Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating 2D Cartoon Paint Splats Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody it's EJ from I design comm and
today I have a very splat tastic
tutorial for you it's all about creating
2d splats or cartoonish splats inside a
cinema 4d so you know I love to kind of
give the cinema 4d user some very handy
useful things they can do to kind of
supplement their 2d workflow and this is
a perfect example of that
so I've done a lot of cloud how to do
clouds how to do 2d flames and now we're
doing some splats so you can see in my
viewport here that's a fairly simple
setup and it's all controlled by just a
couple keyframes to create these nice
little splats a nice thing about it is
is that it's very customizable it's very
easy to create a bunch of splats very
quickly and easily by just kind of
adjusting random seeds and stuff like
this so let's get started and show you
how I created these splats in cinema 4d
all right so let's actually just start
out with a whole entire new scene here
and what we're going to do is we'll
create a sphere and this is going to be
like our main blob just apply a bright
material on there we'll just name this
blob and will just shrink that down to
say 50 or so and what we're going to do
is then create a all the little arms
little blobby splat arms that kind of
emanate from this main object and to do
this we'll just duplicate this blob and
we'll just name these splats
and we'll clone a bunch of them so I'll
get a cloner place that splat object
under the cloner and we'll just make
sure we have the set up radially cloned
radially and then have these go in the
right way and you can see that we now
have these little balls these little
spheres that will when you keyframe the
radius here that will emanate out so
let's actually just do exactly that and
keyframe the radius here so frame let's
just bring this down to frame 10 and go
to a radius again and hit
frame at frame zero so we just keyframed
these little spheres emanating out
radially from other than the main sphere
here so nothing too exciting yet so what
we actually need to do is make this very
blobby looking and if you know about
metal balls you know that metabolome a
configs blobby so what we're going to do
is place the blob and the cloned objects
underneath this metal ball and you can
see that this makes this kind of
pixelated blobby kind of thing going on
let's actually change the editor and
render subdivisions here and adjust the
hole to get a little bit more of that
form so what the metal balls doing is
just placing like a saran wrap mesh over
everything kind of likes liming it and
you can see that we get a little bit of
a sense of some kind of splat action
going on
but as of right now we don't have
anything to connect the arms to the main
middle of our splat so the nice thing
about metaball is that not only does it
affect spheres and work on spheres but
what you can actually do is it also
works with splines so what we can do is
actually create splines that connect or
trace the trails of these cloners out
here these cloner objects out here so
what we can do is create a tracer object
and what the tracer object is going to
do is if I place this underneath the
metal ball here and if I make sure I'm
tracing this cloner
what it's what it's going to do is trace
the path of all those corners as they
animating since we have the the radius
animated here it's going to create a
path from the center where it starts all
the way out to where they are at this
frame when the radius is 140 so go to
our tracer the one thing we need to turn
off is this trace vertices we don't need
to trace the vertices we just need to
create a single spline that is tracing
the animation path of those objects so
if I hit play now you can see that due
to the tracer creating these
lines and you can see the splines as I
turn off the metal ball here we now have
these nice little splat arms that are
emanating from the object and get a
little bit more form of that if we
adjust the hall value here so we get a
little bit more thickness to those arms
if we adjust the coner cloner account we
get more arms so we get a little bit
more of a sense of this kind of splat
action going on and another big thing is
you can see that the arms kind of taper
out and that's due to the radius of our
actually saw the splat arms at the end
here so if we increase the radius of
these splats here you get more of a
sense of a continued arm there so we get
these nice little like kind of droplets
at the end where all the little liquid
parts kind of connect together at the
end of each of these blah
splat arms here so that's looking good
one thing we can do to make this a
little bit more interesting though is to
create a little bit more organic
randomness in our splat because all
these splats are radiating fairly a very
not very mechanically it's not very
there's no randomness at all they're
spaced evenly and when you make a splat
it's not it's very messy it's all over
the place and it's not very uniform at
all so a couple things we can do to add
a little bit of randomness is to one
adjust the offset so that's just
adjusting the offset of all of our
clones in general but then we can adjust
the variation offset and that'll
actually randomize that offset so I like
to keep this at kind of low value
because we only want like a subtle kind
of offset going on here so you can see
that by justing this a little bit we're
getting a little bit more randomness in
these arm spacing and really just a
little bit goes a long way in that
respect so let's see
you can also adjust the off seed or the
offset seed here and see what that looks
like so we still want some decent amount
of spacing I think that looks good
enough where we have a little bit of
random offset there another thing we can
do is actually add a random effector to
this corner let me rename this to splat
arm so that's our corner object and what
we can do is go and add a random
effector like so and what we can do is
let's just turn off all the position
stuff here but what we want to do is
actually randomize the position in the Z
I think it's the Z yeah so let's let me
let me stop this for a second and turn
the metal ball off so you can see that
by adjusting the randomness here in Z
we're kind of offsetting how far those
splats kind of go out so you can see
that that's due to the random value here
we can also adjust the in constrain the
randomness so there's no negative values
perhaps or we just clean up it all too
positive and then we can kind of clean
up how much that maximum length or that
maximum distance is so let's see here we
go so we can adjust all this turn this
back on so you can see that some of our
arms are moving in or moving out a lot
and some of them are staying relatively
close to the center here another thing
we can do is randomize the scale of
these guys so some of them will be
thicker some of the the spheres will be
bigger therefore making some of the arms
thicker and we can get back some of that
geometry by just decreasing the whole
value here
you can just the actual center blob to
get more of the center of the splat back
a little bit here one thing I like to do
is so we have this radius kind of
animating as well what I'm going to do
is there's a couple of ways they
actually animate this and this is fine
if you just want a stationary splat but
what you want to see is the splat
actually kind of fall like a big blob of
paint or something fall from the sky and
then splat and right now it's just
stationary it's just a splat on the
ground so what actually first thing I'm
going to do is just get rid of the
radius here and just start out with a
with just no radius at all you can see
there's actually no animation happening
because of our random effector is not
affecting anything right now but we'll
fix that and a little bit here so what
we want to do is let's go to our middle
ball our middle ball group here and what
we're going to do is just keyframe the
position so we'll just bring this all
the way up in the air say about 600 and
set a keyframe and so our object kind of
falls to the floor and right now we're
not seeing any kind of splat action
going on at all so if we increase the
radio or the the length of the splat or
of the randomness that that kind of
pushes the spheres here you can see that
since nothing is animating we're not
getting any of this tracer object
because remember this traces animation
there's no animation it's not going to
trace so what we need to do is actually
create a fall-off for our random
effector so that when our corner object
passes through see if I got this facing
there we go
so as the spheres fall and pass through
the random effectors fall off we then
have those random values push
those objects from the center due to the
random position in that will actually
create movement that will be traced and
there we get our arms but our splatter
arms back so there we go we have this
nice splat action going on it's to just
some of the stuff here I think some of
like this blob is a little bit weird
over here so we can we can get a little
bit more smoothness by adjusting the
subdivision surface but I also like to
keep these kind of big so we have a
speedy viewport and then what you can do
is then place these in a subdivision
surface to smooth everything back out
and really I should have done that from
the get-go and then applied the
animation to this Alexis actually let me
just do that really quickly I skipped a
step one a little bit I have myself so
I'll just delete the position from the
metal ball and apply it to the
subdivision surface in like so there we
go so we get this nice little splat
going on and again you can adjust a lot
of stuff here and the minimum and
maximum of how much of a splat you get
but thing you'll notice is that we
actually don't have like a flat splat
going on it's actually pretty thick and
doesn't look much like a splat so the
one thing that's really handy that you
can do to fix this is a using a whoa
using a melt áformer and what melt
áformer is going to do if i stop this
and place the melt deformer let me
actually just group all these objects
together and we'll just name this splat
group group and I'll just place the melt
object in that same hierarchy level as
everything else and you can see that
that immediately flattened our splat
here
so you can adjust the strength and
that's just the overall strength of how
this is kind of melted to the floor you
can adjust the radius I'm just going to
you can have the radius up a little bit
so you get a little bit of nice rounded
edges and adjust the strength here a
little bit more the one thing that is
important is this melted size this just
kind of increases the size of the melted
of the melted object so if it's just a
hundred percent it's kind of like a
one-to-one scale so it's actually not
scaling it up very much one thing you'll
notice as I kind of scrub through my
timeline is that this melt deformer is
kind of wanting to bring down my object
even though it's up in the air so what
we actually need to do is go to our
shape here and we'll just create a
fall-off for our melt áformer so it's
going to be facing up in the Y so you'll
see that because we have that because we
have this fall off if I bring this up a
little bit
there we go since I have this fall off
our splat doesn't actually happen until
it hits the fall off and then flattens
everything out so that looks pretty dang
cool one thing we can do so we get this
nice little rant a rounded edge action
going on depending on where the fall-off
is placed or it's just completely flat
depending on where it's placed as well
so you can kind of adjust that as you
want so a bigger size means that so if
you can see that I scale this way way
this fall-off way way high you can see
we get a nice little subtle bulge going
on which you might want that you might
not but I think that ad you're in a 3d
application any sense of 3d you can add
to generally flat object if I actually I
lost the shading there because of the
the subdivision surface there you see as
I render out we get this really nice
flat again when you actually render this
out you'll probably want to bring that
render subdivision down so it renders
out nice and also with the subdivision
surface to smooth all out all those
edges but there you go this is a really
cool kind of thing to do and if you say
you want to make a bunch of different
splats number one you can really quickly
and easily adjust how they look by
number one changing the seed on your
random effector so you can see as I'm
moving the random seed that I'm getting
completely different splatters and then
you can also adjust as I went over
before the offset seed on the radio the
variation offset of how these clones are
spaced radially and then another thing
you can do is go and say you want a
thicker blob in the center
but then you want more arms along the
outside here so as it splats we got a
lot more arms going on we can adjust the
random effector so it's more constrained
to the outside here and then bring these
outer splat arms down so now we get a
different kind of splat that has a lot
more of these arms kind of radiating or
emanating from the center of the splat
so that's another style is flatly you
can do that just by adjusting some of
these the cloners how many arms are
radiating out and also adjusting the
metal ball here so you get a lot more
thick or thinner arms going on and you
also want to increase the subdivision
editor to smooth everything out but you
got a lot of control with the different
kind of splat you can make using the
main ingredients being this cloner with
a random effector with the fall-off kind
of radiating moving everything out from
the center of that object to create the
splatter arms using the tracer to then
trace those splines that will have the
metal ball skin mesh kind of applied on
to that and then the important thing is
the mesh deform er the mesh object
because without it we got this really
fat kind of looks almost like a sea
urchin or something like that but the
melt a former melts everything down
becomes a flatter object and then you
can rent render this out and maybe use
it as a mat for something in
after-effects or something like that so
yeah that's it that's making splats in
cinema 4d if you have any questions be
sure to hit me in the comments section
be happy to help out and again if you
make anything with this I always love to
see what you guys are doing so be sure
to share I like to see what you guys are
up to and again as always thank you guys
so much for watching this really
appreciate all the views and all the
love and I will see you in the next
tutorial so see you next time good bye