Creating 2D Cartoon Cloud Poofs in Cinema 4D Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from eyes on Comm
and today we're talking 2d poof's or
clouds inside of cinema 4d and how you
can do it with some good old-fashioned
mograph action and applying the nice 2d
look with cel shader and using some
sketching toon so it's a fairly easy
setup this shouldn't take too long so
here's my dribble page and I've been
kind of experimenting a little bit with
how to get this 2d kind of poof set up
and make it very easy to do and you know
here's my set up here that I'll show you
alright so this is what we're gonna
actually have our poof look like so it's
fairly typical you know cartoon poof
kind of cloud of smoke or something we
have the initial puff up and then it
kind of disperses into little spheres or
little bits of tangy poof's a little
tiny your poof's
so that's basically it and it's a fairly
simple setup to get this kind of thing
going so what we have here in my scene
is first I got a camera that's just a
projections parallel so it's just
straight on you could also use you know
just front projection but I like to have
parallel projection because then you can
kind of move around as you want to then
I have a infinite light with hard
shadows that are kind of tracing the
shadows on my spheres here and I also
have a cell shader material applied to
the little spheres and then just the
like a sketch in tune outline for the
outline of the actual clouds and I cover
all this stuff in previous tutorials
that I'll link in in this tutorial so at
the base of what a cloud is or a poof of
smoke it's just a bunch of spheres and
you can see that I just kind of arranged
a bunch of spheres to kind of look like
a cloud and you can see that it's not
exactly looking too hot especially with
the cell shading here we have these odd
kind of protrusions and stuff and it
doesn't look very smooth so what we're
going to do to kind of smooth
everything out and smooth out all of our
spheres is go and place everything in a
metal ball object so you just simply
drag all your spheres and place it under
a metal ball and that looks exactly like
cloud right no not really so what we're
going to do is I'm going to move the
material the cell shader material you
can see that we lost it so I'm just
going to delete all the cell shader
materials and just apply one on the
actual metal ball and then what I'm
going to do is go into my metal ball
settings here and increase the whole
value so we actually get more of our
geometry back and I'll just choose like
850 and you can see that it's fairly
chunky and that is because our editor
subdivision is really high so what we
need to do is bring up or bring down the
subdivisions and actually therefore
bringing up the subdivisions that you
actually see and that kind of smooths
everything out so we now we have more of
a smooth cloud kind of shape we're not
done yet of course we're going to
actually start prepping this to actually
animate so what I want to do is I'm
going to have two sets of basically ways
to number one control and scale down the
entire group like this entire cloud and
then also be able to control all these
individual of spheres as well so what
I'm going to do to do that is I'm going
to go and create a fracture object and
what I'm going to do is place that
fracture object under the metal ball and
throw all of my spheres underneath that
fracture object so what that's going to
allow for us to do is use a effectors on
this fracture object and affect these
spheres individually and then what I'm
going to do is create yet another
fracture in place that place my metaball
group underneath that fracture and
that'll actually we can apply effectors
that will affect the cloud as a whole so
we have two levels of control of our
animation and that is sphere level which
is with this fracture object and then
the whole entire cloud
with this fracture so what I'll do is
just rename this cloud and then this can
just be spheres so just the individual
sphere so now we can actually start
applying some effectors and animating
these guys so the first thing I'm going
to do is we need to actually start our
animation where we have the cloud
totally scaled down to nothing so what
I'm going to do is I'm going to go and
get my fracture object my main fracture
cloud object since that's controlling
everything and I'm just going to go into
the coordinates and I'm just going to go
in go to frame four and then just set
some scale keyframes and then go to
frame zero and then just scale
everything down to zero
so you can see that just by doing that
that is causing our kind of puff up
animation of our main poof here so just
very simple we're just using scale
keyframes at that point but the trickier
part is when you want to actually scale
down from here and actually have the
cloud kind of dissipate so the first
thing we're going to do we're going to
go to our sphere level fracture object
we're going to go to mograph effector
and just grab a plane effector and then
we're going to go and we'll adjust some
of these position values here because we
want to control the position and we also
want to control this scale so we kind of
want when a poof-poof
way it kind of pops up and then kind of
dissipates and the whole entire cloud
goes upwards so what we're going to do
is we'll just bring our x value to say
50 and then our Y to about 100 and then
we'll just do a uniform scale and just
scale everything down to negative one so
it kind of disappears and right off the
get-go we actually need to animate this
happening and you can see that if I
adjust the strength here you can see
that our cloud is dissipating with this
plane effector here so now we have to do
is simply keyframe the strength so at
frame 0
I'll keep fright I'll set a keyframe for
the strength in that frame 30
I'll bring the strength all the way up
to 100 and hit another keyframe and I'm
going to go in my timeline and we can
adjust the motion curve here let me
bring this down here so let's actually
go through our animation so it pops up
and then dissipates it's kind of
dissipating in the wrong direction right
now but we can fix that later but we can
adjust this curve a little bit here so
it kind of puffs and stays at that state
longer and then really quickly turns and
dissipates into the smaller ones so
that's kind of just adjusting to
whatever kind of feel you want for this
pouf to dissipate here so let me move
that out of the way so right now we have
this you know kind of nice animation of
everything's kind of scaling down but
what I want to do on top of this is have
this whole entire group scale down as
well so what we're going to do is go
into this main cloud fracture object and
we're going to apply that same plane
effector to that fracture object that's
controlling the individual's feet group
of spheres or the individual group a
group of severes
and what I'm going to do is then
actually on your fracture object you can
control how much that plane effector
will affect these objects that are
underneath it or this whole entire group
so why don't we had to do instead of
having it at a hundred percent you can
see that kind of everything scales down
to nothing and it looks kinda looks kind
of unrealistic doesn't look very natural
we're kind of scaling everything down
into as a group and it looks kind of
awkward that's not really how smoke
dissipates it more spreads out than
anything so what we can do to kind of
temper this down is just by bringing the
strength of this plane effector as it's
affecting this fracture object down to
about 50% so we'll have this dissipation
but we're also having the entire group
of objects kind of fade down
as well so you can see the before and
after how we're just slightly scaling
everything down just a little bit using
that same fracture object so we see that
we have our animation so far where it
poof's up and dissipates and you can
adjust how much you want the whole
entire group of little spheres to
dissipate as well you can also adjust
the position here so we can have it kind
of dissipate even more so you can really
Jack these values up that's not looking
too too hot but again we have to the
more you crank up the plane value you
might need to bring down this value
right here so what we can do to kind of
make this a little bit more organic
looking let me actually just bring these
values down a little bit here so what I
want to do is kind of make it so our
little individual spheres kind of move
around randomly as they dissipate in
isn't so static of a move so to do that
we're just going to simply go to our
sphere level fracture object here that
is going to control all of our spheres
individually and we're just going to add
a effector a random effector and what
I'm going to do is go to that sphere
level fracture object I'm going to place
the random effector before the plane
effector here so we have some randomness
first and then it will move with the
plane effector so what I'm going to do
is go into my random effector here and
I'm going to bring up all of my values
in the position here to about 150 and
then I'm going to go and change this
boat random mode from random to toot
blue to turbulence and I'm just going to
bring the animation speed down and turn
on index so we have different rotation
value position values more random
randomly applied to these spheres and
you can see that with that we're
actually randomizing and as
the clones are kind of moving through
this turbulent field it's pushing these
objects these spheres around and kind of
adding this organic kind of movement to
it you can see that the it's a little
bit too frenetic so what we can do to
kind of smooth everything out is just
choosing a bigger nose scale and that
will kind of smooth everything out so if
we go to say 225 you can see that that
adds just a little subtle bit of
randomness to our dissipation of our
spheres here so I think that looks
pretty good at say like 250 so now what
we can do is since we have this random
effector applied now it's actually
affecting everything from the get-go so
what we need to do is keyframe the
strength of this random effector because
it starts off just like this and that
looks not so poufy not so cloudy so what
we need to do is go and set a keyframe
let's go and bring the strength down to
about a frame 5 let's bring it down to
0% and then at frame 30 let's just crank
that back up to 100% go to our curves
here and adjust the strength curves to
kind of have the similar kind of curve
as our plane effector and just kind of
bring this curve down so it's kind of a
nice smooth transition and then quickly
gets to be randomized here so let's see
what that looks like so we have a random
effector and you can see this just a
very subtle difference of how our clones
are individual spheres are moving but
it's just enough to add that little bit
of organic nough so you can see without
just very static and with on with the
random effector on it adds that nice
little extra movement that you can
really tell that this is a you know a 2d
puff of smoke so what we can do is again
we can go into our plane effector and
kind of move these values around
and adjust a kind of how things are
looking so you can have it really puff
up really fast by adjusting it in the Y
or you know just give it a value of 150
and 150 in the mo X&Y
you can also do it the Z but you really
won't be able to tell because Z is
coming towards the camera and since we
have this parallel camera you're really
not going to get that sense of depth so
that's kind of why I don't have any
movement in the Z here so again we can
adjust the curves here too so we can
have it randomize a little bit sooner
but I actually like it where it kind of
randomizes towards the very end here and
again you can adjust the scale so say
that that noise is too frenetic still
you can just crank up that scale smooths
everything out I think that's a little
bit too big though so actually like how
that is right there can also adjust the
Y values to see how much it dissipates
in the Y you can crank it up in the X as
well so we have a lot more dissipation
going on but I just like just a little
subtle amount right there and that's
basically how I created this animated 2d
poof with just you know a few keyframes
the key being having two sets of
fracture objects you can really have a
lot of control over number one the
entire group of these spheres and then
also have a control over the the
individual spheres that create the cloud
or the poof and be able to scale those
down individually as well and since
we're using the same plane effector we
can adjust these values in here and that
will affect everything in our scene so
the cloud as a whole and the individual
spheres that make up that cloud or that
poof so that's it so it's a pretty easy
setup like I said just using mograph and
then the key being you know apply these
apply the cell shader effect to get this
nice 2d shading and adjusting your light
in your scene so you get the correct
shadows and then what you can do is once
you have a set of these you can actually
go and let me find this here so what you
can do is once you have one set of
poof's you can actually have duplicate
them and using the same plane effectors
and just kind of move them around so you
have these multiple groups and form an
even bigger cloud so you'll see here I
have one big cloud and then it kind of
dissipates and that is one way to get an
even bigger cloud and basically what I
did was I just have this same setup
duplicate it and then I'll go in move
this over and then just move these
individual spheres to create a different
looking a little poof group here a poof
group and so like building it like that
you can get an even bigger cloud or poof
and everything is still intact because
we animated with effectors here so that
is a my method of creating little 2d
cartoon cloud poof's and all that good
stuff if you have any questions leave
them in the comments I'll be happy to
answer anything you might be stuck on
and again I'll put in the tutorial the
link to the cell shading tutorial that I
did as well as the sketch in tune to add
strokes along the clouds here actually I
don't even think there's any applied
right now let me just throw a mountain I
will click real quick so there we go we
got this nice a little outline now
that's sketching too like I covered that
in many of my previous tutorials so I'll
add that in the tutorial notes and
that's it as always thank you guys for
watching and I'll see you in the next
tutorial