Cinema 4D Tutorial - How To Create Abstract Paint Strokes in Cinema 4D Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and today we're going to be making some
cool kind of abstract pink stroke or
I've even heard it being called kind of
like a salt water taffy kind of text
look so you can see on the screen right
now what what we're going to be building
in this tutorial so you can see this has
this really nice organic II kind of
paint brush II candy paint texture on
top of this and if we actually make this
animate let me just open up this little
gift that I made you can see that we
have this really nice organic undulation
really nice organic movement that we
will be applying to our text and this is
basically what I came up with through
experimentation with a few things in
cinema 4d so this is something I created
before just some like really abstract
looking candy looking stuff so I kind of
took that this idea and applied it to
some text and came up with this and so
this is what I'm going to be breaking
down today in this tutorial so let's
just go ahead and get started here
alright so we have my scene here all set
up and I have my hello spline that I'm
going to be using to create this kind of
abstract paint stroke or a Laffy Taffy
or Swiss saltwater taffy whatever you
want to call it but you'll notice the
big thing that you want to keep in mind
when you're building your spline is
giving it enough depth z depth that you
don't have your object that you're going
to sweep along this spline you want to
give it enough room to breathe this so
it's not overlapping so you'll see that
I have very big expressive strokes on my
spline and I have a lot of Z depth so
there's going to be a lot of room for a
thick object to be swept along this
spline so that's the first key in
getting this kind of effect set up so
what I need to do is then create an
object that I will sweep along this
spline and the in the object that I'm
going to use is a capsule object and
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
sweep this along our spline first thing
I'm going to do is adjust the
orientation
so it's going left and right so we have
a positive X orientation and what I'm
going to do is go ahead and to get this
wrapped around our spline we're going to
go ahead and grab a spline wrap it will
make that a child of our capsule and
then what we have to do then is define a
spline that we want to wrap this capsule
object around this geometry of the
capsule and I'm just going to choose
this hello spline drag it into the
spline field and you'll see that right
now we have a very chunky looking
capsule and that is because our height
segments set very low once we up the
height segments you'll see that we're
smoothing everything out and for right
now I'm just going to leave this at 50
because what I'm going to do in the
workflow that I'm going to be going
through with this is I want to have my
capsule object fairly low poly and then
I'll smooth it out later on and the
reason for this is because I'm going to
be applying deformers that are really
going to be slowing down my scene if I
have a very high poly capsule here so
I'll go into that a little bit more
later on but that's just why I'm going
to leave this low poly for now so right
now I'm going to adjust the radius so I
want to make this a little bit thicker
and then I'm going to adjust the height
to about let's do 1375 or so so now we
got this nice actually undid that
accidentally and so right now you can
see that we have a nice full object it's
low poly right now right now I have the
mode set to fit spline and also I have
the end mode I'm just going to change
that to clamp because I don't want that
to extend past the boundaries of my
spline so everything is looking good so
far but again we have to deal with this
chunkiness and the way that I'm going to
deal with that and keeping my speed up
in my viewport is by just using a
subdivision surface to kind of smooth
everything out so by using the
subdivision surface
smooth out my geometry I can easily
toggle this on and off to immediately
via speed up my viewport apply my
deformations that that's going to add
that nice light kind of paintbrush II
candy effect and then be able to turn
this back on and see how everything
looks so this is just to you know easily
toggle back and forth speeding up your
viewport keep it everything kind of
light so the next thing we need to do is
go ahead and adjust some of the settings
here but again I'm not going to actually
adjust any of these now what I want to
do is apply the deformations to this
object to this capsule that will allow
for our nice a kind of taffy paintbrush
II kind of organic look and the way that
I did this was I used to jiggle the
former now a jig of the former if you've
seen any of my past tutorials makes
things very jiggly but one thing that's
very cool about the jig Oh to former
it's very versatile
and when I apply this underneath my
spline wrap so it this order is
important so I want my spline wrap to
affect my capsule first and then I want
the jiggle to be applied afterwards so
that's very important so when I apply my
jiggle to former and hit play you'll see
nothing happens and that is because
something needs to be moving on the
object for to apply this jiggly kind of
jello animation to it and right now
there's nothing happening there's no no
movement at all but one thing that you
can use for the juco deformers actually
apply forces to it to get this object to
move so that's exactly what I'm going to
do and what I'm going to do is I'm going
to grab a few particle modifiers here
I'm just going to grab a turbulence
object right now and I'm going to set
the strength up fairly high I'm going to
make this strength about a thousand and
then to get this to work I actually need
to drag and drop this into the forces
field or the jiggled áformer won't
recognize it so let me hit play now and
you'll see that we have some very very
fast
movement going on a lot of very fast
turbulence and I'm just going to bring
up the scale a little bit to kind of
slow that down so a scale of 45 looks
pretty good immediately you can see that
this is looking pretty dang cool you can
already see how we're getting this nice
brushstroke kind of effect very organic
kind of wig leanness so in essence what
we did with put applying a particle
modifier this turbulence force on this
jig o2 former it basically acts kind of
like a cloth deform or a cloth engine
where it turns our geometry into this
kind of wavy cloth kind of object so
that's very very cool so what we what we
can do now is go ahead and adjust the
options on the jiggle so if we want to
make this a little bit more pliable we
can adjust the stiffness down pretty low
so now we just adjusted the stiffness so
it's not as stiff and now it's much more
cloth like right there and the
structural if we bring this down this is
kind of getting you can see that that
actually there's a bunch of Springs that
are basically holding together a bunch
of jiggly Springs that hold together the
geometry and when you bring the
structural down to zero it makes those
jiggly or the springs a lot more
stretchy or bouncy so you can see that
we have less form going on so it works a
little bit like a stiffness but just
think of like a spring in a mattress or
the loose or the spring the more Bounce
you're going to get and the more stretch
you're going to get so to kind of tame
everything down you can see that
everything's kind of acting a little bit
goofy is we're going to bring this drag
all the way up and that's going to kind
of give us this nice undulation this
nice organic undulation by adjusting the
drag of how the jiggle is being deformed
so it almost looks like this is
underwater a little bit and then another
thing I'm going to do is bring the
springs down so this is basically the
amount of tiny Springs that are actually
uh making these Springs the spring
movements happen I'm going to bring this
down to down to one and what that's
going to do is remove a lot of those
Springs so we're going to get
a little bit less undulation but we're
still getting a lot of really nice
movement going on so this is looking
good so far
this is applying our nice organic
brushstroke kind of effect to our object
you can see I have a few lights and the
grayscale gorilla HDR studio kit on here
kind of lighting the scene and whoops
but what we can do now let's actually go
ahead and adjust or create another
turbulence object so right now we have
some nice undulation going but we can
apply another level of turbulence that
kind of makes our whole entire word kind
of undulate a little bit as well so
right now it's fairly static we have our
geometry moving but not a lot of
movement in our actual whole form of our
text so I'm going to go ahead and I'm
going to instead of keeping a scale very
low I'm going to use this second
turbulence object and scale it up to
about 800 so this is going to be a very
large scale noise that is going to be
driving the turbulence and also jack up
the strength a little bit as well and
you'll see when I apply this to my
jiggle forces you can see that we added
this nice undulation all across our
objects so due to the fact that our
scale of our turbulence is very high
we're creating bigger noise bigger
turbulence and that's pushing and
pulling the whole entire word here so
we're adding this nice second level of
turbulence to our object and giving this
nice organic movement to to our objects
so that's looking really really nice so
the next thing we want to do is go ahead
and another thing that you can do is of
course you can go and add an even bigger
turbulence noise so you can see that's a
little bit less but I found 800 pretty
good but you'll notice if we bring it
too low we're basically just duplicating
what that first turbulence is doing and
again you can adjust the actual strength
you can really
have this pushing pool and get some
really cool kind of looks pretty
psychedelic but so much fun this the
whole jiggled áformer with force is a
lot of fun to play around with I had a
ton of fun experimenting with this so
what you can do at this point as well is
go into your capsule object and you can
adjust the rotation segments to give
this a lot more geometry to push and
pull so you'll see you'll getting a lot
more detail in the actual object due the
fact that we up the rotation segments
here but you got to be careful that you
don't add too much and slow it down so I
found that just may be a rotation
segment of 50 works pretty good you can
also adjust the cap segments so that'll
kind of smooth out the beginning and end
of this object and again you can adjust
the height segments but you don't really
have to worry about the height segment
so much because again we have that
subdivision surface kind of smoothing
everything out so I'll just put that
back at 50 and then the radius again we
can adjust as well so we get a lot
fatter text going on and one nice thing
about what one nice thing about the
spline wrap is you can go in here and
adjust the size of the object or the
size of the capsule along the spline
here so I can go and give this a lot of
different scale or thickness along the
spline so right now I'm giving my
capsule some uneven thickness and that
adds a really nice kind of custom look
and what you probably want to do is kind
of look at where the big parts of your
geometry are so maybe you want the ELLs
really thick up at this part but maybe
thin right down here and the same for
the H so maybe have this part thin and
thick up here and then thick again so
you can have a lot of fun just adjusting
how this is looking and you cannot kind
of move these knots around in the spline
editor here to try to figure out like
where
the spline this is affecting so you can
create a new point here by just hitting
command and clicking on your spline and
you can see that okay I'm bringing this
down this is controlling this part of
the L so you can try to maybe get I want
to make this part thinner so I just made
a new knot so this is kind of
controlling right here on this part of
the spline and then I'll just bring this
spline point up to kind of get these
parts of the L fairly thick and then
let's see let's move this point around
and try to get this part skinny so
that's looking good and again for the Oh
maybe we can try to get this part
skinnier as well so let's add a new
point and where is that controlling so
that's controlling the back part of the
L so if I just move this over a little
bit
move that scale down the spline you can
see that that is now scaling down this
part so that's looking pretty perfect so
that's looking pretty good so you can
have a lot of fun just messing around
and tweaking the spline editor in the
size and another thing you can do is go
ahead and adjust the banking or the
rotation so you can kind of have this
turn to whatever part of the geometry
you like and you can even adjust the
rotation so say you want this to kind of
rotate 180 degrees or whatever along the
spline so you just get a little bit more
dynamic kind of looked to it so it's not
just always facing the same direction so
we have a little bit of a twist action
going on there and you can adjust the
strength to add even more rotation to it
so I think just a rotation strength that
a hundred is looking pretty good
right now we can actually go and texture
this so I have this candy a little candy
texture that I'll go ahead and try to
recreate here so let's go and rename
this candy and what I'm going to do is
go ahead and create a gradient in the
color here so let's create a gradient
and we'll just color this pretty
funky here let's choose a some magenta
here a little pink and then a little bit
of yellow and we can go give it a little
bit of purple on this end so a nice kind
of pastel II kind of look and that's
just the color channel and let's a plot
let's actually apply this to our object
here so apply it to the capsule and you
can see that right now it's not looking
too hot up so what I'm going to do is
adjust the luminance and really crank up
the luminance so we have some really
nice bright texture and what I'm going
to do is create another gradient and use
similar colors here so let's do it's
kind of pastel II and then or some
yellow maybe and then we'll just bring
it back to let's go that color and then
we'll just bring it back so it kind of
loops there so you see that just by
doing that we just added a really nice
gradient to our text but you see that
we're actually losing we're making
everything flat due to our luminance
here what we can actually do that can
make this a lot more organic looking is
by adjusting the turbulence on this on
this object right here so that will
create a little bit more organic looking
and you can see immediately that just by
adjusting the turbulence and adding some
turbulence there we're getting some
really nice paint brush II type of
effects here so that looks really cool
let's actually go into our gradient on
our color Channel and do the same exact
thing and you'll notice that the just
having the color channel just helps a
little bit let's actually go into our
reflectance and really add some good
reflections and really nice reflections
and some specular so let's go into our
specular here
I like to change this the Beckman just
for the heck of it I don't really know
too much about the reflectance channel
stuff I just kind of experiment and see
what looks good I know I want a very
strong specular strength so I'm going to
bring that up to 150 and you can see
that we have these really nice streaks
and I'll show you where my actual lights
are on the scene so I have one area
light over to the right here and another
one on the left so you can see where the
positioning is so you get a better chant
a bitter idea of where that specular is
coming from and I accidentally brought
the specular down there so you can see
how our lights are affecting the nice
specular and we're really given this a
nice kind of candy paint sort of look
there and we can adjust the color of
this so maybe may give it a little bit
of a yellowish tint to our specular so
that's looking pretty good now we can
add some reflection and I'll just add
another Beckmann type and we'll go name
rename this reflection and let's change
this blend mode to add change the
specular to normal so we're adding a
reflection on to our specular and then
our attenuation I'm going to change to
additive and I'm actually going to do
the same thing okay so that's already
set as additives just making sure so
this is just adding the reflection onto
the specular and to our luminance and
color channels here so now we can go and
adjust the reflection strength and the
color of our reflection so again maybe
we want maybe a kind of pinkish
reflection we can bring our fernell in
here and I'll choose conductor and it's
kind of just mess around and see what
looks good here
maybe those values will look pretty good
so you'll see that by putting the
fernell in there we're getting a little
bit nicer reflection going on and so you
can really see the specular or the
reflection
that's coming from our box lights so
what I like to do is just give this a
little bit of roughness just to kind of
blur that all the reflections a little
bit because it'll make it a lot more
organic looking and less kind of candy
so that as we're waiting for this to
render there the one thing I want to do
on top of the reflection and all that
stuff is go ahead and adjust the bump
so let's actually hit play here and
you'll notice that my interactive retro
region isn't rendering that deformation
from the jiggle to former which I
believe is a bug and it's being fixed I
kind of discovered it a while ago but
just keep that in mind if you're doing
interactive render region your jiggle
deform or deformations will not render
in your interactive render region so
you'll see what's going on when you
actually render in the scene so you see
that we're getting a lot more of our
jiggle deformation back and you can see
how our specular looks and a reflection
look so I actually would like to have a
little bit more specular so we'll crank
that up a little bit so we get some
really nice bright specular highlights
there and that's looking good so let's
go ahead and go to our bump Channel and
I just want to add another layer of
organic kind of bumpy or waviness to our
texture via the bump channel so what I'm
going to do is I'm just going to create
a a noise to kind of use on the bump
channel what I'm going to do I'm going
to change the noise from noise and
change it to gaseous and then what I'm
going to do is crank up the the let's
see that would be the vertical scale
there on the on the Y so you can see how
if I turn this on and off you can kind
of see a subtle difference there if I
crank this up a little bit more you
really start to see
you that that adds an Evaline Asst via
the bump channel here so it adds a lot
more of like these kind of paint stroke
ii kind of where the little individual
brush hairs might have went across so
you can adjust this i've always noticed
if you have your strength way too high
it looks very fake so a little bit less
than what you think would probably look
good just maybe do half of that so i
think 40 looks pretty good so we can
render this out and actually let's you
can see that that's actually a lot of
bumpiness so let's actually scale up the
whole entire scale of our noise or
global scale here and actually bring the
octaves down to four so it's a little
bit less complex noise going on and
we'll render this again and see how this
looks and actually what i want to do is
change the spit so right now it's
applying it via the texture space and
that's kind of applying it and applying
it evenly across the UVs but what I want
to do is change this to 2d and what
it'll do is kind of stretch this texture
or stretch the noise out along the
actual text here so just keep that in
mind changing at the 2d it will kind of
project itself differently so you can
see that we're getting a little bit more
noise and let's actually let me crank
this up all the way just so you can see
like a before and after so it adds a
little bit a little bit more interesting
look maybe scale this down a little bit
you can even see in the viewport that
it's just a very subtle thing you can
kind of adjust this to whatever you want
you can really crank up the strength if
you'd like and see how that looks but I
think that's an extra layer of nice
organic pink brushy kind of looks and
deformation to your text so I think
that's looking pretty good you can see
that we're getting a
little bit of some sharp edges here and
that's just due to either cranking the
height segments up or just cranking up
the subdivision editor here so you'll
see that already because I did that kind
of slowing down the scene so you can see
that if this is just our editor to view
anyway so it doesn't really matter
because it will render at this three
subdivision so don't be don't freak out
if you're like I'm getting this really
sharp edges you don't really need to
adjust the height segments here if you
really don't want to you can just have
this render out at this with the
subdivision renderer and that will just
smooth everything out really nice so
then what I did was just render this out
and we have this really nice flowy
organic paintbrush looking effect
happening to our text and that's
basically how I came up with this like
Laffy Taffy of paint brush text effect
in cinema 4d so if you have any
questions be sure to ask it in the
comment section and I'd really like to
see you guys play around with this
effect and come up with your own little
text creations or experiments with this
kind of stuff so like I said the jugo de
forma is really really fun when you use
it as like a cloth deformation type of
thing so always experiment always try
new things that's how I came up with
this kind of look that I'm really diggin
so have fun with it play around and I'll
see you guys in the next tutorial thanks
for watching guys bye