Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creative Ways to Use Voronoi Fracture Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from eyes on comm
and I got a fun one today we're gonna
talk about using the Verona fracture to
not just bust things up into smithereens
but to use it in creative way to create
some cool organic ribbon type effects
build it procedurally we're gonna light
we're gonna texture it and show you how
to build it from scratch let's check it
out
[Applause]
[Music]
all right so here is what we're gonna be
making today with any luck and it looks
something like this but utilizing the
power of the Voronoi fracture and kind
of thinking outside of the box as far as
what it can do and what kind of cool
abstract stuff in compositions you can
make with it so I'm gonna start by how I
built this procedurally and then at the
end of the tutorial I'm going to get to
texturing and lighting so if you want to
stick around for that
be happy to have you joining me with
that part of the process so here is the
finished product let's go to a brand new
composition here and the first step is
to grab a piece of geometry that you
want to you know ribbon if I or whatever
we're calling that to you know apply the
fracturing effects so what I did was I
just went to the content browser trusty
old content browser and in the presets
if you navigate all the way down to the
sculpting folder here there is this base
meshes folder we have a lot of base
message meshes that are used for
sculpting okay so a lot of stuff here
you can pick whatever you want I'm gonna
kick the generic head bust it's
ambiguous is it a man is it a woman I
don't know let's just use that and there
we go
so there's our generic head bus you're
gonna see it's very small on our scene
because it's kind of scaled to
real-world coordinates so let's kind of
just so the the effects in the
fracturing will will make sense on this
let's just scale this guy up there guy
or girl scale this person up pretty bigs
we never get a big generic head in our
scene and you know as you do that's
that's what you you add and let me just
take I'm just gonna delete this material
this sculpt material just have our base
clay texture here and just go from there
all right so it's pretty you know low
poly if I go to my display quad shading
you're gonna see it's very low poly mess
because it's a base mesh so what we can
do is before we even go any further we
can go and just place this in a cloth
surface just kind of smooth that out for
now okay so we
have our cloth surface and it's just
subdividing it once so this is a nice
procedural way to subdivide an object so
we have more geometry to play with here
all right so let's go ahead get out of
our garage shading lines and let's let's
fracture this person and we're gonna do
that going to the mograph menu grabbing
our Voronoi fracture we're just gonna
place our cloth surface with the generic
head bust underneath and even for the
time being we just turn that off for now
so it calculates a little bit faster and
we can start to play with our Veroni and
what we'll do is kind of check out
what's going on so we have this
fractured Voronoi cell pattern that is
there by default because in our sources
tab we have that kind of point generator
going on so every place there's a point
there's that little cell pattern what
we're gonna do is we want to be a little
bit more creative with this and not use
the default point generator so I'm going
to do is just select this source and
delete it okay
and what we're gonna do is just create
our own new source to kind of divvy up
and fracture or objects so we don't want
that cell pattern so what I'm going to
do is grab my just grab a matrix object
what this allows you to do if you drag
and drop this matrix object in the
sources tab you can see that
whoops accidentally move my Veroni if I
move this fracture or this matrix object
up you can see wherever a little matrix
is or matrices is there will be a nice
little fracture and using a matrix
object like this allows for nice kind of
cubic fracturing here which is pretty
cool so what we can do is change this
mode from grid array to something like
linear and if I just move this to the
right you can see we have three matrices
here and if I move this all the way to
the bottom of our model and if I just go
ahead and just bring up the Y here you
can see we have three cuts to coincide
with our three matrices here but what I
want to do is kind of up the count slice
this up a whole bunch and what
do is just up the count but what this is
gonna do is just keep bringing keep
adding counts keep adding matrices that
are 212 centimeters apart from each
other in the wine what I want to do is
not have each of these matrices built
for step I want to change this to end
point so what this allows me to do is if
I put in that original 212 I believe
what this allows me to do is basically
control where the start and end of those
matrices start in N and then just fill
in the gaps there something like that so
now you can see I have a whole bunch of
slices going on there which is nice I
think what I want to do is maybe even
make our bust a little bit bigger
something like that and just bring up
the matrices here so we have a lot more
ribbon or a lot more slices going on
this is this is all well and good all
right so what I want to do now is make
this a little bit more interesting I'm
just gonna rotate my fracturing so it's
a little bit more diagonally you can see
we got these really cool kind of waves
that are following the contour of our
object it looks a lot more interesting
than just straight up vertical slicing
okay so what I can do now is go into the
Voronoi fracture go into the object tab
and what I want to do is offset these
fragments and what this is gonna allow
me to do if I just put in a value of 1
it's basically it's almost like creating
a topographical map kind of thing which
is really cool in itself but we have
these nice little gaps in between all of
our slices which is really really
awesome and you can see that they're
filled in there they're they're solid
slices here but one thing that's cool
one thing we can do to make this and
turn this into a hollow object and make
this look a lot more like ribbons is
going into this hall only option and
checking that on what that's gonna do is
just allow us to see the hull or the
outside of that fractured shape so all
these slices we can now see through and
you know see through our objects so this
looks a lot
or ribbony which is really cool so this
is kind of cool by itself but let's kind
of push this effect a little bit more
and the first thing I want to do is just
double click on this top circle here to
hide it from view so we no longer see
our little matrices kind of showing up
there and being distracting and what I
want to do is add a little bit more
because I'm loving these little waves
but there's not enough in to get more of
those kind of wavy undulations I'm going
to add a displaced áformer to kind of
add some of that organic displacement
there so I'm just gonna grab my
displacer in the deform Ren you drag and
drop this as a child of the generic head
bust object and what I need to do to
have this work is load up a shader in my
shader field in the shading tab of my
displacer so what I'm going to do is I'm
just gonna grab a noise to start out
with you're gonna see this nice
undulation if I go into my display sir's
object tab I can go ahead and up the
strength of this and you're gonna see a
whole lot of distort distort meant going
on in or displacement
I guess distort meant that's not a word
you get you kind of see what's going on
we're getting all these nice little
ripples and stuff like that and this is
where you wanna turn back on your cloth
surface maybe add a second subdivision
just to smooth everything out you can
see this kind of psychedelic kind of
cool effect right there reminds me of
like the painted rocks and Utah or
something looked at a really cool
national park but really cool stuff
going on adds a lot more detail but the
thing is we're losing we're totally
losing our generic head we have no idea
what this looks like this could be a
poop emoji for all we know so what we
want to do is try to maintain the outer
shell of our figure and how we can do
that is a number of things is kind of
taming down the noise first off but one
thing we can do is by default the
displacer is pushing and pulling the
geometry in a positive and negative
manner so we're making indents and we're
also making bulges on the geometry so
it's pushing and pulling the surface and
that's because it's set to intensity
Center now if I choose just intensity
what you're gonna see is our little
figure gets kind of fat because it's
just pull pushing the displacement in
one direction not both so it's actually
pushing it in at a height of 40
centimeters so that's why our whole
entire object got a little bit thicker
if I go ahead and make this say a
negative value of say you know negative
30 like my round numbers you can see
that we're kind of just really smooshing
the sin really indenting and displacing
inwards of our object now what we can do
now is go into our noise shader and
start messing around with some stuff
here to get more of our form back so one
thing we can do is up the global scale
maybe don't like 450 or something like
that and you know maybe up the contrast
as well this is something like that and
one thing I found that really helps
because basically what I want to do is
just get little dots and bulges and
stuff like that not these huge little
spaces of white space basically what's
going on is everything that's black is
not going to be displaced and everything
white will be so I want to make like
little dots and the noise that I found
was best for this I just move this on up
but noise that I thought work best is
this sparse convolution and then by
turning on absolute which allows this
noise to kind of fold over itself we get
these really nice at dots that's kind of
what I was going for these nice little
indents okay so what we can do now is
you know I've just did the contrast I
can adjust the brightness to make those
indents a little bit bigger and see all
this really really cool patterns these
little swirls going on really really
cool stuff so now we can just kind of
play around with like maybe the relative
scale of our displays or of our noise
here that's causing the displacement
maybe just the scale on the Y and maybe
the scale on the Z you know and all of
these values are really going to
determine how this looks okay and one
thing you can also do is you know maybe
get less of those little dots showing up
so we're moving these white little
endian
you can see that you know we're getting
this deformation in the jaw which looks
rather creepy rather than cool so we can
also adjust the seed until we come
across a noise pattern that you know we
think looks pretty good and still again
maintains that outer form and again
doesn't look anything too too creepy
something like that let's just call that
knock not all that creepy even though
this indents kind of creeping me out ya
know see ya the-the-the see just totally
changes everything so pushing and
pulling kind of do it at your own peril
so I think this is a little bit more
normal
not so creepy digging it maybe add a
little bit more there we go so we got
all this really cool distortion stuff
happening there I could tweak this
forever I'm gonna spare you that but
let's move on at least you know that you
know you can play around with the noise
and you know that does a lot as far as
how this looks
and as well as you know how much you
indent how much this distortion height
is in this place er let's just do
let's do 35 again now this is looking
pretty good
but again we can add a little bit more
interest to this just like we added the
displacer we can go ahead and maybe have
so some of these little ribbon slices
are kind of floating off it looks like
it's falling apart or unraveling in some
way so what we can do and the great part
about the Varela noise fracture is we
can use effectors on it so what I'm
gonna do is go to my mograph effect your
menu and go to random okay there it is
and you can see that everything is kind
of distorted and stuff like that but
what we can do is go and grab a
different fall-off shapes right now it's
just affecting all the little slices if
I choose something like box I can adjust
this fall off to just affect the
portions inside of my fall-off and I can
rotate this if I want and one thing I
want to do is maybe just go into my fall
off and just invert that so maybe the
top in the bottom
this figure will be kind of looking like
it's floating away okay so one thing we
can do is just maybe just make this a
little bit more of a subtle effect going
to the parameters tab of the random
effector and just making these values
maybe you know 10 okay
and then maybe adjusting some of the
random scale here scaling some of these
up and then maybe just adding some
rotation here something like that maybe
not rotation in the pitch because we're
kind of doing that we don't want it to
fold among itself so I'm just turn that
to zero degrees and so this is looking
pretty cool one thing we can add to have
these push even further away is to use
the aptly-named push apart effector so
I'll just select my Brunei fracture
again go to my effectors menu and go to
push apart and boom everything's gonna
explode out it's because our radius is
rather high at 100 percenter meters if I
just make this you know maybe 15
centimeters this looks pretty cool but
again I want to isolate this to wherever
the fall-off of the random effector is
so I could do you know the the old way
of you know grabbing a box just fall off
and adjusting this but there's actually
a really cool way to add to have a
effector an effectors fall off kind of
be used by all the other effectors that
are applied after it so in this case I
want the random effectors fall off to
also be used by this push apart effector
so what I'm gonna do is in the fall-off
tab just change this to none so no
fall-off inside of the push apart
effector and then what I'm gonna do now
is go into the random effector and if I
choose this weight transform and crank
this up all the way to 100 you can see
what happened what's actually happening
is if I change this way transform to
100% this push apart effector with no
fall-off sheep will then utilize this
random effectors fall-off shape to also
apply this push apart effector effect
which is really cool so I don't have to
you know kind of fart around with
different fall-off shapes I can just
utilize the very first effectors fall
shape in the effector stack of whatever
I apply this to so whether it's a
Voronoi fracture or a cloner or whatever
which is really cool because then I can
just worry about just editing this one
fall off in this push apart effect or
whatever other effectors you use applied
after this will then utilize that same
space and random effector we transform
all the way up this works with any kind
of effector as long as that first
effector in the effector stack in our
case the random effector has that way
transform all the way up and all the
other effectors fall offs are turned to
none okay so really cool handy tip there
let's just go ahead and just turn off
the D fall off from our viewport the
little box so it's a little bit less
distracting and cool so now we're at the
part where we can start texturing this
because I'm really digging this effect
one thing we can do is you know if we
wanted to animate this we can always go
in and you know add a different type of
random mode like turbulence that's
actually animated and if I hit play you
can see this kind of animating like that
make this super slow undulating another
way we can animate this is just by going
into the displacer going to the shading
tab and just adding you know very low
value here like maybe point two so now
not only does the displacer noise
animate but also the random effector so
we have some really nice undulation
effects going on maybe this push apart
effectors really a little bit too nutty
there I guess something like that so
again this is this is the nice part
about you know having your fall-off
connected you know and and having this
all being procedural is now I'm
adjusting the matrix object and kind of
controlling the slices so just really
really cool set up everything's
procedural which is which is I'm OCD
about I love having everything
non-destructive so I can always edit the
weather
whenever I
you'll like doing that so let's just
turn off the matrix object in the random
effector from showing up the random
effect of fall-off showing up in our
viewport and let's start texturing so
right now we have just some color I'd
fragments which if I go ahead and render
that's what our what the color is going
to be evolve our ribbons so let's let's
change that and actually turn off the
colorize fragments there and let's just
double click and I'm just gonna create a
just a white material here and go to
reflectance just remove the specular add
a Beckmann reflection go to Fornell grab
a dielectric and just grab like a PT
which is like plastic okay
and just use that for a fall-off and
let's go ahead and apply this to our
Veroni I see we got this really nice
shine to it let's go ahead and add a
nice background psych one way I like to
create background Sykes is to just grab
a cube object and let me just undo that
and just scale this up in the T key
scale this up so now we have a big old
box that our little head person is in
there and I'll just make this fill it
that and just round that out okay and
then just make that a bowl by hitting C
going to polygon mode hitting OH to get
my rectangular selection tool dragging
selecting all those front polygons are
just hitting delete okay and now I
basically have like a background room
looks like rounded room and I can just
reposition this something like that so
get this big old room if i zoom in here
got a nice little background there so
let's go ahead and add a let's just
rename this first background it's like
and I'll just go ahead and just create a
like a dark purple material and for this
I don't need any reflectance at all so
I'll just grab you know maybe a purple
like that okay there's something very
basic apply that to the background
psyche and now let's get our get our
lighting on let's just make this a
little bit
smaller let's add some lights so what we
can do is what I like to do is grab the
PBR lights and if you're if you have a
new version of cinema 4d or 19 they have
this PBR lights which basically is their
version of a very physically accurate
physically based light and basically the
difference between dis lights in a
normal area light because these are both
area lights is that the PBR lights have
all of the physically-based
settings already selected so you'll see
that the type is an area light the
shadow is an area shadow and the details
the fall-off is already set to the
inverse-square physically accurate and
you can see that that basically does all
the work for you okay
so I like to use that again if you don't
have PBR lights you can make one from
scratch by just grabbing a area light
choosing area shadows going into the
details choosing fall-off going
inverse-square physically accurate and
then another thing is this show and
reflection and showing render which
which is applied here as you can see so
show and render show is solid so this
actually this little area shape shows up
in the reflection okay so very very easy
to recreate if you don't have that
option so I'm gonna do is just create
some nice rim lights here and maybe make
V little area shape a little bit bigger
and let's just get a nice little
highlight maybe a purplish highlight
something like that looks pretty cool
and you're gonna notice this is
affecting the backdrop here and I don't
want to do that let's just make this
left rim so what I can do is go into the
project tab and just exclude this light
from lighting up our background site
okay so now it's only lighting our or
model if I click the render button
you're gonna see Cole this looks nice we
got these nice little purple hits but we
have this area shape showing up in our
render so to turn that off me to go into
details
and just turn off show as solid in
viewport you're gonna see it's showing
and render so I also need to uncheck
show and render and now this will only
show up in our reflection which is
exactly what we want this nice little
fall-off box shape to show up alright so
let's go ahead and duplicate this
command clean drag I'll just rotate this
and the area light you can tell which
way it's positioning by which direction
it's z axis z blue arrow is pointing so
you can see what's going on there and
let's change this let's rename this
right rim always good to rename your
lights so you know what the heck
everything does maybe make this like a
orange e yellow Cana deal maybe
something like that it maybe just bring
the intensity down actually for both
these rim lights I'm gonna not have them
contribute any shadows okay I'll just
have a main you know key light that'll
do that and cool so that's what that's
looking like right now one thing that's
kind of weird is our nose is not looking
too good so what I can do is uh just at
this angle the noise the nose doesn't
look good so what I can do is just
rotate everything something like that so
I can see the nose a little bit better
there we go again this is going to
change how everything else looks because
I'm just rotating the Voronoi fracture
but the matrix and the random fall-off
we're both stationary so just be careful
with that but cool I'm just kind of
being nitpicky at this point but alright
so let's go ahead and grab a let's just
duplicate this light command click and
drag let's make this the key light and
let's make this kind of be the main
light in the front maybe up and what I
want to do is I like to place my lights
and use the viewport to kind of see how
the shadows or the darker areas are kind
of picking up some of the details of my
object here which is nice and let's go
to this key light turn on the shadows
for this and for this we actually do
want this to illuminate that background
psyche you
see that happening right there and maybe
bring the intensity down make this blue
something like that looks pretty cool
alright and we're building our lights
were painting with lights here let's
maybe crank this up a little bit move
this back now let's go I'm gonna make
we're not seeing our background so I'm
gonna make like a background fill light
and just place this lights right back
here and have this illuminate this whole
background here like that and let's just
crank up the intensity here turn off
shadows again I don't want this like to
cast any shadows I just want this to
illuminate the background so we see it
yeah and let's see what that looks like
looking good it's a little looking all
right cold and then one thing I like to
do with this effect is maybe to have a
light inside kind of illuminating
everything so for that let's just go I'm
just gonna create an omni light okay and
just have this kind of inside the head
like where the brain area is this guy
this this person's got a bright idea so
the inside of his head is gonna be break
so let's just rename this volumetric and
go into the general tab and just go to
visible light and turn on volumetric
okay and then what we can do is now
adjust the radius here let's go to the
details and turn on inverse square so
we're actually adding some fall-off to
our light there we go
we just want this to be inside of the
head and for the visibility of the
actual visible light I'm just going to
crank up the width percentage of the
scale in the Y may just rotate this and
let's change the
- like a orangish yellowish color
something like that let's see what that
looks like so we got this cool
volumetric light inside of the head
which is really cool I'm lumen a ting in
there the one thing that's kind of
getting lost is the inside because
everything is the same texture now what
if you wanted to maybe have the outside
of the ribbon one texture like the white
and what if you wanted the inside of the
texture to be something completely
different well we can go ahead and do
that using a shader unfortunately with
this kind of effect you can't change the
inside faces or the inside Malphite side
faces of the Verona I fracture typically
work with solid objects not hollow
objects so what we need to do is a
little workaround and that is to go into
our texture and basically use something
that is called if I go to effects go to
normal direction what this allows you to
do is put a color on one side of a
polygon where normal and then another
color on the other side of the normal so
if I go ahead and hit render you can see
that the inside is actually that black
and that actually looks kind of cool in
its own right but basically what's
happening is the white texture the white
color is being applied to the front of
the polygons and on the inside of the
polygons on the inside of our little
tape ribbon here that black color is
going to be applied so what I can do is
just go and click on the second color
and maybe make this like a obnoxious
pink color or something like that and
then go ahead and hit render and now
you're gonna see that obnoxious pink
colors now on the inside of our object
and on the outside is that white okay
so normal Direction allows you to color
sides of polygons okay so really cool
stuff now I can go in you know tweak the
you know the volumetrics here maybe
crank up the the intensity
you know the visibility add some inner
distance there like really get crazy
with this but you see the overall effect
is pretty cool now we got this really
cool volumetric stuff happening and
again I could tweak this forever but
again not gonna bore everyone with fats
but it's just important to you know
discover the ways you can utilize the
Voronoi fracture in in ways that are
beyond just you know fracturing things
into pieces and stuff like that and
really thinking outside of the box as
far as that is regarded so a lot of
things you're seeing some little
pixelation some jagged edges here again
we can do one of two things to fix that
we can go ahead and just add another
subdivision there to smooth everything
out and that's gonna allow us to
actually get a lot more detail which is
really nice and again we can go into our
displacer change the noise all that good
stuff and the cool thing about this
again I love building things
procedurally is because you can switch
this out with any other object very
easily and maintain the same effect so
let's go just have our random fall-off
and our matrix object turned on so we
can see where all the slicing matrices
are as well as our random fall-off and
let's just replace this object with
something else let's go into our content
browser let's grab elephant like
elephants my favorite animal right there
and if I just delete the eyes sorry
you're not gonna have any eyeballs and
just bring the elephant body and
basically just replace that generic head
bust with the elephant I'm gonna see it
update now I can just move this on up
scale it up as well if I want whoa
flattened it out the axle wasn't
actually all that bad that was kind of
cool and just kind of move that into
place you now see we have this cool
elephant being all ribboned up you can
you know this could be a renderer about
the extinction of elephants and
elephants are over unraveling or
something like that again I have to you
know adjust the lights and volumetric
lights in here need to be adjusted
inside our big ol elephant here but you
kind of get the point and again just the
you random fall off here but it's just
that easy to be able to switch out
whatever objects you want apply this
cool ribbon effect again play around in
with the displacement and all that good
stuff is really really cool way to
iterate in maybe if you're doing a
series of this type of stuff you know go
to town with that you know apply some
finishing stuff on here some ambient
occlusion so GI if you wanted to bring
in an HDR I go ahead and do that use a
physical sky something something along
those lines just to finish this up but
yeah this is a pretty cool way to use
the Voronoi fracture creating this cool
ribbon effect and ribbon a fiying any
object that you desire so I hope you
have a newfound respect for the Verona
fracture object and maybe not typecast
as so much as just breaking stuff up
alright
tiny little rocks but if you have any
questions on anything I covered in this
tutorial I covered a lot please ask them
in the comment section below
try to get to them as quick as I can and
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bye everybody