Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Make a Realistic Plastic Vinyl Toy Texture Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from Ida's I'm calm
and if you follow my work you know I
love me some vinyl toys inside of cinema
4d so this tutorial is all about my
workflow for creating nice vinyl
materials inside a cinema 4d so we're
gonna be using cinema 4d z-- physical
renderer we're gonna be not using any
octane at all but if you want to see the
octane version of this tutorial let me
know in the comments below if we had
enough comments we'll make some donuts
in octane but for right now I'm gonna
show you how I create my vinyl materials
how I light them and also how I render
them to make it look super realistic and
super nice so let's make some donuts
inside a cinema 4d z-- physical renderer
[Applause]
[Music]
all right so it's time to make the
donuts and here's our little donut guy
that we are going to be lighting
texturing and maybe eating a little bit
later
he looks pretty tasty and we're just
gonna go through how to do this inside
of cinema 4d using the physical renderer
now if you want to see the octane
version of this tutorial let me know if
we get enough requests for that I'll go
ahead and record a octane version of
this but this is what we're gonna be
doing in this tutorial today and here is
just our donut guy and we just got a
bunch of textures in here so far and all
these textures are at this point our
texture or materials with just some
colors loaded up in the color channels
so nothing fancy so let's actually go
ahead and go into interactive render
region and you can just adjust the
bounding box however you'd like and
adjust this little quality slider up or
down to whatever you want and this is
just to ensure that we can see what
exactly is happening when we adjust some
reflections and all the stuff we're
gonna be doing to all of our materials
here so I'm gonna start with this
frosting material here I'm gonna go
ahead and go into the reflectance
channel by default this has a specular
channel
listed in here already what I did was
just removed all those we're not dealing
with reflection or with specular we're
gonna just be dealing with reflection so
what I'm gonna do is hit the Add button
go to Beckman and that is gonna place a
hundred percent reflective material on
our little donut guy here he looks like
he has like some kind of bat like liquid
metal from terminator on him and that's
probably not very tasty so we'll get rid
of that and the way we'll do that is by
going on a layer for now and in real
life objects have fall off to their
reflection unless again you're dealing
with a metal so we're not dealing with
metal we're dealing with kind of a
plasticy kind of look so what we're
gonna do is just go ahead and load up
some for now which is that real-world
fall-off that happens on like plastic
objects and stuff like that we're gonna
choose dielectric and in the presets we
have a bunch of very useful presets here
and then what we're gonna be using is PE
T which is kind of like a plastic kind
of setting here and you'll see that once
we do that you see that we now have this
kind of fall-off and our reflection is
much less pronounced you can see that
our index of refraction is set to one
point five seven so depending on how big
or small this number is kind of controls
how much fall-off there is so metallics
has a very high i/o our plastics a lot
less so maybe we'll just do like one
point four five just for a kind of
vinylene texture and you can see that
for vinyl textures they're not that
shiny so what we're gonna do is go into
our roughness and introduce a little bit
of roughness to our little character
here and you're gonna see that this is
kind of gonna blur our reflection we
almost get some kind of specular hits
here and I think this is looking a lot
better the one thing I want to do to
make this a little bit more realistic
and not so kind of fake because there's
no imperfections in here at all is I
want to go into my layer mask now this
is where we can load up like a black or
white
masks or some kind of texture that will
then adjust or act as a mask to control
how much reflection is covered over our
object so I happen to have a little
fingerprints fork a texture that I found
on the interwebs and I'm just gonna drag
and drop that into my layer mask texture
here and if we actually go into this
texture and open this window you can see
this is a really nice kind of finger
smudge texture I really recommend you
going out and maybe getting a bunch of
these tileable textures because they add
a little sense of realism to your
objects by adding all these nice
imperfections so now if i zoom in here
and go back into my reflection or my
reflectance layer you can see we have
all these little grungy little spots
here which is really really nice
adds that nice sense of realism now we
can dial this back a little bit by
adjusting the mixed strength so it's a
little bit less pronounced and a little
bit more subtle but you can get a sense
for how this kind of adds those nice
imperfections doesn't look so fake
anymore we can also jump into our
texture here and maybe adjust the
exposure if we want this to be a little
bit more contrasty so we can see how
that looks and maybe we want a little
bit more vet to be pronounced on our
image or on our texture so you see a
little bit more that grunge there and I
think that's looking pretty good the one
thing you're gonna notice is you know we
have a scene where the only thing in our
scene is this object so it's getting
very hard to see where reflections are
we can see a little bit of reflection
along the edges and we got a little bit
of these little highlights here but what
I want to do is start populating our
scene with more objects specifically
with lights that can act as soft boxes
so those soft box shapes can be
reflected off of our material and we can
see if our material is looking good or
not so what I'm gonna do go ahead and
grab an area light and let's just go
ahead and
move this back and maybe make it a
little off to the side here just go to
our for up view and just position this
as like a rim light over here I'm
getting close to Halloween he looks kind
of spooky with this kind of backlit
lighting here and the next thing I'm
gonna do is go ahead and add some area
shadows so area lights with area shadows
that's kind of the most accurate type of
light that we'll have inside of cinema
4d and the next thing I'm going to do to
add a little bit more realism is add a
fall-off so lights in real life have a
fall-off so I'm gonna turn that on so we
have the inverse physically accurate
lighting you're gonna see that's gonna
be very very hot so what I'm gonna do is
move my light over and let's just rename
this rim light because this will be our
rim light to the left not Tim light I
don't know what a Tim light is let's ask
him about that
but we'll go and just maybe shrink this
little area shape here and basically
what I want to do now if I just made me
move this fall-off forward and maybe
adjust the intensity down maybe make it
70 so it's not so bright but what I want
to now he's looking really spooky what I
want to do now is adjust this light so
this little area light shape right here
actually shows up as like a white solid
or a softbox and is reflected in our
little guy here so to be able to
activate that I'm gonna go into the
details tab and you can see that we have
all these options down here where our
area shape is so we can choose a
different shape so maybe a disc if we
wanted to I'm gonna keep it at rectangle
that's just the shape that is visually
represented here and the one thing we
want to turn on that's very important is
this show and reflection because right
now by default this little area box
shape is not showing in reflection and
what I'm going to do is also show this
in render as well just so you guys can
see what's happening so now you can see
this little shape that is in this
wireframe is actually showing up in our
render and we have this visibility
multiplier here as well you can see that
this shape is very faint the light is
very faint it's almost like a gray so
what I'm gonna do is actually just crank
up this visibility multiplier to say a
thousand and you're gonna see us really
gonna brighten things up you're also
gonna see it's gonna brighten up the US
like the hit the little highlight here
on this object so you can see that this
little box shape is creating this really
nice skinny highlights on our donut dude
so what I'm gonna do is maybe just bring
this and have this light maybe light a
little bit angled and maybe a little bit
behind or a little donut guy so it's
almost like a rim light that's right off
to the side so we get this really really
nice specular hit or a little highlight
hit right on the edge of our donut here
so that's nice for this light right here
so we're gonna do is actually just turn
off show and render because we don't
actually want to render that out and
maybe we'll move it back so we don't
have that very harsh a little shadow
here so I'm just gonna move this up
maybe move this back a little so that's
looking good so far
and we just have one light so far what
I'm gonna do now is duplicate this rim
light by command click and dragging and
I'm just gonna move this over to the
right side of our little donut dude so
something like that and again make this
like a long skinny area shape little
softbox shape so we can see if we have
yet another nice little highlight on the
right side of our donut dude here so
that's looking pretty good I think I
want them even brighter those little
highlights so I can do is go back into
my visibility multiplier and let's see
what happens when we put in mm see if
that brightens it a little bit more so
you can see that just brightened our
little highlight here maybe we can go
into our rim light and maybe fatten up
this area box this area light shape see
how that looks
maybe move it back and maybe just
increase the intensity to say 75 so it's
a little bit more pronounced on that
side cool so I'm liking that so right
now the Lighting's pretty dramatic and
we got some really dark areas here as
well so what I'm gonna do is go ahead
duplicate our rim light again and make a
fill light so what this is gonna do is
kind of fill in all those dark spots so
what I'm gonna do is just make this
light kind of big and like positioned up
above our scene and maybe just scale
this up so it's encompassing a large
area of our scene and then what I'm
gonna do is just bring down the
intensity a little bit to maybe 45 and
let's see how that looks
so you can see this is kind of filling
in especially in the back or a little
l-shaped backdrop here or a little
background let's actually just move this
a little bit back further and you make
this even bigger so it's a it's a low
intensity light but it's so big that's
gonna help fill in a lot of those darker
areas so now you can see our little
background on our little psyche in the
back is getting filled in really nicely
we no longer have that really harsh
shadow that's coming from our rim light
to the left here so everything's looking
good in the back what we can do is we'll
now fill in the front because the front
of our little donut dudes looking a
little dark so again I'll duplicate this
rim light we'll make this a key light
and just move this forward in front of
our little donut guy and just make this
big as well so it's casting a nice kind
of diffuse light maybe bring the key
light down to say 50 and you can see
that that is also filling in a lot of
the shadowy portions of our donut as
well so another thing we can do is maybe
make this area shape pretty big so it's
also this nice bright box that can be
reflected on our little donut as
so let's see what that looks like see we
get this really nice specular or little
highlights going on here looking really
nice and I think now at this point we
have enough objects in our scene where
we can start really tweaking our donut
materials I'm just going to adjust this
a little bit lower so we can get a
little faster render here in really
getting a sense of how this is gonna
look when it's finally rendered so I'm
really liking how our little plastic
donut materials looking at least for our
frosting so what I'm gonna do is go to
our donut or don't I can spell we'll
just put a donut there we go and go into
this reflection turn this reflection
reflectance layer on go into our
reflectance add a Beckmann and again
going to our for now going to dielectric
and choosing some PT and then again if
we want to we can load up that smudge
texture that we had by going copy and
then just pasting this in that donut
material just paste shader in there and
you can see that you know we have the
shininess and it's kind of toned down a
little bit by our little smudge texture
you can see it's really really shiny
though so what we'll do is adjust the
roughness and for this I'm gonna add a
little bit more roughness than our
actual frosting here because I like that
nice sense of contrast where you have
one really shiny object in one not so
shiny so another thing I'm gonna do is
go ahead and maybe decrease the overall
strength of our reflection so I can go
and control that here maybe tone this
down maybe at 65% something like that so
it's not so pronounced again I can go
into my 4k texture and maybe adjust so
it's less contrast II so you can see in
a little preview window when we have a
lot of contrast you get a little bit
more of that reflection but if we bring
this down we're bringing in more of
these gray values so our reflection is
gonna be a little bit less pronounced a
little bit more muddy and I think I'm
liking that a little bit better we can
adjust the roughness a little bit more
if we want to as well so I like that
nice contrast where we have the vinyl
toy texture a little bit more blurred so
it's almost like you're using two types
of plastic one that is much shinier and
one that's a little bit more diffuse so
now what I'm gonna do is just go ahead
and copy this frosting reflectance
channel just copy it and then paste it
on all of our other layers here so I'm
just gonna paste it and just make sure
that all of our reflectance layer is on
so these are all the sprinkle textures
here and then we have the whites of our
eyes and our shoes and I also need to
add this to my eyeballs the little black
texture here so that's gonna start
updating in my render view here let me
actually just increase the quality here
so we see a little bit better so you can
see that now we have that nice shiny
material with the smudge texture on
again adding that nice sense of realism
and imperfections to our reflections and
you can see how that's looking right
there it's actually zoom in and for the
eyeballs I want this to be a super shiny
material as well so maybe what I'll do
is go into my white material and maybe
adjust the roughness down to maybe 10
and in the fernell actually in the layer
mask I'll just remove the fingerprints
so we're not gonna have any
imperfections so it's gonna be nice and
shiny and then for the IOR maybe I just
upped that to 155 or maybe 1.6 so it's a
little bit more reflective than the
frosting and the doughnut and as this is
rendering we'll see how this actually
looks
so you could see our nice little
sprinkles are looking good and you can
see our eyes are very a way shinier then
even our frosting here so that's looking
really good so next thing I'm gonna do
is I think everything is looking really
nice we have all of our shiny textures
here what I'm gonna do is go into
physical render now so right now I've
just been inside uh in the standard
renderer so far I'm gonna change it to
the physical renderer so our fall-off
the reflections our lights are gonna be
a little bit more accurate and give an
extra sense of realism to our scene here
you can see this is looking really
really nice I'm just gonna bring crank
this up all the way
our little preview window here maybe
maybe we'll just focus on a portion here
and in the physical settings just to
speed this up I'm gonna change this to
fixed so this is gonna be a fixed amount
then just bring the sampling
subdivisions to 0.5 and see how fast
that renders but it gives us a a better
idea of how this is gonna look now our
reflections are gonna be really choppy
right now just because we're using a low
sampling but we'll just deal with this
for now for an interactive render region
here so we have our lights in our scene
everything's looking pretty good right
and what we can now do is add a little
bit more realism by adding some ambient
occlusion which is some of the realistic
shading that happens in all the nooks
and crannies of where objects are
touching so you can see we have more
shading on our you know where our
sprinkles are touching the frosting part
and in the mouth and around the eyes and
this is a little bit too much so I'm
gonna do two things to kind of tone down
how the ambient occlusion looks and what
is going into this black color chip here
on our gradient in making this a mid
gray so it's gonna be less dark on our
ambient occlusion the other thing I'm
going to do is change the maximum ray
length of our am and a clue
or the dark shadowing that's coming from
it just to decrease it so it's a little
bit less pronounced unless blurred out
so you're gonna see that we have less of
that dark shading happening maybe we can
even get away with 15 since our scene
scale is fairly small probably even get
away with 5 let's try that so we had
just enough of the ambient occlusion
there to look nice we can maybe even
make it even more subtle and the next
thing I'm going to do is add some global
illumination now one thing I really want
to drive home is that I'm not using an
HDR I I'm not using an HDR image I am
just using lights with those little area
softbox shapes showing up in the
reflection to now light our scene so you
can see now with the ambient occlusion
is kind of lighting things up a little
bit we now have some of those colors
from our little backdrop site kind of
bouncing off of our little guy here
making it look a little bit more
realistic the one thing I'm gonna do is
go ahead and change this secondary
method to light mapping which is just a
little faster way to calculate some of
the global illumination here and
actually adds a little bit more
illumination as well because it adds a
lot more bounces of light so you can see
how that looks now so at this point you
know if you maybe think okay this
lighting now that we have the GI is
looking pretty flat what we can do is go
maybe do our fill light and maybe back
that off a little bit maybe just this
down to say 30 and see what that looks
like
I think that's looking a lot better
because we're getting less of that fill
light so more of our lights here on the
the rim lights on either side can add a
nice little bit of contrast so our
lights not so flat so I think that's
looking really good let's just see what
this looks like with our physical
sampling up a little bit more so I'm
going to change this to adaptive and
just change this to 4 so it's just going
to increase the quality to 4 subdivision
so
was that point five before so that's why
some of our blurryness some of our
reflections we're a little bit more
grainy but now we're just kind of
cranking up the quality so now you can
really see we got really nice smooth
reflections going on no more that grain
either we're really making out a lot
more of that little smudge that is in
the smudge texture that's in our
reflection mat so this is looking really
really nice and you can you know tweak
all these lights to your heart's content
as well maybe we change some of the
colors of the lights so we get a little
bit more different temperatures of light
as well one thing I'm seeing maybe this
the smudge texture is a little bit too
pronounced so what I can do is just go
back into our mixed texture on our
frosting go into the mask and maybe just
bring that down to say 45 and maybe we
can maybe adjust the fur now so it's a
little bit more shiny but just bringing
down that fall-off strength so that
reflection roll off bringing that down a
little bit so it's a little bit more
shiny so already I'm seeing that you
know and this is kind of the push and
pull of these reflective materials this
is way way way too shiny right this is
looking super fake so again the basis of
this tutorial
and just materials in general especially
reflective you know shiny stuff is a lot
of how your material is going to look is
the reflection but your reflection only
looks as good as the lighting in your
scene so I really recommend that you if
you kind of aren't very good at lighting
which I don't consider myself very good
at lighting I kind of just move things
around until things look good but I
really recommend you you know maybe look
at other people's renders and look at
their specular highlights and their
little highlights over here and kind of
seeing you know if I look at a render
I'm like that
that render looks really really good I
then pay attention to alright where did
this person where did this artist
position the lights and you can see a
lot by the highlights that show up in
reflection so you know on my model right
here my little donut guy I can
definitely see that I can look at that
no pink material and see okay there's
definitely specular to the left just
definitely speculate a little to the
right and it definitely looks like the
one on the right side has a lot more is
a bigger you know softbox right and then
maybe even see a little bit of that
subtle front key light that has a little
bit of the reflection as well so that's
kind of how I've gotten to be a little
bit better at lighting is just by seeing
what looks good from other artists and
paying attention to these nice little
highlights and stuff like that and I
guarantee you'll be way more conscious
of where you then position your lights
in the future so I hope this tutorial
has really helped a lot we basically
just created a bunch of materials with
just colors in the color channel and
then just added some blurred reflection
with some fall-off and then a little bit
of some texture in our layer mask to
then add a little bit more realism and
imperfection to our reflections so it's
not so perfect and fake and then we
added a bunch of lights to our scene
position them in specific areas so we
can art direct our lights no HDRI is
used at all and then we went and added
some ambient occlusion and some global
illumination alright so in this tutorial
I showed you how to create some cool
vinyl materials using a bunch of
different techniques utilizing the
reflectance channel inside a cinema 4d
z-- physical renderer so we also showed
you how to light the scene and render so
it looks really nice and realistic so if
you have any questions about anything I
cover in this tutorial let me know in
the comments below and again if you want
to see
the octane version of this tutorial let
me know as well if we got enough people
I'll do that one as well
and I really want to see you guys making
some cool vinyl toys out there so if you
make anything using the techniques in
this tutorial I'd love to see it share
them with me on my Instagram Facebook
and Twitter and if you like this
tutorial be sure to hit the like button
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always appreciate you guys watching this
tutorial I'll see you all in the next
one bye everybody