Cinema 4D Tutorial - Using Constraints & Deformers to Place and Deform Objects Along a Surface Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from Aya's I'm calm
and today we are going to be learning
how to position objects along a surface
of an object conform splines to an
object surface or have an object to form
along the surface of another object so a
lot of fun stuff we're going to be
covering we're gonna even decorate a
sugar skull it's gonna be a lot of fun
let's dive right in
alright so we're going to get to
decorating our little sugar skull here
we're gonna put some little cutesy
flowers and hearts and all this kind of
stuff on them and basically what I'm
going to be demonstrating is three
different ways that we can align these
objects along the surface of the skull
and not only just objects but how to
conform splines to a shape like this
little eyebrow as well as how to
actually conform and Bend an object
along a surface like this little cross
so the first thing I'm going to do is
just show you how we can constrain this
flower and this heart element to the
surface so typically if you wanted to
put this flower on this guy you would
have to physically you know or manually
put this in and hope it works okay and
that's just a real pain in the buttocks
so what we're going to do is a way
better in way easier route and that is
using the constraint tag so I'm going to
right click and this is my little flower
nul that has everything in it all the
flower petals all the other stuff and
the one thing I want to keep in mind is
when I'm setting this up is where that
access center is because where I'm going
to clamp this on to is gonna and where
it's going to rotate the center of
rotation is all dependent on the axis
Center so we want to make sure it's in
the center not like off to the side or
anything like that because then our
rotation when we actually clamp this on
to the surface will look correctly so
let's go ahead and go and get a
constraint tag
and the function that we want to use in
the constraint tag is this clamp
function and I'm going to click on clamp
and then that's going to enable our
clamp options and we're going to go over
all these little options here but the
first thing we need to set up is the
actual object we want to clamp this
flower on to and that as our skull so
how my skull is built is we have the
subdivision surface we have a symmetry
object as you can see and then we have
our low poly mesh here and we the the
main thing I want to cover is that we
don't want to use this base low poly
skull mesh as the target we actually
want to use the smooth Val subdivision
surface version of this object for the
clamp so we're actually recognized that
smooth out surface versus a low poly one
so we're going to drag the skull
subdivision surface as the target and
you're gonna see that nothing really
happens aside from our distant changes
and as I move that you can see that our
object kind of just went away and if I
turn off the cemetry you can see that
our flowers inside our head what the
heck so by default
what's going on with why our just popped
into where our brain area is is because
this is set by default to the origin of
our object and you can see the origins
basically just the Anchor Point or the
axis center of our object or a skull
subdivision surface so we actually want
to use a different method of what to
clamp on to and if we go to the drop
down we can see that we have this
surface so we want to have this flower
constrain to the surface so it can glide
along the surface of this goal so we can
actually position it correctly and if
you see now we actually have our our
flower in our eyeball in our eye socket
and that's not good but now if I move
this out you can see that as I'm moving
this I'm kind of just moving this all
willy-nilly like and you can see that
this is clamped to the surface of our
skull the subdiv
surface so I'm moving this around you
can see this is a lot easier than trying
to manually place this but we actually
have to first kind of adjust a few
options so you can see that this is not
aligned correctly at all this is you
know lined up along the wrong axis so
what we need to do is go a little bit
deeper in the options here and the first
thing I want to go over is this as so
what we want to do it's really not
taking into account the surface or the
angle of Phong angles of our geometry as
unless we actually turn that on and the
constraint X so if we choose something
like be fun normal it's going to then
recognize the curved surface and now you
can see that our flower is kind of
bending and rotating along that surface
is recognizing the curvature of our
object now as well but we still have a
problem and that problem is that our
alignment is not set up correctly we
don't want this to a-line and the y axis
we actually want to align this in the z
axis because that's where our anchor
point is kind of pointing in if I just
turn that to positive Z that's actually
the wrong way so let's go to negative Z
and then just move this and that'll
update sometimes the constraint tag can
be kind of laggy especially when using
subdivision surface and generator
objects and all that kind of stuff and
the reason for that is is because we
actually need to go into our basic tab
here and we can up the priority here so
right now using this base priority
things can get kind of glitchy sometimes
this can get moved and knocked out of
place so what we want to do is kind of
prevent that and since we're using
generators we want to make sure that we
have generators set as the priority then
we just want to crank this number up you
know usually 100 and something's pretty
safe to do and basically what we're
saying is we want the generators in this
scene
to do its thing and then calculate this
constraint tag and the reason for that
is is everything that's green that has a
green icon here so the subdivision
surface or the symmetry object here
those things are generators and they
need to calculate and kind of calculate
the surface so number one smoothing out
that skull and in then creating that
symmetry on the other side before we
actually clamp activate this clam
functionality so that kind of just saves
us some headaches and stuff like that so
once we put this flower in the right
position we can then prevent us from we
can save ourselves from ourselves by
like accident you know preventing us
from accidentally moving that by going
into the clamp options and saying lock
position lock position and now we can no
longer move it it's locked and so we're
all good to go so now we can actually do
the same thing with the heart and this
has the subdivision surface as well so
I'm going to go ahead and get our drink
tagged blue turn on clamp again we want
to make sure priority is set the
generators and just crank that up and
let's go ahead to our clamp options we
want this to go along the surface we
want this in the negative Z as well I
believe and we're going to use that Fon
normal again and now if we move up
forgot something we need a target
what ding dong so let's go ahead and get
our skull subdivision surface in there
now there we go and the one thing you're
going to notice and this is kind of
helpful depending on how thick your
object is is we have this distance here
so as I move this heart into place you
can see that we're kind of we got some
intersecting going that actually doesn't
look all that bad but say you want to do
it just this and actually let's let's do
the positive z
there we go let's say we're going in the
wrong direction here
so let's actually let's do negative Z
again let's adjust this distance and
there we go I actually move this let's
rotate that now we got our heart again
and we can move this forward so I think
what happened was we just needed reset
in and again the constraint tag is kind
of finicky and a lot of that has to do
with the generators and the priority and
all that stuff and technically you know
everything is calculated in our object
manager from top to bottom so
technically we should actually have both
the flower and the subdivision surface
actually bought at the bottom of our
list and actually happening after and be
below in the priority order of our skull
and all that stuff but the nice thing is
we have this let's go back to the heart
there we go
we can then offset this and have the
distance change and you can see that's
kind of moving it out in z space and
that just gives us a little bit of pad
so we don't have any intersecting going
on or anything like that
so that's looking good we can move this
heart in a place that's looking good
another thing is is a you know typically
a good workflow is having this all on a
null and just to kind of demonstrate
let's just pretend our subdivision
surface is a null and we have that clamp
so if we wanted to manually kind of move
this forward or going to rotate it a
certain way we can have the freedom to
do that independently of our clamped
axis of our subdivision surface so
that's just another workflow kind of
handy tip that you can just have the
null like group everything in a null so
then you have the freedom to move this
and tweak it a little bit more if you
- without adjusting the the access
center on your clamped object so we got
that in the position we want so we're
going to turn on lock position so we
don't mess with it anymore there we go
you're going to see that you can move it
a little bit and that's just kind of
constrained to the distance but we have
distance zero we can't really move it so
there's that so now I want to go over so
that's using the the constraint tag to
clamp things and position things along
the surface so think of like you know if
you had a tree or something that you
wanted a position on a landscape or
something like that this is very really
handy for that the next thing I want to
go over is how you can actually conform
a spline to a shape so we're going to
try to recreate this little eyebrow
element here so there's our eyebrow
spline and for this we're going to use a
projection technique and how you set up
projection is let's just go ahead and
first let's change our color of this to
something way obnoxious so we can
actually see it in our scene there we go
so we can see it on our over a white
skull and basically we just want to move
this into position so let's just uh
let's first turn off this little element
here so those out ix sense we're going
to turn off that eyebrow and we kind of
just wanna you can see how we have it
just floating above our object here
let's actually turn off the skull so I'm
just going to put X in that selection
just negate that for a while and then
when we're done we can just zero out
that X so we just turned off that
material and basically we want to just
set this up like this we want this view
to look like yeah we want this if we
were going to just have this be like a
dynamic object and wrap along this from
this camera view that would actually
happen correctly so we're going to go
and actually have a
a function in cinema4d that allows you
to do just that where it's almost like a
dynamic like spline I dynamics will just
let this flop in conform and just be
conformed to the shape of the object
underneath it using this view and we're
going to go and go to mesh and spline
and we're going to project this spline
onto the surface of the object
underneath and this works for this
instance because we don't have any other
objects other than that skull if there
was multiple objects it would be
projected on that as well because our
mode is our current view and we can have
different modes here we can have just
certain axises axes that we can use but
I just want to use this of this camera
view wearing right now I'm going to hit
apply and from this view you're actually
not going to see anything but if I kind
of rotate around you can see that it's
almost like we just plastered that from
this camera view and just projected it
onto the surface of our skull which is
really cool so then what we can do is
just use a sweep and I'm just going to
delete that spline that's currently
there and we'll turn this on so we're
going to use a sweep object and you can
see that with the circle as the sweep
profile we just swept a sphere or a
circle along our object here and we just
created this cool little eyebrow element
that is now an accent piece for our
little skull our spline conform to the
shape of our skull and that's pretty
handy so the final thing I want to do is
show you how to actually have an object
Bend or conform to the surface of an
object so just like we did with the
spline but with an actual piece of
geometry here so this is going to be
different from the heart and the flower
because we're just using this to
position this objects or these objects
along the surface but it's not actually
bending or conforming to the profile or
the surface of the object so let's just
go in
to a different composition here so
there's my little cross element and the
key here is that we have this this is a
extrude object we have a bunch of
subdivisions in here due to turning on
the regular grid on this and we can kind
of get enough small subdivisions here
set to quadrangles we also have a lot of
intermediate points using the natural
versus the adaptive subdivision here so
we got a whole bunch of points making
our geometry a little bit of a denser
mesh so we have way more to geometry so
when this actually does conform to the
spherical surface it's going to look
nice and smooth so what we're going to
use for this is a deform and we have
this aptly named surface to former here
so to be able to get our surface de
forma to work with this extrude object
we can't just apply this as a child of
any of these because we actually need
this to be a group but I like to keep
things editable so I don't want to make
that editable so what we can do instead
is instead of making the surface 2
former a child of an object we if we
just place both objects under a null and
have them in the same hierarchy here
this deform will then affect this cross
or this this extrude object there so
this is our cross group and just like
with the constraint tag on our surface
deform we need to define a surface and
that's going to be our sphere here and
right now if I hit initialize it's it's
set to projection nothing's going to
happen and typically I never use
projection usually it's just mapping and
these mapping methods use the UVs of
another object and you're going to see
that right away
we got some really funky stuff happening
but once we go to UV mapping we can
adjust the
addition of U and V we can also adjust
the scale and if I adjust the scale
enough you can kind of see you kind of
make out the it's almost like our cross
got rotated and squashed vertically so
what that means is that we need to then
go ahead and adjust the axis rotation to
get this lined up correctly so I'm going
to so right now it's like laying flat we
need to adjust this so it's standing
upwards so I just went to axis Center
mode adjust the axis rotation so it's
now standing upwards and you can see
that fixed our cross so now it's
actually it's flat but at least it's
it's laying in the right direction and
not being squashed vertically so now we
can go back into our options here and
adjust the scale and kind of get that
form and get that cross looking the way
it should this also has an offset option
just like our constraint tag here and
you see we have a few little gaps in
here and that's because we need to go
into our cross and say create single
object and that'll then bind the caps
and the rounding and make it act as one
single piece of geometry and that will
get rid of our little gaps there versus
the caps being treated as a entirely
separate object so you can see V the the
point I was trying to make with having
enough subdivisions so that our our
deformation our surface deformation was
smooth but the problem here is you can
see it's still chunky but the problem
isn't with our cross object our problem
actually is with the main object the
surface that we're using the sphere it
just doesn't have as many segments as it
should be to make this object smooth you
can see this is very low poly you can
see the bends are happening right at
each polygon edge so to just smooth
everything out
we simply just need to crank up the
segments here you can see now with that
happening we now have a nice smooth
object here being deformed or conformed
along the surface of our sphere so
that's very handy and again if we didn't
have enough geometry here as I'm like
cranking up the values you can start to
see that we have some Fung issues and
some and some issues here as well so
it's very important that we just go back
to end Gonz again then we have this set
up correctly and have enough
subdivisions all right so we are done
decorating our little sugar skull we
learn a few techniques on how to
actually position objects along the
skull surface or any object surface one
being the constraint tag set the clamp
mode to be able to move objects along
the surface of objects then we learned
how to use the spline projection method
to actually have a spline project onto
the surface of an object and conform to
the surface of the object and then we
learned how to use the surface deform or
to do that same thing and deform objects
into forma to the surface of another
object using the surface to former so
that equips you with a lot of ways to be
able to put saw objects on top of other
object surfaces and create some fun
stuff so if you make anything fun using
these techniques be sure to tweet them
at me send them to me I'd love to see
what you're doing if you have any
questions be sure to throw them in the
comment section thanks again for
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for watching I'll see you in the next
tutorial bye everybody