Cinema 4D Tutorial - Controlling Light Intensity With Effectors Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey it's EJ from iDesign calm and in
this tutorial I'm going to be showing
you how you can control light intensity
with just the factors so no more having
to hand keyframe these things and doing
it the hard way so let's uh jump in here
we got our light and just for viewing
purposes I'm going to make that visible
so when I render you can see what the
heck I'm doing let's clone some of these
guys throw the light and the cloner go
to our cloner jump up the count spread
them out a little bit alright so we got
a whole bunch of lights here let's
actually spread them out a bit more so
we got all of our lights here so there's
actually a couple ways we can get this
done the first method I'm going to show
you is a method specific to light
objects and adjusting the intensity the
second method I'm going to show you not
only adjust the intensity of a light
object but you can adjust a attributes
on other objects as well so say if you
have a custom piece of geometry that you
have illuminance material applied to you
can use an effector to adjust the
intensity of the luminance to have it
look like it's fading on or off and I'll
show you that as my third example later
on in this tutorial but first off I'm
going to show you the first method that
is just specific towards adjusting light
object intensity so let me show you that
I'm going to go and actually use a plain
object or plane effector I'm going to
turn the position off where I actually
use the color mode turn it on we're
actually going to send the blending mode
to subtract because we have our light
here with full intensity we're actually
going to go about this and effect it and
actually turn and subtract the luminance
value from the light as the effectors
going through it so
to get this to work we actually have to
turn up modify clone and we're going to
change our fall-off to linear so we have
some linear fall-off going so the lights
will turn on gradually as the effector
fall-off passes through so we're going
to change this to positive Y and we're
going to make sure we got our effector
actually affecting so once I threw that
plane effector in there you can see
everything below the fall-off
is off and everything above is on so if
I render this out see only the lights
above the fall-off are on and that's
because we have this color mode set to
subtract so as ever as a the effector
passes through its subtracting the
luminance value and turning and fading
everything off so now if I actually go
in it's actually keyframe this plane
effector move to 90 move this all the
way up as you can see as it's going up
that the the light object in the scene
is kind of fading going from grade to
just black so if I bring this all the
way up hit another keyframe let's
actually render this make a preview and
let this thing go
so we have all of our lights turned on
and as we have the effector pass up all
of those lights intensity are fading
down because we have our modify clone we
have our blending mode set to subtract
so now if we set this to add it would
actually brighten the light so let me
show you that let's get the calculating
the preview if we go here press start
see how it's actually adding to that
luminance so you can kind of see the the
what's going on behind the scenes and if
you wanted all the lights to actually go
from off to on all you have to do is go
to your plane effector go to the fall
off and just invert it and you can see
all of these go black if I hit render
again you will see that because you
inverted it all the lights will be off
and as the effector passes through it'll
turn all the lights on so simple is just
hitting invert on the fall-off and now
I'm going to show you the second method
to get this done we're going to actually
need to go between two states or even
more than that two states of the objects
so we already have our light object at
full intensity I'm just going to hold
down control and duplicate this light
and make one with zero intensity so
right now it's just cloning and just
iterating one light on one light off and
you can see in the clone under the
cloner it's set to iterate if we go to
sort if I render right away nothing
happens but once I throw an effector on
this guy so I'm going to choose the
plane effector I'm going to turn the
position off I'm going to change the
fall-off to linear I'm going to
orientate that to the positive Y
and if I render right away nothing
happens but once I turn up this modify
modify clone and hit render you can see
everything everything above the fall-off
is on and everything below the fall-off
is off and why that is is because we
have this sort option and what this is
doing is it's sorting between the blight
with the intensity at 100% and the one
with the intensity at zero so as our
plane effector is going through from
kind of see the kind of boundary area or
the little foot light fall-off area so
the fall-off is controlling where the
objects are being the cloned objects or
feedings being sorted so right now we
have if I go and animate this and I make
the plane object go to our coordinate
put a keyframe at the Y and move this
guy up a little this guy will the way up
so the fall-off clears the top and hit
another keyframe if I do a quick preview
render here
and this pops up and if I hit play here
actually if I select the right preview
file do a little bit of previewing here
so you can see that the the plane
effector is going up and turning all the
lights off or it's it's changing the
clone from the the light clone with 100%
intensity to the clone with zero
intensity so it looks like it's shutting
off now that might be the look that you
need but what if you want to have these
gradually decreasing in intensity right
now it's very sudden zero to a hundred
or 100 to zero sorry
so what if you want to have it more
gradual so the way the sort option works
is it's going to cycle through all the
clones in the hierarchy so right now
it's like length through 100 to zero so
now if I go in and if I go to make this
a 75 so we're going from 100 to 75 let's
go to 50 duplicate this again go to 25
now right away if I go and have that so
it's in the center hit render
nothing's happening right now Oh I have
to actually adjust the minimum maximum
to negative 100 so it can pick up some
of those lower values so now if I just
adjust the fall off a little bit here if
I do another Ram preview just let this
go play on this so you can now see it's
cycling through the first it's going
through the 100 it's going from the 75
250 225 to 0 and each of these clones
are doing that so as I hit play you give
the illusion that it's actually the
light is just slowly fading off the
intensity is fading away so it's looking
that's looking nice but what if you want
the opposite effect it's just going by
the hierarchy here so if I wanted to
start at zero intensity I just kind of
flipped these guys around so now I have
100 percent the bottom 75 50 25 and 100
and so everything's going to be reversed
at that point so and what I had to do
was uh the minimum maximum because it
was set at zero it was only going
through half of the clones here if you
have it go from negative one hundred to
one hundred it's going to cycle through
all of these so be cognizant of your
minimum maximum settings and also make
sure that you have the modified clone on
because if you don't have the modifying
clone on it's not going to do anything
so just something to bear in mind so
that's how you can get either a nice
abrupt abrupt on off on your intensity
or a gradual fade off by adding these
you know middle steps between the zero
and one
intensity you can add as many of these
as you want if you want a little bit
more gradual you just make you a 10 20
30 40 50 60 you know keep going on just
use your math skills right so that's how
you can control your light so why I
actually came up with this was because I
needed to create a noise meter for a
hockey team and I made this little sound
meter if I run this out
so I have all these cylinders with a
luminance texture on it
zum-zum let's go over here if i zoom in
here I can hit the right button here we
go so if i zoom in and render it's just
all these cylinders with this light
texture on and I want to go the same
effect I want it's supposed to be
measuring the sound so the meters gonna
go up right and the lights are going to
turn on it's kind of like the the what's
the little carnival game where you hit
the hammer and the light goes up you
want to try to get the bell all the way
to the top and the lights go on until
you get to the top figure with that
thing's : but uh you know I'm talking
about so that's basically like the sound
meters as the sound supposedly gets
louder these little it's gonna turn on
these little lights up until it gets to
the top so it's kind of measuring the
the noise that's really not but so let
me show you how I did this so it's same
premises before I have a cylinder with a
texture that has luminance at 170 I have
one at a hundred and then one with a
darker luminous so it's basically turned
off so
I just have to go in here make sure that
it's set sort and I just need to use
another linear plane effector and make
sure that is applied to our climber and
it is and going to turn off the position
I'm going to turn on the modify clone
set our fall-off to linear and set it to
lie so already you can see if I render
this out let's go in the opposite
direction but you have the one hundred
and seventy percent luminance of this
texture and then the one with just a
hundred and then the one where it's the
darker luminance so it looked like it's
turned off so I'm actually facing the
wrong way so if I go to negative and if
I'm moving this up and down you can kind
of see what what I'm talking about so
the sound meter so you as a sound build
you know this meter is going to slowly
go up so would go up until it just all
the bars have turned to full luminance
so that's the kind of gradual look I'm
looking for if I wanted to I can
duplicate another middle one and make
another texture that has say 50% or 60%
luminous throw that texture on there so
it's even more of kinda gradual is very
subtle but if I make this let's make
this a little bit darker
so you see a little bit more how you
have that gradual luminance fade as as
the effector the plant effector goes
through here
so as I did in my other tutorial use
cappuccino to kind of record my mouse
movements and it's come in handy since
I've discovered that what the heck
cappuccino actually does even though
it's not for character animation solely
but uh so what I did is I had to kind of
make this camera and as the energy is
building the camera is going to shake a
little bit more as the noise supposedly
gets louder in this arena that the this
animation is going to be playing so I
kind of had to you'll gradually have
this camera shake build up with energy
shake even more as the noise got louder
so instead of just hand keyframing any
of everything I just went in here and
got where is it I've got my cappuccino
open if you don't know what cappuccino
does check out the tutorial I made
called intro to cappuccino basically it
just records all your mouth movement
once you hit start hitting record it's
like motion sketch inside of After
Effects so I want to kind of control the
position of this plane effector right so
I'm going to make sure it's down at the
bottom and I'm going to kind of make it
make it look like it's measuring the
sound all right so I'm going to go in
here make sure I got 30 frames per
second that's a the project the frame
rate going to make sure so whenever
recorder records in real time and make
sure I have my plane effector selected
move it down and then hit start real
time
and as I touch it it's going to start
playing the the vibrate tag animation so
now I can start to control this as it
gets kind of real shaky so I can
really adjust and go along with the
shakiness of the action here so I just
stopped a little bit early there so if I
go back and hit play again with
cappuccino it made me able to just
interact directly with the vibrate tag
so I can match the franticness of the
vibrate tag and has the vibrate tag kind
of builds with the shaking build the
build how how high up the these little
luminance bars go up so kind of looks
like it's reacting to the shaking of the
intensity of the vibrate tag there so it
kind of matches with that and would be
pretty hard to try to hand keyframe that
to make it look believable and get this
kind of sound meter look where it's
measuring the noise decibels if you
follow me so there's a couple uses of
how you can you create luminance
textures to fade on with effectors or as
I start out with how you can get how you
control light luminance as well with
your light objects so hopefully you can
start using that in your day-to-day
workflow and never have to hand keyframe
a luminance material or a lights
intensity ever again so because you just
know how to deal with a simple plain
effector with the modified clone option
enabled so thanks for watching