Cinema 4D Tutorial - Inflate or Deflate Objects Using Soft Body Dynamics Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody's DJ from Isaiah calm and
today we're gonna learn how to inflate
and deflate objects in cinema 4d let's
learn how all right so this is what
we're going to be doing today inflating
or if you want to run backwards
deflating insert your own sound effects
using soft bodies in cinema 4d so this
is going to be really fun so let's just
jump into a new composition here and you
can use any object you want to deflate
just as long as it has enough
subdivision so I'm going to go over the
whole subdivision thing shortly but what
I'm going to be using is just a text
object so this is good a good workflow
if you have anything extruded like a
logo or anything like that or just some
text I'm just going to use the number 8
I'm going to make it bold big and bold
and aligned to the middle alright and
then I want this to actually have a
floor so it doesn't just fall through
the floor I want to have a four that
this the flights on too so I'll just
make a disc make it big enough and I'm
just going to position this letter 8
just above the floor and let's just make
this a little bit thicker like so and
let's start applying some dynamic body
tags to introduce some dynamics some
gravity some real-life physics to this
scene so what I'm going to do with the
mo text object that made it go and
right-click on the mo text object go to
simulation tags soft body tag so we got
rigid body and soft body rigid body is
like a bowling ball where it bounces to
the floor soft bodies like a water
balloon right you want to make a make an
object more pliable a softer body as you
would say so we're going to apply a soft
body on that and you're going to see if
I hit play we have soft bodies applied
to my object or letter R number 8 but
things happen first our faces explode
faces exploding is never
thing our caps explode from our object
and we're actually going falling right
through the floor the reason why that is
is because our disk is not included in
the dynamic simulation because there's
no dynamics tag applied to it so let's
go to our disk go to simulation tag and
one over rigid body and soft body but we
haven't covered collider body yet and
collider body is basically just a
dynamics tank that allows an object to
be collided into and nothing else so
we're going to apply a Collider body to
the disk and then we'll hit play and now
we should see our eight no longer falls
to the floor which is always a good
thing so what we're going to do to make
sure faces don't do our caps on our mo
text object don't fall off we're going
to go into our caps options here and
enable create single object and what
that's going to do is basically connect
our cap faces to the extrude of our
object so we no longer have that issue
but we do have an issue here where as
it's collapsing
it doesn't look very soft it looks more
like paper like a origami or something
like that the reason for that is is if I
go into my grub shading lines I can
actually see all the subdivisions on my
objects and you're going to see that we
have uneven subdivisions and in fact our
caps don't have subdivisions at all
which is why we're having all those
issues so what we're going to do is do a
few things to make our subdivisions way
more even I have our mesh a little bit
more dense and a little bit more even so
we're going to do this this is the same
workflow I go over in my double text
tutorial which I'll link in this
tutorial but basically just go through a
few steps to introduce some more
geometry one is being changing the
intermediate points to subdivided and
what this does is allows us to not
control our subdivisions based on the
angle or angle between points but we can
subdivide based on length so you can see
that every 22 centimeters there is a
subdivision so our objects a little bit
more chunky
and then we can adjust that as we like
and then we can actually introduce some
subdivisions to our faces as well by
going to our caps field and changing the
type from m'gann's to quadrangles and
what that's going to do is slice
everything up on our caps and then we
can change this to a regular grid and we
now have the width option that we do
with the maximum length where we have a
centimeter option so what I like to do
is just kind of match those two fields
so 15 and 15 or if you have 13 in here
and 13 in here that works as well so we
just have a more evenly spaced mesh and
another thing I like to do is just kind
of subdivide that extrusion by upping
the subdivision here and now we have
pretty evenly spaced squares all
throughout and the one thing we want to
do is pretty much smooth this out
because this is very chunky at the at
the moment so we want to make this a
little bit more bubbly or balloony so
what we're going to do is place this Moe
text object in a subdivision surface
like on a smooth everything out we can
smooth out the edges of our caps or our
bevels by adding some Phillip caps like
so and maybe increasing the width to say
8 and then we can decrease the depth
just a little bit and that looks fairly
bubbly we can keep adjusting all this
stuff to try to smooth out some of the
stuff we don't get any weird fog issues
or anything like that something like
that works pretty well and that's
looking good so the dense of a mesh the
more the more the nicer our soft body
dynamics simulation is going to be too
because that can create nice folds as
the thing this flight deflates and all
that good stuff so just something to
keep in mind there so now they're soft
body dynamics today I'm going to go into
our soft bodies here and we're going to
hit play on this so now that we have a
softer rounded object we can now see
like alright now we have a little bit
something more
pliable like a pillow or something gooey
gooey which is what we want but the
thing is our objects just kind of
falling over so what we need to do is
have another object in here we need to
like cage this guy off so he doesn't
flopped fall over her backwards so what
we're going to do is just like we have a
collider as a disc so our object doesn't
fall to the floor we're going to create
a box to kind of cage in our number
eight so it doesn't fall forward or
backwards just gosh if it collapses it
collapses straight down and if it shoots
up or inflates it's going to inflate
straight up and if you're just
collapsing something that's parallel
with the ground you really want to do
this step but since this is standing
upwards we're going to need to add this
extra step so let's create a cube and
I'm going to go into the basic tab of
the cube turn on x-ray so I see through
it be like Superman and let's just go
ahead and adjust these handles so we're
encompassing but not intersecting we
don't want this cube to intersect or
that's going to create a lot of
wonkiness with our object with the
dynamic simulation so that's looking
pretty good
let's go ahead and now we can go to our
cube we're going to right click again
this isn't going to be included in the
dynamic simulation until we have a
simulation tag on it and again we're
going to use a Collider body but we're
going to go one more step in the
collision box here or option here the
default collision shape is automatic and
what the automatic one does is default
is the fastest one and it's kind of like
a simplified calculation but the thing
that the automatic doesn't count for is
if you have something inside and other
objects so by automatic this is correct
this is treating the cube as a solid
object and it's not treating it as a
hollow object with something inside of
it so to make this collision shape
something that's a hollow shape or a
hollow box like a cardboard box we're
going to need to change it to a more
accurate simulation
and the static mesh is something that
does just that so that's all goods now
we can go and have this in and you're
going to see as this collapses it stays
upright because it's trapped in our box
trap not a little cube there so that's
perfect
what we're going to do is go ahead and
just turn off the stop lights and change
them to red so they won't show up and
render and they won't show up in our
viewport so it's going to be there but
we don't have to worry about it showing
up or making any issues here what I'm
going to do is just increase just kind
of smooth everything out a little bit a
little bit of jinking us going on so I'm
just a smooth stuff out here a little
bit bye up in the width on our options
here there we go that's looking nice and
smooth cool so now we got our dynamic
object what we need to do is make this
not so stiff we need to deflate this
right so in our soft body tab here we
have a bunch of spring options now
there's three types of Springs
structural shear and flexing on
structural is the type of spring that
wants to maintain the actual structure
or the the outer shell of our object
shear makes it from shearing diagonally
and flexi on tries to make things not
fold over each other so have not have
polygons fought over each other so these
three types Springs are very important
and the higher the value in these fields
the stiffer those Springs are so right
now it's like we have a structure
holding this up that's made of like al
dente spaghetti but really what we want
is like very soggy spaghetti has a
structure for this hopefully that makes
sense so if I decrease the strength of
the or the stiffness of our Springs here
and I let this go you're going to see
that this kind of collapses down because
we're losing that that the stiffness in
all of the spring so we're going to even
need to push this a little bit further
so maybe to a strength of two in each of
these and now you'll see that as we have
this
we remove all the stiffness from the
springs we just have this flip this just
straight fall straight down and
collapses and looks really nice and
melts really nicely and the thing is is
if you want more definition in your
object again you're going to have to go
back into you know some of these fields
here and add more definition and a few
more subdivisions again we're looking at
the garage shading here and just kind of
upping all that good stuff if you want
to but as you add more geometry that's
going to slow down the simulation a bit
but you're going to get nicer folds as
your soft bodies kind of take effect to
this mesh because there's more polygons
to kind of push and pull and all that
good stuff so if we bring this down even
more let's see how much detail we can
get how much of this folding stuff we
can really get so that's looking pretty
good as far as it's kind of collapsed
state or deflated state let's see set
another subdivision there see if that
helps add a little bit more flaps on the
top here so that's what I'm looking for
right there that nice little fold these
creases and that's by adding another
subdivision on the actual extrude so
again a lot of this is just kind of
tweaking to taste and I'm liking that
that's a good fully deflated state one
thing I want to go over is this rest
length so when you're making this
deflation or inflation animation if you
want this to be like a balloon where
when when you get a balloon before you
blow it up like a water balloon before
you put water in it it's a very small
balloon and then you put the water in it
stretches out right so if you want this
to be more of a stretchy balloon this
rest length comes in handy so when this
shrinks when this collapses we want this
to be like a shrunken state where are
the actual letter itself just kind of
shrinks until it gets inflated and that
stretches out the edges of our geometry
so what we can do is make this rest
length less than 100 or 70% and what
that's going to do is change that length
to a smaller shrunken state you can see
that that kind of shrunk all over object
and you really see this if we bring the
stretch the strength down to 20 you can
see that that's just collapsing itself
and that looks pretty dang cool as an
effect so that's if you want it to go
like that
but if you're just looking for something
like a uh like say an inflatable
mattress where it's just a you know very
tough kind of thing you just blow it up
and it maintains the same like it
doesn't stretch the material of the
actual inflatable bed you can just leave
that at 100 but I think I wanted to
shrink a little bit
I'll just have this shrink down to well
not 1% they're like 80% and see what
that looks like so that kind of shrinks
a little bit and that's looking really
good so what I did was I stopped the
simulation by hitting escape and when I
get this looking the way I wanted to our
collapse state when I want to actually
inflate from or inflate this object from
this state what I need to do is store
this state of this object this collapsed
state and then allow for another dynamic
simulation to blow it up again so what
I'm going to do is go to my dynamics
text and go to set initial State what
that's going to do is it going to store
the state of this object as it is right
now and allow me to add another
simulation to it so I just went to frame
0 and you can see that I'm still at my
collapsed state right so now what I can
do is go into my soft body dynamics here
and the main thing we're going to worry
about is this stiffness view I'm
actually a few more fields is the
structural the shear and the Flexi on
Springs again because what we're going
to do is we brought these the the
tension stiffness down to make a
collapse what we can do with a inflating
is actually give a little bit more
stiffness
- this right off the get-go or you can
keyframe these if you want it to be
gradually but what I'm going to do is
introduce a value of five and then for
shear
I'll give it 20 and then flexi on 20 and
what you're going to see is immediately
right when I hit play is that it's going
to start inflating because we gave a
little bit of stiffness to our object
which is great but to inflate it fully
we need to introduce some stiffness
under this shape conservation option
here and what this is going to do is
when we increase the stiffness is going
to try to get back to that original
shape before soft body dynamics ever
affected it so what we can do is just
set a keyframe at zero and then go to 90
and say give this a stiffness of 20 and
then over time the stiffness value will
raise and you can see as that happens we
have this fully inflated object you can
see that our object kind of tilting to
the side and that's because our cube is
fairly wide so what we can do is either
shrink this cube in the X or we can go
into our dynamic options and there's
actually an option to make your object
kind of stay straight straight up and
not have any rotational values happen
upon it and that is in the forced tab
and if we increase the follow rotation
to say 20 what your object is going to
try to do is maintain the same rotation
and not try wobble too much so you can
see that as I increase that follow
rotation to 20 we no longer have that
rotation happening as it wobbles left or
right so you can see that even with a so
we have our object inflating and a
stiffness of 20 it's still not fully
inflated so what we can do is go to our
keyframe here I just clicked on my
keyframe and we can actually edit the
keyframe value in this value key field
and just change that to 30 and what I
want to do is listen we can see this
again so we got this inflating looks
really nice and if laits even further it
looks like at 30 it's it's fairly fully
inflated
but what I want to do I don't want to
have this like ease-in ease-out of this
linear inflation what I want to do is
look like this is getting blown up but
with like a few pumps of air so we'll
pump of air and then another pump of air
as it slowly inflate so what we do for
that is go into our time line go into
our dynamics tag here and you can see
our stiffness value as it kind of eases
in and ease it out what we're going to
do is make this a way more gradual
inflation but just changing our curve
like this and actually what we can do to
have a couple pumps of air is create
some new keyframe just hitting command
and clicking on this track and maybe
we'll just change these keyframes to let
me just adjust the value keyframe value
we'll change this to like point three so
at point three this will be these two
keyframes so point three if stiffness
and then as it goes a little further
we'll have another puff of air that will
change that stiffness value to say point
let's to seven so these are going to be
very low values and then after that is
just going to fully inflate boot just
like that up to that 30 stiffness so I'm
just going to move the timeline out of
the way and let's see how this looks so
you're going to see that this is the
inflation of 0.2 so we got a little bit
of inflation going on let's looking nice
so that's one pump of air and then we
got the next pump of air going to that
point eight and then we got that fully
inflated as it pops up so we can add a
little bit more time to our composition
let's say 162 add a little bit more time
to the end of this the stiffness value
ramping up so maybe it's a less steep
curve as its inflating let me right
click on this keyframe and go to soft
interpolation and we'll have a little
bit more gradual
like that make this maybe 120 and
something like this alright so now let's
see what that looks like so we got a
little bit inflation going got some nice
stuff happening here and then a little
bit of inflation further and that's
looking really good so if you say you
want it say you're saying alright this
is too much inflation for the first
inflation bit so all we need to do to do
a little bit less inflation just to just
lower those two values in those key
frames here of 0.3 so maybe we say let's
do point to see what that looks like
I'll just close out the manager here
timeline there and this is point two
right there and that's actually looking
a little bit nicer still pretty deformed
you can see that we're still blowing air
into it now we got that second puff of
air and now we got it to that point and
then fully inflated right there and
again this is all enclosed in that cubes
who are not having that wobbling forward
or backwards let's get out of our garage
shading there and there we go we have
some nice inflation looks right here
there's some other things that we can
add here as well we can add some
pressure to kind of inflate this as it's
blowing up so maybe we add some pressure
and what pressure is going to do is
basically add some like actually inflate
this object even further from that
original state so I can hit play and we
got that first inflation and it's going
we're getting this blown up a little bit
more and then now I think right about
here is where the so you can see a
little bit of inflation happening with
the pressure recurring so that's just a
little bit of extra thing you can do to
help inflate this object alright so
today we went over how to inflate and
deflate objects in cinema 4d using soft
body dynamics and it's a lot of fun
and we went over how to create a bubbly
type of textviews subdivision surface to
smooth out our chunky text and make it
nice and bubbly and that we went into
the soft light dynamics tag and learned
a few of the options there we learned
about some of the springs we learned
about what stiffness does and all that
good stuff so hopefully you guys are
equipped to play around more with soft
body dynamics and dynamics in general
because we also learned how to use
collider bodies as well to be able to
control where our soft body dynamics go
so hopefully you guys learn something
useful if you make anything with this
tutorial I'd love to see it I want to
see your inflation and deflation test be
sure to share with me on Facebook or
Twitter and as always thank you guys so
much for watching if you like this
tutorial please press the like button I
really appreciate that and I really
appreciate you all for stopping by today
I'll see you guys in the next tutorial
bye everybody