Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Wood Block or Cast Metal Type Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everyone its EJ from I design calm and
in this tutorial and be going over how
you can recreate this cast metal type or
woodblock type kind of look on you'll
notice that these aren't these letters
aren't extruded it's not a straight
extrude you kind of have this nice
rounding here and what I had to recreate
this look I really wanted to be true to
you how these blocks actually look you
can kind of see a little bit better here
how it's not just a straight extrude you
got this kind of round bevel action
going on and I had to create a whole
bunch of these actually and recreate
something similar to this so the
workflow I'm going to show you is how
you can make one of these set it up and
easily duplicate it change out the the
letter or the font and resize the block
and just keep going just keep keep on
trucking and just blaze through a whole
bunch of these so you can quickly and
easily recreate a whole entire wall of
this so let me jump right in show you
show you the workflow that I came up
with we're not going to start out with a
cube
we're going to actually start out with a
extruded rectangle and the reason for
that is let me put this in the extrude
and give that some depth is uh because
we don't want to we're going to need to
subdivide the front face here and with a
cube you'd have to make that editable
and do a bunch of subdivision stuff like
that and it's just easier for me to just
go into this caps choose the types to
quadrangles and just there you go
you're already subdivided and you can
still have full control over that and
it's still editable so all this whole
entire workflow is keeping things
editable and easily manipulated or
edited so you can just kind of adjust
for your taste or whatever your
look you're going for so so we have our
little block now we need to add our text
so let's get a mo text object and let's
choose a cool font than that and let's
go for rock well that works and let's
just go with E and let's scale that up
and give us some depth and we're done
there's your woodblock just kidding
so like I was saying you want this kind
of we want to go for this nice rounding
here nice a bevel so actually how I came
up with that is normally you would think
of we'll just put don't even deal with
this mo type just throw a bump channel
on this like a bump channel texture on
here with a matte of the font that a
JPEG of Illustrator file or Photoshop
file and just adjust the bump or the
displacement channel of that texture but
then you can't easily edit that and just
go in say like alright well I want a J
instead and then just reposition you
actually have to make another matte
another image with that mat where you
can use that in the displacement or the
bump channel so that's that's the name
of the game of this workflow here is we
don't we don't want to do bump channels
anything like that so scale that back
you know so I had to come up with a
different way and messing around and I
mean there's so many deformers I kind of
ignore a bunch of them but I was messing
around I was like okay I see this
collision deformer
and it kind of looks like just by the
icon itself it looks like something that
could possibly be kind of handy so I
decided alright let's let's give this a
shot so basically I want this
this mo type object to deform the cube
and kind of give it that like it's
pushing out like Han Solo and the
Carbonite right we want we want it like
we want the e to be Han Solo in this to
be the Carbonite block and if you
haven't seen Star Wars yet I'm sorry you
don't pick up on that reference but you
should see Star Wars so let's uh so
we're going to need disc illusion to
former to deform this block with the
type basically so the collision to
former can't can't interact with the
extrude NURBS because it's just in this
hierarchy it just won't work so we're
going to actually have to group the
objects put into a null and if I move
this now on the same level of the
hierarchy then we can actually get this
work and so we have the collision of
former applied now we just have to say
alright we want this Collider to be the
moat i p-- will just name that e so once
I throw the e in there you'll see
nothing happens right away we don't want
intersect we're going to actually need
to choose inside stretch so right away
you can see okay this e if I move this
around it's pushing out remember si Han
Solo his hand all that stuff pushing out
and that's uh that's that's kind of the
look that we want to go for we don't
want that extreme of a bevel though
because like is ever so subtle but it
really adds a lot of you have that
effect so what we'll go into here is
adjust some of these settings if you go
into advance if you start playing around
with some of these you can kind of get a
feel for what these things do
so if I bump up the steps can't really
see too much but it looks like it's kind
of tightening the stretch just kind of
stretches things out softens that that
bevel or the the deformation so we
actually want to keep this stretch
pretty pretty low because we want the we
just want a slight bevel at the ball at
the base of the letter and if we mess
with the relax you can see that that
just kind of relaxes kind of like this
is a cloth so we actually want to we
don't want to keep that down too much
because then you start getting these
jaggies here and you can actually
alleviate that a few ways by doing the
relax or by going in here and your
extrude and remember why I said this is
important and why I worked like this so
you can bump up the subdivision and kind
of smooths everything out you'll see
you'll have this kind of pinching here
on these edges can get rid of that by
simply let's go adjust the height and
just kind of move the move the font away
from the whip move the font away from
the edges or just not have it go out
that far because then now render out and
you'll get some funky edges going on so
let's uh bring the height down there
okay so that's all right let's go back
into the collision settings here and can
play around with the stiffness see that
that's kind of fixing our edges here if
we get our struct down I'm not doing
anything right now but see what if we
adjust our flex everything kind of
reacts with this stiffness value up
there so you can kind of play around
with these settings to to get what
you're going for one thing I've noticed
that helped is if you bring this up
bring the text up and then you can kind
of get that nice bevel right there but
you can see that the the actual text is
getting in the way the text objects get
in the way and if I turn off the
visibility there you can start to see
the results and it's still not looking
like that so we really need to tighten
this up a little bit - one thing I found
that helped is if on the text object you
add a fillip cap and if you adjust the
steps just the radius it helps that a
little bit another thing is just keep
playing with these settings to get it to
the way that you would like it to look
actually let's uh we adjust the steps
down so that kind of tightens it up a
little bit
tightens it up a lot actually and then
we can use this relax to kind of smooth
smooth that out and again we can go
let's actually bring that down we can go
into the extrude nerves and bring down
the subdivision of that the subdivision
of that cube face as well
let's go into our collision again
stiffness just to smooth all those edges
out choose that so it's just that a lot
of messing around with all these values
trying to smooth all these values out so
you get the look that you want and right
now right now you're getting we're
getting a pretty good looking fat going
on it's kind of looking looking pretty
pretty close
see if that helps and let's leave that
alone
let's go into make it a smaller radius
Phillips
crease it that's not looking good let's
bring that back down like I said it's a
lot of time this is exactly how I got
the look the last time is just messing
around yes if you bring this out a
little bit more - that helps the one
thing is is that you can see that this
texture here is a lot lighter than this
texture and that's just because of
keeping this smooth you in a letterpress
you you would need to smooth this out so
that the ink Cana didn't leave spots or
anything like that so you always got
this dark and tarnished edge so keep it
in mind that you probably want to use
two textures and it's pretty hard to
kind of do polygon selections to assign
different tags so how I came up with
doing this is if you if you turn that
back on you can see that the polygons
are overlapping so I can't just simply
throw a lighter metallic texture on that
and a darker metallic texture on the
block so if I render that out see that
the polygons are overlapping it just
doesn't look look very good at all so
one thing I actually stumbled upon after
playing around with some settings is
that if I just do a negative value
museum out you actually take these
textures off you can see a little bit
better you can see that totally changes
how the collision deformer works so you
instead of having the nice round you
have this kind of globby look so one
other thing is that if you do a smaller
depth that will actually smooth a lot of
stuff out as well so I think I actually
did like
do a negative 0.5 so you can still see
that polygon overlaps and maybe let's do
a negative 7 let's just do a negative 1
all right now if I rendered this no
textures applied but I just want to see
if there's any polygon overlap here
looking like we're good on that front
selection zoom in here you see that this
doesn't line up exactly so let's do some
more tweaking you can see that by using
a negative depth value totally changes
how the collision deformer acts so to
get the I mean sometimes if you just
wanna you just want this whole thing to
be the same color that'll work perfectly
fine for you you don't need to worry
about the negative death but since I
want to use two separate textures doing
it this way but the negative depth
really works nicely
so let's actually see how this looks
with no caps it's right now that matches
up a little bit better but not not
perfect and then we get this stuff
messed up so let's actually do the
Phillip Phillip caps again let's go back
into our former occlusion to former
let's try to get these edges to matte
match up a little bit better
the stretch up to size bring that down
do this up to one just kind of line it
up pretty good now we don't got to get
too exact because once we zoom out it
kind of blends in anyways and one other
thing we do is always keep keep in mind
you can up the subdivisions and that
will help get a little bit more exact
look here so it's uh
going here let's drop down stretch down
relax just a lot of trial trial and
error here
yeah
all right let's up that and alright I'm
pretty happy with that it's not not
perfect it's looking looking better
bring that down to zero there we go okay
maybe stretch will smooth that out
that's looking pretty good
okay I've got the depth subdivision and
all that's good so now let's actually
just apply our textures and see how this
looks through some lighting in here me
it's getting a little slow in my
viewport so it's a go to lower quality
let's put some area lights in
I set an angle that up there get an area
shadow point out all the stops we want
some really nice lighting here
and duplicate this bring this light over
here
maybe turn this down a person any bit of
blueish tint to that one and let's do an
HDR I sky objects so let's go into our
sky objects throw whoop let's throw a
HDR eye on that bad boy and just so we
can hide it put a compositing tag on
that don't want it to catch a doze or
receive shadows don't want to see it in
the camera view and we want to see it by
raising GI so that's all good and
alright let's let's turn on the level of
detail to high zoom in a little bit and
make sure our put some ambient occlusion
on so we can see so really accentuate
the shading on the edges here and let's
give this a go
so one thing I've seen right away is
this texture if you look in here this
texture has a nice bump map or a
normalized map and that's actually new
to our 14 is uh instead of using bump
you can you actually use normal
deformations and put that new normalizer
effect on there and it'll actually
instead of just a normal black and white
matter it will actually use a UV turn
your your like bump maths your black and
white bump maps or whatever or just
colored images and turn them into a faux
kinda normal map so it really act a
little bit better with the lighting in
the scene so anyways that's there's some
nice textures applied on here on normal
maps and so let's actually do cube cubic
mapping here you can see this textures a
heck of a lot better so it's kind of
just adjust just these let's bring this
to 200 by 200 and let's do another
render here so you can see the normals
the normal map really bumping into that
maybe we want to turn down
normal strengths a little bit there down
here man the nice thing is that you can
actually see it update the textures and
the little bit of lighting in the viewer
in the viewport to that's noon or 14 as
well so kind of nice
I'm not crazy with the size of the
texture there so let's bring that
texture down let's make that seamless so
we don't have any seams we bring this
down to that little quality try 70 and
turns seamless off and there we go it's
looking a bit better
so let's see we need to shine a little
bit more light on this guy so you can
really see the see the bevel edge in
there so it's uh 30 and bring this light
out one front and let's actually bring
the accuracy down on this we don't want
another five-year render render
so you can start to see this nice
rounded edge here it's a little bit dark
but you can you can you can see it that
nice rounded bevel that I was talking
about in here let me just so you can see
a little bit better
we actually brighten this texture
working that so much and let's go to
this texture here and reflection down
just bring the little bump down a little
bit to one last render
so now you're starting to see a little
bit better that rounding you're still
seeing a little bit of kind of kookiness
right in here but again you can just
jack down that subdivision setting and
that'll take care of that or even play
around the collision settings and maybe
do the relax a little bit more as well
and that'll smooth all this owl up the
steps to I think this steps kind of act
as a subdivision kind of smooth stuff
out as well so again it's just a lot of
adjusting these options playing with the
depth here depending on if you want a
separate texture for the front cap here
so you can get the nice lighter metal or
wood color on this see how this is a
little bit more shiny texture than the
actual block so then so you got your one
block alright and let's actually go down
in level of detail again and actually go
way low oh so we're going to actually
let's just do this the EEB lock and
duplicate all of it well actually let's
group that together this Justine group
and we're gonna duplicate all this by
holding down ctrl click and do J cuz
that's my name block and let's keep it
tidy
rename and okay so we're going to go in
here J we're going to move this whole
entire block over my name is Angela its
EJ let's move that over there we can go
in here and adjust
it block sighs let's make this a little
bit more square and to do an uppercase J
and let's bring the height down so
that's that's kind of the whole point is
that you make one of these you get to
look the rounding the way you want to
you just duplicate the one block and
resize it here so there was a method to
the the workflow then I kind of came up
with here is that you can easily just
iterate and make a whole bunch of these
blocks because like I said I had to make
a whole entire wall of these and just
spending the time and getting the one
block to look perfect was really nice
because then I have those all those
settings I just duplicate it just change
the letter change the font and to
whatever you want and you can easily
bang out a whole entire wall of these
guys so do one last render here like I
said it does it does what it does bug
down your computer quite a bit if once
you actually get all these guys set and
you know you're not going to change it
you can just make everything editable
and let's see I think at that point
yeah you can actually believe you can
just cash the deformation so it doesn't
bog down because I mean the collision
deformation is what hogs up with a lot
of it the memory so if I go to we don't
want to add at a time because it would
actually time out the deformation over
your each second over your time line so
we just want a sample one frame so we're
going to go from start one frame at zero
frames stop at one frame and let's
calculate this is going to calculate the
J that's not what we want actually
what's uh update so we actually need to
I made it editable but I need to
actually connect all these in delete so
all this is one object and let's make
that editable as well and connect
objects and delete so alright cool so
now I just put that back on there and
delete the extra Knolls
get rid of these guys now I think we
have to reconnect the collision into the
collider yep so move that object a J
I'll check back in there and so we've
reconnected that deformation
there's a cube alright now let's do the
caching so this is when you're all ready
to go and you don't need to edit
anything anymore and you just want to
navigate around the scene so set the
zero to one and
calculate now and that's enable its
Alisa
it's just hide the e group you can see
my computer kind of struggling before
with moving around so now it's just
super super fast and that's because that
whole collision deformation calculation
is now in the cache so keep that in mind
when you actually get to a point where
you want to make everything editable and
just navigate the scene and animate some
of these guys because unless you work in
low res mode or just have it where let
me actually bring this this guy back or
if you just work in a mode where you
make sure you have your your
subdivisions up until you actually want
to render so you can actually enemy and
stuff like that so keep that in mind
when you actually want to render these
if you just want to do like a print
piece something like that you really
don't have to worry about that but but
when you do want to render make sure to
bring the settings back down so you have
that nice rounded bevel there so that's
how you go about creating a bunch of
these cast metal type here's a you
actually find one that already did and
so you gotta just uh you kind of
recreated this and made in the type and
I think I have my render here in the
desktop see here
think it's this one yep let me bring
this over here so there it is a fully
rendered with that nice beveled curved
edge down at the base there with the
separate texture is all that good stuff
so hope you follow along there all right
and go make some wood blocks or cast