Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Line Art Animations Using Cinema 4D Lite; Cineware; and After Effects Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and today I'm gonna be going over an
older tutorial that I did all about how
to create line art style animations in
cinema 4d using sketch in tune and this
one is more for the guys who have cinema
4d lite version and you have cinema 4d
lite if you have After Effects CC or CC
2014 comes with it free so you can't
beat that
but the thing is is that cinema 4d Lite
is pretty limited but it is it can do a
lot of stuff and I figured out how to do
the line art style without sketching
tuned and using only the native tools
inside of cinema 4d lite so there you go
it's free and you can use it and we can
recreate this line art style have this
nice 3d depth and stuff everything that
I did with basically everything I did
was sketch in tune it's still limited
not as powerful as sketching tune which
you'll see in this tutorial go over some
of the limitations that you have and
it's a little bit more work than just
applying a sketch in toon style under
everything but we can get pretty dang
close and like I said you can't beat
free cinema 4d Lite so hopefully this
will help you understand cinema 4d a
little bit more and understand all the
tools that are included because there is
a lot there there's a lot in cinema 4d
Lite so I'm gonna be going over how to
number one prepare your files for this
technique using cinema 4d Lite we're
gonna have two separate files we're
gonna have one that's just the base
colors so it's gonna have all of our
flat colors and we're gonna have a
basically a copy of that cinema 4d file
that we're gonna apply all the line edge
treatments to it and then we're gonna go
into After Effects and using Cinna where
we're gonna composite those two cinema
4d files together and create our line
art and then finish it off in After
Effects do some you know final
compositing color stuff and then just
render it out and this is all using
cinema 4d Lite
sin aware and After Effects CC so for
all the guys out there who are using
After Effects and might be new to these
tutorials welcome to the cinema 4d
community hopefully this will interest
you more in exploring stuff in cinema 4d
and seeing how it can work in your After
Effects workflow so nothing me jibber
jabbering let's go into the tutorial
alright so here we are in cinema 4d Lite
and I have my turntable animation here
all set up and the workflow I'm gonna go
with to create line art is I'm gonna
have this composition with just flat
colors and I'm getting the flat colors
by creating a bunch of materials with
different colors and placing them in the
luminance channel now what you do but
what happens when you put an object or
colors in the luminance channel if it's
a hundred percent brightness it's just
gonna be flat color so you can see if I
actually add a color channel that
actually gets some shading now but we
don't want any shading at all we just
want flat colors and then outlines so
once you animate your object you're
going to apply the flat color to all the
objects here and then you're gonna
create a duplicate of this of your line
art composition of your 3d object and
that is the separate composition that
will apply lines to so I have turntable
lines and that is what I'll apply all
these lines to but you'll notice that
most line art is very geometric which is
perfect because it falls into line with
a lot of what cinema 4d Lite is capable
of and that is creating just simple 3d
shapes you can get more complex by using
some of these modeling tools here but
for the most part line art is just
created with just a bunch of geometric
shapes so this turntable is just a bunch
of spheres or just a bunch of cylinders
cubes we've got a bunch of cubes here
some cylinders here and then some discs
you know discs for the record player all
that good stuff and I also have some
splines here that I'll get into showing
you how you can actually get these nice
defined grooves as well as this little
singular spline here for the little
slider so I'm gonna go through all that
stuff of how to create outlines on all
of these basic geometric shapes so
that's gonna be the name of the game is
creating outlines without have
sketching tune available to us because
that is not in cinema 4d light that's in
the full version but we can still do a
lot with cinema 4d lite so let's just
jump into this little composition here
that just has a bunch of geometric
shapes so I have this in hidden line
mode so you actually can see all the
edges so I have a cylinder sphere a disc
and this is just my record basically
with all of my arcs all those grooves
for the actual record and a pyramid so
we're gonna it's a two-step process to
get all the lines and I'll show you why
so the first way we're gonna get some of
our edges is by using something called a
cell renderer and that's in the effects
menu and it's actually really it's
really cool that this is included
because basically what you can do with
it is create outlines and apply outlines
to all the objects in your scene but
you'll notice one thing is that you get
the outlines but you're losing these
inner edges of say our cube our cylinder
here you don't see that edge and you're
losing that edge in the pyramid as well
now you'd think that alright well you've
just turn on edges and solve all those
issues but the thing is is that the edge
mode is perfect for you know wireframe
renders because you get all the edges of
all your polygons but it's not very good
when you're trying to do line art
because you're getting all not only are
you yeah you're getting the definition
of that inner edges especially for cubes
those look perfect but if you have any
cylindrical objects you're getting all
these other polygons in there so if we
jump back to my original turntable color
if I go into my cell renderer turn on
edges you'll see that this just looks a
mess like we can't use that that's not
line art that's just a wireframe so but
cell renderer will get us part of the
way there so we're going to use cell
render along with another feature
another another feature in cinema 4d
lite to create all of our edges but
we're not we're not done with cell
renderer yet what we're going to do is
create on our
separate line project file or cinema 4d
project file so like I said we're gonna
have our main color and then a separate
file with just their lines we're just
gonna have a so this is like the
finished thing what we're gonna create
is just a black and white image with our
lines in it so what I want to do first
is just create a black Lumina Tyrael so
all of our objects are shaded black I'm
just gonna apply this unto all the
objects in my scene and I'm just going
to enable color so the color will
actually show up and then actually need
to change the edge color to white so
that'll show up so now we have a black
and white image and I'll turn that off
and then what we're gonna do is you
combine this edge version of the
turntable scene with the color version
of the turntable and then just use
blending modes and After Effects to
composite those lines on top of the
color version so that's that's a little
bit of the workflow but we need to get
our edges here so this method I'm going
to show you force cylindrical objects
we're not going to use to get cylinders
we're not going to use a cylinder object
to get cylinders and to maintain this
edge what we're gonna do is use a
extrude object and then we're gonna use
a circle so this is gonna be how we're
creating our cylindrical objects so I'm
gonna place the circle underneath the
extrude and then just you can increase
the radius here and we just have a flat
disc or a just very skinny cylinder so
I'm just gonna move this over near our
other cylinder here and I'm going to
increase the extrude here and the nice
thing about using the extrude is if I
render now with the cell renderer you
can see we get this little edge back
because we made it with an extrude now
I'm going to apply this black material
to that extrude hit render and you'll
see that I can now rotate this object
and I have a
d cylinder with that inner edge showing
up so that is perfect that's what we
need to create some of the little
elements like this little turntable arm
rotate handle or these little buttons
right down here so this is perfect
so using extrudes instead of cylinders
that's a very key thing so I'll just
name this cylinder and then what I'm
gonna do is duplicate this and not only
can you create cylinders but in this
circle options here the circle spline
options we have the ability to create an
ellipse so you can actually get
different sizes of so you can actually
get different sizes of cylinders and you
know squash it and all that stuff and
you can also get a ring so now we have
this hollowed out cylinder which also
comes in handy with certain elements of
line art as well so I made like a
Polaroid camera this is perfect for like
the lens or the outer ring of the lens
and again when you hit render you get
the inner and outer edge of that ring so
this is very handy when creating line
art is to use these extrude objects and
not just cylinders because you lose the
inside edges so extrudes actually
maintain edges when you use an extrude
and a spline shape so you can also you
know use all these other objects so say
you want to do a star maybe let's just
shrink this down move this forward and
then just create an extrude apply a
black material on that you see that we
don't actually get these inner edges so
this doesn't work for everything and
you'll notice that I'll do the same
thing with a rectangle and try to get
like a cube and we'll make that a child
and if I render you'll see that if I put
a black material on that we
the the cap edges but not the other
edges here so some renderer gets us part
of the way there by using extrude
objects for cylinders we got our inner
edges of our cylinders but we still are
missing the inner edges of our pyramid
our cube and also of these little accent
grooves here and we're gonna use a
different thing called proximity shader
to get these edges back so I'm gonna
jump into another composition here to
demonstrate what a proximity shader does
and like the name suggests a proximal
shader has to do with proximity of
objects so I'm gonna create a cube and a
sphere and what I'm gonna do is kind of
place them close together so they're
close proximity to each other then I'm
gonna double click in the material
manager turn off color and reflect in so
I'm gonna use luminance on this as well
because I want everything to be flat and
I'm gonna go to effects and choose
proximal so if we go into our proximal
shader options here you'll see we have
this object field and we also have this
like circular gradient and all these
options here right now I'm just gonna
demonstrate what a proximal shader at
its very base level does so what I'm
gonna do is I'm going to apply the
proximal material let me rename this to
proximal and then apply this to our cube
so what this is gonna do is depending on
what objects are defined you can
actually have objects shade other
objects based on the proximity of that
object to the other object so what we're
gonna do is use this sphere to shade our
cube based on the spheres proximity to
our cube so if I hit render let me
actually turn off cell renderer here I
had cell renderer on I hit render you'll
see that we have this shading on our
cube that is this circular gradient and
that is just driven by that spheres
proximity to the cue
so you can see that the further away our
sphere is we don't get any shading but
we also have this end distance if we
crank this up now notice this this
didn't show up before if I hit render by
increasing that end distance that is
actually expanding the proximity
distance that this actually shades the
cube so I can move this sphere fairly
far away but if I crank up that distance
we can actually still shade that cube
even though it's far away by using this
end distance so I'm gonna bring this
back down to 100 I'm just gonna move
this cube or the sphere closer and you
can see how this is working so I can
actually increase the size of this
sphere here there we go so we actually
have it being shaded so that is
basically what the proximal shader at
the base level does but the cool thing
is is that we can actually have an
object shade another object by using the
edges of an object so we're gonna get
rid of the sphere I'm gonna take the
same basic idea of shading things based
on proximity and what we're gonna do is
use a cube to shade itself on its edges
by using the edges of this object now
this isn't gonna work right away because
we're using a parametric object and
parametric object technically doesn't
have any edges until it's made editable
so to get this to work with edge mode we
need to make our objects editable so now
we have some edges here and what the
proximal shader is gonna do is use these
edges to shade itself since we have the
proximal of material on the cube and
we're using the cube to shade if I hit
render you'll see that we actually have
some shading and right now you can't
really tell what's going on but again if
I adjust this distance of how much the
proximity distance is that's shading and
render you can see what's going on if I
bring this down to say 2% and hit render
we have these nice edge
or these nice strokes around our edges
and this is due to just using the edge
mode in the proximity shader you can
almost think of this dot as the stroke
width so if I have this a very this a
very small dot that is basically the
stroke width on our edges there and this
is a very thick stroke so I'm gonna do a
distance of one and render and you can
see that if i zoom in really close
though we have these kind of soft edges
and we can get rid of that and make this
a more solid line or stroke by
increasing the intensity so if I bring
that up to 350 and hit render you can
see that kind of hardens everything you
can even go even further than that and
get an even sharper edge so if i zoom
out we have a very nice sharp edge there
I'm just gonna bring that down a little
bit and the name of the game here is
using proximal shader in conjunction
with cell renderer to get all of our
edges now if you have multiple objects
which of course you are gonna have
multiple objects in your scene so let's
just use use another cube and I just
scaled it down so I have the proximal
shader material applied to this cube but
you'll notice if I hit render it's not
showing up and the key thing is that not
only when you have another object in the
scene do you have to make sure that a
you have the proximal material applied
to the object but you also need to have
that object included in the object list
in that material so now by placing that
cube into the object field that is now
showing up in the proximal shader
material and it's being an edges being
applied to that object so you can have a
bunch of objects in here and that will
create your edge so you'll notice in my
lines turntable scene here I have my
proximal shader
and I have see here's my lines
I have a whole bunch of objects in here
that I'm just using edges for so another
so let's actually just go ahead and
recreate that proximal shader let's go
to effects proximal we're gonna use
edges so we're also we're gonna use the
pyramid member we need to make it
editable so it recognizes those edges
and then we have our box here so I'm
gonna place both of those objects in the
box I'm also gonna you can also include
sub objects and also exclude parents so
you can keep I mean those those are
really handy options there as well
in distance again I'm gonna keep two one
bring up the intensity just like we did
in the other scene and then what we can
do is hit render and you'll notice
that's not gonna work because we haven't
applied that material this proximal
material to our objects yet so I'm gonna
apply this to the box so there's
proximal and then there's the pyramid
and I'll replace that black material
with the proximal hit render and there
are our edges but you'll notice that our
proximal lines are a bit thicker than
our cell renderer lines so what we want
to do is keep the thickness of our
proximal edges in our cell renderer
edges consistent so they kind of blend
together and then you don't have to
worry about the thickness in cell right
in cinema 4d because we can actually use
After Effects to thicken our edges by
using some effects over there but the
unfortunate thing about cell render is
there's no option to adjust the
thickness of those edges so but that's
fine because again we're gonna go into
After Effects and we can increase the
thickness there but while we're in
cinema 4d we need to make sure that
these edges kind of Mak match up and I
think if we use a value of like 0.5
those kind of match a little bit better
maybe 0.2 I think those that looks
pretty consistent now with the edges on
the cell render and the edges on
proximal here okay so that is using the
edge mode on proximal shader but we also
have these vertices this used vertices
option as well miss using the vertices
is going to help us with the little
splines here now we're going to use the
proximal shader not for the edges but
with these splines proximities with the
the split splines vertices proximity to
this disk or the record so I'm going to
duplicate this proximal shader and let's
actually rename this first one to edges
and then I'll name the second one to
vertices and then I'm gonna just delete
the objects in the objects field and
what I'm gonna do just put this down
here what I'm gonna do is then apply
this proximal material this new one we
made and apply it to the record and then
what I'm gonna do is bring this record
into the objects field and we want to
include the subject sub objects so those
are all of our arcs and if we hit render
we actually need to use vertices so not
edges but vertices and if I hit render
you can see that we get these dots and
if I actually move these actually our
problem is our end distance to small so
let's increase this to one and now you
can really see our dots showing up now
what are these dots so when you use
vertices it actually creates dots where
each vertices is and the vertices are
determined the no amount of vertices are
determined on splines by this
intermediate point setting so the angle
is 5% right now but if I bring this up
barely high you can see that that is
losing or degrading the smoothness of
our arc splines here and if I hit render
you'll see that everywhere there is like
that little chunk that little segment of
our spline there is a vertices so that
is how the vertices option on the
proximal shader works so what we're
gonna do is actually bring up the angle
fairly low so it's very high quality
line and if I hit render since it
creates a dot almost every angle change
in that spline we are getting this line
this nice straight line that's just
created by a bunch of those dots you can
see if it's too high we have too few
dots because those are the angle is too
high
we need to bring that threshold all the
way down to zero we get this nice
straight line and this is due to the
proximity of these vertices of the
spline to the disk now you'll notice if
I bring this up
we're losing the actual lines here
because the objects the splines aren't
close enough proximity to the disk so
there we go we need those splines to be
right on top of the disk and that'll
actually show up with the proximal
shader okay so what if we have just a
straight line say we have let's just
draw on top of our disk here so there's
a straight spline and let's make sure
that's right on top of our disk here
and if we go and apply that spline to
our object list here you can see that
that shows up right there and that is
only because we have two points so two
vertices to increase the number of
vertices we need to actually change this
from adaptive to uniform and increase
the number and you'll see that by
increasing the number we're now getting
a bunch of more points more vertices
along that single spline to create our
line so that is how I created the line
let's go back here the line right here
on the little slider guy here so that's
just a spline and then you just need to
change it to uniform and crank up the
numbers and that's how I created the
line and that is due again to the
proximity of it to another object if I
just had a spline out here floating in
the middle of space and I wanted this to
show up in a render what I'd have to do
is do a sweep and sweep a very small
circle onto it so I'm sweeping the
circle I'm sleeping the circle whoop
along the spline so I need to make this
a little shorter there we go
so there's my circle now you make this
very small and if I hit render there I
get my my spline in there due to giving
it some thickness so it has some edges
and you can position this any way you
want and there you go that's how you can
render splines that are just kind of
floating in space and I can add
different points to this and that'll
still render since it's just swept with
a very small circle to create some
geometry and that is being driven by the
cell renderer instead of the próximo
shader all right so I showed you how to
create cylinders
with extrude objects to create your
edges I showed you how to create
hollowed-out cylinders again with the
cell renderer to with extruded objects
to get the edges I showed you also how
to use and a sweep object to get splines
to show up in your render using cell
renderer and then I also showed you how
to create these inner edges by using a
proximal shader set to edge mode here
so using edges you can also include sub
objects as well and I also showed you
how you can use proximal shader that
uses vertices to to create these little
grooves by using the proximity of
splines so these little arc splines to
the disk to create the little grooves on
the turntable so now that we know how to
create all the edges on objects we can
basically apply what we just learned and
apply that to all these objects so if I
go to hidden line here we have all of
these objects which are basically Q's
cylinders discs and splines and you can
see that I applied the proximal shader
with a whole bunch of the objects in
this main scene hit render and I have
all of my outlines on all of my objects
here so it's as easy as that is once you
learn how to create edges using proximal
shader using cell renderer you can then
isolate individual 3d objects in your
scene and apply either the cell renderer
which is just applied to the entire
scene or apply a proximal shader either
edge mode or vertices mode and that's
how you get all of your edges so once
you have all of your edges in your line
version you save it and then we bring in
both of our cinema 4d files in
to after-effects and then we can start
compositing so now we can actually just
start we can just jump into After
Effects and do just that alright so
we're now in After Effects and we just
imported our to cinema 4d files so
remember we have the at the cinema 4d
file with just a flat color and then we
have the same file that's a duplicate of
that color file but then we just replace
all the color with our Sun renderer and
our proximal shaders to create our
outlines of all of our geometry so then
what you'll do is you'll create a
composition like I did here and I'm
gonna put the turntable lines on top of
the turntable color layer and you
automatically have a sin aware layer
applied to your cinema 4d files once you
bring them into a composition and then
you can actually go to the effects and
start messing around with these sin
aware layers so sin aware is really cool
you can bring in exactly what you see in
your cinema 4d viewport and see it
inside of After Effects which is really
handy and you can actually do some
compositing now with these two separate
cinema 4d files but the first thing I
want to do is right now we're just
seeing the wireframe version since it's
set the software renderer but we want to
actually see a draft version of the
fully rendered thing so now we actually
see what we saw in our turntable lines
cinema 4d file which is just these
outlines and we'll do the same thing
with our turntable color here and we'll
just change this so it was from from
software and we'll move it to standard
draft so now we actually see the flat
color and then what you want to do is
you'll just multiply this layer this
lines layer on top of the color layer
but you'll notice that our lines if I
change this back to normal mode our
lines are white and everything else is
black what we actually need to do is
invert that
so our lines are black and everything
else is white so the first thing I want
to do is make this just a complete black
and white image because right now it has
alpha and what I want to do eventually
is apply an effect that'll thicken the
of our cell renderer and our proximal
shader so we can have a little bit more
thickness and not so thin lines so the
first step is to get rid of the alpha on
the line so I'm just going to go to
interpret footage main and then just
ignore the Alpha and you'll see on the
lines layer we now have just black and
white so the next thing we need to do is
invert this and we can do this simply by
using the invert effect and apply that
so that's applied after arson aware
layer so that's good so we now have
black lines on a white background so now
if we do multiply you'll see we have our
thin lines on top of our color layer
cool now what if we want to thicken
those lines now we're going to use a
different effect that has a really fun
name and I like to say it funny it's
called minimax
and we apply that to our turntable lines
as well but the thing is we'll want to
apply this before the invert effect here
so what it does is basically grows the
image based on the color Channel so
since we're dealing with black and white
we're growing the black part of the
channel there and thickening our edges
so just the value of one is is pretty
good once you go to 2 we kind of get
some weird artifacting and stuff like
that so it's it's it'll thicken minimax
will thicken but it's also limited so
like I said this this workflow isn't
perfect but it will get you this line
art style look without too much fuss so
we have our sin aware layer our minimax
we have our invert and then multiply
this lines layer on top of the color
layer so you can actually have a little
bit of fun with this and say you want to
offset get this like kind of offset
printing kind of look where the lines
doesn't exactly match up with the color
shapes and we can do that by just using
like an offset command because if I
actually move this cinema
or Delayer you'll see we get an issue
with sin aware so we can either apply an
offset or we can pre compose this
cinema4d
layer and then move that composition but
just just for the sake of simplicity
I'll just use this offset you can see
that we're offsetting the lines a little
bit there so we have this cool little
offset where our lines are a bit offset
our colors are a bit off set and that
that could be a kind of artistic little
treatment of your line art as well so
that's with offset again if you want to
scale it up
I believe you can use a transform effect
so that will just apply you can apply a
scale to all that to scale the whole
entire line layer up so you have a lot
of flexibility here so once you actually
get your file the way you want it to you
would then change your cinema 4d you
want to see how these lines actually
look because right now they're really
chunky and there's two reasons for that
one of them being the renderer is set to
draft so if you change that to final on
both of these layers that'll kind of
smooth everything out but the thing is
is that you're also you also have low
render settings in your cinema 4d
composition so by default if we go over
to cinema 4d Lite you go to your
anti-aliasing settings they are by
default set to the lowest settings
possible and that is geometry
well actually none is the lowest but
geometry is pretty cruddy too so what
you want to do before you render
everything so the workflow you need to
you need to go through is making sure
you you Ram preview everything the
animation looks good and everything
looks ready to render and then you you
crank up your render settings in After
Effects in the sin aware layer and then
what you'll do before you render
everything is make sure that your
anti-aliasing is set high enough so you
get nice crisp edges
that's kind of the the look is that you
made everything with like really crisp
shape layers or vector art and you want
to maintain that kind of feel in using
3d so to do that you're gonna go and
you're gonna change the low
anti-aliasing settings to best and then
what you're gonna do is by default this
is set to min level and max level of one
by one and four by four and this is
basically how much anti-aliasing the
threshold basically how high it goes so
what I like to do is change the minimum
level to four by four just so it's
fairly high and then you go to the
filter and this also adjusts the the
type of filter you use so still images
pretty sharp but I actually use sync
that's just my preference to get nice
sharp edges that goes with animation as
well and then what you'll do is once you
change your anti-aliasing settings and
crank them up a little bit you're gonna
save and then you're gonna do the same
thing in the turntables line composition
change it to best I already changed this
to four by four by four by four and then
change this sync as well and then just
save now the thing you have to keep in
mind is now once you change those
anti-sea a leasing settings to a higher
value it's gonna take a lot longer to
actually render via sin aware and then
you're gonna see this thing cranking for
a while so the one thing you really need
to keep in mind is that this is just to
preview like one frame and make sure
that the anti-aliasing looks good and
once you check this one frame then you
just render and I would recommend to not
render using sin aware because it's
gonna take a lot longer because you're
not only rendering from cinema 4d but
you're also rendering through this After
Effects pipeline which is gonna slow it
down so what I recommend you do is you
render both of these cinema 4d
animations so I would just go and just
render you go to your output settings
make sure you have all four
and then just render - picture viewer as
a QuickTime or whatever PNG sequence
whatever you want to do and then import
those files those rendered movies so you
do that for the color cinema 4d file and
the lines render these out and then
import the QuickTime movies or sequences
whatever and then just replace these
cinema 4d sinawe layers and then since
this is quite an easy setup you can
either just import the MOV files and
just replace these two layers and make
sure to turn off the sin aware layers
you don't need those anymore since
you're dealing with movies or you just
recreate the setup and just copy the
effects onto a new composition with the
with the rendered QuickTime movies so
that is how you the workflow that I
would go through to create line art in
cinema 4d cinema 4d Lite and sin aware
and After Effects and hopefully for
those of you out there that are just new
to cinema 4d that this all made sense if
not please make sure that you you know
if you have any questions just hit me in
the comments I'll be I'll be watching
them and and helping you guys out I know
some of you might be very new to cinema
4d so I want to help you guys really
learn and understand all this stuff and
and if you make anything be sure to
share that as well love to see what you
guys are making out there so hope this
all made sense and as always thank you
for watching I'll see you in the next
tutorial later guys