Cinema 4D primitive objects, tools, deformers
Primitive objects and 3D tools
are the most fundamental part of every 3D application,
since they allow you to initiate your 3D project.
In this lesson, I will also talk about Cinema 4D deformers
to show you how you can manipulate this primitive in a procedural way.
Let me show you.
To access primitive objects in Cinema 4D there are two ways.
You can left-click and hold on this blue cube
and then you will see all the available primitives,
or you can go to Create, Primitives and select them here.
Let me bring some of them. I'll bring a cube, a sphere,
and one capsule, and also the landscape, for example.
I wanna show you a real tip to arrange these
without selecting and moving them individually.
You can select all these objects here and then go to Tools, Arrange.
And then, as you see in this axis,
I will arrange them putting a number here
and then hitting Apply.
You see they are now arranged by this distance.
Let's talk about these individuals.
If I select the cube and press S,
the camera will focus on the selected object.
Now in this Attribute Editor I can see I have some different tabs.
The first one is Basic.
This will be similar in all the primitives.
It gives you this option to turn the visibility off and on
in the Editor and also in the Render. Here you see it's set to Default.
You can turn it to Off and then I don't see that.
Also you can change the X-Ray mode, which is nice.
I can see through the object.
I can turn it off or I can enable and disable.
This is directly linked to this green checkbox here.
As you see, now it's turned off. It's the same thing.
I can turn it off and on.
And also I can change the icon settings here.
You can display a color for the icon or you can change the name here.
The name is Cube. You can type your desired name.
The next one is Coordinate,
which gives you the coordinates of the object.
Here I can see that this is set
to 900 centimeters from the origin.
I can change this.
I can scale this, and I can change the rotation.
It's exactly the same thing with handles.
I can just select that and rotate it. And if I select that,
now I have all these parameters in different value.
The next one is the object. This tab is the one that defines
each separate individual object and it is different.
I can change the segments here.
To see the segments,
we need to go to Display and set the Quick Shading (Lines).
This doesn't allow you to see the division in the segments.
I would like to turn it on for now.
Another nice option is to enable the Fillet.
If you enable Fillet here, you can get very smooth corners.
I can change the radius and I can change the subdivisions.
If I turn it off,
you will see that it has very nice, smooth corners.
But besides that,
you can also define and change these attributes
just by these handles.
All these primitives, before you turn them to Editable mode,
you can manipulate and change the parameters
with these handles.
It will be the same thing with this capsule.
If I select this handle,
I can change the size or I can change the segments.
And I can even have a slice of that.
This will give you a portion of this with different angles.
Another one which is a little different is the Landscape one.
This is my favorite.
You can also change many different values here.
I can change the shape of this landscape
or I can even change the seed.
And every time I press this, it gives me a new different result.
You can change the level here, or you can change the sea level.
So it gives me this value.
And I can make it a little lower.
As you see, it gives me tons of different options.
You can change this to Spherical mode.
I'm not going to talk about each individual one
because they are kind of similar,
but please review all these available primitives
and get familiar with them.
PRIMITIVE OBJECTS Creating a null
When I create a null, I cannot see anything in the Viewport,
but there are some very cool benefits of that.
First of all,
I can select all these and put them in this Null,
and then it will be a group of these objects.
Sometimes you just want to create a null object
to define some parameters without seeing them.
This null object will be nice to have,
but if you want you can also go to Object, Display,
and change it to any shape you want.
And now you can see this object here, as well.
PRIMITIVE OBJECTS Spline
You can access spline primitives through this window here
or you can go to Create, Spline, and access all these primitives.
Let's talk about a few of them.
If I bring one helix here,
you see I have this helix and I can change the radius...
the height and angle and many different values here.
Let's bring another one, the star.
I can change the outer radius or the inner radius,
with different points,
or twist it.
We cannot see a spline by default in the render.
In order to do that,
we need to use an object called Sweep object.
Here, you can access the Sweep object.
If you select this icon, you can see the Sweep here.
How can we use that?
Just create the Sweep
and then put your desired spline as a child under the Sweep.
And now you just need one profile.
I'll create a circle, for example,
and give the circle to the Sweep, as well.
Now I can see that in Object,
but in Cinema 4D's Object Manager, the object's order is very important.
If I switch this,
it's actually swept the helix around the circle
instead of sweeping the circle around the helix.
If I change the radius of this by scaling down,
I can get a different result.
This can be the same by creating another Sweep
and putting the star here,
and giving a new n-Side.
So I put this here and now if I scale this down,
it gives me this beautiful shape.
You can also draw your own spline.
If I select the Spline Pen,
I can start drawing by left-clicking and then dragging and drawing.
But I always recommend drawing a spline in orthographic views.
How can you do that? Let me delete this.
Select this cube on top of the Viewport,
and then you can access the top, front and right view.
If I go to the top view, for example, and draw again...
and press Escape on my keyboard,
I can see that it's perfectly aligned to the horizon.
You can also sketch all the splines that you want.
Just select this Sketch and then here I can start drawing.
And if I go back to the Perspective view,
I now have this beautiful spline.
We can smooth out this spline if we want.
We can just let Spline Smooth and set a desired value here,
and then start drawing on top of that.
It will smooth out the spline for us.
Now let me add some thickness to this guy.
Again, bring a circle, bring a Sweep Nurb,
and put this under the Sweep.
Again, the order is very important. So I re-order that
and I will change this to get a different result.
These two splines are connected and created as one spline.
Anytime that you create a spline,
you just need to make sure that this Create New Spline is checked.
If not, when I draw a spline,
it just adds to the current spline.
Sometimes it's nice to have this option,
but I always recommend to set this Create New Spline
to create a new separate spline.
PRIMITIVE OBJECTS Sweep options
In this Sweep you can change End Scale.
Now I can get a different thickness.
You see here, if I just zoom on this one,
I can get a different scale.
You can change the start growth or the end growth.
And you can even set some key frame to animate that.
By clicking on this circle, I set a key frame,
and I can see the key frame here.
And here, I set to 100 and then set the key frame again.
Now I can see that animation.
TURNING PRIMITIVE OBJECTS INTO Editable objects
Let me delete this. I'll bring in one cube, press S.
Now, if I click on this icon or press C on my keyboard,
it turns into an editable object.
First thing you may notice is the icon is a little different.
It tells me that this is an editable object.
Now, if I select one of these three,
the Point, Edge and Surface, I have access to these elements.
I can select the surface, for example.
I can move, scale, rotate
and I can easily deform this object.
But Cinema 4D offers different tools in order to make this easier.
Let's press Control + Z.
First I would like to show you Extrude.
I select the surface, right-click and then select Extrude.
Now, in my Attribute Editor, it shows me the attribute
of the current tool that I am working with.
You can see that available here.
If you select the object, for example, and you want to get back to the options,
you can just select this, and now it shows you
the available options for the selected tool.
Now, if I just left-click and drag my mouse,
I can extrude this.
I can right-click and select Extrude Inner and extrude in.
And then right-click again, Extrude and extrude in.
This way I can create tons of different shapes
just with one single Extrude tool.
If I right-click when I am on the Edge mode,
select Bevel and select this one,
I can bevel this one, as you see. Now here, I can add Subdivision
and get a different subdivision type just on that selected edge.
Now, if I get back to the object mode I have this beautiful shape.
And if I put this under Subdivision Surface here,
it smoothes out the whole geometry for me.
Now you can see that if I turn off, I have this beautiful object.
If I, for example, delete this and bring one cylinder,
I would like to turn on Quick Shading (Lines).
Turn this editable, and then...
Let's see what the other options are.
If I right-click, I have Loop/Path Cut here.
I can see that it's already showing me a loop.
I can just click here and with this available tool on top,
I can reposition that in between
and I can even add more subdivisions, which is very cool.
So imagine that I do that and I want to select this ring,
so I just-double click on that and then I can select and scale that.
Select this one again and scale that.
Again, if I put that here...
You don't have to, but I always love to create very smooth shapes.
By right-clicking
you can access all these available tools here.
For example, just select Line Cut, then you see all the options here.
If I turn off Visible Only and I apply this,
then it applies, and then I press Escape
I see it applies to all the surfaces,
even those surfaces that I cannot see through the camera.
Or I can change it to Infinite Cut,
which is one of my favorites, and when you click,
you can see this infinite line.
You let it go and then it applied this cut.
Please, play with these tools.
You will see how easy you can manipulate these objects,
even without using deformers.