Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create a 2D Liquid Reveal Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody it's EJ from I design comm and
today I'm gonna be showing you how to
get a kind of liquidy 2d linear
transition inside of cinema 4d so we're
gonna be making a transition that's
gonna look kind of liquidy or a wipe
that is very 2d in its nature you can
actually see on my screen right here is
that we have the shoe that is actually
it that comes in a free sketching to
model pack that I'll provide information
in the in the tutorial description so go
grab that and what what what's actually
going on is I have my first off my my
strokes kind of fading on I also have my
strokes actually offset a little bit so
it got a little bit of this like print
offset kind of look in style to this
piece of line art animation and then I
have this kind of liquidy kind of
tearing kind of effect wiping and wiping
off or wiping on and wiping off this
shoe model so this is what I'm going to
be going over today is 2d transitions 2d
linear transition this inside of cinema
4d line offsets and fading up your
sketch in tune strokes all in cinema 4d
so let's get started here all right so I
got a shoe model and I pulled that from
my I design free sketching to model pack
it is free as it says in the name and
it's a collection of eighteen models 3d
models that you can use that are
optimized for use with sketching tune in
applying sketch in tune flat 2d styles
to your 3d objects so I got a collection
of eighteen here you can grab them from
the website from my website I design
calm and I'll post a link to the actual
download page in this tutorial
description so check it out there but
this is the shoe model that I'm using so
you can actually grab this model and do
the same exact thing and follow along
but what I'm gonna do is create a wipe
that kind of wipes this shoe on
and at the same time I'm gonna have the
stroke the strokes the outlines on this
guy kind of fade on as well the first
thing I want to do is I may actually go
in here and delete the animation that I
got already going on here so you can
actually see the strokes so the first
thing I want to go over is how I got
this kind of print off see so you can
see my strokes don't exactly a line to
my object you can see there's a little
bit of like color bleed going on right
here and this is actually a very simple
setting in a sketch in tune so I'm gonna
turn on interactive under region here
and so you can actually see what's going
on and to get this kind of print offset
look what you're gonna do is go into the
adjustment tab of your sketch material
and you have all these options you can
resize the strokes you can actually
adjust where the ending point is there's
a lot of really cool options in this
adjustment for adjusting your stroke so
you can see you have this kind of
tapered kind of gradual edge kind of
getting chopped up here you can create
really cool stylistic strokes using all
of these options here but the main one
that you want to pay attention to with
getting this print offset look is this
screen offset button right here so what
this is gonna do is you're gonna
basically want to pay attention to the X
and the y here and what these values do
is offset your strokes from your off
from your object in the X and y
direction so you can see if I have zero
values here in the X&Y everything looks
exactly as it should in this scene here
all the strokes line up perfectly with
the 3d edges of my 3d objects in here
but once you start adjusting these
values you can see that that is now
offsetting my stroke in the X direction
you can see actually
in my little coordinate little icon down
here that X is actually a little bit
slanted aside since I'm using a parallel
camera right here so it's you can see
that it's kind of pushing it in the X
but it's actually X towards the screen
because you're doing screen offset so
really I guess is independent of how
your coordinates are kind of lined up so
it's in the positive x I can go in the
negative X it'll go way over here and
let me just put it value of 3 in there
and then you can also adjust them the Y
so if I Jack up in the positive Y you
can see it goes down if I go in the
negative Y it'll go up and you can
actually see what's going on in preview
in your little window up here to see
exactly what's what's happening up there
so that's basically how you can get this
screen offset so the start in the end is
is again just kind of offsetting the
start in the end of each stroke so this
is kind of taking the first part of the
stroke and moving it and offsetting it
and you can see that it really doesn't
give that that good of a result because
when you're working with a lot of
objects in your scene you start messing
with this value it just starts making
everything kind of janky maybe that's
what you let maybe that's a style you
you dig and you want to use that but for
this the most important things I use is
this is the X & Y screen offset because
it gives it achieves this really nice
kind of print printing press kind of
color offset kind of deal where your
your strokes are just a little bit off
off-center from where your actual
objects is and then creates this really
really nice effect that you're seeing in
a lot of animation these days and even
illustration work so screen offset
that's how I get that done the next
order of business is creating this nice
gradient
alpha gradient kind of wipe
and the way I did that is actually
fairly simple I'm gonna create a new
material and I'm gonna name this just
alpha white and I'm gonna turn off the
color and the reflectance I'm going to
turn on alpha so first thing I need to
do is I'm gonna create a gradient a
black and white gradient to use as a mat
to help wipe motivate this wipe on and
off actually so I'm gonna create a
gradient you can actually see my little
sphere here that I'm getting a gradient
happening and it's a smooth gradient but
what I want to do is actually have a
very no interpolation whatsoever so I
just want black and white no gradation
or no ramping from black to white just
it's either black or then it just goes
directly to 100% white so what I'm gonna
do is create this wipe where it actually
wipes on and then wipes off so black
means it's not visible white means it's
visible and then I'll actually need
another black not over here where it's
not visible again you can kind of just
eyeball this or you can actually you
know do 33% and actually have these
positioned in kind of like a third of
each of you know dividing this gradient
into thirds so these are spaced kind of
evenly so what you'll notice is what
you'll need to do well first off is you
need to actually apply this to all the
objects in your scene and to do this you
just select you just go ahead select all
of your objects make sure you get them
all in here so I think that's about it
and you actually apply this on top of
the materials you already have in your
scene so what I'm gonna do is go and
select right click and just go to apply
and you'll see that all of my gradient
alpha ramps have been applied and the
important thing is is that it's applied
as the material furthest to the right if
you have this material applied under or
to the left of your original material
it's not gonna work
you can actually see that gradient kind
of go away and be overridden by your
original material so keep that in mind
let's see I think I can get rid of that
material or I'll keep that okay so let's
see now what we need to do is you'll
actually see that this isn't actually
creating a Grall feh at all what we're
doing is just painting these black
strokes onto our shoe and that doesn't
really look all that great so what we
need to do is number one you can
actually see in our little preview
window here that what we're getting is
just a white or a black stripe here and
this is due to the fact that by default
if you don't have any other color
channel or anything on it's just gonna
have no it's just gonna be a black
material here so you see if I just turn
this off it's just a black circle so
what I actually need to do is go into my
transparency channel and turn that on
and I don't need the internal reflection
or exit reflections at all I just need
this to be a transparent material so you
can actually see that by turning
transparency on with this alpha gradient
that we're actually creating those black
stripes actually are now basically
alphas you can actually see through the
images there and since this gradient is
applied based on the UVs of your object
we're getting these little black and
white gradient Maps just kind of tiled
all across our object and that's not
what we want we actually want a just one
gradient applied over the whole entire
span of all of our objects and then have
it wipe linearly and what we'll need to
do for that is actually change the type
of gradient we're using from one that's
based on the UVs of your materials of
your objects the UVs of your objects and
one that's independent of any of that so
what we're gonna do is use a 3d linear
gradient and what this is gonna do this
updates right here is
you can see we have a stripe going right
down the middle of our object
and the first thing when you actually
need to do is invert these colors
because we're actually having where we
wear white actually should be visible
texture we're actually getting the
opposite so what we're gonna do is just
invert this and we should then give
exactly what we expect so we have so
black is is nothing so it's over here so
we can see right through so that's full
alpha White's is where we can actually
see our image and then it goes back to
black where we can't see our image again
and we'll just turn the cycle off here
cuz ICO actually deals with UVs and
mapping and stuff like that we don't
need it so basically how 3d linear
gradients work is based off of 3d space
you can actually position a gradient in
3d space you can see the start and the
end and if I turn off my interactive
render region here and actually see our
grid that the start position these
values is x y and z so and then end XY
and z so right now our gradient starts
at negative 100 in the X and you can see
this might this is my x axis kind of
going at a diagonal here so my start is
right here right at this one line right
here this is negative 100 in the X and
then my end is positive 100 in the X and
you can see that's about right here so
when I render you can see exactly this
gradient being laid out interactive
render region there we go so what you
can actually see is once this renders is
that this gradient is laid out between
negative 100 and the X and positive 100
in the X and you can see our white or
stripe going right down the middle of it
that's our matte where we can actually
see our texture so if we start
adjusting these values to be closer
together
so if I move this to zero so it would be
zero in the X this will actually squash
our gradient to just zero in the ax to a
hundred centimeters in the X and if I
make this a bigger negative number that
means our gradient will start here or
actually start over here and end here so
you can see that more of the gradient is
pushed over to this area over here so
it's very kind of abstract
you can't visually see exactly what's
going on
and I don't like that kind of setup so
what I like to do when using three
linear gradients is actually linking the
start and end positions to nulls and you
can actually do this with some very very
easy peasy simple expresso so what I'm
gonna do is control these gradients and
set up the start and end positions of
our 3d gradients and control them with
nulls so I'm just gonna create a null
and rename this to start and what I'm
gonna do is then go to my start no and
just select all of the position values
here so all of them are highlighted and
I'm gonna right click and go to
expressions and say set drivers so I
want these values to drive some other
values in something else and those
values are gonna be this start position
remember this is start XYZ so I'm gonna
have the position X Y Z of my null
control-v start X Y Z of my gradient and
to do that I just right click on the
start here go to expressions and go to
set driven absolute and then what you'll
notice is that my start null is 0 0 0
and now my start in my gradient is 0 0 0
as well but you'll notice once I start
actually moving my gradient around you
can see that I'm moving the Z I'm
adjusting the position in Z it's now
reflect
those same values in the 3d gradient so
that's really really cool and that's and
it just created an expression here you
actually didn't need to write any
expresso at all but you can basically
see that this automatically set up and
just kind of linked those two values
together of the start position of the
null to the gradient start fields here
in our gradient so we're gonna do the
same exact thing with our end
coordinates here so we'll just create
another null and rename this end and
again do this really simple easy
expresso setup of right-clicking make
sure you get just click on all on the P
and you'll select all of them and just
right click set driver and then make
sure end is selected right click on the
word end and go to set driven so now
you'll notice that the end null is now
controlling the end coordinates in our
3d gradient so now what we can do is
move both our start in our end and
actually see this white stripe or alpha
or black and white Matt kind of going
through our objects so what I want my
animation to be is have it start from
nothing so if I render this frame right
here you'll just see the outlines so
none of our textures are actually white
dawn yet so once I actually keyframe
these nulls you can actually see a
little bit in the viewport you can
actually see this little Czech
checkerboard kind of texture and that
that kind of signifies the Alpha so when
I render this you'll see that we
actually have an alpha right up here so
this stripe going through it is the
matte passing through in 3d space and
affecting all of our objects so now what
we need to do is we just need to kind of
extend the start in the end position
here so it's actually covering so that
white portion is actually covering the
entire
the entirety of our object here so now
that's fully visible because we're now
mapping this white part of our mat to
the 3d space that our Shu object is is
positioned in the scene and then all I
need to do to animate this is just set
some keyframes for our start and end
we'll just need to set some keyframes in
the Z but you can actually record them
for all if you want and then I'll have
both my start and end nulls kind of
actually I did this wrong let me go back
so I actually want so this is fully
visible actually need the gradient to be
over here so now it's invisible now we
have the black part of the mat or the
black part of the gradient mapped on the
shoe so you see I render that and you
don't see anything and then I'll
actually move my nulls so it actually
makes everything visible hit a new
keyframe so you see there's no more of
that checkerboard transparent stuff on
my shoe and then I'll have another
keyframe so there's a hold here and then
I'll just move my nulls to have this
wipe completely off so I just moved my
black and white gradient stripe through
my object set some keyframes now you can
actually see hopefully you can see
actually the checkerboard material being
passed through and now it's white and
then it ramps through again so for you
can see that so this is fully visible
and then we have our as this see this a
little line here with the checkerboard
that's the start of our mat that's
coming through and wiping all of our
textures off so this is all well and
good once you have that all animated and
keyframe correctly the way you want it
to keyframe we can actually go a little
bit further to make this a lot more
interesting and that is by adding a
little bit of turbulence to our
gradient here so we can turn just a
linear gradient into a more interesting
kind of grungy gradient here if you if
you if you want you actually see that's
a little bit just like noisy just very
small noise but we can actually scale
the noise down I never understood why
bringing a percentage down actually
makes the scale of the noise bigger but
the lower this value is the bigger your
NORs you can actually see a little bit
bigger noise and I'm gonna bring the
octaves down so there's not so much
detail in our noise you can see a little
bit going on there
let's see let's give it to let's go
right here and render this so when we
turn on the interactive render region
here and you can adjust the turbulence
you bring up the turbulence up even more
and you can kind of get this looking
almost like you know it's liquidy kind
of washing over this 3d object which
looks kind of cool especially with all
the layers of 3d here going on so you
see the outer sole this red and then you
actually see the inner sole which is
just this white and it actually creates
this really nice cool almost liquidy
effect and this frequency is actually
how fast this turbulence is animated so
if I right click and say animate this
preview and turn up the frequency here
you can actually see the turbulence kind
of waving around and if you bring this
value up this will actually be like
animated noise wiping through your scene
so you can have play this you can't kind
of play with that and see what looks
good I think just a very subtle low
value and here actually works works
pretty dang good just for some subtle
movement as this wipes across and then
the final thing I did so that that
creates this kind of liquidy wipe on let
me turn off that animation window there
and again you can adjust
the size of the gradient if you would
like by scaling this just in the scale
percentage here so you can create some
really cool kind of liquidity transition
effects like this right here you
actually see a lot more almost looks
like it's tearing a little bit like kind
of cloth or something like that so you
cannot have a lot of fun experimenting
with this but then the final thing was
just animating the opacity of our
strokes so we don't want our animation
to just start with outlines we actually
want our outlines to kind of transition
on as well and kind of transition on the
same time as the alpha the gradient ramp
kind of goes through so you can see the
start of it happening right at the top
of our shoe and what we can do is
actually go and instead of going to draw
to draw on our strokes we can actually
have our opacity fade up all of our
strokes and then control that whatever
way we want to so we can actually reset
this default long to short or since our
gradients coming from right to left we
can actually have our stroke order go
from right to left and our method you
can just do single strokes or all
strokes whatever you want to do and then
the draw speed I like to use completion
for this and then you can just animate
the completion of all of your strokes
animating and fading up by this
completion percentage so I can hit a
keyframe for completion I'll just move
this here and then just have my
completion all the way down to zero so
you'll see no stroke going on and then
as I go from the 0% completion to 100%
you actually see our strokes fading on
one by one in our a viewport here so
I'll have that animate on and then have
this animate off by going from 100%
completion back down to zero so as our
gradient wipes off we can actually have
our strokes animate off as well so let
me go and adjust this so this is our
gradient or start and end keyframes here
so I just kind of want to line that up
and have that synchronize with the with
the the wipe so now once you've set all
that up and you render it you put it in
the oven 45 minutes later you get a
little animation kind of like this so I
had the strokes fade on I have my alpha
white coming through kind of creating
this cool kind of tearing or liquidy
kind of wipe on with the the turbulence
in that gradient as it wipes across and
then have my strokes fade on and fade
off using the completion percentage on
the opacity on my stroke material so
that is how I created this cool little
2d kind of liquidy transition kind of
thing going on and using the screen
offset to get the kind of offset
printing kind of look to my object so if
if you have any questions be sure to hit
me in the comments hopefully you guys
followed all that this is a lot of fun
to play around with them really excited
to see what you guys come up with
remember to grab all those models and
the free sketch into model pack on my
site play around with all that stuff if
you make something be sure to show share
it with everyone really like to see what
you guys are coming up with and as
always thank you guys so much for
watching
appreciate it I'll see you in the next
tutorial talk to you guys later bye bye