Cinema 4D Tutorial - Create and Animate an Umbrella Using Mosplines in Cinema 4D Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody it's EJ from I design comm and
today we are going to play around with
umbrellas and we're not going to open
them inside because it's bad luck but we
can't open them inside of cinema 4d and
I think we're okay but basically I was
very excited to actually figure out a
way to make an umbrella open up and
animate it opening up and closing using
most planets the first time I figured
out a good way to use most blinds so
let's let's kind of break down how I
figured out how to do this let's just
jump into cinema 4d and here is the
finished version version uh Nana mated
you can see I used a combination of most
spline loft and just simply a cloner to
create this so let's go ahead let's uh
delete all this stuff start from new and
the first thing we'll need to do is
we'll create that capsule for our
umbrella or parasol whatever you want to
call it and then we're going to use some
most blinds with with a loft nerve to
actually create the little sections of
our umbrella and model our umbrella so
the first we want to do and the most
spline the way I figured it out is you
know when you make an umbrella you need
it to like kind of Bend and close and I
figured that the most plan was perfect
for that because it's a spline that you
can bend and curve and stuff like that
so once I was playing around with this
stuff like this is pretty much you know
like what an umbrella does where
you can kind of mess around with stuff
you
there's like a portion of our umbrella
and you can bend it and you can adjust
the curve this is like a curve from this
direction but you basically most blind
it the very basic is a spline that you
can curve and Bend and kind of
manipulate the way you would want to
so let's start building our little
portions or like the cage or the spine
of our umbrella so the first thing we're
going to do is adjust the length here so
maybe like 250 going to move this up
and let's see let's kind of bend this
down that's what we want and you can see
that we have this this is just like a
visual here let's actually go to our
object here and we don't want to see the
full shape let's just use a line or a
spline to visually see what we're doing
with our most line and for this I'm just
going to just have the end a little bit
shorter
let's adjust
we go negative here so maybe well let's
just let's model it completely open what
need to
and then what I'm going to do is create
another one and what I'm going to do
with this one is Bend this 45 degrees so
let's just go down here and get negative
45 so that'll be one portion and then in
the middle actually let me get my loft
herb here first you can see what we're
doing so let's get our loft place our
smo splines in here you can see that
I've modeled a section you know that an
umbrella has that little arc section in
the middle here so we need to create
that so I have my first line in my
second spline I'll need a spline in the
middle and since I need to put place
this halfway in between right in the
middle of the two that already made I
basically just need to divide this by 2
or 22.5 you'll see I have my center
section here basically all I need to do
is kind of make this n portion shorter
you can see I have this nice arc now
this is just going to be a section just
one part of my little umbrella so get a
little creative with this and you can
see that it's even bulging a little so
you might need to kind of Bend this in
ever so slightly maybe
maybe you do want that to kind of have a
little bulge if you want but usually
they kind of cave in a little bit if you
if you picture an umbrella since there
it's this piece of cloth that's being
tightened with the two metal pieces it's
going to be a little bit tight we're
kind of bent and/or bowing in a tiny
tiny bit so just subtly you can see it's
just very subtle how it bowed in just a
little bit so there's that and maybe
you
and just the angle and the bend
kind of get it to how you want it
goes a long way and again you can adjust
how much of an arc you want on your
little piece here so now we have one
piece of our object or of our umbrella
so I can duplicate this and I can give
these two different colors so if I want
my umbrella to be red and white I can
just make two and put red on one and
white or cream material on the other and
then we just basically clone these guys
and we'll make this cloned in the radial
mode we'll turn off the radio or we'll
bring down the radius we'll crank this
up to eight and we need to do a little
bit of transformation here so 90 and we
also need to actually rotate this all
the way up like so and here we go we
have our little umbrella so now since we
used most blinds to to create this we
can now animate like the bend and stuff
like this so now we can animate this to
be close if this is the open position
which we have right here we can animate
this to be close so you can actually
animate this by hand if you want to in
selecting you know each of these and
setting keyframes for all this stuff and
adjusting all this but what I like to do
is not worrying about key framing all
these individual things what I want to
do is let me just
sorry name and stuff here umbrella
umbrella pieces so this is piece
this one
this is peace - all right so I'm just
going to place all this stuff I'm going
to group it all together this will be
the umbrella group and what I'm going to
do now is get a pose morph tag now pose
morph tag basically store States of
objects so if you save a state make some
edits you can actually morph between
those two states so what I'm going to do
is choose which which attributes I want
to store and I'm just going to you know
you always want to do more than you
really need so you know points
parameters parameters is going to be the
big one just because it's going to be
the parameters mostly of the the most
lines here user data I don't think we
need but again better safe than sorry
and hierarchy is definitely one we're
going to need because we want to record
everything in our hierarchy in our
object hierarchy here so with all that
setup we're going to go to our tag and
this is going to be our base pose the
open pose and then it automatically
creates a second pose that we can
animate into so this will be our closed
pose and what we can do now is so these
are all the little like structural this
were like the metal pieces the metal
spine of our metal metal cage ribs or we
don't know what that you would call it
on the umbrella but the metal pieces
that are holding that cloth together of
the umbrella we can start manipulating
this and kind of closing this in and you
can adjust the angle if you'd like so
what we're going to need to do is
probably not Bend so much but going to
angle this down
and we're probably not going to want too
much of a bend but angle this down and
we'll do the same for that middle piece
or the piece that's kind of making that
arced section that's not being held by
that metal piece so we'll probably not
want to bend that much either and we'll
bring this down and you can already see
that that looks hey look at that that
looks like a closed umbrella but again
if you think about how a closed umbrella
is this is going to be loose cloth now
so it's not going to be very tight so
you can kind of make this a little more
bent if you would like so you can do
that another thing is that this looks
kind of weird at the top I'm not sure if
we can fix that by doing this somehow
yeah so if we make the start position
down we lose that
no if there's really too much of a way
we can get around that but that kind of
helps we adjust the start but
you might just want to leave it because
I feel like a real umbrella would have
that kind of bunching up at the top
anyways so we made all of our
adjustments here
and you can see that if we go in here I
mean if you want to get close enough you
can see some of the chunkiness here and
we can adjust that by adjusting the mesh
subdivision v here and I'll just kind of
smooth everything out if we really need
to but since we're kind of far out or
far out dude we're really don't have to
we're really not going to see that so we
don't really have to worry about that
but if you were and you were making a
bigger object or something you need to
smooth out that stuff you play around
with the mesh subdivision V so we have
our clothes pose and if we just adjust
the strength of this hose you can see
that we're animating from open to pose
or from up into clothes pose clothes
rhymes but you can see right there that
that's what's going on so maybe you know
we want maybe when it's closed we want
this to be even longer so we can kind of
embellish here and make these objects
and a little bit further to the bottom
here same with these let me just make it
longer
see how that looks
ooop so what we can do now is just kind
of prepare for maybe a little bit of
follow through animation so if you want
to make this more kind of cartoonish
looking if you see in my original piece
where opens up and it kind of flattens a
little bit see right there
a little follow through kind of stuff or
overshoot sorry you follow through if it
kind of bent upwards again alright so we
can actually set that pose as well so
let's go and just create add new pose
and this can kind of be the over shoot
pose and thing we can do with this is we
can adjust some of the angles so we can
move this up we can also adjust some of
the bend so maybe have this bent upwards
a little bit and then we can do the same
thing with our kind of V the rib pieces
of the spine pieces of the umbrella and
adjust these up and maybe adjust the
bend a little bit too now see how that
looks that looks so you can really see
that these are the pieces that have that
spine that metal piece in them so
actually
ah let's maybe straighten these out a
little bit more you can see in my
original that the umbrella kind of
flattens out a little bit so let's do
that
oh let's get all these metal pieces and
flatten them out then bring them in
and the same thing with the middle
pieces
and
this so it's a little bit less Bend
there we go so that looks pretty flat to
me so now all it is is a case of just
animating these poses so we got our open
or closed in our little overshoot bit so
now all I'll do is just reset these
sliders and what I'll need to do first
is just start from that closed post so
I'm going to have the clothes post set
to 100% go to frame 0 and set a keyframe
maybe go to frame 10 and close this and
this is where we're going to start or
overshoot and maybe the overshoot takes
about 5 frames and create our overshoot
there and then we'll need to bring this
back down to zero so let's actually go
into our timeline and see what the heck
we just did there
bring this over okay so here's our
timeline
we can hit play let me zoom out here let
me hit play see what this looks like
you see this isn't really timed out at
much at all so let me let me bring down
our composition 25 frames you can see
that our overshoot needs to do a little
bit of overlapping here so now we have a
little bit of that follow through or the
overshoot happening of our umbrella and
it's all done with a couple poses of the
most blinds here so we can get in here
and really try to tighten this up with
adjusting these key frames here so
actually with the open pose we kind of
don't want any ease in really want this
kind of snap open so maybe this happens
even faster now that means this portion
or the overshoot or the follow-through
of those little spline spines the metal
pieces of the most line snap a little
bit too so maybe we don't want too much
of this ease here
bring this ease down a little bit
getting close getting close
kind of time this out so it looks good
so one to snap umbrella snaps open poof
poof we could get this really extra
cartoony if we just kind of change the
spacing or the timing of these pieces
here these key frames and adjust the
spacing
that feels much better that feels more
better and that's it so we have our
clothes pose strength animated easing in
and we have our overshoot pose that is
animating here a little bit and remember
you can always kind of overshoot of the
dis original pose too so if you want to
flail open a little bit more you can see
I have a negative pose value in here of
negative 58 so I can change that too if
we go to my key value here on this key
frame maybe that's a little bit too much
maybe we just want to do a negative 30
you can see that that kind of spreads
open the umbrella a little bit more and
kind of adds to that overshoot strength
of the most blinds bending of the bend
strength not bending so much that feels
I don't know if that feels better or not
maybe just make it negative 10 negative
10 it just kind of flails out a little
bit more that feels good so now we have
our opening umbrella so this was done
with just some loft NURBS lofting some
most blinds and you can see as the pose
morphe is playing through you can see
these values of all my most blinds
moving as it's morphing from one state
to the other so that is it uh if you
have any questions be sure to post them
in the comments section I have other
tutorials on pose morphe if you want to
learn a little bit more about pose
morphe and how I use it to morph through
different objects I'll post that in the
tutorial post as well but that's it
that's my creative use for the most line
and the only reason that's the only way
I've found a use for the most bun but
you know I'd also like to hear if you've
found any cool uses for most one because
I know they can do a lot of things oh
one other thing I forgot is a really
cool thing is the most line you can
actually use particle forces so say you
wanted to do some kind of add some wind
you can have
in effect the umbrella so it's actually
affecting these most blinds so if we add
some turbulence here maybe some
turbulence frequency and we gave us a
little bit more time so this is like you
know I really should find more uses for
most blind because this is pretty cool
but again this is you probably wouldn't
want all the wind on single-most on all
these most blinds basically you would
just want the wind to affect the the
middle pieces here not the the pieces
that will be connected to that metal
spine par so we can say for these ones
exclude that wind áformer and then
you'll now only have the wind affecting
those middle pieces and now you kind of
have to do some adjustment here so maybe
that one's a little bit too much
and it's very subtle but you can see it
and then we can angle the wind up and
now you can really see it while doing
its magic doing its wind thing but ya
have a play with that that's just a fun
thing that you can do with most blind as
well as using effectors so you can use
particle forces and effectors on it so a
lot of uses for the most blind but this
is I need to figure out more ways to use
this because it can be super useful I
just need to dig into it more but yeah
that's that's it thank you guys so much
for watching again if you have any
questions post them in the comments if
you have any uses for most blind that
you've come up with would love to hear
that and that's it so thank you guys so
much for watching really appreciate it
and I'll see you in the next tutorial
bye everybody