Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Cel Animation Style Paint Strokes in Cinema 4D Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

Ava when it's EJ from Ida's I'm calm I
am back with a brand new cinema 4d
tutorial I'm really excited about this
one it is on how to create cel animation
style paint strokes using cinema 4d no
third party polygons at all you don't
need X particles my technique just uses
all the built-in stuff inside a cinema
4d to create this kind of look and this
is very um since like a very common
thing you see these days the cel
animation style illustration kind of
stuff in your Tim 2d animations and
really really cool effect but my
technique is pretty flexible you can
kind of get your paint strokes to look
the way you like them whether it's a
little bit more grunged up or a little
bit more smooth or however you like it's
a really it's really fun effect I've
been having a lot of fun with it
you can see on my tumblr page right now
that I have created a few paint strokes
that actually resolve my logo on and
then I actually played around with how
to get this to kind of write a cursive
type on so this is very flexible
technique and you use it a lot of
different ways different techniques of
writing on different things and I'll be
going over a few of them in my tutorial
so let's just jump right in and I will
show you how to create a cell animation
style paint strokes in cinema 4d alright
so what I need is first an object that
is actually going to motivate the brush
stroke and that is going to be the
sphere I just have this simple animated
sphere that kind of just animates in a
circular kind of fashion and what we're
going to do is use this to kind of
motivate our paint stroke so to do this
we're going to need to trace the path
and have the path kind of generate the
stroke so to trace this object and
create a spline wherever this path goes
we're going to go to the aptly-named
tracer object and if you have the object
already selected it's automatically
going to put that in the trace link in
your tracer so I'm going to bring the
tracer object down
and if I hit play you can see that we
have a whole mess of splines and that is
because we have this trace vertices on
if I check that off it's only going to
create one spline and trace that one
object with that one spline that's
that's what we want so right now our
spline is kind of chunky so what we want
to do is change the type from linear to
b-spline and then intermediate points
we're going to switch to adaptive and
let's just bring this down to ten that
will kind of help smooth out our spline
here so now actually we can bring this
down to let's just bring it all the way
down now that's really smooth so now
what we want to do is you can see that
in my little animation The Strokes kind
of come on and then they leave so right
now our stroke here just kind of is on
animates on and stays on and we don't
want that so to change that to kind of
have this like tail kind of follow it
and then kind of collapse into itself
we're going to go and change the limit
from none to from end and right now it's
set to one and you don't see anything
but if I increase this value you'll see
that this kind of creates a tail and
that's exactly what we want we want the
stroke to end or we want the stroke to
right on and then the tail kind of like
tucks into itself so for this I'm just
going to keep this to about thirteen and
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
actually create two tracers one that's
going to handle a big thick stroke and
one that's going to kind of handle the
small little blobs so I'm going to
rename this tracer the a long streak and
then I'm going to just duplicate this
and this will be the short streaks and
then for the short streaks I'm just
going to make the streaks a little bit
shorter and what I'm going to do is
actually have some geometry created
through these little streaks here I'm
just going to worry about the long
streak first but to do this what I'm
going to do is first
just create just I'm just going to group
these objects so I got both of my
tracers underneath a null and I'm just
going to rename this null streaks and
then what we're going to do is so this
streak is tracing the sphere this one I
don't want to worry about you I'm just
going to remove that and turn it off
so we need some actual geometry to
create our streaks from this traced path
and to do that we're going to go up to
metaball and what we're going to do is
we're going to throw our metal ball
underneath our null and then throw both
of these tracer objects underneath it
and you can see that that creates a path
or that creates this kind of like
metabolic kind of stroke that if we put
a we put this pink little texture on it
we have a stroke we have this little 3d
stroke kind of like after-effects it's
not too exciting yet but what we're
going to do is we're going to change all
these values here and to kind of get
what I feel like is a good paint kind of
stroke you kind of look is to bring up
the whole value pretty high to say about
let's let's do about C well 750 and then
we're going to bring up the editor
subdivisions here to about 50 so 50 and
50 and then we're going to turn on
exponential fall off and you can see
right away that instead of this big
stroke we have this kind of little
streak going on and that's not too
substantial yet so what we're going to
actually do is create more of these
objects that are going to get traced so
we're not going to trace just the
emitter we're also going to trace the
some other objects that will then
combine with the metal ball to make the
metal ball a little bit thicker so what
I'm going to do is create a
a cloner object and I'll name this small
blobs and what I'm going to do is just
clone some spheres so just get a sphere
plop it in there we'll just bring the
radius pretty low don't need many
segments segments and what I'm going to
do is go ahead and just clone onto an
object and that object will be this
original sphere here so let's see we
have so right now it's set the vertex we
don't want that we actually just want
surface and then we can actually choose
how many spheres we want let me actually
bring this up so you guys can see so
there's my spheres right there and for
this I'll probably only need a count of
about like nine so now what I'm going to
do is actually trace this cloner object
with the short streak so I'm going to
drab drag the cloner object in here and
I'll turn the short streak on so this is
tracing all of those clones so work work
we are tracing nine of these small
spheres so now I'm just going to hide
this for now so with the extra tracer
you can see that with the with the
tracer tracing both the pink emitter and
the short streak or all these little
clones you can see that we're getting
kind of like a more kind of paint stroke
kind of look but we're not quite there
yet so what I actually want to do is do
the same exact thing I don't want to
just trace this emitter with this long
streak what I'm going to do is remove
that I'm going to duplicate the small
blobs and name this big blobs and I just
want say about five of these and then
what I'm going to do with the long
streak is actually trace this big blob
corner so it's tracing
five of these objects five of these
spheres so now when I paint we're seeing
that we have this nice thicker kind of
stroke if I run do you see where we're
getting we're getting closer still not
yet it doesn't look too organic yet and
now what we're going to do to kind of
add that organic Ness or that kind of
splattery kind of a movement or feel to
it is we're going to go in with both of
my cloner selected here I'm going to go
to mograph and I'm just going to create
a random effector and I'm going to
change these values to about 150 each
make sure that it has been applied to
each of my objects here now what we're
going to do is use this random effector
kind of really spastically move these
clones around so as they're being traced
it's not so linear so what instead of
just a linear path it's going to be like
whoa going out of control being traced
and then those kind of deformed random
kind of spastic paths will then be metal
balled into form more of a organic kind
of paint brush stroke kind of look so
let's go back into our random effector
and we're going to go and change our
mode from random to turbulence and then
what I'm going to do is change the
animation speed to 200 to get this
really frenetic kind of movement and
let's just change the scale to zero so
what's going to happen is let's turn our
spheres back on so what's going to
happen you can see that our spheres are
really going out of control if I turn my
metal ball off so you can just see so
you're seeing that we have this kind of
really frenetic kind of animated stroke
kind of going on so all of our splines
are really kind of frenetic looking I
think yeah we need global and scales
good and you can kind of mess around
with how this looks and you can even
mess around with
in what direction these go so now if I
turn on the metal ball you can see that
it's probably a little bit too much
let's bring this down to 150 you can see
that we're now getting kind of this more
organic kind of look here we're kind of
looking kind of brush stroke II so far
now let's let's go back let me actually
go back and show you why I change these
metal ball bat values to the to the way
that I did you can see that if we have a
low hole value that we have this kind of
thick stroke and with the larger hole
value you can see we're getting more of
these splatters so this is very
important because this this technique is
very flexible in how you actually have
these paint strokes looking so you can
have a more roughed up you can have a
more smooth and it's all driven by under
you know at the base of it controlled by
all of these metaball object values so
you can change the subdivision editor to
something higher and it's more chunky or
if you bring this a little bit lower to
say 45 you can see that you're getting
more of your streaks in here but it's a
little bit more uniform and not to
organic anymore so you can kind of mess
around with this see what you like so
that is the random effector kind of
moving all of our clones around that are
being traced and creating more of an
organic kind of look to our brushstroke
here so now what I want to do let's go
back to frame 1
now hit play and what I want to do now
is add even more organic kind of random
grunge duck not grunge it up more more
random turbulence to this to make our
brushstroke look a little bit more
grungy grungy is the word so let's go
ahead and in our streaks
little layer what we're going to do is
go and create a displacer object and I'm
just going to drag this underneath the
null so it's affecting the metaball
without having to put this a displace or
object underneath the stack or anything
so if it's on the same level in the
hierarchy it'll actually affect all the
objects in that same hierarchy so what
I'm going to do is just go ahead and
create some noise and I'm going to go
and go to our height and really crank
this up and you can see that this is
creating it's it's definitely grunting
it up but it's a little bit too much and
what I'm going to do is go to like a
negative value let's say about negative
40 and then what I'm going to do is
change the type from intensity centered
to just intensity and look what just
happened you can see that now we're
getting really chunky kind of looks and
it's looking a lot more organic it's
still chunky but you can see that just
bringing in the height with this
turbulence kind of helps a lot and what
we're going to do is go to this noise
and we're just going to change these
values a little bit so I'm going to
change the global scale to about 800 and
let's bring up the animation speed to
about 4 so then we have this noise kind
of animating and getting this kind of
nice organic undulation or movement here
so you can see that that displacer kind
of goes a long way in helping with this
kind of organic paint stroke splatter
kind of look so you can see though that
it's kind of still chunky right now and
that's because we have this high halt
value but we need that high halt value
to get all these kind of like little dot
blobs here because with a lower value
that will just connect all of these with
the metal ball so to be able to smooth
all this out what we're going to do is
go ahead and I am going to
let's group these again group and this
will be metal ball group and what I'm
going to do is throw this null into a
wait for it cloth surface so what the
cloth surface is going to do if I place
this null group underneath the cloth
surface I can actually change the
subdivision and smooth all this out so
you can see the lines if i zoom in here
you can see that it was kind of chunky
before but if I bring up some
subdivisions gonna kind of smooth
everything out and the nice thing about
the cloth surface is not only that you
can kind of smooth out the geometry by
adding more two subdivisions you can
actually increase the thickness now look
at how thick we can make our blobs if we
want so I'm going to set the thickness
to about eight so I'm liking that and
you can now see that that kind of
smooths everything out and we're getting
this kind of really nice splattering
move kind of look with just our cloth
surface here and you can kind of mess
around with the subdivisions you can
mess around with the thickness whatever
kind of thickness you think looks good
so this is very flexible with however
what kind of look you're going for let's
go back to regular shading here so now
we have this more fluid kind of
painterly kind of blobby look here with
our brush stroke and with our displacer
here again you can see how much just
that negative noise value here really
helps to create all these little
splatters and everything here so one one
final thing that you can do to smooth
this out even more is by going and
getting a smoothing deform and placing
that in the same group and you can see
already that this looks really smooth
out right now it's probably a little bit
too smooth but automatically it has the
stiffness set pretty low what I like to
do is kind of just give it a little bit
smoothing and maybe bring down the
iterations a little bit so it's not so
much just a subtle subtle kind of
smoothing and you can have this kind of
control to your taste so you get more
smooth little blotches right here paint
splotches and the nice thing about
everything going on here is you can you
can change the the seed of the noise
here to however you want let's actually
get to a point where we can see what
happens here stop stop there we go so
you can actually change this and you can
also change the the seed of the the
actual clone spheres here that are
creating the traced splines that are
creating this whole paint stroke effect
and again you can control the count you
can control the streaks here so again
going back to why I created of the long
and short streak is without the short
strip or without the short streaks you
see we just have this kind of light
splatter and if we just have the short
streaks we kind of have these splatters
here but combining both we get a little
bit more fuller control and adds that
extra bit of randomness to this stroke
that I think really helps out a lot and
you can again change the the length of
each of the splines in this group so
again this this has so much control over
getting the kind of paint looks that you
like now when it actually comes to Oh an
even more control is again remember that
we're actually the sphere is driving
everything even the size of the sphere
so say if we want a you know a thin
stroke maybe more calligraphy or
something like that or a big fat stroke
we can kind of change the size of our
sphere and you can see our
let's kind of move along with it so if I
just increase the size of the sphere you
can see that that really changes the
look completely of our brushstroke and I
think this looks really really cool just
by increasing that that size value in
the Y on our sphere because again
everything is controlled by this sphere
initially because we have these clones
these spheres cloned onto our actual
surface of our sphere so they follow
every deformation you have on that
sphere so now look at that I mean that
looks pretty badass that looks pretty
good
if I do say so myself so that's kind of
how I got this look now let's actually
go to animating this guy so let's hide
our sphere and hide these guys too so
remember to hide these spheres so they
don't show up in the render so what
you're going to do to actually animate
these guys on let's go into our timeline
so right now if I don't have let's say I
have my so I have my objects kind of
come on right around frame of five or so
right so let's hit play and they animate
on perfectly but what happens when you
actually want to animate this off let's
actually play this out and see what
happens so we got the sphere going
around got the strokes happening and
we're getting almost to the end so again
if you don't think the if you think
these blobs are too far back you can
just bring in that long stroke a little
bit to have control over that
so let's swirling around almost to the
end
now say if you want to actually animate
this guy off all you'd have to do is
actually let's increase this to about
eighty let's actually see what happens
here so you see that at after this is
what I was trying to show is after you
get the movement done you still have the
metal ball blob just kind of sitting
here just kind of farting around and you
don't want that to just kind of stay
there so what you want to do is at the
end of your streak so say let's see
think about man I got Flay plate from
the beginning in so to actually animate
it off you can see that you have
everything animated sometimes you'll get
this too and what you want to do is I'm
going to hit escape and then go to the
beginning and sometimes you got to click
the go to frame 0 button a few times to
get every all the tracers and stuff
reset hit play again
look guess it didn't do it enough get
back there okay hit play there we go and
we're going to go through this again so
what we're going to do is at the end of
this animation we're going to kind of
let it play through and see at what
point that the streak ends and we're
just left with these little floating
blobs and what we're going to do is
simply just go to our metal ball and
just keyframe the enable and disable a
little option so let's see it's coming
around so how you guys doing out there
doing good it's nice to hear all right
now we're coming around wait for it and
now we're stuck with our Bluff so right
around like frame 55 or so is where we
probably want these guys to animate off
and again what I said is what we're all
we're going to do is go to our middle
ball go to enabled hit a keyframe go to
enable and uncheck it and you'll see
that that actually just turns our metal
ball right off
so what you can actually do is also kind
of keyframe the size or the radius of
our sphere and bring that down to so
it's a single blob and then nothing so
let's go again man my computer needs a
little bit more power here huh it's got
these really nice streaks
you can see on my timeline that is about
where this is where my metal ball kind
of goes off turns off from enable to
disabled this is like watching paint dry
but we're almost to the end and our
stroke is coming right back around
here's the tail that's from the the from
end option so you can see that right at
the end it kind of our metal ball turns
off and you can adjust like when that
actually happens so you want it a little
bit sooner but what you don't want is it
happening too early so that your whole
entire streak kind of just disappears
all at once so you don't want that so
you can kind of play around with the
animation and see what you like best so
again if you think that that long streak
is a little bit too long just bring it
in you can play with the count so if you
want a thicker more substantial stroke
you can bring in more of these objects
that'll be traced you'll get this really
big thick paint stroke like so and
there's a lot of applications to this so
here's a few examples of let's see so
here's me actually just I have that
initial sphere so that was that starting
sphere and all I have it doing is going
along this spline path of my let's see
of my eye design a letter little cursive
letter here so I just have those
splatters kind of following along or
that sphere following along with the
sweep start growth and kind of just
follows along and the key to this is
having this intermediate points set to
uniform if you have it to adaptive it's
not going to follow along very well so
you can see that my stroke or my sweep
here if I move this up well where's my
sweet let's turn off the metal ball you
can see that my meta ball or
is already to here but my sweep is
already here or is only here so that is
due to uniform and actually have a
tutorial going over this its figure what
the name of it is but it's with paths
with it's creating streaks with cinema4d
so look that up I'll pull that up at the
end of this tutorial but let that is
just kind of using this blobby paint
stroke to draw on cursive text or
something like that so that's one cool
use and another is I have been learning
Japanese lately and I figured this is a
good application for it so you have this
kind of like writing on a Japanese
character with this kind of paint stroke
here and the key to this is uh so what
we had before was the limit was from end
and what we're going to do is just
change this from start so we don't want
that tail end to kind of like taper and
go back into itself we want that to that
stroke to come on and stay on and that's
just easily done by choosing these from
start and what the amount is is just the
amount of frames that it will stay on
for or the amount of frames that will
actually draw on so I have my long
streak a little bit longer in my short
streak just a tiny bit lower so what's
going to happen is at 41 frames this is
going to stop tracing and kind of end
the spline right about here and then my
long streak is going to keep going for
45 frames until it stops - so we have
it's starting from frame zero drawing on
and then you'll see it around 40 frames
are short streak will end and then our
long streak will go on for about five
more frames and then stop so that's how
we can actually animate on and keep on a
brush stroke instead of having it like I
created before where we have it animate
on and then anime
off so--that's by just changing this
limit here from the start and then from
the end so we're getting to frame 40 and
our short streets will kind of go away
and just stop so right about there so
those are short streaks will end and
then just our long streak will continue
so you can see right here that we have
just a little tapering right there and
there we go and that creates our our
little streak so let's hit render and
then we got this kind of cool little
streak and again you can change the the
amount of how long those trace
splines go for and then I just added a
cell shader with just back facing with
the camera lighting it and just a very
subtle shading difference from gray to
darker gray and that just kind of helps
give it a little bit of depth depending
on where you place this and again if you
don't know about the cell shader be sure
to check out my tutorial on that as well
I'll link to that in this post or if you
just want flat black you can just not
even have a shader all you can just have
a flat material in your luminance and
just have a flat 2d looking stroke so
then whoa that's kind of cool I don't
know what happened there so to kind of
finish is I'm sure you guys if you
haven't seen at the start of the
tutorial I showed my little example
where I have a bunch of strokes kind of
animating on my little eye design logo
here and all that is is just timing out
a bunch of different of those little
setups that I just showed you in this
tutorial where I have one that's blue
actually a couple that's blue white when
I have all these different groups of all
of these spheres writing on and creating
all these brush strokes and then I have
all these cel-shaded materials creating
this nice shading on it too so it's not
completely flat but
again if you want just completely flat
colors just use flat luminance colors so
and again this has so much control over
everything you can change you know how
much random speed the position how much
position change you want you can really
have a lot of fun with stylizing how you
get your strokes looking in your scene
so that is it for me hopefully you guys
can make some really cool cell animation
type paint splatters and stuff I want to
see what you make so if you make
anything with it be sure to at me on
Twitter let me know what you're making
and hope you enjoyed this tutorial and
I'll see you in the next one thanks a
lot guys