Focus 10 - Bend Layers Along Paths in Cinema 4D Part 3 Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

okay so what if you want to work with a
more complex spline than just a curved
path a simple curve passed that I showed
you in the last two tutorials those were
easy enough to do
using the amino snake plug-in and the
puppet tool but I showed you if you want
a more complex spline shape that it's
almost impossible to try to get the kind
of bendy arm to bend along that path
inside of After Effects so I'm in cinema
4d now and I have this spline path that
draws the cursive shape of the cursive
word hi and so we're gonna make a bendy
arm go along the spline so the first
thing we need to do is just give this
some geometry that we can put our bendy
arm material onto so what I'm gonna do
is just make a make a plane and let me
go into my perspective view here so I
got my plane here now I got to wrap this
around the spline and I'm gonna use the
aptly-named spline wrap to do that so
I'm gonna make the spline wrap a child
of the plane and you see in the spline
wrap settings here I have a spline field
that I can drag a spline to so I'm just
gonna drag my spline into there alright
so first things first we got to scale
down this spline or this plane and I'm
just gonna bring the height down so it
looks more like a ribbon Kanna shape and
the next thing I gotta do is we have all
this chunkiness going on that's because
our spline our plane only has a width
segment of 20 so I'm just gonna bring
this up and I'm just gonna bring this
all the way up to like 500 and you can
see we have our nice curved edges here
on our plane that's wrapped on the
spline so one thing I'm going to tell
you is that depending on your width
segments you can get these kind of
points you can get these points on the
edges of your your paths here so you
want to make sure you pick a width
segments number that kind of just rounds
out and flattens those flat edges there
so you don't have these
so just be mindful of that when you're
working with your own spline so now we
got our geometry that we can put put a
material on so let's just create a new
material now I'm gonna turn off the
color and the specular and I'm just
gonna use the luminance channel to paste
our or to put our arm layer onto our
material onto and the reason for that is
is because at the end of the day this is
going to be a 2d animation and so
anything we make in 3d space in cinema
4d we want to achieve the look of a 2d
object or a 2d layer so by using this
luminance object or the luminance
channel to put our arm image in here
which is right here this Photoshop file
by putting it in the luminance channel
it's not going to react to shadows or
any kind of lighting effects it's just
going to be a flat material color so
that's perfect for what we want so I'm
just gonna go in here and make sure you
got your alpha applied as well I just
copy you didn't pasted the arm layer
into there and we're just gonna apply
this material onto this plane object and
so I'm gonna render this out you see
that we have this weirdness going on
right here and kind of appear as well
you can see that once we want to
actually get to animate this and we're
going to animate it by just adjusting
this offset that especially when we have
the the offset animated that this isn't
gonna work at all and the reason for
that is is because if I go and turn to
the side view here
all those spline paths are just
occupying the same Z space in 3d so all
these polygons are overlapping each
other from this plane object so the
thing we have to do next is actually
adjust and move all these plane or the
spline points to different Z depths base
to Cle so the first thing I'm going to
do is I'm gonna worry about these spots
were the the planes are overlapping so
I'm gonna start with this point on the
top of the eye here and I'm going to
zoom in on both the right view in the
top view so what I want to do is I'm
just gonna kind of bring this Bezier
handles out and you can see in our side
view here that we're gonna have this
nice arc arcing path that our plane is
gonna wrap around and that's that's what
the kind of look that we're gonna want
to get so we want this kind of almost
like a ribbon that kind of flows and
bends and arcs over so again I'm doing
and here you can see we have this nice
bending and if I render this now it's
not overlapping anymore so I'm gonna do
the same thing and kind of as a ribbon
would would work I'm gonna so this is
kind of flowing over to the front so I'm
gonna move this point over as well this
bottom part of where the h and the I
kind of connect and I'm also gonna do
the same for this part because as this
path curves over I'm just gonna have
this kind of gradually you can see
especially from the top view I'm gonna
have this path gradually come forward
again so I just want to make this spline
path as smooth as possible as we're
giving some more 3d depth to the flow of
this spline so I'm going to do the same
kind of thing where I want this arcing
path at the bottom of this H you see as
I move this busy handle that we're
getting more of this arcing going on on
the bottom here
so if I move this around I want to make
sure that all of our pieces of our
ribbon our arm kind of stays for because
you see if I move this this point here
we're kind of losing the flatness of the
plane so you gotta be careful so how
much you're moving so this part of the H
I'm going to need to go behind this the
beginning of the H here so I'm gonna
move this forward and also move this
front this very first point forward as
well so you can see that as I go to my
side view again we're getting a little
bit more depth and more lose that we're
getting rid of that overlap so I'm gonna
go back into here you can see that we
still have a little bit of weirdness
here in some overlap at the bottom of
this H right here so I'm gonna go to my
top view again you can see we have a
really weird distorted path so we're
just gonna kind of fix that a little bit
and make that kind of round it off and
that looks a lot better we kind of have
our to point our planes interconnecting
or intersecting at this point as well so
let's fix that
kind of move this forward so now we got
our flat path again or flat shape again
kind of round this out here as well so
now I render that out you can kind of
see we want to get a little bit more of
a space between this edge here
this is a this back part of the H is
kind of flattening out
let's just move this this bottom point
and it's looking a lot better
all right so let's render that and let's
just double check and make sure that
once we do this offset that nothing is
overlapping anymore so that's looking
good all the way through bring that back
to the offset back to zero and let's
just double check from our side view
here and everything is looking pretty
good all right so we can adjust this a
little bit more make sure all the bottom
points kind of line up so I'm gonna use
this bottom part of the the edge of this
line right here to kind of measure or
line these bottom parts up since our arm
is going to come from off-screen make
sure that your spline is kind of off to
the screen as well
alright that's looking looking good we
just kind of round out this bottom so we
get more of a flatter flatter shape
right there it's trying to get back some
of this flatness here as well sometimes
you got to adjust the Bezier handles how
they kind of curve as well to get some
of that flatness back there's also some
other options you can kind of play
around with and I think it all depends
on just the shape of your path is uh are
these settings in the spline wrap or you
can adjust the banking and you can also
adjust the up Vector and sometimes when
you mess around with both of these that
can help you keep your your your plane
kind of flat and flush to like the Z
plane so it's always facing forward
towards the camera so just keep in mind
that you can use messing around with
these couple options here and do that so
we can see that where my hand kind of
flipped so let's go to a negative
banking here and render that so that's
looking pretty good let me just go down
here and just slightly adjust that
bottom SH again
all right so it's a lot of just tweaking
these these points and adjusting the
angle of the Bezier curves and all this
the handles to get the the look that you
want I mean every every spline path is
gonna be the same but using these this
kind of workflows is a kind of works for
everything that you want to do writing
out or putting a spline wrap on this
plane and putting the material on here
so the nice thing about working in
cinema is that okay we have this flat
this flat 2d looking layer now that we
can bring into After Effects but the
nice thing about being in cinema is is
that say we wanted to add some subtle
shading and some subtle shadowing here
to kind of really give the the the form
of the shape because once especially in
this h-here you're kind of losing
everything is kind of meshing together
here and it could be hard to read I mean
here it's not that big of a deal because
you can easily read out this H in this
eye but with some other more complex
splines maybe you maybe you want a
little bit more disconnect between or
some contrast between so you can
actually make out this edge of this
shape right here so what we can do is go
into our material here and go into our
diffusion Channel and we're just gonna
turn that on and we're gonna add some
ambient occlusion and give some some
nice shading to kind of give some
contrast between the front of the H and
this back of the H part right here so
I'm going to turn off specular I want
this to us affect the luminance because
luminance channel is what all we're
using for this material and I'm gonna go
in here and let's just do a render and
see how that looks so far and you really
can't make anything out right now
because we need to adjust some of these
settings so one thing that I noticed
that kind of hell
sit down a little bit is adjusting this
contrast let's render that again so now
you can see very subtly that this kind
of darkened over here and if I move this
this little color this black color
chicklet thing here and render that
again and now you get that a little bit
darker and ms what if you want to have a
little bit more dark over here you can
just adjust some of these points I think
if I just how much this curves out maybe
that'll help okay there we go so I just
made the curve a little bit more shallow
the angle of the curve a little bit more
shallow here you see from my side view
here's that arced path they used to be a
lot more a wider angle so I just brought
that down and you can really make out
the shading or the look the shading here
now so even at the top here on the top
of the H by using the ambient occlusion
you got this nice shadow here so you can
make out this word a little bit better
and also keep in mind some of these
angles you want to have a wide enough
angle that the because if you have it
too shallow
you'll get that kind of look and you
also have that overlap all over again so
it's just just that a little bit there
so you see I move that point and now we
have this weird overlap again so be be
careful what you're doing with the
Bezier handles here so all right so now
all we got to do is just go and like I
said before just adjust that offset so
we're gonna hit a keyframe at 40 frame
this about and just bring this offset up
to 100 and let's just play that out so
we have a arm coming in and let's
actually get this arm out a little bit
higher here and let's set a new keyframe
and can adjust this angle this Bezier
handle right here
there we go
all right so let's go back to our spline
wrap let's maybe make this a little bit
longer of an animation there we go
we can go into our timeline here and
let's adjust this so it has a little bit
more of an ease ease in here
cool so we got a little overshoot as
well because I just did the spline a
little bit lower than this value here
let's do one final render and I already
rented this out previously so that's
what you get and then you just bring
that into After Effects composite that
into the scene in there and then you can
have your little bendy arm forming
whatever word you want or whatever any
kind of object bending along the path so
you just bring it into cinema using the
luminance channels so you don't have any
shading and if you do want shading you
can mess around with the ambient
occlusion in your diffusion channel and
and that is it thank you guys for
watching