Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create 2D Cel Shading in Cinema 4D Lite Video

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and hey do you have Adobe Creative Cloud
but perhaps don't have a full version of
cinema 4d and you want to get into all
this fun sketching toon type of cel
shading apply to 3d objects well in
cinema 4d Lite you can actually do a
very nice little hack and you can turn
your 3d geometry into flat 2d style
cel-shaded type of compositions and it's
fairly easy so I'm going to show you
this workflow and basically just to set
up the scene here I have an object or
this game boy that has all luminance
materials applied to them so flat
shading and we're going to take it one
step further and apply the type of cel
shading and allow for shadows to be cast
on my 3d objects so let's just jump
right in and I'll show you how easy it
is to create cel shading type of 3d
objects inside of cinema 4d Lite so
let's just go ahead and we'll add a
light and if I click the light button
here it'll create a light in by default
it's going to be an omni light which is
basically just like a light bulb X just
like a light bulb so what I'm going to
do is go to my top view I'm going to
zoom out
there's our object I'm going to move it
forward and just move it to the top left
of our object and what I'm going to do
is go back into interactive render
region so I can see exactly what's
happening and one other thing I'm going
to do is activate some shadows so we can
cast some shadows with a 3d geometry I'm
going to use Ray traced hard and what
that's going to do is create some very
hard shadows without any soft blurred
shadow edges just to keep with the whole
cel shading flat materials and the first
thing you're going to notice is that I
turned on shadows and we have no shadows
what's going on well what the problem is
if Ike you can even see as I toggle my
light on and off by clicking the check
box here that nothing's changing at all
and this is because we
member we used a hundred percent lumina
materials on all of our objects now this
is kind of like trying to cast a light
and shadow onto a fully lit lightbulb
just not gonna happen so what we need to
do to be able to cast shadows and bring
some shading back into our objects is by
adding more diffuse shading to our
objects and we can do this by turning on
the color channels in our material so if
I go in here and maybe this red one I'll
turn on that one and I'm also going to
go in here and just right-click on the
color copy it and paste it into the
color of my color Channel
I'll do the same thing for my blue color
here activate the color channel paste
and as I'm doing this you're noticing
that by activating the color channels on
each of my materials we're getting some
of this shading we're getting some nice
shadows being cast we're also getting
some nice shading on the back parts of
our objects so we can do the same thing
with this dark red right click copy
right click paste
so there we go we can actually take this
one step further and just remove all of
our darkened edges so we have our
materials with selections here I'm just
going to delete the selections and
delete that second material I'm going to
do the same thing from my a and B
buttons here and again remove the
selection because I just want to use one
material to apply cell shading type
effects on all of my objects so we can
do this with the control pad as well
remove that selection and I think I
forgot to add a color channel to this
mid black so I'll do that right click
copy right-click and paste you'll see we
added some shading back to our game pad
so right now we still have some diffuse
shading going on it's not
entirely flat it's a nice look but we
still have this gradation so to remove
that gradation all together this is
where ambient illumination is going to
come in you can see our ambient
illumination checkbox right here I'm
going to turn that on now notice what
happens so when I turn that on we
totally remove all of that gradation and
we just are left with like a two-tone
kind of shading and why that is is
because ambient illumination casts flat
lighting onto our 3d objects where the
only thing that's taken into account is
the material color so that's also being
driven by our color channels and our
luminance channels so what I can do is
go into my white material again and if I
want to get back some of that like
greenish blue that was our kind of our
darker color on our Gameboy body I can
simply go into the luminance channel and
just change the color to something
closer to what we had and you can see
that we now have this darker edge we can
go into our color Channel and kind of
pump up that front color so you can see
that as I'm pumping in the brighter
color that brighter white or in this
case I can change this to like a blue
you can see that that's updating on my
little material preview here and that's
a little bit too much so maybe just 110
percent I think that looks pretty good
so now we can actually move our light
around and you can see what's happening
is we're kind of interactively casting
lights and shadows onto our 3d objects
with just the light and we don't have to
do any material selections so this is a
much nicer option here so one other
thing we can do if I can just move where
is our light we can move it back to
where I had it before so we actually see
the shadows being cast here what I can
do is also control the shadow by going
to my light and going into the shadow
options and I can turn down the density
to make it a little bit lighter of a
shadow so now you can
just very very light shading happening
or you know I can crank that all the way
up another nice thing is I can actually
change the color of my shadow so I can
go and make this let's try like a
reddish let's see what that looks like
so now we have like this pinkish kind of
shadow being cast on in my objects
because it's not only mixing this color
I set in the shadow but it's also mixing
with the colors in my color channel and
my luminance so you got to keep that in
mind we can also just turn off luminance
all together and you can see that full
value of that red color we chose for the
shadow being represented on our objects
so now we can go in here and maybe we
want just the shadow to have that bluish
color and we can have everything cast
that bluish shadow and just totally
remove the luminance channels on all of
these objects here as well so this is
that's an also an alternative that you
can do right there as well and we can
also go into each of these materials and
just crank up the brightness of those
colors again actually I need to go into
this one and crank that up you can see
we have a nice bright red color so we
have a lot of control we can either just
use the color channel or use a
combination of the color channel and
illuminance channel to be able to kind
of recreate this nice cell shading type
effect on our 3d objects so there's one
more thing I want to do to really help
give the illusion of 2d so right now
this looks still a little bit 3d because
of the fact that our camera view still
gives some kind of depth perspective and
what we can do to kind of mitigate that
or remove it all together to make our 3d
composition or 3d object look even
flatter is by applying an isometric type
of view
well that will remove camera depth
perspective and again further develop
our 3d representation in a more 2d view
so we can go here in my camera add a
camera and we're not looking through
that camera view yet until we click this
little viewfinder icon so I'll activate
that and I'll go into my for up view and
just kind of move around you can see as
I move around let me zoom out using the
two key and the one keys and clicking
and dragging that as I kind of orbit
around using the three key here click
and dragging the three key is I'm
actually moving my camera in my scene so
let's just choose like this kind of view
and again I'm going to go for a parallel
camera and what a parallel camera does
is you can see immediately that it's
just flattened everything out all of my
3d geometry looks a lot more 2d because
we remove that 3d perspective and now we
can hold the three key down and kind of
orbit around here as I drag my mouse
that we're getting this really really
nice flat illustrative geometric kind of
composition with our 3d objects because
of that parallel view now we also have
different kind of views here
isometric is pretty popular and if i
zoom out you're going to notice that if
you try to orbit by holding the three
key and trying to click and drag we are
fixed at a locked angle and that's kind
of the downside about the isometric view
and why I prefer to use the parallel
camera because the parallel camera does
the same thing but you can orbit around
freely you're going to kind of notice
some weirdness happening here we just
kind of sliced our object in half and
what's going on with that is we have our
camera intersecting our object and this
is actually called clipping and if we go
into the details tab of our camera you
can see that clipping is enabled and if
we turn that off that will remove our
you or we can just simply move our
camera out you can think you think that
you could just zoom out like this and
that would move our camera but you can
see that that's only really zooming in
our cameras at a fixed position so what
we actually need to do is physically
move our camera back and that'll make
everything all nice and happy again and
remove that clipping so just keep that
in mind you can just turn that off and
you won't have to deal with that at all
so let's just go back into our
perspective view without any clipping
again we can move our light around to
kind of position our shadows the way we
want them to be cast all right so that
is it for me I hope that was very useful
for you so yeah Adobe Creative Cloud
users you have cinema 4d Lite you can
start doing cell shading immediately
with this ambient illumination workflow
and I hope you have fun with it if you
make anything definitely make sure to
share it with me and if you like this
tutorial be sure to like this video and
if you like my channel be sure to
subscribe really appreciate all your
subs and your views thank you guys so
much I'll see you in the next tutorial
bye everybody