Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create a Retro Style Animated GIF in Cinema 4D Part 1 Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody it's EJ from I design comm and
today we're gonna get 80s with it we're
going to the 80s and we're gonna do some
kid mograph or james white from signal
noise inspired 80s goodness some retro
fun action and we're going to recreate
this so if you're not familiar with
signal noise or kid mograph they just
make some really crazy amazing 3d or 2d
and 3d art
James white is more known for his 2d
illustration work but also using
dripping with some 80s retro goodness
stay rad check the stuff out so that's
Sigma noise comm we also have Gustavo
also known as kid McGrath and a lot of
this stuff has really inspired me and
and yeah I was like I wanna I want to do
my best
Gustad lolkid mograph impression I was
saying this was this is how I felt last
week in Vegas just like Oh felt like
crap but I'm here I got my voice back so
let's get started let's break down this
scene so the first thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to build the scene in a
cinema 4d then I'm going to go ahead and
bring it into After Effects and apply
some like VHS old VHS filters and stuff
on that and bring it into Photoshop and
we're going to make a gif out of it so
we're going through the whole entire
process here so the first thing I'm
going to do is I'm going to go ahead and
I'm going to make my little floor grid
so to do that I'm just going to go and
grab a plane I'm going to make this
fairly large to something like 8,000 by
like 4,000 don't need any segments so
I'm going to get rid of them and I'm
actually going to apply the grid as a
texture so I'm going to go ahead and
apply a texture here and go any
interactive render region here just so
we can see what's going on actually this
is default
this is a fault composition here and I'm
going to build this at 800 by 600 and I
like building it with this because this
is ultimately going to be a gif or Jif
I say it's a gif because it's graphics
interface so that's all good so it's a
gif and this is the format this is the
width and height that dribble uses so I
like posting a lot of my gifts to
dribble so I'm going to use this kind of
width and height so you can use your own
you can do you know your 720 whatever
you want to do have fun with it but
let's go ahead let's let's turn on our
Luminos we're going to use some
luminance and we're going to load up a
grid so I'm going to go to surfaces I'm
going to go to tiles you've got a grid
going on or a plane let's actually turn
our color off for now and go into our
tiles and we're going to make our grout
color a little grout area here we're
going to make it into some kind of like
hot pinkish magenta kind of thing going
on whatever color that is we're just
going to make all these other colors
like I can copy and paste this just
going to make them all black and you're
going to see that this is fairly blurry
and the blurriness now if you're not
from it and this used to screw me up a
lot is the grout width and the bevel
with width
you'll know that if you bring the grout
with to one you'll still see that we
have a fairly large grid and that's
because of our bevel with the bevel
width basis basically like blurs the
grid there so I'm going to trough the
bevel and when I want sharp edges like a
sharp grid I'm just going to bring this
bevel whip bevel width all the way down
to like point one so we're going to get
a super sharp grid now and we'll just
bring this grout with two two still got
the sharp edges and let's bring the
global scale to like 20 so we've got
this really nice grid going on but you
can see that it just kind of keeps going
and just kind of
stops abruptly so what I want this to do
is kind of fade out in the distance and
what I'm going to do to recreate that
kind of fall-off is to create a layer
shader grab my layer shader and then
what I'm going to do is apply for now
and make that multiply I'm going to
multiply that on top of the tiles I'm
just going to invert this for now and
you're going to see that what this does
is it just kind of uses the fernell
angle to kind of fade off the tiles so
we can go in here and say like alright
well maybe that's a little bit too much
we can bring some of this back and just
kind of adjust this to whatever kind of
fall off we want let's say that looks
pretty good right there
and then for the
like the specular we can give this
barely
all kind of purplish
we dark purplish specular there and
we'll really see that pop once we start
adding some lights and stuff to the
scene so now we got we got a grid so far
let's just go ahead and rename this
texture grid there we go and we're gonna
create our mountains because for some
reason 80s stuff needed mountains in it
all the time so we're going to make our
80s mountains we're going to grab a
landscape object I'm going to bring it
right there we're gonna move it all the
way back just zoom out here there's my
grid it's my plane I'm going to move it
all the way to the back of the plane
make it fairly wide and fairly eat back
there make its like 1,200 do you know me
I like my even numbers let's do like
1500 as a height and then for the size
let's see let's even this out to
something like 5500 make that wide
enough adjust a camera make sure
this is looking good
that's pretty high
down
and what we can do is like bring down
the width and height segments or the
depth segments just to bring less
geometry we can also start changing
around a lot of stuff here one of the
things that is going to change a lot is
the seed so we're going to get totally
different kind of mountains depending on
how of what the seed is and you can also
adjust how rough this stuff is by just
thing the furrows something like that so
we're getting a little more rocky we're
going to go maybe a little bit like a
low poly on this and get something like
triangulation so what I'm going to do is
uh I guess just remove the fog angle
it's going to remove it so now we get
this chunky kind of stuff going on so we
get the really chunky polygons and then
just to add a little bit more
triangulation a little bit more
interesting stuff to the landscape I'm
just going to apply a polygon reduction
what that's going to do is like low poly
if I our Mountain there that looks
pretty cool and then what I want to do
is grab this landscape and I want to
have some kind of outlines or grid apply
to this as well but instead of using a
texture I'm just going to go ahead and
make a copy of this by using an instance
and so here's our instance right here
woop and I'm going to use this instance
to create our outlines and I'm going to
create the outlines by using an atom
array I'm going to drag that landscape
object in there and so now we got our
atom array creating lines I'm just going
to create that I'm just going to change
the cylinder radius and sphere radius to
about three so this is going to get us
some kind of cool outlines let's apply
some textures here so this will be our
mountain texture
Mountain
that OOP and this is going to be like
fairly dark fairly dark texture maybe
with a little bit of like bluish use
something like that and then we can
bring the default specular and make this
kind of blueish as well but once it be
fairly dark and again we're probably not
going to see much until we start adding
lights and stuff but that's just like
that'll be our base for a mountain and
we'll tweak it later and then for the
mountains like outlines we'll apply that
to the an array and this will be more
bright we'll see a little bit more
specular happening this would be like a
lighter blue maybe
there we go you can see some outlines we
got the basis of our grid and we got the
basic setup of our mountain here so the
nice thing is is I can go ahead and
change the landscape and since this is
an instance you know it's changing both
things we got that kind of flexibility
and I always like to you'll keep things
very nice neat and organized like that
so let's see the next thing I want to do
is go ahead and add that like shiny cone
that like chrome cone we had in there
let's go ahead add or where is it or is
it there it is there's our cohen and
we're just going to turn it upside down
so i'm going to make this orientation
negative why that flips it upside down
that's uh
go ahead and move this back let's I get
our composition working here
Mountain in the background there's our
cone and I want to make it a little
round though just so the chrome
reflections and stuff will have this
nice little edge to kind of Bend on and
make it a little bit more interesting so
here's the cone let's texture this bad
boy we're going to end of course in the
80s
everything was chrome everyone loved
mountains everyone loved chrome everyone
climbed chrome mountains and all that
kind of stuff so for we don't want to
use like a reflectance and add a
reflection or anything like that how
we're going to build the chrome is
actually by activating the environment
channel and we can easily apply
something like cheesy 80s chrome by just
going into the environment channel
choose in gradient let's go ahead and
apply this material to our cone and we
can even rename this to cone chrome and
basically we can have a little get a
little creative in here as far as how we
want our chrome to look so right now I'm
just kind of dragging and making new
chips and creating like a cool chrome
gradient here
let's see and the key to this is just
kind of you know having some very sharp
all offs like this like bringing this
little diamond all the way to the right
so there's less space to interpolate
between the black and the this grayish
color so just by doing this we have some
pretty nice chrome going on
so 80s and you can see that right here
we have this odd edge right there and
that's just because we had this going
from solid black to solid white so you
kind of want to have that mirror a
little bit will make this just black on
this side that's looking pretty good
and since we're kind of doing this to
cheap way you can kind of map this so we
have like nice highlights on either side
so we can kind of see what's going on
here
looking pretty good pretty chrome tastic
a little bit more highlight to that side
by moving these chips over so you kind
of see what I'm saying where you can
adjust all this so now we can actually
go into the the actual environment
channel itself and we can start like
tiling this if we wanted to us we can
add more of those little gradient knots
in there or less you can kind of change
how this is mapped on your object but I
think I like it just the way I set it up
so that's your chrome doing it the cheap
way in the environment channel so now
it's not going to really reflect
anything else in the scene which is fine
because most of that cheesy 80s chrome
like computers couldn't do reflection
like that so I'm not going to worry
about it right so now what we can do is
um
go ahead and add those little little
holes those little slats in our cone so
right now let's see I think I want this
to be a little bit wider maybe a little
bit taller something like that and of
course I got it even out these numbers
because I hate random numbers get them
nice and flat and even a little I'm a
little crazy a little crazy because of
that stuff and we're going to go in just
grab some cubes
and
we're going to use these cubes to kind
of bowl or cut the holes in our little
cone guy so there's one there's one cube
and why I like to use a cube is because
it's got less segments and when you have
too much geometry sometimes that can
cause problems with pools and usually
bulls are kind of frowned upon but you
know what they work just fine for some
instances so I'm going to place the cone
in the bowl in the cube and you're going
to see right there we got our little
hole in our cube we got that little slap
so now we need to make a whole bunch of
them so we're just going to go ahead and
grab a cloner
we are going to go into work loner and
turn off fix clone so they're going to
be back in place and I need to keep in
mind I'm going to be animating this so I
need to make this kind of start down
here and add more of these cubes there
we go so now I can kind of just animate
it up and down and that's basically our
little cube guy a little cone we can add
a lot more of these we want so you can
kinda figure out how you want your cuts
to look you can have a lot more cuts
like that and that looks kind of cool or
not you can have way thicker caps so
right now this kind of has no texture on
the cuts the the Chrome's only on the
cube bits but not on the inside here
that's just gray so you can either put
the chrome texture on the cloner and
that makes it all white or you can put
like a darker color on there so you so
it's way more pronounced that there's a
hole in there so you can do whatever you
want you can have a texture there that
has a little bit more specular again we
need to start putting some lights in
here so all that stuff works
so let's now put any background
and what I'm going to do is just create
a background like a background gradient
that's very 80s looking with a lot of
bright neon colors and all that stuff so
let's go ahead need a gradient let's
apply this to our background object make
sure it's facing the right directions we
need up-and-down and we'll make this
gradient go from black to like this
magenta this hot pink magenta and it
will slowly go into like a light purple
and then a dark purple
and then maybe just totally black
so something like that and we need to
adjust these knots so we can actually
see and since our composition is kind of
halfway remove all these up so we can
actually see that magenta II bit there
here we go see a little bit more of that
as this goes to like past 50 percents
right there that's nuts
of 50 now we can see it so that's
looking pretty nice and make this a
little bit more orange ish or pinkish
there we go
that greeting there we go that's looking
a little bit better
all right so that
background and actually what we can do
is and what I did was I just googled
some galaxy stuff some galaxy images and
I found a really cool one I'm just going
to add that via this layer and this
image I found just called space stars at
just literally Google googled it and I
got this really cool galaxy image right
here I think it's going to work very
well and I'm just going to multiply that
actually let's screen it on top so now I
got this really cool galaxy thing and we
can bring down the opacity of that and
actually what I want to do is move this
up a little bit this image of the galaxy
up a little bit so I can see more of the
cloudy galaxy ish stuff nebulas whatever
that stuff's called and how do I am
going to do that is go ahead and create
a folder put the stars thing in the
folder and that's going to kind of blow
out the the the blending mode so I'm
going to need to reset that on the
folder level so I'm just going to go
screen on the folder and now what I can
do when this is in its old folder I can
apply a transform effect to just that
layer and just move that up now you see
I have more of that like galaxies
nebulae stuff in there so that's looking
pretty good that's looking much better I
got more of the detail of the cloudy
nebulae galaxies stuff whatever that is
Stardust and that's looking pretty good
so now let's go ahead and start adding
some lights add some lights the scene
and this is going to be my background
light
and this is going to be on me it's going
to be a little bluish here and what I'm
going to do is move this light source
all the way to the back by the mountains
here and I'm going to go and make this
have a little fall-off here basically
what I want this light to do is just
kind of cast a little bit of a hint of
light back in the mountain so you can
make out a little bit of the detail of
that mountain range back there so we're
getting some really nice highlights on
the the outlines here
and
crank this up a little bit so we get a
little bit blown out maybe
I just want to get some light there so
we get some of the details and that just
goes to black on the edges there now
what I now I want to do is go ahead and
create a camera so right now
everything's looking fairly flat kind of
boring because we need that extreme like
angle or perspective so what we're going
to do to do that is crank up the sensor
size to 50 and bring down the focal
length to like 15 so we got this extreme
like depth here so now that I have this
here I'm gonna start have to start
moving some stuff around so I'm going to
move this cone back because basically
what I want to do is have the mountains
in the back
and the cone kind of more in the
foreground and this is where we can
start going back into our landscape
object and be like alright well maybe we
need these landscape this landscaped
object to be a little bit taller so we
can actually see it behind the cone we
need to make sure we're moving both the
landscape object and the instance up
that has the a Marais there we go just
move it up a little bit so we want to
see a little bit of the mountains and
this cone
there we go
and now let's go and so now we got some
lights in here let's go back into our
very boring grid texture now because we
have like no reflection no nothing on it
so far and we can add like a color
channel here and make this kind of dark
blue and now we get some more like color
from the specular channel here actually
purple a pretty good
or get a little bit more color in that
floor area and what we can do to add a
lot more hotness to it is add some
reflection and now we're going to start
to get uh you know reflections of the
mountains reflection of that chrome cone
but I don't want like a hundred percent
reflection the first thing I'm going to
do is go ahead and just kind of make
this additive and I'm going to go to the
for now go to dielectric and choose the
preset to glass because I just want this
kind of act like glass and you can see
that the the reflection is going to be a
little bit more muted I'm going to get
rid of the specular and actually want to
bring more reflection in there I want to
really see a lot more of that that
mountain in the back there and that's
looking pretty cool so far and what we
can do is just kind of go in here and
make some roughness
and that's looking pretty good so that
kind of adds some really nice noise kind
of degrades it degrades the quality a
little bit and let's see so now what we
can do is I want to see more of this
environment the Star environment in my
reflection so what I can do is go and
grab a HDR eye studio and I'm just going
to use instead of an HDR file I'm just
going to grab that same space image
there
you
to turn off the floor turn off the
background so now I just have a really
cool star background reflecting as like
an HDR so this is looking really cool we
get this really nice detail or
reflection from this background here and
with that kind of crappy quality
reflection blur it's actually looking
not too shabby like I just want a little
bit of that degradation quality going on
and that's looking pretty good and we
get a lot more sense of the lot more
like of this negative space of the
mountains kind of at the bottom there
and that's looking pretty good I think
one thing I want to do before I start
animating or anything like that is to go
back to the landscape and start messing
around with like a polygon reduction
maybe I want more of these outlines or
maybe add more segments in here
more like that
it's kind of just whatever you want to
do if you want more of those little
gridlines or less but I just like the
idea that you have these like
triangulated lines and it's not like a
perfect grid or anything like that you
actually move out a little bit more move
our cone up like this and kind of want
to make more of the grid kind of really
fade off and really get that extreme
angle
let's
here
move back
and
move this cone back
make this landscape object a little bit
bigger so like with all this tweaking
because I know I like this week and
tweaking good because you want to push
your design to the limits and make it as
good as you possibly can so always being
able to make sure that when you make one
change on one you don't have to keep
making change on the other it's always
kind of important
just move this up
we go
alright done tweak in the mountains the
mountains look good what I can do is
kind of tweak the light maybe a little
bit more you push this back I just want
like a hint of light coming behind the
mountain here
see
I think the reason
why I'm not seeing too much is because
the mountain has a very dark specular
we're not seeing too much I'm going to
go into my specular channel here
Dork of a blue okay I think that's
better
and I want to really be able to make out
those outlines so I can pump up the
color with that as well increase the
specular strength so we get more of that
outlines and then more of the outlines
reflected onto the ground there cool
cool cool got all the major things that
happened in the 80s we have grid we have
mountains we have galaxies we have
chrome we have every element of the 80s
so now let's see we can let's just add
one more light to the scene I'm just
going to duplicate that background light
and this will be the cone light I just
want like more of a magenta II I'm
saying magenta a lot I'm sorry it's a
word though look it up I'm just going to
move this right below like right behind
where this cone is just to give this a
nice little highlight like right there
that looks pretty cool right move right
back there
adds a nice little splash of the pink
satin say it again the pink color to our
scene so we can go in here and actually
I like this kind of purple specular in
our cone right there but say that's a
little bit too hot I can kind of go in
here and that's just this the cube so
the part of the cube that's kind of cut
out there I can go and change that and I
can change this stuff too now I don't
want to create new object I want to hi
new edges
and create phone breaks yep that looks
good
so I can actually go in here and just
make this the inner cone texture just
because that might be a little bit too
much color apply that to the cloner and
we can like tone down the brightness
there inside the cone since we added
that light in there it's a little bit
too much now we're just kind of bringing
that back a little bit now we just have
like a really subtle purple glow and I
think I like that and think I'm digging
that okay let's save this really quick
ADEs save and let's see now we can start
animating so the things we're going to
animate in here first thing I want to do
make sure I kind of align everything I
don't want any x value I don't want any
zero or I don't want any rotation in the
in there so I just want it straight on
boom nice and centered
so and let's start animating stuff so
this is going to be animated Giff so
just for compression sake and just
keeping the file limit down we're just
going to make this a 30-second loop so
just one second everything is going to
kind of loop and the only thing we're
really going to do is just have these
cuts these little slats animate up and
we're going to have the grid kind of
move forward so we're going to animate
the grid by just animating the offset
here so I'm going to create a keyframe
at frame 0 go to frame 30 now this is
going to be the tricky part and
sometimes it helps to go into your
material go to the editor and I think
this is really going to help that much
but sometimes you can turn the texture
preview side to no scaling and that
could sharpen it sometimes but that's
really not working but one thing we can
do is just go to our editor display
instead of using combine let's just show
the luminance and that's going to blow
out like the reflection and and stuff
like that so we can more clearly see the
grid and let's go and now we can try to
eyeball this and there's no like this is
kind of like very unscientific but so we
want the grid to go forward and right
now I'm hit I'm holding down the option
key so I'm going by like hundredths
decimal place or tens sorry I'm just
moving this and gonna try to match this
so like this let's see if that works I'm
gonna hit the keyframe and I'm going to
grab both these keyframes and I don't
want any interpolation so right now it's
kind of ease in
I'm just going to grab both keyframe
just say no I need linear interpolation
and make sure that I select both of them
I just select the one so there we go
so now actually that looks pretty looped
got a little tiny hitch though I think
I'm going to try to just nudge this last
keyframe because I think they kind of
overlap
yeah they're pretty close you don't want
overlapping keyframes so
just nudge this back one tenth
think I just made another ease again and
I did and actually present a prevent
that so every time you set a new
keyframe it's going to totally blow out
the interpolation that you set I'm going
to change that by going into my project
settings here by hitting command D go
into key interpolation and clicking on
overdub what that's going to do is just
retain your interpolation the way you
want it to so when I'm set a new
keyframe it's like a blowout the linear
interpolation is going to keep keep that
so I'm going to select this keyframe
again go to linear and now let's see
here
it's got little tiny hitch in it maybe
and that just might be because of this
texture quality is kind of pretty let's
just say that loops let's say for now
that loops I think that looks pretty
good
so now let's animate the
enemy the yep this guy the little slats
here so same thing I want to start at a
position where I can kinda tell what my
looping points going to be so like right
there or I can still see the top cap
here the top of the cone and I'm just
going to keyframe the cloner Y so this
is going to go up so basically I just
want to make this so we're right there
so maybe one before that because we
don't want overlapping keyframes and
when I get it just before that point
let's see if that works so right now we
have that spline interpolation so again
I need to select both of my keyframes
here uh go right there turn this to
linear go to this one make it linear and
let's see and then I just screwed
something up there see that I just blow
out one of my keyframes
let's see what I did
forty I think I didn't move it enough so
let's go here
I barely moved that sucker okay let's
move this a lot more
set keyframes for all these guys that's
no good let's just get rid of these just
need in the why
and let's go to write about there and
see what that looks like
see what we got now we got it moving a
lot more and since we had overdub turned
on it should stay linear but just in
case that's actually moving too fast
that's looping but I think that's going
too fast when we have two things at the
same speed doesn't look too interesting
so I'm going to kind of slow this down
so we have a little bit of contrast
maybe see see if that
works
when I did it again I did it again
all right let's move this one then so
this will be down oops guess I got to
move this one move this up to there boom
okay there that I like that speed a lot
more and that looks like it loops so we
have one that we have the grid moving
faster we have the cone moving a little
bit faster than that and it looks pretty
looping good job guys so that wasn't
like scientific at all but just kind of
like tips and tricks of how to line
things up correctly so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to do that little trick
that cooking show does and put this in
the oven and come out with a brand new
render so I'm going to render this and
we're going to jump into After Effects
and apply our let me just do the Remo
interactive render region here we've got
everything looking good we're ready to
render and now I'll meet you guys inside
of After Effects we're gonna make this
look like old and have a nice vh X or
VHS kind of look and feel to this so
we're going to put this in the oven in
boom this going to be already rendered