Cinema 4D Tutorial - Intro to Soft Body Dynamics Tutorial Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and if you want to learn soft body
dynamics you came to the right place
let's go learn so this is what we are
going to be creating today we got some
soft body feeders here kind of rolling
around tumbling around and it's all
boxed up in in a little boxy kind of
shape so basically this is gonna be a
crash course into soft body dynamics and
cinema 4d and to really get you guys
thinking about how you could use soft
body dynamics in your workflow so let's
just start a whole new scene here and
let's create a square composition
because we're gonna have all of our
little sphere guys rolling around in a
spherical or a rectangular shape so
let's do like 800 by 800 is good and
we're under all frames and 90 frames
should be good and we'll just do
geometry all this good stuff and I think
all this stuff is actually fine so we
can start getting to work here so the
first thing I want to do is set up a
camera and let's look through it and
let's just kind of frame up where our
scene is gonna be so let's uh just zero
out the angle zero out the X&Y so now
we're looking straight dead on and now
we can create some spheres and we're
just gonna make a few Spears here just
different sizes the key is we do not
want them to be touching each other
because when they're touching each other
and we apply soft by dynamics to it
they're gonna freak out and try to blend
into one another so we don't want any
intersecting polygons or anything like
that and actually what I should do first
before I start positioning all these
spheres around is making our boxy shape
that we want to have our spheres
constrained inside so despite all the
rage they are still just some spheres in
a box and I just gotta throw in some
like 90s
alternative music joking there so here
is our cube this is what is gonna be our
Collider body all right and what I want
to do is actually just turn on x-ray so
we actually see inside here and so we
have a compositions that is 800 by 800
but so we can actually do let's do like
650 by 650 so everything is kind of in
there something like that and let's see
let's go to 50 let's go 300 for the
depth we go 350 and now we can start
moving around these spheres to make sure
they are constrained inside this box so
we'll just move these around and create
some more spheres make some small ones
make some big ones we just want enough
in here that we can have them all
smushed together so let's just let's
make a few more here make this one
bigger and again we don't want so just
like we don't want our spheres they
intersect we also don't want the spheres
to intersect that that box or the cube
that's going to be the collider body so
we can actually just uh move this and
then move this back move the camera back
just so we can have constraining here
let's actually go into our project
settings here and you settings I think
it is and let's just crank up that
tinted border so we can actually see
where our constraint where our
boundaries are when we actually render
so we just want to make sure that our
our Collider is gonna fit right in that
little render region there so that's
looking good and let's see let's move
this around and move our spheres let's
see we got
eight spheres so far let's make a couple
more we've one up here and we're just
kind of filling out the volume of the
box here you can make this play a little
bigger let's just add one more run right
there and I think we got ten total now
let's see yeah or eleven okay that works
eleven is fine and so now let's just
make sure that all of our spheres are
inside our box and let's also kind of
get out of our camera view look and just
kind of orbit around here and make sure
none of our spheres are touching so
that's fear right there's touching a
little bit let's see no touching there
no touching allowed no touching and
we'll make this a little smaller and I
think we're all set let's see I think
this fears a little too close to our box
boundary so this guy this guy's needs
that keep his keep his fear to himself
and I think we're all set there so let's
go back to our right view and whoops
accidentally was moving my camera around
so let's just zero out all this stuff
again here we go and just zoom do a
little zooming in there we go and let's
just turn off the visibility here on our
cube and let's let's go ahead and set up
our dynamic tags here let me just move
this fear right about there to just make
it make a little baby a little baby
sphere there okay I think everything is
cool alright so for dynamics we need to
make sure we set which are which objects
gonna be our Collider object where of
our objects and I'm bouncing too and
that is our cube so we're just gonna
right click on our cube go to simulation
tags and just go to collider body and I
think we're all set here except for one
thing in which I'll show you really
quick
so these are gonna be our soft body
dynamics guys so what we're gonna do is
just add some soft bodies to that and
let's just hit play and see what happens
and you're gonna see automatically that
a whole bunch of crazy stuff starts
happening here and the reason for that
is that by default on our dynamics tag
here we have a shape set to automatic
and even on our soft body dynamics tags
here the shape is set to automatic and
what that tries to do is tries to make
the fastest calculation of your objects
so in our case of our cube it's gonna
try to just simplify the object's
geometry so that the simulit via dynamic
simulation happens fast the thing with
that is is that it does not keep it does
not recognize that this cube is hollow
inside so that's why we're having this
issue it's treating it as it's a solid
cube which it is but we actually want to
use the inside of the the actual volume
of the cube for our simulation so what
we need to do is change the shape to
something else that actually recognizes
the actual inside volume of our shape so
the thing that we're going to use is
static mesh and that's kind of the most
accurate form of dynamics shape that you
can use for a non moving object so if we
had a moving object we want moving mess
but since this is a static collider
object we're just gonna use static mesh
and let's see if that works so now we
actually have our spheres inside and
everything's just kind of melting
melting to the bottom of our cube which
is fine we have soft by dynamics because
we added the soft body dynamics our soft
body is actually set to on instead of
off made of polygons and lines and we
can stop messing around with all of
these objects here so the first thing I
want to cover is like the springs here
and that basically controls all of our
your soft body dynamics
shape so structural is this number kind
of controls how much that how many
Springs like little tiny Springs on each
little polygon here let's actually go to
our shading with the lines here so we
can see all of our shapes and actually
the first thing we want to do is you can
see what the deformation and with those
spheres the sphere type that we have
which is standard we have a lot of
polygon density at the top and the
bottom of our sphere are spheres and our
soft by a dynamic simulation is kind of
weird especially you can see right at
the top of this sphere we have a lot of
polygon density here and it kind of
makes the soft body dynamics look kind
of bad so we actually want a different
type of sphere that it has more polygons
that are more evenly distributed across
our spheres
so there's hexahedron which you can see
we actually stay with the square
polygons here but we have a little
pinching at some of the sides here as
far as like we have some polygons that
are bigger than others so you could use
that one but from what I understand is
that the icosahedron I think I'm saying
that right is more of a evenly
distributed polygon type of thing but
they're triangles that little tries so
that's the only thing that is kind of
weird but you can see how these polygons
these little triangles are more evenly
distributed so if we try this just
simulation again you should see a lot
more of a nicer simulation here with
things kind of squash and we don't have
any like geometry pinching where there's
a higher density of polygons like we did
before everything looks pretty good so
we had we now have everything kind of
fallen right and these the structural
Springs here if I select all of these
soft body dynamics tax the structure
will basically tries to this number the
higher it goes the more these Springs
are going to be stiffer and try to
maintain the straw
actual integrity of the above the object
that you applied the soft body dynamics
to so if I bring this like up to 500 and
hit play you can see that our spheres
are a lot more rigid they're trying to
maintain their original shape sudden
these guys are getting a little more
squished than others here but you can
see the bigger Spears here are trying to
maintain their shape and if we bring
this down the other way to say like 35
and let this go you're gonna see this
becomes a lot more springy
everything's getting squished a little
bit more so that's all with the springs
and the shear and the flexing on are
also helped determine how the supplied
dynamics works and how those little tiny
Springs on each of our polygons works
and the shear just prevents shearing
like polygons from sharing one another
or folding polygons folding over
themselves and flexing on is just it's a
it's a it's a fancy word for how flexi
how much flex there is with like
polygons stretching and stuff like that
so we're actually not going to change
any of those feature settings right
there what we're gonna pay attention to
is the structural because that's kind of
the most important thing here is the
overall structure in structural
integrity how squishy do we want these
guys to be so that's that in shape
conservation stiffness is kind of
self-explanatory it just means that your
shape is a little bit more stiff and
this guy right here this pressure is
going to be very important for what
we're trying to do in this this
animation here because we actually want
these spheres to kind of blow up and
fill up the space a little bit more
because right now our spheres a little
bit too tiny so what we're gonna do is
first I want to not have these spheres
just kind of fall to the floor I'm gonna
go into I'm gonna hit command D and go
to my project settings and we're just
going to navigate to our dynamic so
here and we're gonna set the gravity to
something way lower to say like 10
whoops
10 there we go and just kind of have
these guys more float around in space so
now this looks really nice we still have
a little bit of gravity going on but we
we now have these guys floating a little
bit more one other things keep in mind
is I'm gonna kind of mess around these
settings now but these steps for frame
and maximum solver iterations if we have
once we set up these simulations if
polygons are starting to fly out all
over the place we might need to adjust
these settings and these basically just
increase a calculation time but gives
you a more accurate soft body dynamics
simulation so we'll come back to this if
we need it but I'm just gonna leave that
alone for now because I want to make
this a very light render light
calculations all right so we adjusted
our gravity our guys are just kind of
floating around in space we want some we
want to add some like wind or some
turbulence into this scene so what we're
gonna do is go to simulate particles and
let's just grab yeah let's not get a
rotation let's get simulate particles
turbulence and what we're gonna do is
just give a little bit of turbulence to
the scene and that's actually going to
react to the soft body dynamics that are
applied on our spheres
so let's actually this is gonna be the
scale of the noise that's gonna be
affecting our spheres here so let's make
it like fairly large like 150 and then
for strength let's do let's do 150 there
too and see what this looks like so now
we actually have our spheres kind of
colliding into one another because of
the turbulence and this looks fun
everyone's just kind of bouncing off one
another and looks pretty looks pretty
nice so far but the one thing I want to
do is have these spheres actually fill
up the volume of that soft body cube we
have here this cage that they're in and
to do that
remember for this simulation to work and
I'm actually going to show you just what
happens when we actually have a sphere
intersecting some polygons intersecting
you're gonna see this like globular kind
of thing happen so that's why it's
important that when we start the
simulation no none of our spheres are
kind of overlapping or anything like
that
but we actually need to grow these
spheres in size to fill up that volume
right so for us to do that what we're
gonna do is come back to our little
pressure thing here and basically when
you apply pressure if you add pressure
to your soft biodynamics your object is
kind of going to blow up like a balloon
which is actually pretty fun so let's
just go ahead and do that let's put any
pressure let's try 100 and what we're
gonna see is that well that's a little
bit too much pressure but you can see
that what's happening is that we have
our spheres getting inflated and filling
up the volume of that collider body
that's that cube and you can see that
that's a little bit too much pressure
here under too much pressure so let's
let's just tamper that down let's see if
65 is good so it's gonna inflate our
spheres and fill up the volume and then
our turbulence is gonna push everything
around and I think that's still that's
still a little bit too much I think this
sphere right here is actually a little
bit too big it's taking up too much dang
space so I'll just shrink that guy down
and let's try 50 and see what happens
there so now we have our spheres
inflating and we still have some space
in our cube that things are still have
room to kind of move around and stuff
like that probably want to maybe leave
even more room for these guys to move
around because it kind of restrict
they're not really tumbling over each
each other like I'd like so let's do 40
and let's just turn up crank up the
turbulence to say like 250 actually
let's uh that's one
to scale and actually want to crank up
the strength to say like 200 let's do
225 all right so now let's see what
happens so we got a little bit more
space we got a little bit more
turbulence now we're starting to get
that nice tumbling all these spheres are
kind of tumbling over each other and
that looks pretty pretty fun the thing
to keep in mind with the pressure is
that it relates to like the stiffness
kind of relates to how much structural
Springs are in there so if we bring the
structural down to say 20 we're gonna
get a lot softer spheres here so now you
can start seeing more deformation and
actually like that a lot more well we
have more distortion more squishy more
squishiness and stuff like that and the
volume conservation is kind of tries to
maintain the the volume inside of the
shape that you're in and right now we're
not really concerned with that so we're
just gonna leave that to zero so I'm
thinking this is looking pretty good
the one thing I want to do is let's just
give this give some of these fears even
make them even smaller hmm
and now we got a little bit more action
going on here all right so I'm liking
the the animation here and like and
what's going on what I want to do now is
just group all these things together all
these spheres together and one thing you
could do to speed up the simulation is
bring down the segments if you'd like
but I'm just gonna i'm actually getting
cranked it up so we can try to get some
nice undulations some some more like
Ripley details in let's actually see
where a cube is I think I moved
something around here I moved my null
yep I moved my no zero out all this
there we go
here we go let's just hide our cube
again okay now we're back in business
adding more geometry we can get a little
bit more rippling action a little bit
more detail with our soft biodynamic
simulation here so I'm liking that a lot
better
and but with that you're actually gonna
slow down the simulation so it's a nice
delicate balance that you have here
let's actually just bring the pressure
down there like thirty five this was a
nice delicate balance but what we can do
to actually smooth out our spheres even
more what I want to do is when it comes
to rendering we want to actually turn
off the render perfect because that
doesn't really play well with soft body
dynamics and we'll have render issues
but what we'll do to kind of soften
everything we'll just rename this null
sphere no and then we'll just apply a
subdivision surface by just throwing
these spheres that sphere and all in the
subdivision surface and you can see that
that kind of softens everything up
everything's really really nice you can
see we have a little bit of the
wrinkling going on at the surface level
here and the the nice thing about this
is is that we have the soft body
dynamics applying the dynamics to our
spheres and just keeping in mind the
segments that are set here we're
actually introducing more segments after
the dynamic simulation so this isn't
really going to slow it down because
we're applying the subdivision surface
subdivisions after the dynamic
calculations so that's trying to just
make our simulation as fast as possible
so you can see what's going on here and
let's actually go back into our garage
shading and see this got really getting
crunched in there really getting
crunched so let's uh let's give that guy
break let's give that little sphere
break thing was that guy right there
let's go in here let's find the where's
my sphere that I want that one there we
go
and we'll just move this over a little
bit
so with that one sphere doesn't get so
crushed and one thing we could actually
do so they don't get so crushed is to
again
crank up the structural a little bit so
maybe thirty so that again that's gonna
maintain the structural integrity of our
spheres so playing around the pressure
and structural it's a little
give-and-take kind of thing but you can
see we have some really nice rippling so
these look almost like I don't know like
some kind of weird like blobby I want to
say like water floating around and like
zero gravity or something like that it
looks really nice so I'm really liking
how this is moving how this is going
let's actually you know apply some
textures and stuff like this unless
actually save this leave this soft body
there we go and let's apply a texture
and I'm just gonna apply so that no I'm
gonna apply this texture to everything
and let's just make this licky like a
plasticy or like a matte plastic black
so we'll go in here make this little
black as far as the reflectance I'm
gonna go ahead and add a Beckmann
reflection make that add make this
additive as well and what I want to do
is get rid of the specular strength
there and I just want a tiny tiny bit of
reflection and then a little bit of
roughness as well so you can see that
this is kind of like a nice matte almost
a vinyl texture going on so we're gonna
do that and we we also need something
actually reflect in this scene so we
actually see a little bit of stuff so we
can do one thing and that is the add a
light and mmm I'm just gonna add an
infinite light and just kind of control
where that lights coming from so like
the top left here looks good and I don't
know if shadows are really gonna show up
but we can add shadows here and then
let's go ahead and just add the
greyscale gorilla HDR a studio rig and
let's open up the
and choose like a bevel reflection
studio there let's see what that looks
like we'll render that out and you can
see we have the nice blurry reflection
and it's just very subtle but adds a lot
of nice features here so this looks a
little bit more plastic D than like
really super shiny we can actually go
into our reflectance and that's only a
reflectance strength of three so we
actually can go all the way down to one
and just get a really really subtle kind
of reflection going on maybe a little
bit too subtle maybe a little bit too
much too subtle
okay so I'll do that and let's crank up
the brightness let's crank up the
reflectance strength a little bit there
see what this looks like so we're
getting a nice reflection from the HDI
studio so we can still see that shape
there we've got a nice background that's
also introduced with the hgri studio rig
we don't need the floor so we're going
to turn off that floor hmm and this is
looking pretty good I'm liking how this
is looking so far if this will actually
render there we go
so the one thing I want to do is just go
in and just do a physical render here
and let's just do automatic and
something we'll have to worry about
later on is those the blurriness that we
introduced in the texture we might have
to bring up the blurry subdivision there
but we'll we'll forget about that for
now so we got our really nice spheres
little blobby spheres little oil blobs
whatever you want to call them and we
have our dynamic simulation right the
one thing I want to do is it would be
nice if we could skip this part where
everything inflates because right off
the get-go
everything inflates and then starts
moving around so there's one thing we do
is just render this out and let me just
bring down the segments here we could
render this out and just chop off the
first few frames until they're fully
deflated or inflated and
then just render from there so we don't
start from that position but what we
could do and this is kind of handy when
you want to try to loop dynamics
including soft body dynamics is going
into all of your soft body dynamics tags
and say ok I want to start from this
soft body state right here I like how
this looks I want to actually start from
here so we can do that by just setting
set initial state and that kind of did
something a little bit there and just
pop back so now that's gonna store that
dynamic state all of our deformation our
soft body deformation our spheres it's
gonna store that and when we actually
start from the beginning sometimes you
have to like go to the beginning hit
this button go to back to zero to go to
the start a animation a few times
and you'll see hey at frame 0 we're
actually starting from that stored
dynamic state so that's very handy we
actually don't have that then pressure
thing and actually it's just a little
glitched there so you still have to when
we do this when we render this out just
because it's some little glitch there at
the start we'll have to like edit that
out and probably still render from frame
5 but at least we're now rendering from
that fully inflated state from our soft
body dynamics pressure right so if we
actually want to try to loop this right
we got our spheres rolling around having
a good old time what we can now do is
say okay at this at frame 50 I want this
to begin to go back to its original
state and all the spheres and stuff go
back to its original position how it
looked on frame 0 where we set that
initial state what we can do is set a
keyframe to turn off dynamics so I'm
gonna go to frame 51 set another
keyframe turn off dynamics right and
what's gonna happen is to get the
objects to transition with dynamics
still enabled back to its original
position we
to turn on this dynamic transition and
what's gonna happen is our objects are
gonna still bump into each other but
it's gonna try to get back to that
original state that we set and mine
isn't my camera just zoomed out really
crazy all and then we also have this
transition time which basically defines
how long how many frames should that
transition that dynamic transition wire
Spears kind of undulate and try to get
back to the original position that these
Spears were at at frame 0 and right now
let's set this 60 frames so right now
we're at frame 51 let's just have the
transition last about 40 frames or
actually 39 so that'll bring us to frame
39 earth to frame 90 here and now we can
hit play and so we got our we got a
little glitchy thing there I'm not sure
what's going on but we'll probably have
to render from frame three or just edit
that out in post fix it in post
and we have our undulation happening we
got our nice soft body dynamics we got
our cube bouncing a you know having our
spheres kind of collide into them with
our soft body dynamics or with our
dynamic Collider tag here stop by
dynamics are doing its thing and we're
gonna hit to frame 50 work dynamics will
turn off so there we go and it's another
glitch so we're gonna have to edit that
out as well but now begins the
transition the dynamic transition back
to our original state back to how our
spheres and how our soft body
deformations looked at frame 0 so as
this goes to frame 90 remember this is a
39 frame transition so it's gonna take a
full thirty nine frames for all those
spheres to dynamically try to get back
to those initial states that they were
set at frame 0 and we're going and we're
going and you can see the nice rippling
action going on there because of our
cranked up
subdivisions are sphere I got the nice
smoothing from our subdivision surface
everything looking really nice really
nice and then we're almost done we're
almost back you can do it you can do it
spheres make it back make it back and
there you go
so actually we that was just so quick
that let's just do a ram preview here
right so we're gonna go do a full Ram
preview let's do 600 by 600 and yeah
that looks good and we'll just hit okay
all right so our Ram preview is done
let's see what we got so we got our
loopy little action going on here we got
our blobbies going and you can see that
loops pretty seamlessly except for a
little weirdness right about here and
I've discovered that with the dynamic
transition and soft body dynamics it's a
little buggy and we might have to edit
out a few frames so it looks like frame
88 is fine so we can just edit out from
there and then the beginning looks good
that's our set from initial set initial
state a stat write status right there so
we'll just hit play from there we have
our dynamic transition happen at 51
frames so that's when everything starts
to go back to its original position you
can see that it's a pretty seamless loop
we just have a little bit of glitching
but again we can edit out some of that
stuff maybe edit out that first frame
see if that's a little bit more seamless
but that's basically how you can loop
dynamics including soft body so what did
we do we made some spheres that we
applied some soft body dynamics to we
went through all the soft body dynamics
settings here to get this nice little
blobby type of setup here we also
discuss what set initial the state does
especially when using soft bodies and
the pressure field here too inflates our
spheres and then also how to loop it
using two loop dynamics using set
initial state and then the dynamic
transition and the transition time
alright so we covered a bunch here we
covered how to do
soft body dynamics few the settings in
there we even learned how to loop the
dang thing and make our little blobby
things kind of move around and then loop
that so if you guys make anything with
this definitely let me know I'd love to
see what you guys make if you have any
questions about any of the stuff that I
covered in this tutorial make sure to
leave a comment in the comment section
and if you like this tutorial be sure
punch the little lucky button give me
some hearts I'd really appreciate that
and I really appreciate you watching
this tutorial and that's it I'll see you
in the next one alright guys bye
everybody