View Full Version : Basic Question
07-15-2010, 12:07 PM
Hi all. I recently decided to get into 3D work, as I'm doing a Film and Video course at uni, and thought it would be awesome to add 3d elements to my films. From looking at all the packages, I decided to get Cinema 4D as it's interface is supposed to be easy to grasp, and it integrates well with After Effects, which would help with compositing. I downloaded the Lynda tutorial's to get to grips with the basic's, and decided I'd like to have a go at modelling characters for animation, however I've got one question about that;
When you model characters, do you use one shape and then extrude and mould that to your needs, like getting a circle then extruding two parts on the lower half to create the legs, or do you create all the parts separately and then combine them together. I imagine there's no "correct" way of doing this, but what way would you guys recommend?
07-15-2010, 01:44 PM
Basically, yea. If you are using polygonal modeling techniques, you would start with a box or other primitive and begin extruding faces until you have the overall shape blocked in. Subdividing the surface will produce the smooth organic shapes. The principal is the same in all modeling programs, they just have different tools.
I'm not that familiar with C4D, but I'm sure there is some sort of work-flow to allow previewing a smoothed / subdivided version of your poly model.
Found a couple tutorials here that shows what i'm trying to explain:
07-15-2010, 02:47 PM
Also, don't forget to check the C4D forum here. There's a nice sticky with good tutorials catered to C4D: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6603976#post6603976
07-15-2010, 03:47 PM
I'm sorry, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean (being a fault of my intelligence more than your explanation)
I know in Cinema 4D the primitives are parametric and to turn it into a polygonal object you have to use the make object editable button
from cinema 4d help file;
CINEMA 4Dís primitive objects and spline primitives are parametric, i.e. they have no points or polygons and are instead created using math formulae and parameters. Since these objects have no points or polygons, they canít be edited in the same way as normal polygon objects and splines. For example, you canít select and move points, nor can you apply commands like Extrude and Create Outline.
However, you can edit these objects if you first convert them to points and polygons. To do this, select the desired primitives and choose Functions / Make Editable.
do you mean convert the object using that, then extrude/mould the object into it's shape, and then subdivide it (I think it's called a hypernurb in C4d)
Cheers for those links aswell, didn't realise there was a seperate forum for tutorials
07-15-2010, 03:47 PM
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