Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create Colorful Feathers 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're gonna be having some fun
with feathers so you can see in my
viewport here got a lot of really fun
colorful feathers that I made and
cinema4d
our seventeen so I'm gonna be going over
one of the big new well one of my
favorite features instead of the new
version is the new pen tool and I think
it's actually better than the
illustrator version of the bear pen tool
about I'll be using that I'll be using
feathers and feathers is actually part
of the cinema4d hair module so if you
haven't used it before it's a lot of fun
it's actually very easy to play around
with and get going but the main
important part is how to build a feather
to actually make it look realistic
that's the tricky part so we're gonna be
going over all the options and how I
feel like you can create a very good
organic realistic feather inside of
cinema4d so let's go ahead and jump into
our composition alright so let's go
ahead and start a brand new scene let me
delete all of this stuff in here right
now so the first thing we need to do is
we're gonna build a spline that is going
to be the base of our feather
so in r17 is a really cool brand new
tool if I can only find it create spline
there we go still learning this stuff so
they have a new pen tool and it rivals
illustrators pen tool so illustrators
pen tool used to be a head but I feel
like the new pen tool in cinema 4d r17
is really really nice so you basically
just click in your viewport you already
have this like preview spline of what
your splines gonna look like as you lay
a second point so I can click and drag
and I got this Bezier handles that you
can drag around and all this stuff so
this is really nice so you get this nice
preview of where you're next how your
line or how your spline is going to
continue with this little preview here
you want to get out of the pen tool you
just click escape or if you want to
close the path you click escape so then
you can go and with the pen tool still
activated you can go and click on
individual points and adjust their
handles so really really cool the pen
tool in r17 so basically what we're
doing is just creating a curved spline
that we can have our feather kind of be
built upon so that's exactly what we're
doing right now and I think that looks
pretty good so we want this nice organic
kind of curve to start and then what
we're gonna do to actually create
feathers we're gonna go to simulate
we're gonna go to hair objects and under
hair objects we have feathers feathers
object here so to apply feather ish
effects onto a spline you just simply
drag your spline right underneath make
it a child of the feathers object and if
i zoom in here let me actually go
fullscreen into my perspective view you
can see that we have a bunch of like
splines or strands that have been
applied to our base blend that we
created here so if I go into the
interactive render region you can see
that this renders out whatever you have
with this default hair material so it's
all brown and kind of looks kind of
cruddy but now inside of the feather
object we have all these options and
stuff but you'll see that we actually
don't have like a base for our feather
and actually what that base is called is
the Rakus so the Rakus if i just this
Rakus radius you can actually see that
that's kind of spreading out these
little strands of hair or Barb's of not
not hair but Barb's of this feather so
these little little feathery strands are
technically called Barb's in the feather
object and then the the actual part that
kind of connects to the bird or whatever
is actually called the Arrakis so the
Rakus we actually still need to build
because there is no
I guess right right yet so that's
basically the Rakus radius what that
does is kind of spreads apart the barbs
from the bottom of the the base position
the starting position of our feather and
then from the top as well and typically
you wouldn't really move around these
very much but let's go ahead and just
create our little Rakus here and let's
go and the way we're gonna do this is
create a sweep object and what we're
gonna do is sweep a circle along this
spline and instead of just creating a
duplicating this spline what we're gonna
do is just create an instance of that
spline so I had the spline selected and
then chose an instance object and what
that'll do is create a spline instance
and it's referencing our original spline
so we're gonna use this spline and we're
gonna create we're gonna use the circle
spline and the spline instance drag it
underneath the sweep and you can see
that if I decrease the radius of my
circle spline here we now have our
little Rakus that we made with a sweep
object so we'll rename this Rakus and
then we'll just bring the end scale down
to zero and you can see that that kind
of tapers off and then I'll just apply
like a basic material to that and there
we go we got our Rakus and the nice
thing about making that creating that
spline instance is we can go into our
spline here and this will not only
update the feather Barb's and all that
stuff but it will actually update and be
changing where our Rakus is because
that's an instance and it's referencing
this original spline that we're now
editing so very handy indeed so let's go
ahead and start messing around with
these feather options here shall we
let's go right in here and a lot of this
stuff is very straightforward
so number one you'll notice a difference
between the amount of Barb's that you
can see in our interactive render region
and in our editor and this is due to the
fact that we have this editor level
level of detail and you can kind of
adjust this to kind of speed up your
viewport or if you just want to see what
this is gonna look like when it renders
you can just keep this at a hundred
percent but I like to just have
interactive render region going to
actually view what's going on so that is
the editor level of detail we also have
the we can generate hair or we can
generate splines we're just going to
stick with hairs right now and then
segments is basically how much detail is
in your hair segments so how many
segments is in your hair so the more
segments the smoother the spline or the
smoother the hair will be so if you
actually start bending it and stuff you
won't get like chunky sharp edges so if
you're just this segments and you
actually see this later we had we don't
have any displacement right now so you
really can't see anything yet the next
is spacing and we already messed around
with this Rakus radius and the top as
well so you can't actually go in here
and say okay well we just want a like a
one centimeter gap here but I mean it
really doesn't matter all that much but
that's what that does the start in the
end is actually where all of the barbs
start and end on your spline so you can
see as I adjust the start all of our
Barb's kind of are constrained to the
very top of our spline or if we just
don't want any kind of gaps at all we
just want our little feathery Barb's to
start at the very start of our spline we
can do that as well I'm just going to
leave that at 10% right now so this next
one kind of determines how much spacing
you have between each of these Barb's
it's very aptly named barb spacing and
typically you'll want to just leave this
at a fairly low number
and then when a nice thing about this
and what one of the things that is
really going to help sell a the illusion
of a organic feather is buy most of
these options that have variation you
want to add a little bit of variation
just to give it a little bit more
organic organic enos is that a word I'm
making it a word organic enos so each of
these options you want it just a little
bit I mean a little bit goes a long way
you can see that just a point four
centimeter really does a lot so let's
just actually do like a point one and
you can see that get that gives just a
little bit of randomization a little bit
more organic miss organic miss is the
word of the day today so now we have so
that was the barbed spacing and now
we're gonna do the barbed length so
basically that's just the length of each
of these barbs here and you can also
adjust the variation on these as well so
again a little bit goes a long way we
don't want to get too crazy with this
but like a variation of like one should
suffice pretty dang good so let's keep
that barbed length at 45 let's go ahead
to displacement here and you'll notice
as I adjust the displacement nothing is
happening and that's because
displacement is basically driven off of
modifications of these options down here
so we got cross section and we have
curve so what the cross section does I'm
actually going to go to my for view here
so we can get a little bit better
understanding of how or what's going on
when we adjust each of these so the
cross section I'm gonna hold command and
I'm gonna create a new point on this
spline editor and you can see that
what's going on is I'm creating a curve
on the right side of our feather here so
you can see that this is basically
adjusting a nice little curve in our
feather so we get this really nice
specular highlight action going on we
can do the same thing with this other
side and you don't want these to be
exactly the same because again we're
talking with or
janek material and organic feather and
nothing is gonna be exactly mirrored on
each side of these feathers so you can
kind of have a little bit of our
artistic license as far as where how how
these curves kind of are similar to one
another or how much differences you have
between each of these sides so you can
see that this that adds a really nice
little nice arc curve using that cross
section there so the next is an actual
curve so again if I go to the the curve
spline editor I'm just going to create a
new point by hitting the command key and
just gonna bring this point up and you
can see that that is actually let me
just zoom in here and you can see a
little bit better pay attention to this
side you can see that I'm creating
so the cross section kind of had an arc
going up in the y-direction this is kind
of or not in the Y but the the Z and the
curve is creating a curve in the Y
direction so you can see if I create
another spline here or another spline
point here we're getting a nice arc
going the other way and I can also kind
of bring this point up on either side
and kind of have it like that so you can
have a lot of fun with how your how your
Barb's are kind of curved out on your
feather so right now well it's looking
pretty good we get this really nice
specular highlight you can really get a
sense of that depth of this feather
because of the arc settings or the arc
displacements that we set up with our
cross section and our curve and then I'm
just going to go back to our
displacements so remember those
displacement tab we weren't really
changing anything and that was because
we had no displacement form our cross
section or our curves so now we can
actually go to our displacement and
start messing around with this and
basically what this is doing it's an
overall like strength control over that
the spline editor curve changes that we
changed in our curve and our cross
sections you can see this is just kind
of like overall strength of everything
here so what can actually do is go into
our variation and adjust a little bit of
variation so again just a little bit
goes a long way and let's just go to our
perspective view here so just a little
bit of variation there for the curve top
and we can actually adjust the strength
of the curve on the base of our the base
of our feather so typically you will
have more curve on the base of a feather
than you will at the curve on the top so
just keep that in mind I think that's
true but again you can adjust the
variation on these both of these as well
so I just choose like a one centimeter
in that again just as a little bit of
that organic randomness to our feather
let's see in the displacement again is
the displacement of the cross section
there so you can adjust the overall
strength there and again adjust
variation on your cross section so if i
zoom in here you can see that that adds
a little bit of variation there cool so
that's again that's a little bit too
much if we do a little bit too much
variation that kind of starts to look a
little bit like pillowy or just it
doesn't it looks too frizzy to be a real
feather unless you want one of those
like feather fake feather boa things and
that those are like really frizzy but
we're not doing that we're not making no
pink boas but so that is the
displacement options here so again just
a little very little bit of variation
goes a long way so the next thing is the
rotation and that just kind of this
controls the rotation of all of our
feather Barb's we have the rotation step
where we can get some really crazy stuff
going on there kind of looks like a DNA
helix but the one thing that the one
important option here is the Arrakis
rotation and you can see that what the
does is rotates individual Barb's here
so again if we adjust this a little bit
and then have a little bit of Barb
rotation here so this is like rotation
and the X and rotation in the Y and
again I just like to give this just a
little bit of rotation here just again
to give it a little bit of organic a
little bit more organic nests so
actually for the rotations you probably
want to go a little bit lower than 1% so
just a little bit like maybe half a
degree and that should be just enough
maybe even it a little bit less so just
very very subtle variations in all of
these options here really add up as you
can see here is we're not very uniform
looks very organic and then our last
thing that we can do as far as the barbs
go and adding variation is the gaps here
so what the gaps do does is if I
increase the gap nothing's gonna happen
we actually need to set a gap width or
height or whatever this this is the
centimeter option here and then we need
to actually adjust the occurrence so
this is how often gaps will occur on our
feather here you so you can see at an
occurrence of 15 we have quite a few
gaps and then once you actually have
some gaps applied via this occurrence
you can adjust the variation on each of
these gaps so again you just want a
little bit so that looks pretty good
you just want maybe just a few more gaps
in there so again this is looking pretty
good but again our shape the profile of
our of our Barb's are just totally
linear going up and down we actually
need to adjust the shape of our feather
and that's we can actually do that in
our shape field here so we have again
two spline editors like we had for the
cross section in the curve
and if we go ahead and again I'm gonna
command ya command click and create a
new spline point and I'm just going to
adjust the spline curve here you can see
that this is going to really define the
how our feathers gonna look is based off
of this spline right here so I'm gonna
adjust the end point over here maybe
create a fourth point and let me what
let me zoom out here and you can see
that we're now getting the shape of a
feather and again looking pretty organic
and again adding to the whole organic
looking thing is you can control both
sides so it's not an exact mirror unless
you really want it to be so again I'm
just going to create some more points on
this side and you can see that what
we're doing is basically creating the
profile of our feather that we can see
in both of these two shape splatters
here so you can see that updating in our
viewport so you have full control over
how your feather profile kind of looks
so you can have a lot of fun with this
and kind of create whatever kind of
feather you want and there you go so
again you don't want to want them to
have exact sides because again nothing
in nature is perfect so you just want a
little bit of some differences to add a
little bit more character to some of
these feathers I feel like I feel like
we're talking about like happy trees or
something with Bob Ross but we're gonna
make some happy feathers each one's
gonna have their own little nice
personality right didn't you say that
about all the trees happy trees but yeah
so this this feather looks pretty happy
you don't you agree so that's enough
playing around with that so we got our
good feather shape looking pretty good
and that's basically all the options in
the feather object the one thing we need
to do now is adjust the hair material
because
feathers really don't have this much
specularity on them but since we're well
we can just go to color and we're gonna
go to will actually go down to specular
first I'm gonna adjust the specular here
so we want a little bit of specular but
just we want to tone it down we still
want a sense of this nice little depth
that's created by the arc of our feather
but this is just way way too much so
what we're gonna do and just bring down
the strength of our first a primary
specular here and we'll bring the
sharpness down to five so the strength
yeah the strength that 5% the sharpness
at 5% so you can see that we still have
our secondary specular going but you can
see that we tone down the specular
overall quite a bit so for the secondary
strength we can leave this at 80 but
let's bring the sharpness down to 5 and
we can just give this a nice kind of
like matte finish to our feather so
that's looking pretty good just enough
specular to get a sense that this is a
curved that all these Barb's are kind of
curved and that when we actually put
lights in here the specular the slight
specular will really play off of those
lights that will be added to our scene
so the next thing is we'll just adjust
the thickness here we're gonna change
the tip from point one centimeters to
zero so you can see that that we now
have very very where our Barb's start
thick and then just kind of taper off to
nothing and actually are actually our
Barb's are fairly thick so let's
actually just bring the route down to
about point six and you can see that
we're starting to get a lot more gaps in
here so let's go ahead and fill that in
by adjusting our barb spacing on our
feather object so instead of 0.4 let's
do point two and you can see that we
kind of filled in a lot of the gaps
there and then I think the gaps these
gaps are a little bit too big so let's
just number one bring down the the gap
centimeters and then adjust the
variation as well so that's
I think that's looking pretty good yeah
so just a little bit looks good
so let's go back into our hair material
and I don't like brown Browns not very
exciting so let's actually go and in my
example I had a lot of bright colors and
you can see down here so let's let me
just go ahead and show you how I changed
the material so if you didn't notice
that when you when you actually create a
feathers object there's already a
default hair material applied to it and
this is default Brown and we can adjust
the color in this gradient right here so
we can go like this but one thing you'll
notice is that your by default you're
really stuck with coloring the feather
from the tip of the barb to the end of
the barb as a gradient but what if you
wanted to actually have the gradient
going up and down so say you wanted
Brown at the bottom and green at the top
what we'd have to do is actually number
one not use this default color gradient
here what we'd actually have to do is go
into the texture and create a gradient
and the one thing you'll notice that
once we create a gradient it's actually
set in the right 2d space but we're
actually not seeing the gradient going
from top to bottom and we actually need
to do one thing to our hair material tag
here and that is going to the tag go
into the tag settings and we have this
hair you v's and if you actually check
this out it's going to be very obvious
what you need to do is once you go to
here hair view you v's by default it's
set to symmetrical we actually just need
to change this and say hey hair material
we're actually using we're actually
creating a hair material for a feather
so we need to change the hair UV space
that will work best with the feather so
once I change that to feather you'll see
that number one if I go to my gradient
that's now
okay but we're actually in the wrong
direction so we're actually I lied we
are in the wrong direction but if we go
to the V there we go now we have the
black part of our grading at the bottom
and it gradually gradates to white so
again if I didn't have that hair UV
setting set correctly you'll see the
issue we would have ran into so I
actually didn't have that to do that the
type correct but I needed to change it
to feather anyways so yeah so now we can
change this to let's go and change this
to yellow let's make this a very bright
tropical bird feather and let's just
have that bright orange and then weak or
bright yellow and then change this to an
orangish kind of thing and that looks
pretty good and you can adjust these
knots to kind of have this applied as
you want them to but you can see that
you've been just having a gradient like
this also adds some really nice depth
and you can get a sense of the form of
the feather as it curves back as you can
see with the the spline and again you
can always go into this spline and give
it even more of a curve on this feather
so we get even more a sense of depth and
we can actually you know just this so
it's not completely linear up and down
so again and everything will update
since we have that spline instance so
then how I created my little composition
was I created a number one a few more
hair materials with different gradient
colors and then basically what I did was
just kind of grouped my feather object
and the Rakus object grouped them
together and I'll just rename this
yellow feather and then I just
duplicated it let's change this to the
purple feather and then
I already pre-made the different hair
material color so I just applied that
new hair material to the feather object
let me just move this hair material over
or this whole feather over and then for
each one of these you want to add a
little bit of difference a little
variation to each of these feathers
again each of these feathers are happy
feathers and they all have their own
individual personalities as Bob Ross
would probably say so again I'm just
going to change some of the stuff the
how the spline is I'm going to go into
the feathers object and again just kind
of adjust a lot of these things in here
just the spacing a little bit maybe can
adjust the curve base maybe not have
that as curved adjust the variation on
these the rotation perhaps and then the
biggie is of course adjusting the the
shape of each of these feathers here so
this is going to give each of these a
lot of different character and really
help sell the fact that these are just
completely different
feathers and they all have their own
differences
everyone's a special little feather so
yeah and then what I did was just kind
of duplicate there's a couple more times
I'm just going to kind of blow through
this part so just hair feather I can't
spell feather and then apply a red
material to this guy move them over and
then just very quickly I'm just gonna
just the shape this there we go
maybe you're just the spline just very
quickly cool and then with
do one more and this will be the teal
feather and very tropical it might be
the end of summer but hey let's let's
keep it nice and tropical inside of
cinema 4d again we can adjust the spline
a little bit and that's looking pretty
good so then what I did was just to
create my composition I just got a
little bit creative with number one
laying these out in 3d space and kind of
rotating these feathers around so what
they're kind of overlapping one another
maybe scaling one of them up and the big
thing here will be to add some lights
because right now you can see as I'm
layering these guys let me turn this
yellow feather upside down like so cool
so that's looking pretty good let's
where's our teal where's our teal
bringing our teal back let's put that
there so everything's layered in z space
and you can see that there's no shadows
on here because of course we have no
lights so let's go ahead and change that
really quick let's go ahead and and
light to our scene and move this light
out so we're getting a little bit of
diffuse shading and actually I think our
red no okay I thought we're overlapping
a little bit I think this feather might
be overlapping something else okay so we
have our diffuse shading from the shadow
but again our from the light but again
no shadow because we of course haven't
set any shadows yet and your best
options probably gonna be the shadow map
soft because area is really gonna take a
long time to render so keep that in mind
so I'm just going to turn on shadow map
soft and already you can see that that
really adds a lot of nice depth by
adding shadows and those shadows are
going to be cast on each of our
strands or our little barbs of our
feathers and right now there's not a
whole lot of detail because of the fact
that our shadow map resolution is very
low so you can see if I bring my light
up you can see especially on the purple
feather and a little bit here we get
this a very soft shadow what we can do
is increase the shadow map resolution so
Jack this up to maybe a thousand and you
can see we're getting a lot more detail
a lot more sharpness on our soft shadow
so again what we can do is go ahead and
create another light and just kind of
move it over here and maybe turn down
the intensity will turn down the
intensity of our first light as well and
let's let's go to our first light and
let's create a give this a realistic
fall off right now so now we have this
fall off and so now we're getting a
little bit uneven diffuse of light
casting on this so we get more sense of
the depth of our feathers and then the
last thing I want to do is actually go
in and create a background so we'll just
create a plane just so we have something
actually cast our shadows on to let's
just orient this in the positive Z scale
this sucker up and place a white
material on the back here and what I did
was for the background I just used the
white color and just increase the
luminance a little bit and then just
gave it a little bit of a very big
specular highlight so you can actually
see two shadows showing up from this and
one is because of our second light so
let's actually bring this light out here
and let's change this to a lower let's
change the shadow on our second
like to lesser more soft shadow and on
our first light let's change the color
of our shadow to maybe something blueish
so it looks a little bit more
interesting let's make it maybe make it
like a brighter blue like so and so
right there we got some really nice
shading happening let's actually
increase bring this down increase the
intensity and adjust the position of our
light so that's looking pretty good
um see for second light bring down the
shadow and now I'm just kind of doing
annoying TWiki things but you kind of
get the point basically what I wanted to
convey in this tutorial was number 1 how
to create feathers and number 2 how to
make those feathers happy so I hopefully
kind of conveyed how to do both those
things and again you can adjust the the
composition of these feathers to change
the different colors of feathers and
stuff like that but feathers are really
fun in cinema 4d to actually render them
out though you could to render out the
Alpha you actually need to go into your
multi pass and what you'll need to do is
add a post effect where is it
yeah post effects here and what that
will do is create a you'll render out a
pass with just your hair just you're
just your feathers action going on there
so just keep that in mind when you
actually go to render but yeah there you
go that is how to create a fun colorful
feather composition inside of cinema 4d
thanks a lot for watching guys I'll
always appreciate your guys's views and
I will see you in the next tutorial bye
guys