everybody's EJ from Ida's I'm calm and
today we are going to learn a little
intro into dynamics and how to create
some fun compositions inside a cinema 4d
let's learn how all right so in this
tutorial we're going to get a little
intro into dynamics and create a
composition not much unlike this little
composition so what's going on here we
have a bunch of dynamic spherical clones
that are filling up a volume and
creating this cool little shape so you
replace this with a logo or whatever you
want to do but we're going to get a nice
little intro to dynamics and learn how
we can fill up some volumes and create
this cool little like logo reveal let's
go ahead and create a whole new
composition and let's just start off by
just discussing what the heck dynamics
are work well dynamics are cinema for
these real-world physics engine so it
applies things like gravity and inertia
and balance and friction to objects so
what I'm going to do is create a sphere
move it on up and where we can actually
apply real-world physics or dynamics to
objects is by right-clicking them going
to the simulation tags and this is where
we're going to be living in this
tutorial basically these two options the
rigid body and collider body we're not
going to cover soft buddy but if you
want to learn about soft body has a
whole tutorial dedicated to soft by
dynamics but we're just going to deal
with rigid body and collider body for
now so rigid body dynamics is what we're
going to use and when you apply a rigid
body dynamics tag to an object by
default you see as I hit play our sphere
just kind of falls and drops so it
applies real-world physics
it applies gravity to my object and so
my object just Falls so this actually
can interact and collide into other
objects as well so what we're going to
do is create another object like a plane
or a floor to collide in
to this fear so what I'm going to do is
hit play again you're going to see that
our sphere just falls through our plane
and that is because we have no dynamics
tags on this plane object so it's
excluded from the dynamic simulation so
what we need to do is right-click this
plane go back into our simulations tag
and fly a Collider body to it and the
collider body is very aptly named
basically what a cloud or body is is it
allows other dynamic objects to collide
into it but it does not apply fit
physics or gravity to the object so when
I apply a Collider body to this point
you're going to see that my plane
doesn't fall there's no gravity of flat
applied to the plane but it allows other
dynamic objects to collide into it hence
glider Bunny
so very simple easy stuff very basic
level we just applied some dynamics to
our scene to move the sphere up even
more have more of an impact hit play but
on a very basic level that is dynamics
it applies gravity in real-world physics
to objects in your scene we also have
Collider bodies to have objects collide
into objects so very simple let's take
this a step further let's rebuild this
and again fill up like a box with a logo
inside of it with clones or spheres all
right so let's go ahead and do that so
the first thing we need to do is
actually create an emitter that emits
dynamic spheres that we can then use to
fill up that box or that cube and reveal
that logo of that little diamond shape
so what we're going to do is we can find
emitters underneath the simulate menu go
all the way down to particles and we'll
grab this emitter and if you're familiar
with particular in After Effects
trapcode particular this is going to be
very not unlike that so right off the
get-go we have particles emitting
they're going to notice that when I hit
render nothing is going to actually
render because these are just little
placeholders little particle
placeholders what we need to do is
actually define a shape just like you
would define a shape for a particular we
can do the same thing and define a shape
for the emitter so we want to omit some
spheres go ahead and create a sphere and
let's just make this sphere a little bit
smaller something like that and to make
a object you met from an emitter we just
simply have to place it as a child
underneath our Mitter
and then go ahead and say show objects
because we say we don't have show
objects on it's just going to emit these
little placeholders but the moment we
say show objects we're actually going to
use that object that is the child of
emitter as the emitter geometry great so
we have some of these basic options here
we have the birthrate editor which is
how many particles four per 30 frames
that will emit and then we have the
renderer and basically the difference
between editor and render is is that if
you have a thousand of these you're
actually going to bog down your system a
little bit and you can see that we're
really blogging it down so what you want
to do is this is just like a viewport
optimizer so what you can say is you
know what in my viewport I just want to
have a hundred show up but when I
actually render I want a thousand to
render so that's just kind of like a
scene optimization thing but for this
tutorial sake we're just going to make
sure these numbers are the same so when
we are looking our viewport we're also
going to render the same amount of
particles and you see that we're still
getting kind of slow feedback in our
viewport this render instances is going
to optimize and save some of this stuff
in RAM so it's going to speed up the
simulation you can see that when we go
and do that 1000 again you're going to
say that it's much faster so I like to
work with this render instances on it
optimizes your RAM and
just makes it way easier to work with a
bunch of little particles fears so we're
going to do bring this back 200 and
let's just cover a few more of these
options here so we have the lifetime
which is basically the lifetime of your
sphere or of your particle so if I say a
lifetime of 50 it's going to admit and
then after 50 frames these particles are
going to die or just disappear for this
composition we're just going to leave
this at 600 because we actually don't
want these particles done want them to
live and be happy so what we're going to
do is what one thing we are going to
manipulate and change is this stop
emission so start a mission is where the
where the particles start emitting and
stop emission is the frame that our
emitter stopped submitting frames so if
I say stop emission its frame 20 I'm
going to have mission of particles and
that frame 20 it's going to stop so this
is one thing we're going to be changing
very shortly so we'll just leave that
150 for now so what we need to do first
is we have our spheres we have them
being emitted but they're not dynamic so
we need to apply a dynamics tag to our
emitter and what we're going to do is
just go ahead go to the simulation tag
is again rigidbody because we want
gravity and all that good stuff to be
applied to our emitted spheres and we're
going to hit play and see what happens
you can see that by default we really
just applied gravity to our emitter so
emitter just Falls and drops as it's
emitting but actually what we want to do
is go a little bit deeper in the
dynamics tag settings and say hey
actually want all these spheres that are
being emitted to actually be dynamic so
we need to change a few settings in this
collision field right here so right now
we have this option called inherit tag
and what this allows you to do is apply
the dynamics options to children since
we have our sphere as a children we're
going to want that
inherit AG to apply to children and then
this individual elements we also want to
have all these spheres that are emitted
to be recognized as individual spheres
with their own individual physics or
dynamics applied to each of the spheres
so you can see that if I just have that
off nothing is happening our spheres are
still not dynamic we need to do is say
recognize all of these objects
underneath the emitter as individual
dynamic objects once we say all we now
have this happy joyous explosion of
spheres and just puts a smile on your
face doesn't not like popcorn popcorn
popping and we have all these really
nice dynamic spheres one other thing we
can do is we can then duplicate what if
we wanted different sizes of spheres
what we can do is just say alright this
is going to be the large sphere we're
just going to hold command click and
drag and duplicate that and what this
can be is the medium fear we can drop
this down to 13 and then I'll command
click and drag again make sure that's
underneath the emitter as a child and
just make this 8 centimeters so we have
three different sizes of spheres and now
what's going to happen is you're going
to see all three different sizes of
spheres being emitted so we have a
little bit more contrast a little bit
more interesting particle emission
they're looking really nice and let's
just rename this small so you have a
large medium small and what we can do is
then just rotate this emitter so it's
facing downwards and now they're just
kind of falling so this is perfect this
is looking good so far what we can now
do is with these dynamic spheres that
are being emitted from our emitter is we
can use them to fill up a volume so
let's go ahead and rebuild this world
composition here so what we had was
basically our cube that was filled with
spheres and then we had a little like
diamond shaped inside here
and we had clones filling in all three
of these shapes so we have the outer
cube the inner bit and then this little
pink diamond so let's just go ahead and
create all those things so let's just
create a cube and we'll make this just
do 400 by 300 and we'll make this 100
centimeters deep and let's go ahead and
create our little diamond inside so
we're just going to grab a tube and make
it face forward so negative Z and you
can see that where I can't see inside of
it so what we're going to do is go into
our cube and for a things like this
where we've got overlapping objects we
actually want to see inside an object
one handy option is in this basic tab we
actually change this to x-ray so we can
actually see through it a little x-ray
of the cube we can do the same thing to
tube here but you'll notice that we can
since they're overlapping it's hard to
tell where the overlap was in this
outline so what we can do is distinguish
the tube like going and saying use a
color and we can actually use the color
that is different from that Greg so we
can actually make it a little bit better
and since they're both 100 centimeters
thick what I'm going to do is just make
this one centimeter thicker and we won't
have that weird glitchy overlap now we
can actually manipulate all this stuff
without actually turning off of objects
or anything like that
so now we can just just these rotation
segments to four and we can create that
diamond shape again and let's just make
this a little bit bigger something like
that
I hate decimal so I'm just going to
round this up to 65 and 120 cool and now
we can apply those Clyde ER tags right
to these two objects so let's go ahead
and our cube
go to simulation tags Collider body and
then we'll just command click and drag
to duplicate that to the tube and we'll
just move this emitter up right and
let's just make this emitter long enough
so it's emitting in a wider space so
we'll go to the emitter settings and we
adjust the X size of the why size so
we'll just adjust this and we can
actually shrink this down a little bit
so you can see we're just sitting inside
there and let's see what happens let's
hit play and you can see that what
happens is not what we want this is not
filling up the inside of this cube and
the reason why is because of the default
settings on our dynamics tag here so by
default we have this collision shape
which is basically set to automatic and
what automatic is is just the fastest
guess of a dynamic simulation for the
object that you're using it's the
fastest but it is the least accurate so
it doesn't take into things like hollow
objects or divots and objects or you
know bowls inside objects it just
creates like generally like an outer
shape mesh but we actually want this to
recognize that this is a hollow volume
and to do that we actually need to
change the collision shape to something
more accurate more accurate simulation
and the accurate well the option that we
actually want is de static mesh and this
is one of the most accurate options it
also slows things down a little bit so
but you know that's what we need to do
so we're going to go and choose static
mesh we're also going to do the same
thing for the tube as well because we're
going to eventually emit some spheres
inside of the diamond so we'll change
this to static mesh and once I do that
I'm going to hit play and you're going
to see that now whoops
undo that go back to our
main view here you're going to see that
we now have fears being emitted inside
that cube volume which is exactly what
we want and that is all due to the
static mesh so what we want to do is
make sure that we have enough spheres
that actually fills up this volume so
let's just make our composition a little
bit longer say 180 frames and let's just
see where our cube is fully filled with
our little spheres here so stay around
like frame 130 and let's actually have
this fill up a lot faster so what I'm
going to do I'm going to rename this
emitter to just cube emitters we're
going to have a few different emitter
one for the outer bit of the cube one
for inside of this diamond and one for
this little space here so the cube
emitter let's have this fill up the
volume faster so let's go to our emitter
particle settings and let's bring this
up to say 150 and let's see how fast
that fills up so fill in a much faster
in it say frame 100 is where it's fully
filled so what I'll do is say okay this
is fully filled this cube is fully
filled at frame 100 that's why I want to
stop a mission
so no more particles noble particles
allowed after frame 100 so if I hit play
again I'm going to fill this up and then
at frame 100 emission is going to stop
we had one little escape that little
tricky rascal of a cute of a sphere just
popping a you does not want to join this
party but we can fix that when you have
objects dynamic objects kind of popping
out of objects and it's not you're
working very well that is due to again
the default settings of dynamics trying
to be fast but it's also not very
accurate at the default settings so what
we can do is go into the dynamics the
project dynamic settings
so the dynamic settings for this entire
project that we're in right now and to
do that we're going to hit command-d and
go into our project settings and then
our project settings we have this
dynamics tag and under expert we have
this option right here and basically
what this steps per frames is is the
calculations per frame or steps per
frame and right now it's fairly well at
5 but we have a lot of spheres being
created and being emitted every 30
second or every 30 frames so we need to
up this a little bit more because it'll
be a little bit more accurate so what
we'll do is we'll crank this up to 30
and what this should do is hopefully
prevent any spheres and kind of popping
out and you see that actually by upping
that steps per frame and since there's
so many spheres being calculated or
emitted it's actually picking up a lot
of those in-between frames that weren't
recognized before so what this is
actually doing by upping this
calculation is we're actually being
closer to emitting the amount of spheres
that we actually wanted in the submitter
so what we'll have to do is actually
bring down this editor because when
there's so many so many particles being
emitted at the lower settings sometimes
some frame some of the particles get
skipped so when we up the calculation to
being more accurate we actually have all
of those spheres or all those particles
being accounted for not being skipped
over because we have so many being
emitted all at once so we just had to
bring down our birth rate a little bit
and we just change it from 150 to 130
and I think we're filling out pretty
good we could probably get away with 132
because I'm seeing a little bit of gaps
at the very top so we're doing this and
we're stopping a mission at frame 100
and let's see if we have that that rogue
sphere he doesn't pop out anymore
so this is good and one thing to also
notice we don't have anymore that jitter
happening either so before we had a lot
of fears kind of jittering around and
still moving after we stopped the
mission but actually upping I'm going to
hit command D again go back into our
dynamics particle settings and upping
that steps refrain helps tame those a
little jumpy little jumping beans a
little jumping fears that we had before
so this solves a lot of problems maximum
solve our nation's per step also helps
up the calculations as well but again
also slows things down so if you're
having a stuff still pop out of the cube
you might need to up this as well but I
think we've solved that I don't think we
need to change that value at all because
all of our spheres are staying inside
and they look pretty happy to me so what
we'll do is this is looking good
we'll then go ahead and we'll command
click and drag and just duplicate this
whole emitter and I think what I want to
do is just move this down and position
this new emitter and this will be a
diamond emitter let's go back to frame 0
and move this down and then go when you
actually fit the emitter shape inside of
our little diamond shape here so let's
go to our mitr shrink this guy here and
shrink it in the Y move this up just a
tiny bit we don't want this dinner stack
because then we'll have emitter it will
have spheres emitting outside of that
diamond shape so what I'm going to do is
just turn off our first cube emitter
here and just deal with this diamond
emitter and immediately I know because
this of course is a smaller volume we
won't need as many emissions
won't need as many particles emitting so
what I'll do is I'll just play half it
or almost assets by just changing this
to 60 and then just hit play and you're
going to see that we have so many of
those larger spheres that we're having a
little bit of an issue with too many of
these big spheres popping up and I just
want more of those smaller spheres to to
be in here so I'm going to do is to have
more small spheres show up I'm just
going to create more small spheres and
this will then almost double how many of
the small spheres are being emitted
versus the other tube medium and the
large and I think what I'm going to do
is just totally get rid of the large
sphere there so we just have the medium
and the small so let's see I think
that's filling up still too quickly
let's just play that again what I want
to do is because it's hard to see here
even with the x-ray what I'm going to do
is just turn off visibility on the cube
by clicking this little stop light till
it's red and what I actually want to do
is click this bottom stop wait till it's
red as well because this top one means
that when this stop light is red it
won't show up in the viewport but it
will show up in the render if this is
not red so I'll just hit render you can
see that even though our cube doesn't
show up in the viewport it shows up and
render but if I turn this bottom button
to red and hit render you can see that
also doesn't show up and render it as
what either so this is exactly what we
want let's do the same thing for the
tube with diamond let's just rename this
diamond because we can keep this naming
structure straight and we'll just turn
this off so we can actually still see it
in the viewport but when we render we
don't see we only see the spheres so
perfect so let's just turn off the
visibility in the viewport as well and
let's just see how this looks
to frame 100 it'll stop and I think that
looks pretty good we don't have any
Spears escaping or anything like that I
think that's I think that number I chose
of sixty might work out just perfectly
so let's go ahead and turn on turn back
on our emitter and then all of our
spheres for our cube back out here and
so we have the cube emitter we have the
diamond emitter and let's actually first
create a couple materials so we can
actually recognize both of them so for
the cube emitter I'm just going to make
a white material but for the diamond
material I'll make that like pinky
magenta color let's just go ahead do
little something like this
so these are just you know placeholder
materials will develop these materials a
little bit more later on I just want to
see the differences the difference cubes
or the different spheres being emitted
here so you see this is looking good no
gaps are nothing happening here this is
looking really nice and now we got to do
is a fill in the little gap right in
here so what we'll do is we'll take this
a diamond emitter and we'll duplicate it
and we'll rename this inner cube emitter
and what this is going to be I'll just
apply this white material to this for
now and what this is going to do is just
go to frame the zero and turn back on
our cube and our diamond I'm just going
to place this emitter inside of that
little gap that we need to fill up and
let's just turn off the emitter and the
spheres for a diamond emitter in our
cube emitter so we just see the inner
cube bit and this is going to fill up
really quickly so we're going to need to
bring down this birthrate editor to say
25 and let's see
you know let this plate will frame 100
and see if that fills up completely and
see it doesn't so we still have some
gaps too let's just up this 30 go to
frame 0 let it play I got this top it up
and this is filling up and we got filled
up pretty nicely maybe 29 because we
still I think it's packed so much we
have that little jitter happening so I
think we have looking pretty good there
we have less of that jitter because our
spheres are left packed in and that's
looking nice and it stops coming through
a rest no more jitter on those spheres
so I'm liking that if you have too much
if you have too many spheres being
jam-packed in that space number one
you're going to have all these fears pop
out but you're also going to have a ton
of this jitter right so you need to walk
that fine line between two little
spheres and too many so I think 29 was
the one that worked before
silver sup boo boo boo boo boo boo boo
cool and it's not jam packed too tight
we got nice rest no more jitter almost
fears Matt's looking plea fit so let's
turn back on all of our spheres and
let's hide the cube by clicking the
little stop stop sign traffic light
things to read so this will not show up
in viewport or render as you can see and
let's hit play and we have all of our
three emitters so we got our cube inner
our diamond emitter and our inner cube
men are playing and they're all stopping
a mission at frame 100 that's looking
good I'm digging that I see that a we
have a little bit of movement here but
it all stops once it gets to about frame
1a so that's good I think this is
looking pretty dang good so let's go
ahead and let's start developing us out
a little bit more with that some lights
let's add some textures nicer textures
then I got here but before that what I
want to do is actually just bake this
simulation so I don't have to keep
playing this and what I want to actually
see what this looks like fully formed
when I'm getting my lighting and my
texturing right I want to actually see
that without having to waste my time
playing through this simulation I
actually want to cache it and basically
what a dynamic cache is let go and
select all of my dynamics tags here and
go to the cache field I can bake all of
the caches of all my dynamics by hitting
this bake all button basically when I
hit this button it's sort of like Ram
previewing in After Effects where I'm
just storing this dynamic simulation to
my RAM or to my memory so this is a
perfect way to once you've got the
simulation down you like the way it
looks and you don't want to deal with it
anymore you just want to bake it and
save it cache is what you want to do
alright so we have our dynamic fully
cached so we can just hit the play and
we have full speed ahead full cache we
don't have any of those jerks fears jump
out or anything and now we can again go
ahead and just go all the way to the end
here and we can actually see what this
looks like at the end and now we can
start lighting and texturing and seeing
exactly what this is going to look like
so perfect let's get to uh lighting and
texturing so let's just create a Airy
light and just go to our for up view
click that button right up there and
just move my light this is going to be a
light up right over to the left and just
kind of angle it so it's facing our
scene let's go ahead and add some area
shadows let's go ahead
and create some fall-off so it actually
behaves like a real light source where
it doesn't actually light source doesn't
go to infinity actually falls off a
little bit and you can see just in our
viewport here that the lighting is kind
of hot so let's just bring this down a
little bit see what that looks like go
we got our shadows but it's too
contrasty so what we're going to do is
let's create another light and let's
just make this more of like a rim light
so we'll put this right back behind it a
little bit so you see just a nice little
backlight let's turn off shadows for
this one so we only have one light with
shadows and let's see what this looks
like
I'm liking now we have this nice back
highlight here this nice little rim kind
of light and right now we just have
normal diffuse textures let's go it
let's add some sexy reflections let's go
ahead and go and add some Beckmann
reflection we don't want any specular
strength in here and we just want a
little 20 bit of reflection say like 7%
of a little bit goes a long way and
we're going to change the attenuation
you additive and then also add this on
top of our specular and let's just make
this specular a little more sharp or
something like that and let's add some
luminance to this I'm going to copy the
color Channel to get that pink and load
it into luminance and what this is going
to kind of do is almost give this like a
glow er like it's being lit from the
inside so let's see what this looks like
you can see that looks nice you can see
that the shadows are a little bit lesser
they're almost looks like these are
these little spheres are glowing a
little bit digging that so I think
that's good what I'm going to do is just
duplicate this and since I like the
reflection and everything instead of
just bloating in the stuff - the same -
this white material just rename this
white
and change this to a gray change this
luminance to great as well let me even
bring this down a little bit more bring
the luminance down and then just I'm
going to hold option and drag that over
and that will replace that white texture
and we can hit render you see that the
white spheres are a little washed out I
like how the pink ones look
so let's actually get rid of some of the
luminance there maybe make this a little
bit darker darker right like that and
what we can do to make this top a little
bit more is adding some ambien occlusion
that'll add nice little shading where
our objects are close together so let's
go ahead to effect let's go to ambient
occlusion and since our spheres are so
small our biggest fear is let's see 17
centimeters so 100 centimeters is a
little bit overkill because 100
centimeters is like the pretty thick
right so it's about one of these grid
spaces here you see these little square
grid really what we want to do is not
make the shading much bigger than our
sphere so maybe we only have like 15
centimeters so that's how much it like
blurs out so we can render here you can
see a little bit of shading that happens
especially in the pink sphere you can
definitely see that definition that nice
contrast where our spheres are touching
with us that little nice amat occlusion
shading that's looking really nice we
can probably get away with making it a
little bit layer so it's not so
contrasting it's looking a little bit
nicer but Abney occlusion definitely
makes things pop I think what I want to
do is maybe up the aluminum's a little
bit just so that shading on that spheres
so dang harsh render here I'm liking
that a lot more one thing I'm going to
do is add some nice highlights and
reflective highlights on my sphere by
going into my lights both of them going
to my details I'm going to turn these
into soft boxes so right now our lights
are showing up in a specular but they're
not showing up in the reflection so I'm
going to do is turn that on and what's
going to happen is these little square
shapes are going to be come soft boxes
that will show up in the reflection and
what I'm going to do is just up the
visibility multiply all of the strengths
of that shape to like 1500 and what
you're going to notice is you're going
to start seeing you're going to see a
little square it's very faint you can
see a little square highlight where that
little soft boxes and you're going to
see it much more noticeably if I
actually make this soft box square a
little bit wider and bigger just by
dragging these handles out now let's see
what this looks like you're definitely
going to see a huge rectangle right
there being reflected in our spheres and
you see that this is kind of like
creating a nice little soft box there
this is a little too overkill
so what I'm going to do is just move
this up and let's grab our handles here
just shrink that down I just want a
little tiny soft box shape but for this
back rim light I'll make this a little
bit bigger now hopefully this will show
up on our Sears they put a hitch render
you see just a little bit just a little
nice little highlight looks nice looks
like a little bubby
bubblegum or something like that and
then you can also see kinda like right
here on this sphere you can see that
back soft block shape as well so got
that nice little rim highlight look in
there
you just rotate this up a little bit
alright see what this looks like
we've got our nice soft box reflection
in the front and then of course all
these spheres are reflecting each other
so we got these really nice reflections
and I'm digging that we've got that
softbox nice little rim highlight off
the back there I'm liking it so what we
can do now is I don't want a black
background let's just create a
background here we'll just make it white
so I got my background let's create a
new material apply it and this will just
be a solid white color just by loading
solid white in maybe a little bit
grayish and then luminance and that will
actually show up in our render the white
background and we can actually do is we
don't have any color introduced into our
light so we can actually do that maybe
pump some yellow into the one light and
maybe some blue into the back just to
give it a little bit more contrast
because no light is really purely white
really so that's looking good I think
that's a little bit too yellow I'm just
tiny tiny bit
cool and that's looking a little bit
more realistic and since we have our
dynamics cached basically we can just go
ahead and just render this bad book
thing you're going to notice is that
since we have this cache we can actually
just render a random frame in the middle
of our composition and see what this
actually looks like we can again go into
our filter here and start playing around
with some of the curves and all this
stuff see what this would look like if
we need to adjust any of the shadows or
anything like that or if we can just fix
some of this stuff and post to make this
look a lot nicer up to the saturation
there a lot of cool stuff you can do in
the filter tab here but can render all
this out and get this really nice
dynamic emitter kind of thing here all
right so hopefully that is a nice little
intro to dynamics that can equip you to
make your own nice little dynamic
compositions we learned a little bit
about dynamics a little bit of an intro
to it how to create an emitter to admit
dynamic spheres that we can use to fill
up volume and create a nice little like
logo review so if you have any questions
by anything I covered in this tutorial
please leave them in the comment section
if you create anything using this
technique of filling up a dynamic volume
please share it with me on Twitter on
Facebook in the comment sections I
always love to see what you guys are
coming up with if you like this tutorial
please hit the like button I'd really
appreciate that in other words they
really appreciate you out there watching
all of my tutorials and I'll see you all
in the next one alright bye everybody