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...   :)

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Daylight tutorial by Carles Piles !

Daylight tutorial by Carles Piles !
This amazing 3d scene, entitled Daylight, was created by Carles Piles. Read how the scene was created in the tutorial below. Download the model scene for FREE ! Requirements: Cinema 4d Carles Piles: URL: www.3dluvr.com/carles
1. The main element in the scene is the bridge, which is done using extruded objects; except the bottom ornament, which is a sweep nurbs object. First I draw all the splines in Freehand 8. (You can create splines in Cinema 4D, but it is more comfortable for me to work in a vector-drawing based program, since they have may tools geared specifically to the manipulation of vectors.)
2. Next, I exported ALL the splines to Illustrator, and later imported them into Cinema 4D. Important: To do this (import all objects), you must check "Group" and not "Join" at "Import/export settings> Illustrator" to obtain separate objects to extrude later using different values for each one. Using this technique all objects are already placed. Then, take each spline, one at a time, and drag it into the "Extruders" (extrude nurbs objects). I used "Cap and Rounding" for all extrusions to keep the edges from appearing hard.
When all splines are placed into the corresponding extruders, move objects in the Z axis to position the construction ornaments to the outsides, and the main bodies to the insides. To create the bottom ornament I have a shape, and the bottom ornament path. I drag them both into a "Sweep Nurbs Object". To finish the bridge, I duplicate the objects and elements I need, and put them in position.
WALLS - Walls are simple cube combinations.. REAR AREA - The rear area is created using cubes, except the railing sticks; they were done using a combination of 1 cylinder and 2 spheres for each stick.
3. FIGURE This person really isn't a full person! Is quite simple, really. I only modelled the visible parts (the figure is very small in the scene and seen from the back). To make the cape I created bezier-splines in Cinema4D and I dragged them into a "Loft Nurbs Object"(later, we can use a bump map to give more details to the cape). I can modify splines placed into Loft Nurbs Object, and view the results in real time. To make the hat and the hat-feathers I used "Loft Nurbs" as well. (Really realistic feathers can be created by the use of Alpha Channels for transparency).
To make the arms/legs I used "Capsule Objects". The feet are deformed cubes, the head is a sphere, and the sword is a modified capsule! This person doesn't have a body; I only created the parts that would be visible from my camera. This "pseudo-figure" looks ugly too, close-up but the camera is far enough away that this really isn't an issue.
4. TEXTURES There are only a few textures in this scene. They are: A. a stonework map for all walls B. another stonework map for the floor C. my own stone map (rouged grey) for the sculpted stone D. plain colour textures + bump + diffusion (fractal noise) for the clothes E. a bit of fresnel in colour texture with alpha channel activated (holes) for the feather F. a background map For the stonework textures I activated the diffusion channel and loaded the new plug in "DirtyNUTs" shader. This shader creates an automatic "dirt" effect where ever it is applied. Mapping was really fast, mostly applying a cubic mapping to object groups and adjusting the number of tiles in real-time in the editor view. I played with the tiling until I liked what I saw.

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make a tire in cinema 4d xl

OK, this is a technique I picked up in a thread at CGTalk.com so I can't take any credit for devolping it, and if you're more than average in Cinema you probably know about it anyway. What we're gonna do is make a segment of a tire, make duplicates of this segment, add a Bend deformer and drop the whole package in a HyperNURBS. I'm not gonna guide you throgh every single step but rather focus on the technique itself. You should be somewhat familiar with the functions of adding and bridging points.

Load the reference image in the Luminosity-channel and take a note on the size of the image. Then create a cube and give it corresponding values in the X- and Y-fields. Set Z to 1. Assign the cube the material with the default mapping type, UVW -- you want the reference image displayed on the front of the cube so that you can work from the Front viewport and with UVW the image will place itself properly.

Then move the cube 1 or 2 units backwards on the Z-axis. Why? In the next step you're gonna create a Polygon Object and start adding points and if you keep the cube at 0 on the Z-axis you points will be placed visually "inside" the cube. The points will be created at Z=0 and you don't want that space occupied by the cube. So change the cube's Z-position from 0 to 2.

Create a Polygon Object (Objects>Polygon Object). Nothing in your viewport will change but in the Object Manager a new Polygon Object is visible so double-click it and name it "Segment". Switch to Front view, zoom in on the profile, make sure you're in Points mode and that you have Segment as the active object. Now start adding points by selecting Structure>Add Points and then CTRL-click the outline of the profile. Just focus on getting the points down for one side of the profile since we will later mirror the Segment to get the complete element.

Place the points at the "crucial curves" of the profile -- identify what features are giving the profile its shape and place the points accordingly.

When you have all points in place you select them all and clone them once -- Structure>Edit Surface>Clone. Set Clones to 1 and change Rotation from 180Ú to 0Ú. Click OK.

OK, now you've cloned your points so don't let go of that selection! Move the new points on the Z-axis only to -50 (or just type -50 in the Coordinates Manager). All points are at the same Z-value so moving them all att the same time will be OK at this stage. Note: the cloned points are the unselected ones in the image above.

Time to bridge the points. Select the Bridge tool (Structure>Bridge) or just hit B on your keyboard. The cursor will now look like an arrow with a small, black bridge. Click on the first point and start bridging. Check out this gif if you're not sure on where to start, or read up on the Bridge tool in the manual.

This is roughly what you should have by now. Here I've dropped the Segment in a Symmetry Object just to see how it works. Now it's time to start slicing using the Knife.

Select the Knife (Structure>Knife) or hit the letter K on your keyboard. Make sure that the option Restrict to Selection is unchecked in the Active Tools Manager -- we want our cuts to slice throgh the whole mesh. From the Top or Right viewport add 4 cuts like in the image: 2 cuts to form a thin band of polygons and 2 cuts to form a slightly wider band. If you hold down Shift while cutting you will restrict the knife to 45Ú angles and will make it easier to keep the cuts straight.

Now switch to Polygon mode, select the polygons shown above and delete them.

This is how it should look.

OK, this can be a bit tricky but the principle is quite easy: select some points, clone and move them, and use the Bridge tool to create new polygons. Here's how you do it:

Select the points on the image marked with purple dots (•) and copy their Y-value from the Coordinates Manager.

Now select the blue dots (•) and clone them once, just as we did before.

Paste the values you copied earlier in the cloned dot's Y-channel and hit Enter -- the points should move down to the position marked with orange (•).

Now Bridge the points to build the polygons nescessary for the pattern of the tire. The image above shows what it should look like.

Continue cloning points and then bridging them as this image shows. As you can see I've let 2 triangles slip through but I think we can get away with it :)

Now it's time for some more slicing. Select the Top view and lay down 6 cuts along the X-axis as shown in the image. The cuts are made close to the edges and the reason for these cuts is to provide sharp definition when we eventually drop the finished wheel in a HyperNURBS. When you're done cutting swith to Front view for some extra slices.

The black lines on the image indicates where the cuts should go. Once again, we want sharp definition on our tire pattern and this will get us there.

This close-up is just to illustrate that I decided to go with triangles for the ending of the thinner polygon band as well. You can also see some of the cuts we made in the previous steps.

If you drop the Segment in a Symmetry Object and hit render you should have something like the image on the right. It has some resemblance with a tire but we're not there yet. Switch to Points mode and Top viewport.

Select the Live Selection tool and make sure that Only Select Visible Elements is unchecked. Then select a any group of 4 points and start moving the on the X- and Z-axes. If you have some reference material of real tire patterns, use them, otherwise just move and rotate the points (around Y-axis only!) until you get something that could pass as a believable pattern.

Frequently check with the Symmetry Object active and dropped in a HyperNURB to see how you're doing. When you're satisfied it's time to Duplicate and then Bend.

Deactivate the HyperNURBS and select the Symmetry Object. Then select Function>Duplicate. The number of Copies determines the size of your tire -- 5 copies will make it pretty small and 200 will make it pretty huge (although rather thin...). Anyway, enter 50 to start with and work from there. Alse check Generate Instances so you wont bog down your system with too much geometry. Also, if you change the geometry of your Segment, all instances will update immeadiately.Now, the tricky part here is to know how much every instance should move. Select Top view and start experimenting with different values for the Z-channel. You might wanna zoom in real close in order to get the instances to line up properly. I found that something around 2500 was an appropriate number. Click OK.

Add a Bend deformer (Objects>Deformations>Bend). Group the Symmetry Object (containing your Segment), the Instances and the Bend deformer under a Null Object (Objects>Null Object). Name the null Wheel. Select Right viewport and rotate the Bend deformer -90° around the X-axis/Pitch. Now double-click the Bend object to bring up its dialog box. Change the Y size so that it encompasses the whole group of instances and is placed reasonably in the middle of the group. Check Keep Y Axis Length and set the Mode to Limited.

Your hierarchy should be as the image above illustrates. Now we will bend all those instances into a circle and forming the actual tire.

Grab hold of the yellow handle on the Bend deformer and start dragging it in the Z-direction. You will see the instances starting to bend. You will probably have to drag the handle as well as zoom out quite a bit before the circle will be almost closed. Now zoom in and double-click the Bend deformer once again. You'll see that the Angle will be very high and this is the value you should play with now -- add 10-20 degrees, click OK and see what happens. Zoom in extremely close on the gap between the two ends and make sure that they meet as neatly as you can. For my wheel the angle of 412Ú proved to be OK.

Now drop the Wheel-group in a HyperNURBS and render -- Congratulations, you have a tire! Just add a hubcap and you're ready to roll!

Here I've added some additional cuts (the line along the center of the tire) to break up the pattern a bit plus a rim modeled by following this tutorial by Holger Schömann at Digital Worlds.

Note: the tire can get very heavy on the polycountside when you drop it in a HyperNURBS so if you're not planning any close-up shots of it, deactivate the HN. Usually you can get away with simple polygons. Or set the HyperNURBS Subdivision Renderer to 1 to keep some smoothness.

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