Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Melting Paint Drips With X-Particles in Cinema 4D Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from Aya's I'm calm
and today I'm here with my very first X
particles tutorial in this tutorial I'm
going to teach you how to use X
particles and some of the really cool
things inside of cinema 4d to create
this kind of nice paint drippy melty
waxy kind of effect using X particles
and again with some of the native things
inside a cinema 4d so the great part
about X particles is the workflow is
very familiar with what you're used to
like using in cinema 4d with cinema 4d
the Moga mograph module and stuff like
that so a lot of this stuff makes a lot
of sense but it's so deep X particles is
such a deep piece are just such a deep
plugin that you really need to sit down
and take some time to learn everything
or you're going to get completely lost
like I kind of did so once you actually
figure out what each of the modifiers do
what each of the generators do it's very
very simple so it's almost like if you
just jumped into mograph and cloners and
effectors and stuff you you have to
learn a little bit to know how
everything kind of works in that kind of
workflow so it's the same thing with X
particles and today I'm going to show
you the workflow I came up with to
create this kind of drippy plasticky
melty kind of thing going on here so
let's just go and jump in and get
started with some X particles so the
object I'm going to be melting is this
Banjul I made it out of a just a simple
spline that you can see right here if I
turn everything else off so it's just
this spline it's in 3d space you can see
on the top view here we have some nice
depth on the Z and basically just a did
a spline wrap on a capsule and if I turn
everything on you can see that I created
my Bonjour
a little script here and just have a
sphere for the little dot on the J so
and the reason why I have this all under
a connect object is because I want to
kind of have these both the main Bonjour
script and the sphere here kind of act
as one single object so that's what the
connect object does is basically melds
everything together and treats
everything as if it was one big huge
mesh so what I'm going to be using with
this connect object is this is what
we're actually going to be building our
little blobby object and it's going to
spell out the same the same word here
and we're just going to generate a whole
bunch of particles and basically rebuild
this out of particles that we can then
start melting and kind of effecting the
particles with gravity I'm getting a
little bit ahead of myself so let's just
go ahead and just create recreate this
script using just particles so with X
particles it's very easy
the this this kind of workflow if you
understand a decent amount of X
particles you should be able to follow
along fairly easy so to get an emitter
we're just going to grab this XP emitter
and by default what it has is just the
emitter shape of a rectangle and we
actually need to use this object this
connect object to actually emit
particles so we can change the emitter
shape from rectangle to object so now we
can this is where that connect object
comes in handy is since it's treating
both our script with our spline wrap and
the sphere we can just drag this connect
object and what I'm going to do is just
kind of hide the connect object from
view and so we have our Bonjour connect
being the object emitter shape and what
we're going to do we don't want to omit
from the polygon Center if I hit play
you can see that it's just emitting from
the center what we actually want to do
is emit from
the object's volume we want to fill up
the volume of that object with particles
and the first thing that you'll see is
number one there's not a whole lot of
particles there but number two all of
our particles are moving around because
it has an emission speed and so we're
just going to bring down the speed to
zero so it just kind of appears and what
we're going to do is change this
emission mode from rate which kind of
has a birth rate throughout the whole
entire composition we just want this to
shoot out a whole bunch of particles and
just be stationary so to do that we're
going to change the emission mode from
rate - just a pulse so we're just going
to have a single pulse of particles and
we're going to turn off in middle frames
we're just going to have a length of one
frame and the start emission is going to
start at zero and the end emission is
going to just be one frame and for the
birthrate will actually bring this up
fairly high to about 25,000 particles
because we need to have enough particles
to define the actual shape so that we
actually apply the scanner to make a
blobby it actually still looks smooth
and has that really nice defined shape
of our original Bonjour object so what
we're going to do now is just hit play
and you'll notice that even though our
birth rate is set to 25,000 particles
you can see that this does not look
anywhere near to 25,000 particles so X
particles is kind of screwing us here
what's going on like we ordered more
particles than this you gave me that
what's going on so the the important
part about using the object volume is
this max retries and what's this max
retries does is the lower the number the
speedier the calculation to fill up your
object volume is but the less accurate
so right now the max retries FET set
very low but if you notice I cranked up
the max retries from 20 to 500 go to
frame 0 and hit play you can see that we
have a lot more particles actually
filling up our volume react we can
actually make out the form or the actual
geometry the volume of that Bonjour
shape so basically what this why it set
it at a lower Mac stream retry amount is
because the higher you go the more
calculations and the slower your
viewport will go or the slower will take
to calculate that volume but we really
don't have to worry about that because
we're just kind of generating particles
and not even moving this set of
particles and this is part of the whole
workflow is we're going to use this one
emitter to create our form we're going
to then use a second emitter so this is
actually looking pretty good we have a
we can actually make out the form so
what we're going to do is use a second
emitter and what we're going to use this
second emitter for let me just grab a
second emitter here I'm going to rename
our original emitter just our main
emitter and the second emitter this will
be our drip emitter there we go so we're
going to have a whole separate set of
we're gonna have a whole separate
emitter to actually create the drips
based on the particles that we generated
with the main emitter and the reason why
we do this is because we're going to be
applying a lot of effects like gravity
and fluid dynamics and stuff that we
don't want to really apply to our whole
entire rig so to be able to have full
control we're just going to create
another emitter that we can then apply
different effects to and generate more
particles based on this main emitter
particle mesh basically so once we have
our drip emitter what we're going to do
to actually use this emitter to generate
more particles based off of this main
emitter particle pulse is by using
what's called a spawning emitter are
just a spawn object now if I go to
modifiers here let's see where is it
generate and we have XP spawn and what
XP spawn does it's very aptly named it
just spawn
particles based off of it another
emitter group so the spawning emitter
that we want to use is this drip emitter
so I'm just actually let's just rename
this as spawning emitter so this is
going to be the emitter that's going to
be spawning new particles based off of
this main emitter group so notice what
happens when I go and we have the
spawning emitter option here I'm going
to drag in our spawning emitter into
that you're going to see that that icon
changed so basically what we're doing is
we're using this spawn object to spawn
more particles based off of this other
object here so what we can do is if I go
to my spawning emitter let's just change
the speed down to zero and you can see
in my XP spawn what it's actually doing
is it's going to spawn 300 particles
from every single particle from our main
emitter and that's a lot so I'm just
going to bring this down to one and what
we can do is just hit play and right now
nothing's really happening so let's
actually add a modifier so let's
actually add some gravity so we can
actually see some stuff happen to our
actual spawned particles here so let's
go to modifiers let's grab gravity here
so one thing we need to keep in mind
when we add modifiers to our scene is
that we're not affecting our main
emitter with it so we're if we go to
modifiers and we can go to the exclude
mode we're going to exclude the gravity
from our main emitter here so our main
emitter those particles are just staying
there they're not doing anything they're
sitting there staying there just
chilling out and everything we're going
to actually modify is the particles that
are created by the spawning emitter and
the spawn so now if we hit play you'll
see that we now generate with our spawn
we have one one set of particles
spawning from that twenty
me what do we have here 25,000 particles
so we're spawning 25,000 particles each
second so we have one spawn number and
the timing is per second and we can
actually just have this spawn once and
we can actually have this kill the
original particle so the original main
emitter particle after it gets spawned a
new particle so if I change that to and
if I turn on this option see what
happens is what we just killed all those
original particles and we have those
spawn particles just falling through the
ground so let's actually fix the fact
that that's all of our particles are
falling through the floor so I have this
plane object here that I have hidden I'm
just going to go ahead and make this
dynamic and this is the greatest part
about X particles it's just the workflow
is so familiar to the workflow that
you're already used to with dynamics
tags and stuff like that so if you want
to have an object collide into particles
we just simply add this XP Collider to
the plane object that's acting as our
floor and if I hit play you'll see that
our original main emitter particles have
worse put that initial pulse and then
within that second we're having those
we're having a new set of particles
spawn from those original main emitter
particles and those are the ones that
have gravity applied to it so the cool
part about this and we also have them
colliding into our four now because we
have that emitter tech so the whole
reason why we create this whole second
emitter is the fact that the XP spawn
has a fall-off so this is the key to
this whole workflow so what I'm going to
do is change this from infinite I'm
going to change this to sphere so let's
go ahead and let's just put our our
spherical fall-off right about there I
hit play you can see that we're now only
affecting wherever this fall-off go so I
can actually move
this around and actually have gravity
effect this based on this fall off so
basically this spawn emitter turns into
a like a gravity fall off almost and
again since we have our our kill
original particle after spawning turned
on it's just killing those original
particles and then just when those spawn
particles are created they're getting
affected by the gravity so if we
actually want to keep the original main
emitter particles we can just turn that
kill original particle after spawning
after spawning off hit play and you can
see that we're now just having particles
just kind of fall and this is I think
you're almost you're seeing where I'm
going with the whole drip thing
happening so this is all well and good
let's actually create some form to this
whole scene because right now if I
render we don't have anything those are
just particles we actually need to apply
a mesh to the emitters here and to
create geometry based on these particles
so to do that the really fun thing I
like playing around with is this XP
Skinner and basically this just applies
a geometry mesh to a particle to a group
of particles so what we're going to do
is first we need to set some sources of
what we're going to apply meshes to and
we're going to apply meshes to this main
emitter and you can see we have this big
huge blob Umesh now and we're also going
to apply it to our spawning emitter so
both of our emitters here because we
don't want just our main emitter to have
geometry but we also want all the spawn
particles to have geometry tooth's
because these are going to be our drips
eventually so the first thing we can do
is change this surface from heart to
something more fluid looking like this
zu Brig Brinson I don't even know if I'm
announcing that right but so what we're
going to do is so that gives it a little
bit of a tighter mesh we're just going
to play around with some of these
settings here and and the big thing
about X particles is that it's a lot of
just trial and error and just kind of
messing around and screwing around with
options and seeing what works and what
doesn't
so this preserve volume just kind of
preserves the actual original volume of
the particles and the one thing that is
very helpful is under the smoothing tab
the geometry you can see that if I turn
that on turn that off there's a huge
difference you can see that when the--
the smoothing geometries turned on it
just smooths out our whole entire mesh
and makes it look really really nice so
you can turn this up or down here the
more iterations you go the more smooth
it gets so maybe artistically you like
this thinner kind of look go for it I
want a little bit of a kind of thicker
mesh going on here so again we can
adjust the preserve volume if we want to
but that's looking that's looking pretty
good right now
so we actually have a mesh now and I
have this material already this kram
material that you can actually find in
the my text edge Pro material a little
set there so if you buy that you have
that already so I just have this really
nice kind of crayon texture and really
makes this look nice and plastically and
kind of gooey gooey and almost kind of
cheesy I guess so the next thing we need
to do is so we have our Skinner we have
our spawn we have our gravity if I
actually hit play and let's see where's
our spawn fall-off you can see that
where my spawn fall-off is our spherical
fall-off we actually have some drips
happening based on all of our particles
falling and since we're also
buying a Skinner mesh to all those
emitted particles and we're getting
these little drips but they're not as
nice as these nice strands of drips
going on in the original picture that I
showed you guys so the final piece to
this puzzle is adding one more modifier
and not a modifier but something that
can generate more particle information
that is the XP trail so this is just
like a tracer in mograph module we can
actually have particles create trails
that we can then also skin as well so
I'm going to go ahead and bring that XP
trail into the Skinner so whatever these
trails
so whatever trails XP trail generates it
will also be skinned with geometry so
again I need to make sure that my main
emitter does not have any trail stuff
going on at all and we can go and go
into our trail and we need to set what
emitter we want we're going to bring
this the spawning emitter in there we
don't want a full scene trail we just
want a specific length of trail so
actually the default settings here of a
trail length of 30 frames or 1 second
works we can get a little bit of
variation in there by just setting a
little bit of frame like 5 frames and
hit play and actually let me turn off
the Skinner here so we can just see the
particles in action and the actual XP
trail so you can see that where my
gravity is we now have a whole crap ton
of trails being traced by all of our
particles that are then moving and
falling due to the gravity and actually
the one thing I want to do is this
gravity set way too high if we want
these nice plasticky drips those drips
kind of move very slowly they don't
really fall all that fast so let's
actually bring our gravity strength down
to say say 230 we can give a little bit
of
variation there so it's not all uniform
falling so now if I hit play again you
can see that it's not a lot slower it
looks a lot more believable that this is
some kind of like GUI GUI thing we can
actually bring down the gravity strength
a little bit more but the the the final
thing is so actually that wasn't the
final piece of the that wasn't the final
piece of the puzzle but that when I do
turn that on you can see we do have
these really nice trails but the thing
you'll notice is that these just kind of
fall down and don't really do anything
after that and it doesn't really look
all that liquidy because what we need to
do is actually apply some fluid dynamics
to this whole entire shebang and so what
we're going to do is again we don't want
to have any fluid dynamics on our main
emitter so I'm going to go and put that
in the exclude just wanted to affect our
spawning emitter I'm actually going to
on our spawn I'm going to bring the
scale down because I don't want this big
huge strand of blob eNOS happening I
don't want a big huge drip so if we go
into our fluid we want Collider
reactions and again a lot of X particles
just trial and error and just kind of
messing around but what I found that
looked the best was just bring
everything to about ten percent so the
viscosity the repulsion but the one main
thing is the density so you want this to
be so if it's plastic it's not going to
be as light and viscous as like water so
to make this more heavier dense fluid
we're going to crank up the density to
about five thousand and if I hit play so
you can see that we have our spawn right
here and if I just bring up the fall-off
a little bit more
you can see that now this is kind of
when it reacts with the ground it acts a
little bit more liquidy so we have this
nice liquidy drop happening so now and
you can see as the particles are falling
this is kind of spreading out just like
you would think some melted plastic
would look so if I just pause that right
there hit render this look really really
good just even just this one little
liquidy kind of drip and I just love how
it kind of piles up and then kind of
smoothes and disperses out and the
dispersion is all through the XP fluid
here and it's actually controlled by the
stiffness so if you don't want those
drips to spread out I have the stiffness
all the way down to zero let's see if
this works so number one you can see
that everything's clumping together a
lot more and once it hits the floor
there is no spreading so this does not
act like liquid so the big the big part
of this looking really good is having
this stiffness value and look at just
what happened that looks really really
awesome right there so there's a lot of
happy accidents that happen just
experimenting with X particles and like
I said I've said this a couple of times
X particles is all about experimentation
I think that's what the X stands for
experimenting with particles and you
have a lot of fun with it too so the
stiffness all the way up you get this
nice really nice liquidy stuff going on
and the build-up and the spread you can
also control how it impacts the four by
going into your XP or your X particles
Collider tag we don't want any bounce
with our particles we just want the
liquid to kind of melt and fall one
thing we can adjust here is bring up the
friction and maybe adjust the friction
variation so again it's less uniform
let's just hit play again
and again you can go and just bring this
spawn
around and just bring the fall-off all
over the place and you can see that this
is creating except for right there you
got to be careful with where you place
the fall-off so you can get this big
explosion stuff going and actually I've
found how to kind of prevent those
explosions from happening is going to
the XP spawn going to the fall-off and
just bringing the fall-off to a hundred
percent so it's just going to be nice
smooth gradual fall off from the very
center of the sphere to the outside so
it's going to be this nice ramp so
basically what you can do is just start
playing around with the fall-off shape
and seeing what looks good what's
creating some really nice drips from
your mesh and then basically what I've
done is just kind of gotten creative and
experimenting with duplicating so I'm
going to hit command and just drag and
I'm going to duplicate via this XP spawn
and just place it all over this word
here just kind of place it all over the
place what I found works really good is
just placing if you fall offs
towards the bottom of the mesh here so
like I have at the bottom of the oh and
even just kind of playing around with
where what looks best with positioning
these fall offs so basically just
selectively and creatively I'll just
kind of put these just have your little
artistic license that you got into
school that you carry around your wallet
and just kind of place these wherever
you want and then just kind of hit play
again experimentation particles and then
with all these fall-off kind of in our
mesh we're now creating a whole bunch of
drips and that's looking pretty dang
cool so again if these drips are falling
way too fast which I almost think they
are just bring the
gravity strength down and with the
gravity strength you also have to keep
in mind that your trail is only going to
last 30 frames so if you're really
slowing things down and you need to
extend your trails just bring that trail
length up a little bit so I think that's
looking pretty good
let's just stop it right there and the
final thing I want to show you is so
again X particles is really awesome with
just the fact of how cohesive it is and
how compatible it is with everything
inside of cinema 4d and the one thing
that I like to use a lot is just using
particles X particles with deformers and
one two former that really came in handy
for me with this project let me just add
just one more spawn let's get some more
drips going on here scale this up just
want to have a few more drips just so I
can show you this final thing put the
icing on the cake the drippy icing so
again you got to be careful with where
you position your spawns because if
they're inside the mesh that's going to
kind of explode out some of those
particles in there
so you want to have that Center not
directly inside the mesh there all right
so now our drips are happening they're
going which one's going to win oh is the
O the O drip one all right so we got
we're just playing this out getting the
drips here so the final thing I wanted
to show you guys is by using so again
you can use deformers and a lot of other
objects that exist in cinema 4d with X
particles the one thing I like to use
with the skinner is the smoothing deform
er so I'm just going to make the
smoothing to former a child of the
skinner and you can see that
automatically we just smooth the heck
out of everything and really made this
really gooey looking so I'm just going
to hit render you can see that just by
applying that smoothing
deformer that that really smoothed out
our mesh even on top of the smoothing it
that you can do in the XP Skinner
sometimes the XP scanner can get you
some of the way but then applying the
smoothing to former can get you the rest
so maybe that's a little bit too much of
smoothing so you can bring the
iterations down this the stiffness is
the higher the stiffness the less
smoothing you're going to get so if you
want way more smoothing just bring this
the stiffness value down so again render
this out and again you can have a lot of
fun with again experimentation particles
experimenting with your Skinner the
surface type the smoothing on this the
the custom radius the polygon size and
again you have the render polygon size
so it's kind of like a metal ball mesh
where you can have the viewport size and
then the actual render size but I'd say
this looks pretty dang good I would say
that would put a lot more spawn points
just to have more drips happening but
that's basically how you use X particles
to create this nice little liquidy
plastic e drips like I have in this
final composition here so that was it
that was my first X particles tutorial
hopefully that made sense I've just been
getting into X particles a lot lately
and having a ton of fun again
experimenting with it a lot of this is
just trial and error there's there's
just so many options it's such a deep
plugin and not a lot of documentation
out there not a lot of people doing
tutorials on this stuff so it's kind of
you just have to kind of do it by brute
force and see what works what doesn't
just by kind of tweaking all the options
here so if you have any questions I know
you might have a few just let me know
I'd be happy to help you guys out I
really want to see if you guys are
messing around with X particles I want
to see if you guys can recreate this I
want to see your dripping your drippy
particle compositions and renders and
stuff and be sure to post them in the
comment section and all that good stuff
sand
again if you have questions just let me
know and if you want more X particles
tutorials let me know what you want to
see and I'd be happy to kind of mess
around and see if I can figure it out so
thanks a lot for watching everyone and I
will see you guys in the next tutorial
bye guys