Cinema 4D Tutorial - 7 Tips for Creating Great Looking 3D Text Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

everybody it's EJ from eyes I'm calm and
today's tutorial be sharing with you
seven ways that you can improve the way
your 3d text looks inside a cinema 4d or
cinema 4d lite let's learn how all right
so let's go over some tips for making
better looking 3d text inside of cinema
4d now a few things I want to lay out
right at the beginning number one we're
gonna be using cinema 4d lite the
version of cinema 4d that actually comes
with your Adobe Creative Cloud
subscription so if you have After
Effects you have cinema 4d lite and I'm
also going to be using this mo text
light preset that is available to
download for free on my website I will
add the link in the YouTube description
as well as a little link e right above
the video here so definitely download
that if you have simipour D lite if you
have the full version of cinema 4d you
can just use the built in mo text but
this is a nice little preset that has
all the functionality of the full
version of cinema 4d s mo text so let's
go ahead and let's just go over how to
open up cinema 4d lite I know a lot of
people don't even realize that they have
a free version of cinema 4d included
with their After Effects or Creative
Cloud subscription so the way to open up
cinema 4d it's kind of convoluted you
gotta open it from After Effects so I'm
gonna go to file new
Maxon cinema 4d file and I'm just gonna
save this as an untitled and then what
that's gonna do is launch cinema 4d Lite
now when you download that mo text light
if you have a cinema 4d Lite you want to
download that from my website what we're
gonna do is just go ahead and install
this really easily it didn't install the
the preset the mo text like preset well
first go to preferences we'll go to open
preferences folder and then what that's
gonna do is bring up the light
preference file here and you want to
stick that Lib 4d file that is included
in that download and just put it in
your library folder and then in the
library folder there is a browser folder
and just drag and drop that Lib 4d file
in there and then just close out cinema
4d relaunch it or just do this before
you even launch cinema 4d Lite and you
can then access this if you go to window
content browser boom and your presets
you'll now see VI design mote X light
and then all we have to do is simply
double-click to get our mote X light
object so here it is again it has all
the functionality of the mo text object
in the full version of cinema 4d but its
laid out in a way that you don't have to
build it using the fracture and extrude
method that you typically would in
cinema 4d Lite alright so first things
first with our 3d text is we're gonna go
to the actual text object here and we
are gonna Kern ladies and gentlemen for
whatever reason and I think it's due to
the fact that kerning used to be so hard
to do inside of cinema 4d but it's a lot
easier now make sure you turn your 3d
text people don't lose your design
license there it's kind of the number
one no no's of designing is not kerning
your text so it's very easy I just went
to my kerning show 3d GUI and I'm just
clicking and dragging here because you
don't want that and you definitely don't
want that so just give a little bit of
love to each letter and the design gods
will thank you for kerning your 3d text
so now that you've current now we can go
on with a cool interesting sexy stuff
like reflections and all that good stuff
what we're gonna do is let's first
create a material for our moat X so I'm
just gonna double-click in our material
manager double-click on that material
that we created and let's just create a
gold material so let's go to our color
Channel and maybe get a little gold hue
in there go to our reflectance Channel
and this is where all of our specular
and reflections are gonna be by default
we have a default specular and I'm just
gonna remove that because all I want is
a Beckmann reflection now this
kind of the most common reflection
people will use as a starting point so
I'll just add that in there and you'll
see that we now have this fully
reflective material let's just go ahead
and apply this I'm gonna apply this to
my extrude and I'll explain why in a
little bit later but it gives us a
little bit more control versus placing
it on any other objects so let's go
ahead and create gold a goldish
reflection we're gonna go into the layer
for now now Fornell is basically that
fall-off that reflection fall-off
roll-off that happens in real life so
phrenologist tries to replicate that and
under for now we have two types we have
conductor and dielectric conductor is
for like metals and if you choose that
and then go to the presets you can
actually see we have all of these nice
metal presets so we'll just go ahead and
choose gold and you'll see that it'll
give us a nice goldish reflection
goldish hue in our reflection and now we
can go ahead and see what this looks
like let's go and turn on interactive
render region here and I'm just gonna
increase the bounding box and then this
little triangle here this little arrow
I'm gonna bring this all the way to the
top this is actually our interactive
render region quality I'll just crank
that to the max turn it all the way up
to 11 and you're gonna see that we have
reflective we have a reflective material
but we're not really seeing any
reflection right so that's because if
you're in a vacuum with none it not like
a you know Hoover vacuum but in this
vacuum of space with nothing around you
you're not gonna be able to reflect
anything everything that has a
reflection is reflecting everything
around it so those nice highlights all
those glints are due to the lights in
your room or you know just the objects
in your scene since there's no other
objects in the scene but the text itself
it's really not looking very interesting
so we can do two things number one is
creating an area light and I like using
area lights because what area lights
allow us to do if I just move this over
here is we have this nice little
bounding box here and we can actually
use this as like a light box by going
into our light object details and going
into show and render and what that's
gonna do is actually show you what the
area light actually is it's a plane
that's fully luminance and you can see
if I rotate this but you can see that
this is actually isn't this white box
this this plane is not actually being
show is not showing up on a reflection
that's because we've got to do one more
thing and that is to actually turn on
show and reflection on our object or on
our light here and if I just move this
into place you can see this little card
is now showing up in our reflection on
our text so I actually want to turn off
show a show and render so we don't
actually render out a white card there
but that's one way to introduce some
more some more stuff in your scene for
your objects to reflect the one major
thing that you can add to your scene is
an actual HDR environment and basically
what an HDR is if I just bring a sky
into my scene what a sky is is basically
a giant sphere that is gonna be like
your sky in your ground and all that
stuff and it's gonna give our text
something else to reflect so we won't
actually apply material or an HDR image
to the sky for our text to reflect and
if you download and installed the I
design mode text light into your presets
here you can actually double click on
this text file and you'll see we have
this HDR I that I made for my text Edge
Pro a preset that you can actually
download as well show that a little bit
later but we can then use that as a
image that our scene that our text can
reflect so I'm just gonna double-click
create a new material and then what I'm
gonna do is just load this into our
luminance channel so I'm just gonna drag
click on a click and drag and just bring
it onto this texture that's gonna load
that up and then all I'll have to do is
go and apply this material to our sky
and let's actually just rename this HDR
I and you're actually not going to
notice too
much again everything is not looking
that great we're getting a little bit of
some reflection stuff going on as far as
like shades and different different
shades of this gold but everything's
looking fairly flat still looking very
like late 90s 3d or something like that
so what we need to do to really allow
our text or objects to reflect is by not
making our text so dang flat so all the
reflective surfaces that you see have
some kind of like if you look at a can
or something like that our a bottle it's
because it's nice and smooth and curved
and that allows your object to pick up a
lot more reflections so to be able to
add some rounding to our text we simply
have to go to the caps and instead of
just having sharp-edged
caps we're just gonna go and choose fill
it caps and what that's going to do is
round everything out and you can already
see that by adding that little rounding
we're getting a lot more curvature here
and you know even in real life nothing
has a perfectly sharp edge anyway so you
want to introduce a little bit of
rounding here you can see we're getting
this really nice glint on the edge of
this rounding here and if I go into my
options here or in my display we can go
to garage shading lines and if I turn
off my interactive render region you see
what's happening we have a step which is
basically the subdivisions of our cap
philic cap and then we have the radius
which is how big that rounding is so if
I increase this you can see that our
rounding up bigger one thing I like to
do is if we're only if we know we're
only going to be looking at the front of
our text we actually don't need to have
any geometry or subdivision on the back
so on the end I can just change that to
cap and we can get you rid of that
useless geometry and subdivisions that
we're not even gonna see so I'll just
you know
optimize your scene a little bit more by
not having all those extra polygons back
there but what you're gonna notice if I
go into just normal garage shading mode
and go back into my interactive render
region boom right there you can see that
we kind of have some weird stuff
happening especially right here on our M
we've got these little shards happening
and this is due to the fact that with
the mo text object we have these weird
subdivisions and these can be more
prominent depending on the font you're
using so it's just artifacting that's
occurring here and that affects our
reflections now I've seen a lot of 3d
text with some really crazy chunky stuff
happening like this and there's one
quick fix to prevent that so to prevent
that in to smooth everything out we're
gonna just simply increase the step here
now watch what happens when I change
this to say 15 you're gonna see that
that smooths everything out we're
getting less of those Jaggi little
pieces there another thing that you can
do to help prevent that is by clicking
this create single object and what
that's going to do is smooth out things
ever so subtly but what the create
single object does is basically fuses
the cap to the extrude of the object and
tries to smooth everything out that way
so that's just a really nice important
thing to do there so we can even maybe
increase this a little bit more because
we're still seeing well I just
accidentally move that to one but you
can really see that pronounced though
the jag enos there let's just change
this to say 15 and you know we still
have some of the issues right here so
maybe let's do 30 and that smooths out
everything really nicely and you know
the oh is definitely one of those
objects that has a lot more subdivisions
to get the round shape and you can see
that this reflection is nice and smooth
there alright so we added some rounding
to our text to pick up nice little glint
slice little highlights on the edges on
the rounding of our object we also use
create single object to smooth out the
whole
entire extrude of our objects to the
front cap and the actual extrude itself
and we use a light in a sky to add more
things to our scene to pick up more
reflection so one way we can make this
look a little bit more interesting is
you know this pure shiny texture here
looks kind of fake and just way too
glossy and over-the-top you know there's
just you don't always need sexy like
super shiny text what I like to do is
just maybe introduce just a little bit
of roughness here and you can see that
if we crank this all the way up we're
gonna get a nice kind of diffuse
somewhat like specular highlight
happening and and one thing that kind of
blew my mind is I was working in 3d is
that you know specular is actually fake
reflection it's just a faster way to
calculate it because really all the
things you see in in real life it's all
a reflection there's no diff there is no
specular specular is created from very
hot objects in your room like a light
that is creating that specular hit on
your object reflecting that light so
everything's a reflection right so we're
just gonna kind of roughing that up a
little bit maybe tone down the actual
overall strength of this reflection
layer but you can see that introducing a
little bit of that roughness gives it
some grain gives it some texture and it
looks really really nice so one other
thing I like to do let's actually first
create another light I'm just gonna
command click and drag create another
light and just move it maybe over here
just to illuminate more of our text
another thing I'm gonna do is go ahead
select both of my lights go to the
fall-off and just choose the physically
accurate inverse-square method and
that'll just create a little bit more
variation on how that light is cast on
our object so it's not just a constant
it's not just lit the same all the way
across it's always good to have some
kind of fall-off on your lights to have
things look a little bit more realistic
a little bit more interesting and then
maybe even turn down the bright
some one of your lights as well all
right so let's actually figure out some
ways we can introduce a lot more
reflection to our text and one thing I
like to do and somewhere along the way
my gold texts turn to three so I'll just
rename that gold and one thing I like to
do to have our text pick up even more
that reflection again where the
interesting stuffs happening on our text
is where we have that rounding we have
the nice rounded edges is picking up
some of those nice highlights so one
thing I like to do to try to fake and
introduce a little bit more bumpiness to
our text is by going to the bump channel
turning that on and just loading up a
noise texture you can see that we're
getting a really bumpy bumpy bumpy like
waves and it's reflecting a lot more of
our HDR image due to it not being flat
as a board but you can see this is way
way overkill so what I like to do is
maybe increase the global scale to
something like you know 1200 or
something like that maybe that's a
little bit too big let's just try 800
and you can see that this is pretty
subtle you don't see it's so pronounced
you can even see in like the preview you
see a little bit of like the bump kind
of happening so it adds a little bit of
imperfection in that bump really helps
us kind of warp the front side of our
text and it's actually not actually
warping it if you see straight on and
since it's in the bump channel it's
actually not distorting our geometry but
it is just adjusting and adding that
bump to our material that picks up a lot
more of these reflections it looks a lot
more interesting now let's just compare
and contrast before and after the bump
so that's with the bump and then without
the bump you can see how much of a
difference that makes we'll get all
these nice extra details by introducing
that bump and it could be even super
subtle as well or it can be very
pronounced maybe something like that so
that looks really nice maybe that's a
little bit too much so we can even tone
down or maybe even blur our reflection
even more so we got these really nice
hotspots and stuff like
happening but it's more diffused out so
it's really not overpowering anywhere
another way we can introduce a little
bit more rounding of our surfaces on top
of the bump channel is by introducing
some deformers so what I can do is go
ahead and let's just maybe get like a
bend to former here and I'm gonna place
it in the same level of hierarchy as our
fracture object here and let's just make
sure this bend deformer
is gonna bend the right way so let's
actually just increase the strength and
I always always always never have my
bend in the right direction so I'm just
gonna rotate it again and then to have
this actually Bend the other side I'll
change the mode from limited to
unlimited and you can see that that
strengths a little bit too much there
and I'll just say keep Y axis length so
it's not kind of stretching our textile
but if we just maybe use like a low
value of say like five and let's go back
into our interactive render region and
you can see that this adds a little bit
more depth you can even make out a lot
more of that extrude because as our text
is like kind of faced straight on to our
camera we really don't see that extrude
but having that little bit of Bend
allows us to see a little bit more of
that so a little before-and-after so
it's just subtle it could be subtle or
it could be very pronounced maybe
fifteen or something like that and I
really encourage you to play around with
a lot of these deformers one two former
I really like to use is the Bulge the
former and what I'll do with this is you
can adjust this and kind of have this
Bend or bulge or contract and again I'm
gonna make sure this is in the same
level of hierarchy as my bowl as my
fracture object and what I'm gonna do is
just rotate this 90 degrees and just
make sure that the bounding box is
unlimited and you can see even just
right there it's a little bit much but
that kind of gives a nice cool text
effect right there has this nice little
dynamic
bulge happening or inner bulge whatever
you want to call that or have it like
that a little bit maybe just the
strength of to something like that but
one thing I really like to do is just
moving this up or down so one thing we
can do is if we align the access center
to either the top or the bottom of our
text we can get this really cool thing
happening and especially if we use like
a negative value and if I put in this to
the top you can get like this Netflix
type of 3d text happening again just by
aligning the top or the access point of
the ball which to either the top of our
text or the bottom so you can see I'm
aligning it to the bottom of our actual
text here so that's really really cool
so I'll just align this to the top here
and have it kind of swing down like that
I can also duplicate this maybe make
this bold forward something like that
and you can see we have like kind of
using a bulge for a bend and again we
get a lot more interest happening there
again maybe even just a subtle amount
there something like that again if I
aligned this forward we get that Bend
which is really nice maybe you move this
up or down all right so we have some
noise in our bump channel we have some
deformers here that's bending and
creating a more curved surface for a lot
more reflections to pick up one thing I
also like to do to add a little bit more
contrast is by creating another material
and what I'm going to do is actually
make this lighter and just apply this to
the rounding or the edges of our text
here so what I'll do is I'll just double
click on our gold material maybe just
what I'll do is just maybe bring this
the roughness all the way down
crank up the reflection all the way and
then actually apply this to the rounding
of our extrude object and this is again
why I applied all materials to the
extrude object is we actually have
access
to material selections on our extrude
objects so c1 is actually just the front
cap so if I actually just go ahead and
maybe just put an X in here so that
deactivates our text you can see that
that gold material is just applied to
the front cap c1 or c2 is actually the
back of our text here so you can see the
gold is now on the back and just
constrained to the back cap or we can go
ahead and use r1 or r2 and now I'll
restrict that text to just the rounding
here this actually looks pretty cool
just having some gold I think it gives
it that nice little contrast especially
with the white material so maybe we'll
stick with this so what I'll do is I'll
so let me just create a whole new
material let's do that go to new
material double click and just make this
like a shiny white texture go in again
delete the diffuse just get my Beckman
there go to for now and for this one
we'll just use dielectric and go to
Plexiglas or PT which is kind of like
plastic has like a plastic roll-off and
we'll just apply that to the main
material there so you now can see we
have this nice white material maybe
increase so it's not so gray maybe
something like that all right looking
good so now we have a nice highlight
here picking up on our edges now even if
we were using gold and gold so gold on
gold what I like to do is to really let
that highlight glint on the edges is
just go ahead and maybe make this super
like almost white and maybe go into our
for now and instead of gold conductor
we'll use something like iron so it's a
little bit more whiter and maybe you
know really crank up the strength of
that so it's really over pronounced so
we have this like nice white highlight
with our gold material and I think it
just makes our text pop a little bit
more and adds that nice little contrast
there but I think what I'm gonna do is
just keep keep the gold for the rounding
and maybe use that white material there
and again that material is kind of flat
so I can go ahead and introduce some
noise and just make this big noise maybe
900 for this and you can see that little
just adding that little bit of bump gets
a little bit more of this nice highlight
stuff happening maybe that's a little
bit too much make it ten percent
strength alright so one last thing I'm
gonna cover is to you know we're adding
contrast by using these different
materials to really make either the
edges kind of stand out one thing we can
do is add another bevel to our text so
what I'm gonna do is create an instance
or a copy of this text spline here so
I'll just go ahead and go to instance
and you'll see that this basically is
referencing this original text object
I'm gonna go ahead and place it in our
mo text light hierarchy so it also gets
deformed let me actually just hide the
visibility of our sky in our viewport
here jet by just changing and clicking
on this little dot so it turns red and
then what I'm gonna do is just move this
you can see there's my mo text instance
and the nice thing about the mo text
instance is that every change I make to
this main motek slight object so if I
update this to text this will actually
update the instance as well so that's
just really nice but what we can do is
use this duplicated instance of our text
spline and maybe sweep a circle around
it so what I'll do is get a sweep get a
circle object and then I'll just have my
circle underneath the sweep and then
place my text instance under it so I'll
sweep the circle along the text instance
and we need it in this order so whatever
your whatever profile spline you want
needs to come first in the sweep
hierarchy
and this is way too big so just move
this down maybe something like that and
then we'll go ahead and move this text
instance backwards and you're gonna
notice we have these little pointy
things here right and this is kind of
due to font issues and how certain fonts
are handled typically to prevent
something like this I would just go
ahead and just use a different font to
see what other font doesn't have that
issue so we go into our mo text we can
maybe go from Helvetica to maybe he'll
Vatican ooh
and you'll see that just by changing the
font it really didn't change the font
style too much but it got rid of that
little pointy kind of devil horn kind of
thing that was going on all right so
just doing that fix that we can now
increase maybe the size of our circle
maybe we can go ahead and maybe increase
the scale and the y to really make this
nice and rounded so something like that
and then what we can do is maybe add
some gold on to that so with that little
instance there we have this really nice
rounded bevel that is now on our text
and really adds this really nice dynamic
look to our text all right so to recap
number one kern just do it
Curtin 3d text don't lose your designer
license number two nothing in real life
has perfectly sharp edges or totally
smooth surfaces so be sure to introduce
a little bit more curvature and rounding
to your object by using caps by adding
some noise to your diffuse or your bump
channel to add a little bit more warping
to your text also use deformers to then
bend your text a little bit to have more
of those reflections catch and again to
create those crack reflections we need
to use lights we can use the softbox a
little option in our lights as well can
also use an HDR sky environment to have
an image to be reflected into our scene
and again we can fix then
those little funky Fong issues by making
sure we go and we turn on the crate
single object and crank up the steps on
our filler caps also we can add brighter
materials or different materials to our
rounding to make our nice little rounded
filler caps look a lot nicer our little
bevels pop a little bit more and then
adding some nice rounded bevels or
whatever kind of bevels using the text
instance circle and sweep option if you
make a lot of 3d text definitely check
out my plug-in text edge Pro it pretty
much automates all the stuff we did here
and definitely recommend that especially
for those of you who do 3d text a ton so
definitely check that out be sure to
download Moe text light on the website
as well if you have cinema 4d Lite now
watch you all go out there make some
cool 3d text and hopefully those will
make you really push the limits of how
good your 3d text can be in the future
all right so I just shared with you a
bunch of tips on how you can take your
3d text to the next level whether you're
using cinema 4d lite or the full version
of cinema 4d now if you have any
questions about anything I cover in this
tutorial whether it's downloading the
free mo text light from my website or
anything else that I covered let me know
in the comments section I'll try to get
to those questions as quick as I can and
if you like this tutorial be sure to hit
the like button I'd really appreciate it
and I really appreciate all of you out
there watching these tutorials I'll see
you all on the next one alright
everybody bye