Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating 2D Wood Textures Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from a design calm
and in today's tutorial we're gonna put
on our plaid shirts take our axe and
we're gonna make some 2d illustrative
looking wood patterns inside of cinema
4d so this is a great technique to
create 2d wood patterns that you can use
for compositions or 2d animations inside
of After Effects so let's learn how all
right so here is our wood that we're
gonna be creating today inside of cinema
4d so I'm gonna walk you through how
easy it is to create this really nice 2d
wood pattern and then how add this nice
little finishing grunge as well so let's
go ahead and make some wood we're gonna
create a cylinder and we'll have the
orientation in the positive x so it's
laying on its side so now we can just go
ahead and start applying some wood
materials so what I'm gonna do is double
click in the material manager to create
a new material will name this wood and
what I'm gonna do to make this
completely 2d is I want to remove the
diffuse shading here that you can see in
this little preview because this just
gives the illusion of this is a 3d
object I want this to be very flat so
I'll turn off the color in reflectance
and just turn on the luminance and then
what that's gonna do is load up just a
flat color that almost fills whatever we
apply to it so you can see that in our
viewport if I go into interactive render
region that gives us an example of what
this is gonna look like when it's
rendered and I'm just gonna drag this
triangle quality slider up so we got
high quality you can see that we just
have flat texture and gives the illusion
that this is now 2d so what I'm gonna do
is load the wood shader in our luminance
channel so let's just go ahead and grab
a wood shader and it's underneath the
surfaces and that's actually cut off at
the bottom of the screen it's the very
last thing is wood trust me it's there
just at the very bottom of the surface
menu I'm gonna load that up and you're
gonna see bone we got some nice-looking
wood nice-looking wood right there but
it looks
to realistic and you know this is why
the wood cheater exists is because most
of the time people want to make
realistic wood add really nice realistic
textures and all that good stuff but
what we're gonna be doing today is using
the wood shader to create a more 2d kind
of wood pattern and how to just turn
this and do like a 2d pattern is very
very easy so the first thing we're gonna
do is just remove the interpolation of
the blending of this gradient color
that's applying the color to our wood so
what I'm gonna do is twirl down this
little triangle here and the
interpolation is now smooth between the
two color chips here what I want to do
is just remove the interpolation or the
smoothness all together by choosing none
and then what I can do is move this
right color chip over here this darker
color chip and just move it slightly
over and we can actually move this over
as much as we want for whatever kind of
thickness we want of our little kind of
wood band grain bands here and we can
actually change the color here as well
so we can make this maybe a little bit
more stylized and get that kind of
pinkish wood color that we had from the
get-go and then we had some white here
as well so maybe just a little bit of
off-white something like that and what
you're gonna notice is that this kind of
looks kind of cruddy and the reason for
this is this grainy that is really there
for realistic wood grain effects for
this wood shader but again since we're
gonna be using this as a 2d shader we
don't actually need any that realistic
grain so I'm gonna just turn the grain
down and the grain scale we don't have
to worry about because there is no grain
and voila we have a very nice-looking 2d
wood pattern applied to our 3d cylinder
here so we can just cover some of these
settings here now and the first is the
overall scale of the wood texture so we
can do this one of two ways we can
either scale this up using the scale
option or we can actually use the
texture mode here by clicking on the
texture mode here we can see this grid
pop up and what this allows us to do
is kind of move around our texture here
now you can see that this is actually
isn't moving anything you can see that
this little band here is just kind of
staying there so moving this doesn't do
anything but if we hit the T key and
bring up our scale or just go to the
scale button here and scale this down
you can see that is not doing anything
either in the one thing we need to do
I'm just gonna undo all this stuff you
can notice that as I'm dragging in draw
dragging and clicking clicking and
dragging clicking and dragging dragging
and clicking that this isn't scaling
proportionately that's kind of one of
the big weird things about scaling you
can see that even if I hold shift
I'm not constrained or you know
proportionally scaling this
proportionally on the XY and Z and I'm
just gonna quickly undo all this stuff
and the reason for that is and this is
one thing I didn't realize until
recently if we want to scale
proportionately in texture mode we need
to turn on enable axis modification mode
and you can see that now we have this
nice little cube here this little
bounding box and now if I hit T and
scale this down you can actually see
that not only are we scaling
proportionately but this is actually
scaling down and scaling up our wood
texture so now you can definitely see a
lot of stuff happening here now one
thing we can do is well is maybe we want
to rotate this texture this wood shader
too so what I'm gonna do is I can either
hit the R key or just go to the rotate
tool and then I'm gonna hold down shift
so I can constrain the rotational
movement to increments of 10 I'll just
turn this 90 degrees and now you can see
we have more streaking happening here
and this is gonna be better to kind of
show how the next option works on our
wood shader and that is the stretch so
what the stretch does is basically we
have the kind of the ring where you
actually sliced the wood in half and
it's very important that you actually
rotate
this texture I don't know why it doesn't
show up correctly on a cylinder but you
actually have to rotate it that 90
degrees to get this but at the top here
you can kind of see the wood texture as
it's like kind of sliced and you can you
know typically see the rings and the
stretch is these texture and how it
stretches along like the growth axis of
the tree or the branch so right now this
stretch values up to 20 so you can see
this texture is very very stretched so
if we maybe bring this down to five you
can see that that texture is a lot less
stretched and we can see a lot more of
this nice waviness here so that's
looking really really good
so I'm just gonna bring this down to
maybe three and see what that looks like
and you can see we're introducing a lot
more of that nice little wavy knots and
stuff like that and this looks really
really awesome as like a a wood texture
but I'm just gonna get out of my texture
mode and out of my axis mode so we can
actually get rid of the bounding box and
all that stuff so the next thing is the
ring scale now these are the actual ring
patterns and how big they are so if I
bring this up to say 15 you can see that
that actually just kind of inflates and
scales up the entire texture as well so
if we make this very small you can see
we have a lot more rings and you know
just kind of work how many rings you
want in your little pattern I like the
default of like five there just because
we got a really good representation of
the pattern and we get some of these
little knots on the edges here
alright so grainy we already discussed
we don't need it for this effect wavy is
the kind of like the wavy turbulence
that is undulating and kind of
distorting this wood pattern so if I
scale this up to say 150 you can see
that actually scaling up adds noise and
more distortion so if I crank this up to
like 500 you can see that we have a lot
more distortion so this is like the wavy
strength here so I think I'm just gonna
leave this at you know 50 we can see
what what happens when there's very low
waviness we got
of these just kind of straight lines
here which you know depending on what
look you're going for you can kind of
play around with how much waviness you
like and then we have the wavy scale
which you know self-explanatory it's the
scale of that we beat turbulence as it's
distorting the wave so if I make this
very small you can see this is like a
psychedelic piece of wood or something I
don't know what's going on there it took
it's a wood on an acid trip but I'm just
gonna leave the wavy scale at about 50
now the last option here before we go to
annual rings is shift and shift is super
super important so say we have multiple
pieces of wood if I just go ahead and I
duplicate this cylinder and move this
over you can see that we have the exact
same looking piece of wood it's got the
same exact pattern now if I go ahead and
adjust the shift though it's actually
switching up and changing the pattern of
our wood so if i duplicate this wood
material apply this to our second
cylinder here and then in that second
new material that we just created I just
adjust the shift you can see now we have
a unique wood pattern so just by using
the shift here so you think the shifts
very important if you're trying to
iterate and create a bunch of pieces of
wood you can maintain the same settings
and then just adjust the shift and
you'll have a unique piece of wood
sitting there so shift very important
the last thing I'm gonna cover that is
very important is we just jump back into
my wood shader here is the annual Rings
so let's just move this shift back to
zero there because I liked how that
pattern looked at zero so the last thing
is annual rings and if I turn this on
you can see that at least on the cap of
this or the top of this cylinder we have
this nice ring pattern this nice wood
ring pattern that's on the top there so
this is basically what annual rings does
is it recreates the the sliced inside of
the growth ring part of the
would pattern so what we can do is I'll
just leave this material as like the the
pattern that we're gonna leave on the
outside here like the long the growth
along the growth axis and then what I'm
gonna do is duplicate this wood and this
will just be like the rings on the cap
of our cylinder so what I'll do
let's get out of interactive render
region here and I'll just make this
cylinder editable by hitting the C key
and now I can go ahead hit u L for loop
selection select that cap and probably
good idea to select this back cap as
well and then I can go ahead and drag
and drop this ring material onto that
selection you can see that now we have a
different material applied to our caps
here and what I can do with this new
ring material is go and check on annual
rings here now something weird happens
with a new material remember how we had
to go into texture mode go into the
Nabal axis modification mode and rotate
so I'm gonna hit R and rotate along the
green band or the Y rotation here and
just rotate that 90 degrees and now you
can see that this wood material is
actually applied correctly so that's
it's a really weird thing I don't know
why it doesn't just work with a cylinder
but sometimes you might need to rotate
your wood texture just to get it looking
the right way so with that with that
rotation we now have this really nice
annual ring annual ring ring it's the
rings of the wood that is now on the
caps of our cylinder and looking really
really nice so again we can while we're
still in our texture mode and enable Mac
axis modification mode here I can go
ahead and scale this down if I want or
scale this up and you can see that we
can also move this as well to maybe
Center and I'm just moving this
constrained along the y in x axis here
and you can see that moving that
actually moves where the center of that
would not is so kind of important to
kind of position this wherever you want
and scale it up however large you want
as well to get what kind of you know
annual ring not look on the caps of your
would alright so we have our wood
pattern looking really nice the one
thing we can do is you know if you want
to render this out I mean this looks
pretty 2d we can complete the look by
just adding a camera looking through it
by clicking this little viewport icon
and then changing this to a camera
perspective that's way more flat so it's
I call it the simcity camera where it's
isometric but I'm gonna choose parallel
and what you're gonna notice is this is
flattens out our wood pattern so no
matter how we look at this this is gonna
look way more geometric and way more 2d
and illustrative so if you want to just
stop here and you're like this is nice I
don't need anything else
knock yourself out one thing I do want
to mention before we go any further is
that maybe you're not even creating 3d
geometry in here using this wood shader
is actually really nice to just you know
make a plain object here and let's just
have this face our camera by changing
the orientation to Z and we can just
apply this wood pattern I'll just hide
the cylinder here by clicking here and
just turning a slot slow stop lights to
red and just make this interactive
render region bigger here what you can
actually do is just apply a wood
material to a plane render this out and
use this as a pattern or a texture for
use inside of After Effects so you know
you can make patterns with this and
again you can make a crap-ton of
patterns which is the official word of a
lot of patterns is adjusting the shift
and you can you know render that render
that and you know adjust this shift and
just keep rendering all these different
wood patterns here and use them in your
2d artwork as a texture inside of After
Effects so kind of important like nice
little handy tip there
of generating a texture in 3d and using
it in 2d a lot of people might not think
of that type of workflow all right back
to our little wood piece here and again
if you want to just leave this flat you
can do that or we can add a little bit
more of shading or more depth by adding
some cell shading so that's exactly what
I'm gonna do so I'm gonna double click
on my wood texture here and what I'm
actually gonna do is create a layer
shader and what a layer share is gonna
allow us to do is place our wood shader
inside this layer and basically we have
like a lay a Photoshop layer system that
we can then add other effects or shaders
and mix them using blending mode so very
much like Photoshop you can have a bunch
of layers and use blending modes so I
have my wood shader I'm gonna go ahead
and load up my sketch Intune cel shader
here and then I can just simply choose
multiply mode and just go into the cell
shader and I'm just gonna use some
grayscale values here remove this not
just move this over and the cel shader
basically applies cell shading to your
object and right now it's using the
camera as a light source I'm gonna turn
that off and just turn on lights so it
actually used lights in our scene but
you actually see we actually don't have
any lights yet that's fine and we're
also going to when we create that light
want to use its shadows to help shade
our object as well so we can adjust this
gradient not to kind of control how much
of this gray texture and white texture
shows up and again this is being
multiplied on top of our wood shader
there so you can just adjust this as you
like but what I'm gonna do is go ahead
and create a light and I'm just gonna
use an infinite light and just add some
hard shadows raytrace shadows here and
how an infinite light works is it's like
a massive light source like the Sun that
shoots parallel light towards your
object and it just adds for a nice more
2d or flat kind of look compared to like
a spotlight or something like that so I
can adjust the angle of this
light that's how you adjust the light is
just by angle position doesn't moving
the position of the light doesn't change
anything just the angle so you can get
this looking how you want get that nice
little may be shaded bit just on the
bottom there and if we want to increase
how much of that dark shading cell
shading is there we can just move this
not a little bit more to the rights and
you can see that this is actually
growing how much of that color is map
than showing up on the surface there so
I'm actually not going to add any cell
shading to the top cap here just because
I want it to stay this nice bright color
but what I am gonna do in my cell shader
here is add a little bit more of a
stylized look and I want to add that
nice little grain that I showed in that
original image off the top and to do
that I actually have a tutorial cover
that covers this this subject as well so
definitely check that out a link to it
is adding grain via the bump channel so
I can use the bump channel in my
material here to kind of add some grains
so in my cell shader whoops in my cell
shader I got the used bump I'm gonna go
into my bump channel check that on and
then what I'm gonna do is load up just
some simple noise and you're gonna see
that once I have that applied it's kind
of distorting and breaking up the
shading the cell shading on my object
and that's all because we have this used
bump on if we don't have it on we don't
have any change at all so what we can do
now is go into the bump go into our
noise and maybe scale this down to
something very small like 5% and you can
see that we now have this small noise in
our bump channel that's now distorting
and basically creating some really cool
grain on our wood shader there and we
can adjust the strength of this and this
is basically gonna grow how how far our
grain kind of reaches and you know so
you can adjust this however much you
want if you want more grain if you want
less grain maybe you just want a tiny
tiny bit of grain on the bottom you just
just the strength all the way to a low
value but I think I like somewhere in
here maybe 30% something like that and
again if we want to maybe darken the
shade here or even introduce some color
we can definitely do that as well by
just coloring the diffuse here and you
can see that we have this kind of nice
maybe we just sample one of this pink
material maybe darken it and we have
this nice kind of stylized gray in there
as well just change the color or we just
keep it Grace Gilligan maybe just make
it a little bit darker so whatever you
want to do if you want to add some blue
go nuts knock yourself out with whatever
kind of grudge you want now now we want
to add some of that grunge to the cap of
our cylinder and the problem with if we
just went over here just copy it
ourselves shader so I'm going to go to
copy shader I right click copy shader go
into my rings again load up the layer
shader here and go another later and
just paste shader and choose multiply
and again we'll need to you know it load
in a noise in the bump scale this down
to five as well you're gonna see that we
have just noise all over all over it and
this is because of how this is shaded
this is completely all in the dark area
of art of the shadow of our light
basically and this is just not gonna
work
even if we move the light to have it hit
and brighten up this side it still has
grain all over it so I'm just gonna do
our light so the cell shaders not going
to work for the caps here but one thing
we can do is use a gradient and again
I'm just gonna multiply this and I can
go into the gradient and I can change
the type from 2d U which is just you
know applying a gradient vertically here
and change this to 2d circular and then
I can just right click and just invert
the not so I have the
part of the gradient on the outside now
what happens when we choose a 2d
circular or any kind of different noise
here sometimes we get this turbulence
option which is really nice so what we
can do is utilize this turbulence maybe
give it a value of like 65 and basically
we're introducing some grunge or noise
that way and we'll just bring down the
octave detail to about three we and
we're gonna scale this way down so we
want very small noise but actually how
the scale works is the higher you go so
say a scale of 2500 the smaller the
noise gets you can see that this is a
nice kind of small noise maybe it's a
little bit too small we want to try to
match the grain size on our cell shader
here and we can men constrain this maybe
and just kind of adjust the gradient
knots here to maybe add a little bit
more contrast there and you can see that
now we're kind of getting a really nice
gradient going on maybe bring the
turbulence down a little bit you can
adjust this however we want adjust how
much of that grunge we want and how much
that reaches by just adjusting this
gradient here and basically there you go
we have a nice little great grungy bit
on the front of our wood and again we
can go ahead and we can even change the
color of this again we can make it you
know maybe a dark blue or something like
that to match the color it was on our
south shader noise there as well so we
kind of matched that on the front and
looking pretty good so one last thing I
want to show is to add even more grunge
is I'm just going to duplicate this wood
object and this will just be like a
branch and I'm just gonna scale this
down rotate this up and we just have
this nice little branch sticking up
right about there something like that
and again if we really wanted to get
technical we can go and again duplicate
the wood texture adjust that shift so we
have a different
pattern but for now I'm gonna be super
lazy and just rotate that and there we
go and what I'm gonna do is add a little
bit more noise and I'm gonna add more
noise via ambient occlusion so a mean
occlusion is in the affects here and
basically what ambient occlusion does
you can see a little bit of dark shading
happen and basically is recreating what
happens in real life when two objects
are close together they kind of self
shade and what I'm gonna do is kind of
make this a little bit more contrast II
and add more grain I'm actually just
gonna bring the accuracy and the samples
down to about one you can see this is
just some really nice grain now I can
increase the contrast there as well
to maybe make it to 50 I can also adjust
the dispersion which is also the spread
of that shading to maybe make it a
little bit more centralized I can also
change this to a lighter gray to try to
help this fit in with everything else we
have here or I can even introduce a
color like blue and you have we a kind
of what nice little hints of blue in
here as well if we added like a disc for
the floor you can see that now we have a
lot of that blue on the bottom there
which i think is a really cool kind of
look there too and let's just add like a
just a flat material here so we'll just
use the luminance and maybe just get a
dark blue color load that up in there
something like that so you can see that
we have nice even some ambient occlusion
happening on the floor here as well we
can go ahead and add in a background so
we can add some of this background color
here too and here we go the one last
thing I want to cover let's look at
pretty nice right we got some nice 2d
wood but it's created in 3d so really
really cool stuff I I would say that the
grunge is a little bit heavy-handed but
you know what whatever we're just gonna
roll with it the last thing we can do or
the last thing I want to cover is
rendering this out so we're dealing with
2d here one thing I always like to tell
people to do
is going to your anti-aliasing and of
course choose best anti-aliasing so we
have nice crisp edges but the filter
typically people render out with the
animation filter and this actually blurs
and I don't know if this actually picks
up but actually blurs a little bit
because it tries to prevent flickering
when things are animated very fast and
you know typically that's how you want
it with animation but for 2d objects we
probably want something sharper so we
can use cubic which kind of sharpens
everything up sharpens up all the
textures or sync is also one I use as
well and it just keeps that nice crispy
edges crispy textures those nice sharp
edges that fit well with you know
rasterized shape layers and stuff that
you may be using this with inside of
After Effects so just one last little
helpful render tip there for you guys as
well but basically that's very easy way
to create some nice wood patterns using
the wood shader inside of cinema 4d
alright so we use the cinema 4d wood
shader to create a 2d wood pattern that
we can then use to create nice 2d wood
looks inside a cinema 4d or just render
the pattern now and use that as a
texture in Photoshop or After Effects so
if you have any questions about the wood
shader or anything I come from this
tutorial please leave those questions in
the comment section below
just want to remind you that I also have
a bunch of tutorials on the cel shader
as a whole so check out the cell shader
playlist in my youtube channel also
check out the stylized grainy cell
shader look tutorial if you want to
learn more about creating nice 2d grain
on your cel shader definitely check
those out
and if you create anything using this
tutorial I'd love to see all of your fun
to deep ESA's of wood inside of cinema
4d so definitely share them with me on
Instagram Facebook Twitter all that good
stuff and if you liked this tutorial
please hit the like button if you like
my tutorials please subscribe I'd really
appreciate that
and as always really appreciate all of
you out there watching the
tutorials I'll see you all in the next
one bye everybody