MoGraph Physics and Hair Dynamics

January 23, 2010 by Ross

I have been exploring Cinema 4D more and more, and I have really become excited about the MoGraph Rigid Body simulations. The Maxon people have made is extremely easy for users to add physics simulations to your scene. This in combination with the already powerful MoGraph module really makes for some really cool possibilities. In this tutorial I run through quickly how to get physics up and running and interacting with the hair module.

The hair module is a really powerful generator. You could easily generate hair, grass, etc and create very realistic behaviors. Like I was saying this is just a quick look at how to setup a scene with MoGraph rigid bodies falling into hair. The MoGraph bodies will interact with the hair.

I will also take a look at a cool utility called Clone Info Hierarchy, this will allow you to attach null objects to different MoGraph Instances. For example if you have a cloner object with 15 spheres, you could quickly create 15 nulls that follow each instance exactly. These nulls can then be exported into an external compositing tool, like after effects, which can then be use to track items with your cloners or maybe attach a particle emitter. In the tutorial I mention color correction on an object but really that isn’t very practical, using object buffer would be much more useful for that. Regardless there are all sorts of possibilities for using nulls.

So if your interested in dynamics and hair interactions then definitely check out this tutorial. Thanks a lot for stopping by and we hope you find this useful!

Watch the Tutorial: Cinema 4D – MoGraph Physics and Hair Interaction

Cinema 4D – Irradiance Cache File

December 29, 2009 by Ross

So I have been working a lot in Cinema 4D over the last few months, and I decided to take advantage of this holiday break and fill my head with as many tutorials and article’s as I possibly could. Overall I can say it is definitely worth it Cinema is an awesome program and is going to be an extremely helpful application in my Motion Graphics toolbox, if not the go to tool itself. I want to make sure to thank Nick Vegas of Greyscale Gorilla and Rob Redman of Pariah Studios for all there tutorials and openness with support. Seriously the work they are doing is awesome and saving me hours of headaches. Thanks to them I have a huge jump start on Cinema 4D.

Now into why you are here, Global Illumination or GI. GI is consider an effect in a C4D render but it really is a dramatic one. The quality of lighting, reflection and overall look of an image can be made by using this and some basic understanding of materials and lights. The downside to GI is render times. A normal render time in C4D can quickly blow up when adding GI, and the more lights,, materials, reflections, etc you have the crazier those times will get.

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