff nothing's happening and the reason
why that is is we have this curve editor
here and this curve editor basically
drives
and anything that happens in this clot
this fall-off and the typical use for
Collider or the the fall-off is for
making kind of like ripples or you're
really manipulating how this collision
shape is distorted across this the
object or your plane so what I'm going
to do is you know we can click this
little point in our curve editor or arse
planet ER and you see that just kind of
rounds things out and what you're really
going to get to see especially if I turn
up the strength is we have this we have
our Collider shape and then we have this
bulge and that is created from this
curve editor so I'm gonna just hold
command or control and click and create
another point control click again create
another point and another point and you
can see exactly what's happening is you
can see this is basically the profile of
what's happening here or of our fall-off
distance so we can now adjust and more
clearly see what all this stuff does you
can see the distance this is like some
ripples some ripple action happening and
as this goes off we can adjust the
strength you can see that this can add
some nice like if you wanted to really
have full control over like ripple
action if you actually animated this
letter a colliding in and then creating
these ripples you can fully animate this
it's very art directive all kind of
ripples but what I'm going to use this
for is I'm going to choose a very small
distance and bring the strength that a
little bit I'm just going to reset this
curve editor default and what I want to
do is actually introduce a negative
value here and what this is going to do
is kind of like push in and you can't
really see but it's kind of dimpling
along the edges of our object here you
can see that that's just adding a little
bit of detail bringing back a little
detail of that little a bit right there
and our little appendages there so what
I want to do is just right click and
I'll actually want to see what I'm doing
and I'm going to go show in two separate
editor now I can hold the two key and
kind of zoom
hold the 1 key in pan so zoom in pin and
just adjust this even further so you can
see we got that curve a little bit down
there so now all I can do is just bring
this slider distance in and you can kind
of see the difference between no
fall-off and some fall-off you can see
that with that Collider we get a little
bit more of that dimpling action
happening on our object and you can
really get a sense of the form of our
object a bit more so that's just one
thing that the the fall-off is good for
I'm just going to choose a level of
strength of 15 a distance of 15 and
strength of 3035 for now
and you can see again off and with
fall-off get those dimples back there so
let's just go and go a little bit
further with the options here on our
collider or our collision deformer
and the next tab we're going to go over
is this Advanced tab and a lot of these
things we're not really going to be
utilizing in this because this is not
this is not going to be animated so a
lot of these things come in handy when
you're animating or if you don't want
very smooth out edges or anything like
that so I'm going to skip over a few
things so the one thing that we're
really not going to use is this size and
typically the size kind of is you as you
increase this it creates a kind of
buffer so it tries to create a buffer
between the quizzing collision shape
collision object and the object that is
being collided with just to prevent like
geometry from intersecting and again we
don't need that because we don't even
need to see our original Collider object
or the object colliding into our plane
the next thing is steps and again this
is something that also comes in handy
with more animated compositions or
projects and this is basically increases
the step calculation of the collision
deformer so if you have fast-moving
objects or a lot of stuff happening this
just increases the detail increases the
calculation step for each frame and
again this really doesn't help us out
much with this you can see that it
tightens it up a little bit it's a
little bit more of an accurate collision
calculation so we want to keep that
fairly low because we don't want to
increase a calculation time or render
time or anything like that
stretch is basically defines how the
fall-off is like how far this stretches
out and affects and distorts the object
that you're getting collided into so
it's how much across the surface this
plane is stretching out so we actually
don't want this to stretch out too much
we don't want this to look like a cloth
we want this to more look like like more
like saran wrap or something like that
relax other than being an awesome song
by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
relax allows the polygons or the
collision deformer to kind of relax
relax the polygons or the springs that's
creating the deformation so you can see
that we're getting less definition here
because all those Springs are relaxing
so we'll just leave it at 20 for now and
let's go into these three last options
here one being the stiffness and
stiffness basically just controls the
overall elasticity of the collision
shape so if we bring this down we're
going to start reintroducing a lot more
of our profile shape we get those
dimples back in there so I'm just going
to keep this fairly low say 20 and then
the struct is short for structural and
it's basically controls how distorted
the mesh becomes with this and the
lesser the values the more this object
is more like a cloth like a very soft
cloth again the lower the value you can
see a lot more of our details coming in
there so again I'm going to keep this
struct value fairly low it's going to
stop trying to maintain its structural
integrity of being that flat plane or
that stiff plane and again flex is
another one of those things that we're
really
not going to see a lot of difference
between zero and 100% and that's because
of a lot of the options that we already
have and again we're not animating but
basically flex controls the flexibility
of all these different polygons and
could create wrinkles and stuff like
that with with compositions that aren't
smoothed out or anything like that so
those are the options in the Advanced
tab and this is looking fairly good the
one thing that we can do to really up
the detail of the object and really
sense get a sense of the form that this
is a letter A is our last resort and
that is by just adding more geometry and
while this slows down the calculation
slows down our viewport you can see as I
jack up this with segments and the
height segments to 200 that you can
really see that we're really getting hey
you know the sense of the shape we can
definitely tell that that is a letter A
right so what I'm going to do is go to
display go to garage shading and you can
see that even with one letter I'm still
zooming around my viewport fairly nicely
here but I think that's looking fairly
good and we can adjust how far that
letter a is pushed in you can see as I'm
like adjusting this my viewports kind of
getting bogged down here so what I'm
going to do is add those other two
letters so the W and the X to create
that original composition of wax and
what I'm going to do is go to my level
of detail here under options and just
work at a low level of detail actually
let's go to medium and what that's going
to do is help speed up my scene and just
limit the quality of some of the
deformers and stuff here so now I can
work much faster so I'm going to do is
just duplicate this and I'll make this
at W and let's just turn on the
visibility here by just turning off
those stoplights and what I'm going to
do is just rotate this a little bit and
scale this down and the main thing is
that you want these far enough from the
back that's pushing enough in making
enough of an indentation that you'll
still be able to make out
this letter and actually for this a
let's just rotate this a little bit as
well have a little bit of like a
tumbling action something like that so
we have W there and then we'll duplicate
the W and this will be the X and we'll
just switch that text to X and then just
move this guy over here and maybe I'll
make this W a little bit bigger
something like that and then you can
create any word you want move these
around as much as you want the one thing
to look out for is you want these
letters to be far enough away that
they're not kind of bleeding or melting
into the other letter because you want
to be able to make out each of these
shapes you want to give enough buffer
there so right now we have our letters
but we need to still include them in the
collider the collision to form our
calculation so under the colliders tag
where we have our letter a we just need
to add our X and our W and we can just
turn off the stop lights on these guys
then and right now you can't really tell
and again that's because our options
level of detail is low on medium let's
crank this to high and see what this
actually will look like and this is
looking pretty good you can kind of tell
that that's an X so I might need to make
that letter a little bit bigger this W I
can probably move a little bit over the
to the left let's go ahead and do that
go back down to the medium level of
detail let's move the W over a little
bit let's just turn the collision to
foam or off a little bit so there's our
a and then there's our X and we'll make
this X a little bit bigger you push a
little bit forward something like that
alright and that's I think that looks
pretty good let's turn our collision to
former back on let's hide these guys
click on the stop lights and again let's
go back to a high level of detail and
see if we can make all this stuff out
alright cool this is actually looking
really nice good make out the double you
can make out the a we can make out the X
looking really nice again we can you
know if we wanted to stiffen this up a
little bit make it less smooth we can
adjust the smoothing de former here so
that's looking really nice too you can
make it let's see what 89 looks nice so
a little less smooth a little bit more
of bumpy again the one really cool thing
about these dimples is now that we have
all these letters in here you're really
going to see that fall off that Collider
fall off as we go from none to that
Collider fall off with that negative
curve really get in that detail again it
really helps create this nice little
waxy feel and look at this so I'm liking
how this is looking
let's go ahead and let's finish this off
let's add some lighting and some
textures so let's go ahead and what I'm
going to do for this as you can see that
you know my composition is already going
pretty slow my viewports going to kind
of slow so let's go to a medium medium
level of detail so I can start freely
moving around here a little bit speed
here I'll create some dramatic lighting
here maybe put a light up here and let's
add some fall-off so inverse squared and
move this up a little bit and let's give
some color to this light just a little
bit of yellow color add some area
shadows to that some high quality area
shadows and maybe bring down the
intensity a little bit and let's
duplicate this light and just create
another weight over here this kind of be
overhead light over here something like
that and see what that looks like so
that's good like
the lights where we can get some nice
shadows and these little nooks and
crannies here and again since we're at a
medium level of detail once we go to
high you're going to be able to see
those nice little details there anyways
and actually with the lights here you
can see that we're probably going to
need to bring down the stiffness value
of that smoothing to form a little bit
to remove those little jagged edges much
better all right so I got some lights
let's create some textures shall we
let's go ahead double click here and
double click our new material and we'll
just name this wax and let's go ahead
and give like this yellow light yellow
tannish kind of color let's apply that
to our subdivision surface there there
you go let's go back to medium level of
detail just for now and let's go to
reflectance let's go to our specular
let's just add a little bit more
specularity to this maybe increase the
width a little bit more to make this
looks a little bit more waxy maybe
introduce a little bit of color into
this maybe some orangish reddish
specular something like that and let's
just add a tiny tiny smidge of
reflection so I'm just going to choose a
Beckmann type reflection I'm just going
to change the specular string just to
move that down to zero we don't need any
specular in this Beckman channel change
the attenuation to additive so it's
going to apply this as an add blending
mode on top of our color Channel and
we're just going to get a very low
reflection value say three percent and
then just give it a little bit of
roughness to kind of blur out that
reflection and right away we're not
really going to see all that much
because we don't have any in our scene
to really reflect so you're not going to
see much reflection action happening or
occurring right now so just go ahead
give a little bit more specular
something like that and let's add some
stuff to reflect to the scene so nice
thing about area lights specifically
area lights is in the
tails tab let me actually go to my for
up view you can see that with area
lights we got these little rectangles
here with these little handles that you
can adjust the size of these little
rectangles what these rectangles are is
basically the area shape and while they
show up in specular they do not show up
in reflection and what we want to do is
actually have these act as soft boxes
and show up in reflection so I'm going
to turn that on in each of these let me
just select both of these lights and
this is going to be a very faint thing
that won't will barely show up we just
render this corner and you're not going
to see anything but if I change this
visibility multiplier it's going to
crank up the brightness of those little
rectangles it's going to treat them as
like a luminance solid or illuminant
plane and if I render this again with
that upped visibility multiplier now
you're going to see those lights little
soft boxes being reflected on our shape
so that's looking really nice we can
also adjust the size of these as we
please all that good stuff looking good
let's see what this looks like cool so
we get a little bit of reflection just a
little bit and got a little bit of
blurring action going on and just adjust
the lights a little bit more something
like that look a little bit dramatic son
like that
let's go to our general tab let's just
bring this light on the right down a
little smidge cool all right so this is
what we got right now it's looking
fairly blah and that's because you know
to get this nice waxy look we need some
kind of subsurface scattering or light
transmission that happens on our
material so it allows some light to
penetrate the surface or the volume of
our object and make it look like it's
kind of like a little bit glowy
or waxing like a candle right so what
we're going to do is use some like I
said subsurface scattering and what you
do is subsurface scattering you load
that into our luminance channel so I'm
just going to try a little luminance
channel go to effects it's going to be
cut off but it's down here subsurface
scattering and what that's going to do
is you can definitely see in this little
material preview let me right click on
this and change it to change it to a not
and you get a little bit more of a sense
of what's going on here let's go and we
can go into our settings here and change
the color to something more yellowish
and I'm not going to go over a bunch a
ton of these options but the main thing
being the color you can change the color
of what this looks like or the color of
the inner transmission of the light we
can change the path length which
basically is how deep into your object
does that light transmission go so I
want it to go to too deep so maybe seven
and then again we can adjust the
strength of how four or how bright that
light that penetrates into our object
surface
how far out bright that is so I'm going
to use a strength of like 250 and then
the only thing I'm really going to go
over is in the multiple tab the only
thing I'm going to do is turn on fast
evaluation just so this renders a little
bit faster let's just see what this
looks like now so you can definitely see
that adding that sub that subsurface
scattering allows that light to
penetrate into the surface of the volume
of our object and this definitely looks
a lot more like candle now remember this
is not looking very defined because
we're still at our medium level of
detail but right now I'm just working on
making sure this this candle a waxy look
is looking good and the only thing I'm
going to change now is index of
refraction I looked up and I saw that
the physical index of refraction of wax
is 1.5 and basically what that does is
basically makes the darker parts of the
object darker
so you can see that definitely if I
remove this tattoo you can definitely
see this kind of makes everything a
little bit darker so 1.5 is a the value
that I found on the interwebs and this
is looking pretty good
what's going let's go to our high level
of detail and see what this texture
looks like with our full subdivision
surface stuff happening and all that
good stuff so you definitely tell that
we got some light transmission I think
we get away with maybe brightening the
the light in our scene just get a little
bit more light this is looking kind of
waxy I think maybe our reflection is a
little bit too sharp so let's just go
into a reflection maybe bring that down
the two and maybe increase the roughness
a little bit more let's a go to our
color maybe beefed up yeah maybe make it
just a little bit more and maybe make
the brightness a little less and let's
go to our main light here and crank up
the intensity just a little bit again do
another render see if our lighting is
all good and with that brighter light
you can definitely see that light
transmission looks a lot more candidly
we kind of blurred out our reflection a
little bit and I think that's looking a
lot nicer because you're only getting
little hits right there nice little
subtle hits right there but this is
looking really nice the last thing I
want to do is add some noise and little
imperfections to make this look a little
bit more organic and we can do that by
going into our bump channel turning on
bump going to our texture and just
adding some noise and I'm going to go
into our noise shader and make this
noise fairly big so maybe 1000 and maybe
crank up the strength to 30 and then
what I want to do is with this overall
big noise it's going to create little
our
little but big waves of bumps and noise
tor object to give it a little bit more
imperfection is by going and adding
another level of noise that has smaller
noise so we get like some little tiny
tiny dents and stuff like that so I'm
going to do to combine a couple of noise
shaders together is by creating a layer
shader and when I create a layer share
I'm going to go into here and this is
where I can start stacking different
effects and different noises so it's
almost like working in Photoshop we got
multiple layers so I can go in to do
that I can go into this noise shader and
make some very small noise like point
one and then change the seat a little
bit so it's a little bit different from
the original one go back into our layer
shader here and choose a different
blending mode so again it's like working
in Photoshop with different layers and
all that good stuff so we can change
this to overlay we can adjust the
opacity of this layer on top of the
other layer and let's just see what that
looks like so we added some subsurface
scattering got some noise in our bump
channel so you can see a little bit it's
just very very subtle details but those
little subtle details definitely add up
and help with the realism there
and speaking of realism we just let this
finish up rendering here what I want to
do is go and switch over from our
standard renderer to our physical
renderer and just make this a little bit
more physically accurate over render so
let me go ahead and do that actually I
think one thing I could probably do is
push this X forward a little bit cuz
you're kind of losing that but for now I
think I'm just going to leave it let's
go let's go to our renderer go to
physical renderer and let's just crank
up these values here to say like medium
that's good and I think everything else
looks fairly nice and
let's just go ahead and maybe add some
ambient occlusion that's going to add
some shading where objects touch
together so I'm just going to add just a
tiny tiny bit and let's go ahead and
render this to our picture viewer render
and the one thing I like to do is when
I'm rendering something and you can tell
that how faint some of the details were
in in our picture viewer or in our
viewport and one thing I like to do is
go into the filter and let me just go
ahead and reset this filter but what you
can do is actually like color correct
inside of your picture viewer so while
you're waiting for this stuff to render
you actually go in here and adjust the
curves in you again I really like those
dark areas to be darker so I can go
ahead and see what that looks like
creating a little S curve there go into
individual color curves and adjust like
a red and again this is a you know
something keep you busy while you're
rendering here can you do a little pre
color correcting as this is going and
you know maybe if you can't make
something look good with the color
correction then maybe got adjust the
lighting in your scene and stuff like
that if you can't try to make it look
better with color correction stuff so
I'm just kind of adjusting all these
values maybe there's a little bit too
stats too much saturation I can bring
that back a little bit maybe a little
bit more contrast really get more of
those darker shadows in here so we're
definitely get a lot more detail and we
can see what this looks like before and
after you can see that really pops more
with the contrast than the s-curve
they're just looking pretty pretty nice
so just let this render a little bit so
just to recap we used a combination of a
plain some letters in a collision
deformer
to kind of push through and create the
this nice little waxy type by having our
letters push through our plane and use a
smooth deform
and create some subsurface scattering
textures to create this really nice waxy
composition we render this out with
physical renderer did some color
correcting in the picture viewer and bam
we got our waxy type alright so that is
how you create waxy texture really
waxing anything using the collision
deformer in cinema 4d so again the
collision deform was the heavy lifter
here we used it to have other objects
pushing and indent into and deform
another object so all about the
collision deformer in this one we also
learned how to create some waxy
materials by using subsurface scattering
to allow some light transmission into
our material give that nice waxy candle
kind of look so if you have any
questions on anything I covered in this
tutorial ask in the comment sections
below and if you make anything using
this technique I'd love to see all your
waxy creations be sure to send them at
me on Twitter or Facebook or in the
comment section as well if you like this
tutorial I'd really appreciate it if you
hit the like button and as always I
really appreciate all you guys out there
watching and I'll see you all in the
next one alright see you there bye
everybody