Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating a Particle Morph Using Cinema 4D's Inheritance Effector Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everyone it's EJ from I design comm
and today we're gonna have some fun with
particles and morphing and all that good
stuff but we're not going to be using X
particles or thinking particles we are
going to be using all mograph all the
time and this is what I'm going to be
demonstrating how I did so I have this
scene set up where I have all these
particles for shooting out all these
particles in forming an arm and but how
we're going to build it is actually the
opposite we're going to have the arm
being all these particles from the arm
getting sucked into the iPad and then in
after-effects we're just going to like
reverse it reverse the little particle
simulation thing so I'm going to show
you how to get this particle movement
and we're just going to be using mograph
and one of my favorite effectors the
inherent effectors so let's let me show
you how I set that all up so I have in
my scene I have the the arm model and
the iPad that all these particles are
going to zip into and the first thing I
like to do when doing a particle morph
or anything like that is by not just
jumping in and now you'll see I have all
these numbers as the particles and
that's a lot of geometry there so I like
to get my particle morph set up without
having geometry used at all and how I do
this and how I set up all of these you
know I really like doing these particle
morphs and using the inherence effector
and all that stuff and this is just my
workflow of how I found is really easy
and simple to set everything up
initially so what I like to do is use
matrix objects and use these matrices as
my particle placeholders basically so
it's kind of like when you generate
thinking particles where there's
actually no geometry there so you can
see that those matrices actually don't
show up in a render so it's actually
really light on your viewport so you can
make a crazy amount of particles or
matrices
and it's not going to slow down your
seam so what I'm going to do is have
this set up where I'm going to have a
matrix object over here with its
matrices and they're going to morph into
and flow into another matrix object that
is going to be over by V iPad so I'm
going to make another matrix object and
I'm just going to rename these so this
will be our start particle position or
start matrices position and this will be
our end position and I'm going to move
my end matrix object right over here in
front of the iPad so that's where I want
all my particles to flow into and I'm
just going to change this mode to linear
and just give it a zero in the Y here so
it'll just be one matrice one matrices
there and I'm just going to put it right
there that's where I want all my other
matrices to flow to so this start
position I'm going to change the mode
from grid array to object and I'm going
to want to clone all these matrices onto
an object and that will be my arm object
so you can see right away boom we
actually have our arm here with matrices
distributed all over the vertexes of
this model but I actually want to just
change this to surface and just bring
the count up to sitting like 2000 so
that that's looking good we got some
good coverage you can definitely make
out that arm form and so we need to get
these particles from the arm over to
that other matrix object over here so to
do this again we're going to use my
favorite effector the inherence effector
and what the inherence effect is going
to do is I want to make sure first that
it's applied its applied cool so what
the inherence effector is going to do is
you're going to inherit the position of
one object or you're going to inherit
you're going to apply this to an object
and you're going to say you want to
inherit these matrices to inherit the
position of these other matrices over
here for the end matrix object so I have
it applied to my start matrix object or
the arm particle
and I want to directly inherit the
position of the end matrices position so
I'm going to drag and drop the object or
the n matrix object into the object
field and you can see that all of my arm
particles here all my arm matrices
jumped over to that position of the n
matrix object now that's not what we
want we actually want all these
individual matrices to jump to that one
position so to enable that we're going
to turn on this morph motion object and
you can see that that kind of all of our
matrices disappeared but if I adjust the
strength you'll see up there they are
they were right behind the iPad here so
they're just following and inheriting
the position of the matrices position on
that end matrix object so the one thing
I like to do and I don't know if it
really makes that much of a difference
is I like to keep it consistent with the
amount with the count of matrices on the
start and end positions so if I'm going
to work with 2000 I want to have a 2000
count in my end just so I've sometimes
had particles kind of jump on and off
and flash on the screen if I had
different values so that I don't know if
it really makes that much of a
difference but that's what I like to do
so we're going to go into our enhanced
effector and you can see as I move the
strength from 0 to 100% we're getting
our motion here so first I'm going to
hide my arm model here and bring our
strength back up and I don't want
everything to be affected all at once so
I'm going to give my give my effector a
fall-off I'll choose a linear fall-off
with orientation 2 + X and you can see
as I move my fall-off from left to right
it is sucking all those matrices - and
moving them to inherit the position of
this other matrix object right here
which is exactly what we want
but you know this is a we need to first
animate this guy and we can also adjust
some things after we animate so I'm
going to position my fall-off over to
the left here and I'm going to hit a
record a keyframe in the X and then move
over until all of my particles have left
or I've moved to this point and has been
affected 100% by the inherence vector
and record another keyframe so I now
have my fall off from my matrix object
or for my inherence effector passing
through making all my matrices now
inherit the position of the n matrix
object position so right now it's very
linear kind of boring the first thing I
want to do is get rid of the ease-in and
ease-out on my inheritance object or
inherence effector fall-off movement so
I'm just going to select both the
keyframes change it from spline to
linear and that will give us a nice
linear curve and we'll get rid of the YZ
and I need to ease out on that movement
so looking good we can do some other
things to adjust how these particles are
flowing from one point to the next and
that is by either adjusting our fall-off
here the actual size of it
or we can go in and adjust the fall-off
percentage here so it will smooth out or
make the make how it affects it has like
a more of like a gradient ramp like a
longer gradient so it's a little bit
smoother and we can also change this
fall-off function from spline and give
it inverse cubic now you can see how the
original looks or just kind of kind of
very linear not much smooth easy Nuri's
out or anything but once I change this
fall-off function to inverse cubic
you're going to see something very
different so we're going to have
nice smooth easing and then once it gets
going you get sucked right in there so
I'm liking what I'm getting from this
this inverse cubic fall-off function and
we can still adjust and play with the
fall-off percentage as well as our
actual size of our fall off but I'm
liking that I'm liking what I'm seeing
so far here the one thing that we have
an issue with is all of our matrices are
moving very linearly just straight in
and it's not looking very interesting or
organic and that's the kind of movement
that I'm going to be looking for for
this for the scene here so to do that
with my start matrix object selected I'm
going to go and add a random effector to
it and that's going to randomize the
position right away and I'll give it a
little bit higher value say 100 and x
y&z and you can see right away that this
is affecting everything so what we want
to do is also give this random effector
a fall-off as well and we'll choose
linear orientation in the positive x and
so we want this to kind of affect the
particles as the inherence effectors
affecting particles so I'm just going to
position my fall-off to kind of affect
everything at the same time as the
inherence effector so I'm just going to
drag and drop this to follow the
position of the keyframed inherence
fall-off so now the random effector is
going to move right along with the
inherence effector fall off so right now
we have everything nothing's scaling
down right now
so we can do one of two things we can
either create a third factor a plane
effector that just kind of scales
everything down that also has linear
fall-off and position it over by this
iPad or since our
matrices from our start position are
inheriting the position scale and
rotation of the end major
sieze we can actually just change the
end matrices scale to zero and you can
see that our matrices are then slowly
inheriting that scale of the n matrices
as well so that can be a solution to
having all these particles kind of scale
down as they're heading towards that
iPad object or that n matrix object so
you can also even have a little bit more
fun and have these matrices have a
different rotation and have these kind
of rotate as well so now you see our
matrices are rotating to match the
rotation of our other matrices so you
can do that as well I'm gonna turn that
turn all that down but keep that in mind
when you're actually doing this because
that it's inheriting everything so
position scale rotation you can also
inherit those values so we're inheriting
the scale to scale everything down all
right so the last thing I'd like to do
here is we have a very linear everything
is being affected very linearly so
there's a definite straight line where
our particles are starting to move and
where they're not so what we want to do
is make this a little bit more organic
let's have some of these particles in
here start to move as well and not just
have this straight linear fall-off in
the linear movement so to do that we're
going to go ahead and add another Ram
effector and this will just randomize
the weight so I'm going to change this
Ram effector to random weight and I'm
going to apply this to our start matrix
object and I'm going to apply this first
this random weight first and turn off
our position a random position here and
I'm just going to go in adjust the
random the weight transform you can see
with it zero value we're having this
linear affecting of our particles or
matrices as I change this and adjust
that transform we're now randomizing
when our matrices are getting a
did so some are being affected early
because of the noise some are getting
affected later and that is controlled by
this minimum maximum so if I adjust the
minotaur the maximum down you'll see
that that's cutting off and there's no
randomness in front of those effectors
so we want to keep that to a hundred
percent and that now you'll see that a
lot of our particles are being affected
back here as well so keep that in mind
you can have some more finer control
over the randomness by adjusting the
minimum and maximum and just by
adjusting the weight transform here so I
think a value of like 55 is pretty good
so we have some nice randomness you
really aren't seeing that straight line
where things where the matrices aren't
getting affected at all on this right
side of the fall-off so I think
everything's looking pretty good I think
maybe even bring this down a little bit
more and maybe adjust the maximum down a
little bit too and hit play and that's
looking pretty good
so we now have a lot more organic
movement but everything's a little bit
too frenetic so we can actually go back
into our random effector that's
randomizing the position and change the
random mode from random to turbulence
now what that's going to do is make
everything really frenetic and that's
because automatically by default we have
this animation speed set to 100 I'm
going to turn off the animation speed of
our turbulence all together and then to
get a more smooth randomness I'm just
going to scale up that noise or that
turbulence noise and if I bring it to a
higher value you can see it's smoothing
it out a little bit more and if I bring
it up to about 700 that looks pretty
good too
and just like we did with our inherence
effector we where we can change the
fall-off percentage and the fall-off
function we can do the same exact thing
with our random object here or a random
effector here and maybe even change this
to inverse
Kubik as well so now we have a little
bit more smooth gradual of these
matrices matrices getting affected cool
so everything's looking pretty nice and
smooth we can even bring up our
turbulence scale a little bit more and
if you want you can even have your
random effector affecting it before it
starts moving and getting affected by
the inheritance objects so now you have
all of our particles or matrices start
to move and then zip over as it's being
affected by the inherence effector so
you can get some pretty cool looks by
just moving your fall-off here so maybe
you want everything to kind of gradually
start moving and then get sucked in so
whatever you want to do I think this
looks a little bit cooler where you have
this kind of gradual being affected by
the randomness first and then
inheritance so that's looking looking
pretty good and probably need to adjust
the inheritance over here so it's since
we added that random weight we need to
then adjust how far over our fall-off
position needs to go over here so now
it's all of our particles are now gone
and disappeared so that's looking good
so that's the first step is setting up
your particle movement with these
matrices so you have a really fast
viewport because we're working with you
know 2,000 particles here and our our
viewports is super snappy so now we can
actually go and start introducing our
geometry and we're just going to then
apply the geometry have the geometry
call it be cloned onto all these
matrices and just follow the positions
of the matrices by just simply cloning
on to this matrix object so you'll see I
already have this corner object here
with all of my numbers
in it and they're just MOU text objects
and I'm going to turn everything on and
I'm going to change my cloner mode from
linear to object and for object I'm
going to just drag and drop my start
matrix object in there and right away
you can see that all my numbers are now
on this on this matrices so everywhere
there's a matrice there's going to be
our matrices they're going to be a
number and everything's kind of slowing
you see the blue the beach ball death
kind of coming up every now and then so
I'm going to go and bring down my count
to say 500 just to speed everything up a
little bit here there we go hopefully
that gets rid of the beach ball and
render instances on that's good and so
we can hit play here and you can see
that all of our all of our numbers are
now following the positions of those
matrices so I can actually turn off the
visibility of my matrices are my matrix
objects here and we now have our numbers
moving instead of those matrices so you
can see as I'm playing this out we're
getting this really weird stuff going on
and that is only because of having this
render instances on if I turn off render
instances first off everything is going
to slow down of course but we're going
to get rid of that popping so just keep
that in mind I'm just going to keep
working with the render instances on but
you can see there's no more of that
popping of all of these clones
disappearing randomly so when you go
actually render this make sure to turn
off the render instances but what I'm
working with this I'm going to keep it
on cool so next thing I want to do is
this is looking okay but I'd like to add
some more
realism to this stuff and add more
organic movement I actually want to have
these numbers like kind of tumble off of
each other and I'm going to do this by
making all these cloners dynamic or all
these clone numbers dynamic so I'm going
to go and add a simulation tag rigidbody
and I'm going to apply tag to children
and individual elements all and I'm
going to hit play you can see that all
of our objects are kind of moving right
from the get-go and that is because we
need to then go to our trigger our
dynamics trigger instead of immediately
we want this to trigger only when it
starts getting affected by those by the
effectors so to do that we're just going
to change the trigger from immediately
to velocity peak so the moment a
effectors moves that a cloner removes
the the actual matrix object matrices
that moves the cloner
that's going to enable the dynamic
simulation on that clone so let's go and
hit play and you'll see that now
everything's kind of moving some of
these are tumbling off of each other and
you're still seeing that popping again
that's only because the that's only
because of render instances is on so
what I can do is number one to have all
of these clones kind of follow a little
bit better and smooth everything out is
to go to my forest tab and just enable
fall position and rotation and that'll
kind of smooth everything out and have
our clones as they dynamically tumble
more follow the path towards the iPad so
if I hit play again you can see that now
it's kind of smoothing everything out
since we have the fall position and
rotation we can actually turn off the
rotation so we want things that maybe
tumble
a bit more and the more particles you
have the more tumbling you're going to
see so what I'm going to do is number
one to get rid of all the the popping is
to actually just go ahead and I can
increase the count here to save whoa
that's too much - about 1,500 and then
I'm going to number two I can actually
randomize the scale of these guys so I'm
going to go and create a Ram effector
that's going to randomize the scale of
these numbers so I'll just give it a
negative 0.5 so we have randomness in
the numbers and let's just go ahead and
cache our dynamics and we're going to
include the collision data and let's
even just to make sure you can see the
tumbling I'm going to go in and notice
if every time I want to increase the
count of the actual clones and the
particles I'm going to my matrix object
here and that's just going to
automatically update and clone more of
those numbers on there now let's go
ahead and give the beach ball again
let's go ahead and cache and bake the
dynamics here so I'm just going to hit
bake all
and now all of our dynamics are baked so
I should be able to just go in here and
hit play and see all of our dynamics
happening still seeing that popping
again that's because of our dang render
instances kind of giving creating some
havoc but you're seeing kind of seeing
all these tumbling of our objects and if
I hit render in one of these frames
right here you're starting to see all of
our particles kind of scaling down
moving over towards that iPad and
looking pretty nice so again what we
might have to do to make this actually
look decent is go to our go to our clone
object turn off render instances and
then bake that sucker this is going to
take a lot longer because without the
render instances you're going to start
seeing actual tumbling and a lot more
tumbling a lot more accurate dynamic
simulation so I'm going to let this go
and fast forward alright so I had my
dynamics cached and I did a little
software preview here so you can see
exactly what we have we have some
tumbling going on with that with the
dynamics added and everything's looking
pretty good we have the the nice
fall-off the inverse cubic fall-off
that's getting that nice gradual and
then Zoop getting sucked in there to the
iPad and looking good so then what we
would do is render this out and then
just reverse it in after-effects and
then just play it backwards and you can
see that that would actually form the
arm coming from the iPad so the iPad
would look like it's shooting out
particles and it's forming that arm so
that that's how that was done so the
last thing we need to do to put on the
the finishing touches for this is to
actually
add some ambient occlusion so we get
some nice shadowing along these guys
along the numbers and then just a little
bit of global illumination I set the
gamma down to about 0.5 so it's not so
bright
we get some nice shading and then I have
some overhead softboxes that I set up in
the scene as well just one behind in one
overhead so we can get some nice
shadowing no mind you I had a lot more
particles in here to make more of the
form of the the arm in my actual project
that I made but this should give you a
good idea for how to get how I achieved
this look as far as lighting wise
there we go that's a funnel render with
a nice shading everything like that you
can really get that form of this arm
from that arm geometry and just to recap
everything was done with starting out
with the two matrix objects just to get
our matrices as placeholders for our
particles so we get the movement nice
particle movement the nice particle
morph going good with our effectors and
then we cloned our actual geometry on to
that initial matrix object and so those
clones follow the matrices and then we
added dynamics and got to this so
hopefully you guys will be using the
inherence effector a lot more I have a
ton of fun with this I've demoed many
many ways to use it in a lot of my nab
presentations and any chance I get in a
project to use it I have a lot of fun
doing it so hopefully you'll jump on the
inheritance effector bandwagon after
this so then I'll do it for me and that
is how you morph particles with
inheritance effector see you in the next
tutorial bye guys