HyperNURBs Modelling (inc. Weights)

Hello there people! It's me again, and this time I will be covering a very, very basic Cinema 4D feature - The almighty, all powerful HyperNURBs. Its functionality is quite similar to 3D Studio Max's "Smoothing Groups", and it's purpose is to... well... smooth out your objects!

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create and edit a very simple pipe-like object utilizing polygon extrudes, and then describe how to gradually refine it via the magic of  HyperNURBs and the addition of "weights" to the object's points, edges and polygons. These weights are the powerhouse behind HyperNURBs functionality and determine if certain selections will or will not be affected by varying degrees of smoothing.

Anyway, enough of the waffle - lets get on with the tutorial!

Step 1 - Modelling the Pipe

The first and 'hardest' step is to make a cube. To do this, just point-and-click on Objects > Primitive > Cube in the menu. Every object created within Cinema 4D starts as a "primitive" object. It cannot be edited normally, except by Cinema 4D's own rules and configurations. Thus, in order to edit this cube as a more basic bunch of polygons, we must transform it into an Editable Poly. Yet again this is quite simple to do - just click on the "Make Object Editable" icon in the left menu.

Now that the object has been converted into its raw component polygons, we can get down to some serious business! Select the Polygon Edition Tool in the left menu, and then the Live Selection tool (as shown by the pictures below on the left and right respectively).

Select the uppermost polygon, right-click on it and select the Extrude option. Extrude "lifts" up the section.

Click and hold the mouse button while moving it to extrude the polygon. Repeat this step four times, until the object looks like this: Extrude the bottom and right-side polygons, so that your model looks like ours below:

Now make a HyperNURBs Object by selecting Objects > NURBs - HyperNURBs. Really hard, huh? We are now ready to smooth this bunch of cubes. So, in the Object manager, drag down the cube object over the HyperNURBs, thus making it a "son" of this object and applying the smoothing effect.

An important point to notice is that the HyperNURBs will smooth ONLY the first son listed, completely ignoring the rest (i.e. if you have two sons, cube1 and cube2, and the cube1 is the first listed, only cube1 will be smoothen - cube2 will remain sharp). This said, it actually does smooth ALL the sons of the first son (i.e. Nested Objects). So, if you want to smooth multiple objects, compact them within a Null Object (Objects > Null Object) and then make the Null Object a son of the HyperNURBs object. If everything has gone smoothly (if you'll excuse the pun), our pipe will now look nice and smooth... but still be far from complete. Step 2- Configuring the HyperNURBs & Weights Let's start by editing the top. Select the Edge Edition mode, which is exactly above the Polygon Edition button, and then click the Live Selection object. (Note: You MUST actually click the Live selection button even if it is already selected, because you must later edit the HyperNURBs weight via the Attributes Editor, which is only selectable via the Live Selection attributes. When you click the Edge Edition, the attributes editor is set to the Edge Edition tool, meaning that you wouldn't find the Weight editor).  With this little issue clarified, select the top edges.   In the attributes manager, select HyperNURBs Weights, adjust it to 100% and then press the Set button. This will ensure that these edges have 100% weight against the smoothing, or, in other words, completely ignore the smoothing strength of the HyperNURBs. Cool, huh? Repeat this step with the other openings. Let's give a final touch to the side-opening to make it sharper. Select the inner edges and apply a 100% Weight to them. And that's it - The pipe is done! It's good to remember that the weights can also be added to polygons and points as well as edges, thus ensuring a staggering level of flexibility. If you want, play around with the weights in other extruded sections and try to make something like this model we rendered earlier... And that's it my dear Biorust people! Until the next tutorial...   :)