Table of Contents

April 2006

Page 3 Editors Notes

Page 5-7 Interview with Christopher Montesano - By Tavy Pasieka

Page 8-13 Clothilde Outside the Box - By Bram van Gerwen

Page 14-16 Mograph Review - By Will Frazier

Page 17-22 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial - By Mark Gmehling aka Macling

Page 23-24 Vital Disclosure Hair DVD - Review by Mark Gmehling aka Macling

Page 25-32 Cup of C.O.F.F.E.E Part 4 - By Rui Batista

Page 33-34 Reference Shader Review - By Christopher Montesano

Page 35-42 Making Models for Half Life 2 Tutorial - By Darrin Frankovitz

Page 43-48 InterPoser 1.00 Plugin Review - By Daniel Lovas

Page 49-50 Spotlight on Brian Harrison

Page 51-55 Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery

Page 56-61 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial "German Version" - By Mark Gmehling

Page 62 Last Page - Contact Info

 Editor Notes!
Please Read
Hello Attackers!
Over many months, 3D Attack and Vital Disclo-
sure have been collaborating to develop a 3D
Video Training solution for the community and
new web-site to host and distribute "video on de-
mand" training. This "trial run" in our shop was
merely used to gauge how this idea would be re-
ceived in the community and to work out any bugs
in our approach before we launch the new site.
Based on the overwhelming positive response we
have received both publically and privately, 3D
Attack and Vital Disclosure are proud to announce
that they will be forming a new company to pro-
vide this type of content on an ongoing basis. The
new web-site is currently under construction.
Upon completion, all video training content will be
removed from the 3D Attack Shop and transferred
to the new site where we will have free video
samples, a discussion board dedicated to the
video training we provide and other enhance-
ments to support the CINEMA community.
Please visit the 3D Attack Shop to purchase the
tutorials that are currently available:
http://www.3dattack.net/shop/index.php?page=16
Look for further announcements from us!
The 3D Attack Team
GOODIES
All of your goodies for this and previous
issues of 3D Attack - The CINEMA
4D Magazine can be found
here: www.3dattack.net/goodies/
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If you would like to advertise with 3D Attack send
us an e-mail requesting our media kit and rate
card. 3dattack@3dattack.net
3
REVIEWS
If you would like 3D Attack to evaluate and review
your product, or if you are a member of the press
and would like to evaluate and review the 3D At-
tack line of plug-ins for CINEMA 4D, feel free to
contact Thomas Pasieka at:
3dattack@3dattack.net
Contact Information
3D Attack
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Chesaning, Michigan 48616 - USA
E-mail: 3dattack@3dattack.net
TUTORIALS
If you have any questions or comments regarding
the tutorials within the magazine, please feel free
to express them on or CINEMA 4D discussion
forum at www.3dattack.net
CALLING ALL WRITERS
If you have a knack for writing and would be in-
terested in writing tutorials and/or articles for 3D
Attack, feel free to drop us an e-mail at 3dat-
tack@ 3dattack.net net for more information.
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 Interview with Chris Montesano
By Tavy Ann Pasieka

Chris: I think it’s about creation… seeing the re-

sult of the work you put in, instead of just punch-
ing numbers all day or filing an endless stream of
paperwork. It’s also challenging… there are al-
ways going to be new obstacles to try to over-
come, or more efficient ways of doing things. In a
way it’s kind of like an art form.

Tavy: Have you had any formal training or educa-

tion in this area?

Chris: No, I started when I was about 15 or 16,

Christopher Montesano
Tavy: Hey Chris! Thanks for taking time to share
more about you and your work with our readers.
Why don't we start with you giving us a little back-
ground info... where do you live, work, etc?
Chris: Hi Tavy, thanks for having me. Currently I
live in central Florida in the city of Palm Bay
(about an hour’s drive south of Orlando), but I’m
originally from New York City. I’m 28 years old, I
run a small cabinetry business as my primary job,
and on my downtime I write code.
first with HTML, then Visual Basic, and then to
C++, which is the language used for CINEMA 4D
plugins with the exception of COFFEE. I learned
with some online references and tutorials and a
couple of books, but mostly practice like anything
else.
Tavy: Currently you are developing plug-ins for
CINEMA 4D. Often, on various web based fo-
rums, I read discussions concerning the market
for plug-ins. Do you find the CINEMA 4D Com-
munity to be a viable market? Do you see it grow-
ing in the future? Have you ever considered
broadening your horizons... developing for other

Tavy: For us programming dummies, could you

please explain what kind of programming you do
and what it exactly is?

Chris: Programming is the process of writing in-

structions for the computer to follow. It’s mostly a
combination of executing commands, conditional
logic, and loops. For example, a piece of code
zBlur in action (Artist: Pierre Magnol)
might read something like this: “If condition 1 is
true then execute command 1”.

Of course it’s a little more complicated than that.

The kind of programming I do is primarily software
and web programming. I used to work for an elec-
tronics company writing programs that told these
huge machines how to assemble circuit boards.

Tavy: I've always wondered, and maybe you can

shed some light on this, why on earth would a
person want to program? What initially attracted
zBlur in action (Artist: Pierre Magnol)
you to it and what keeps you interested?

5
 Interview with Chris Montesano
By Tavy Ann Pasieka

applications... or perhaps developing stand alone

software?

Chris: Well, let me put it this way… it seems that

most CINEMA 4D plugin developers do it as a
second job. It’s mostly one-person operations. But
more and more plugin developers keep springing
up, so I’ve gotta think that the market is growing.

I thought about trying stand-alone software, but

that was before I took over my family’s business.
Plus my “to do” list for CINEMA 4D stuff is long
enough to keep me busy for years. The only real
expansion I’d like to do would be to get another
programmer or two to work with. Anyone inter-
ested can find me on the 3D ATTACK forum. =)

Tavy: Ok, this may be an open ended question,

but where do you start with a new plug-in? Where
do get the idea to create a new plug-in? From
start to finish, how much time goes into develop-
ing, compiling, testing etc?
Chris: You always see people saying “I wish Cin-
ema could do this or that”. That’s pretty much
where most ideas come from. I also get requests
from time to time.
The time taken really depends on the plugin. It
could sometimes take days, sometimes months.
Tavy: As a developer of plug-ins for CINEMA 4D,
do you find it important to have good communica-
tions with MAXON? Is there anything you feel
MAXON, or plug-in developers for that matter,
could do to enhance the software developer, plug-
in developer relationship?
Chris: MAXON is already pretty good at devel-
oper relations. The Plugin Café forum
(www.plugincafe.com) is a good resource for de-
velopers that’s run by MAXON, and most plugin
developers I know have (or have had) some sort
of direct communication with MAXON. I don’t
know that there’s much more they can do aside
from writing code for us. =)
Tavy: Often end users become dependent on a
specific plug-in, and as the main application
grows and changes, sometimes the plug-in needs
to be updated to operated correctly with the main
application. Sometimes this doesn't happen, thus
leaving the user feeling cheated. First, do you
think the plug-in developer owes the user of his/
her commercial plug-ins the update? Second, why
is that sometimes great plug-ins never get up-
dated and go to plug-in heaven?
Chris: Well, more times than not a plugin will
work across multiple CINEMA 4D versions.
MAXON is pretty good about maintaining plugin
compatibility with new versions. I think the main
problem users experience is when a serial num-
ber for a plugin is tied to the CINEMA 4D serial
number, meaning that the plugin serial will only
work with a specific CINEMA 4D serial.
When there is a major version change in CINEMA
4D (like from 8 to 9) your CINEMA 4D serial will
change, making some of these plugins useless
until the user can obtain a new serial from the
plugin developer. In a case like this my policy
(and 3D ATTACK’s) has always been to give us-
ers new serials at no cost, and I’ve decided that
any future plugins or new versions of existing
plugins will not be tied to the CINEMA 4D serial
number.
There are times when a version change can
break a plugin, like when CINEMA 4D 9.6 was
released and zBlur stopped functioning. All of that
coincided with a very hectic point in my life, so it
took me a little longer than it should have to get

6
 Interview with Chris Montesano
By Tavy Ann Pasieka
an update released, but I felt an obligation to get it
done. And if the time ever comes for me to stop
doing the plugins, I’d like to try to find someone to
take over development or perhaps even release
them as open-source.
For your second question, I think what happens is
that you have these small one-person operations
where the developer has to stop (or chooses to
stop) for whatever reason and has no one else to
continue or help with development.
Or, like in the case of a very well known plugin
that died not too long ago, every effort was made
to try to save it and continue development with a
different programmer, but in the end the original
developer decided he’d rather let it die than to
7
share the code and sit back and collect a gener-
ous percentage of that certain plugin’s revenue
indefinitely. Oh well….
Tavy: There are lots of aspiring programmer/
developers out there. Let's say they know nothing,
but want to learn... where do they start?
Chris: That depends on what type of program-
ming they want to do. For CINEMA 4D program-
ming, I’d recommend learning COFFEE first. Rui
Batista has an excellent series of beginners
COFFEE tutorials that he’s written for 3D AT-
TACK.
They’ll definitely help to get you started. There’s
also a COFFEE/Scripting thread on our forum that
I try to stay active in, there’s also Plugin Café, and
a few other CINEMA 4D forums have dedicated
COFFEE threads. If you’re trying to learn C++, I’d
probably recommend taking a class for learning
the basics.
Trust me, it’s a lot to tackle on your own. Once
you have the basics of the C++ language down
you can start experimenting with the SDK exam-
ples that ship with CINEMA 4D.
Tavy: When you're not busy working or develop-
ing, what do you do for fun, relaxation, or to just
pass the time away?
Chris: Not busy? That doesn’t happen. =) Seri-
ously though, I play the guitar, which I’ve been
doing for about 13 or 14 years now. I play mostly
death metal and neo-classical metal, but I’m not
in a band at the moment. Other than that I hang
out with my friends, pick up chicks, and watch tv.
Nothing too exciting and nothing to stressful. =)
Tavy: Thanks again Chris. This was a really in-
formative interview and we are excited to see
what you will come up with in the future. Any last
words for our readers?
Chris: Thanks again for having me Tavy. And re-
member kids: say no to drugs… but alcohol and
tobacco are just fine. =)
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen
This article explains how you can do fun things
with Cothilde other than making t-shirts and
dresses. The scenes we'll discuss are part of a
clothilde experiments thread which I'm doing on
the 3D Attack forum. Many people have asked for
explanations on the workings of these scenes so
we're going to have an in-depth look at them here.
Every scene has a pre-rendered movie and
scene-file so you can watch it and see what the
end-result would be or just study the scene itself.
This article won't explain word for word how you
must set up the scene like a tutorial but if you are
a little versed with cinema you'll have no trouble
recreating the stuff I'm doing here.
Fake Cloth Particles
One of the most interesting uses for clothilde is
faking particles. It can be done very convincingly
provided you don't overdo the number of particles
you wish to fake. Take a look at the
'ClothParticles.mov' file to see what I have cre-
ated. Its just a funnel where a number of oranges
are released, slide down towards the surveyor-
belt, bounce off it and drop to the floor.
The effect looks like a particle emitter but its not.
In the beginning of the animation you can see the
oranges float in a nicely arranged pattern.
This is because I have created two rows of
spheres (one row of 7, one of 8) consisting of 6
sides spheres and then duplicated the two rows of
spheres with the Duplicate tool a couple of times
to get them perfectly separated from each other. It
is important to set the subdivisions of these
spheres low, if it is not set low the spheres will
simply collapse in on themselves due to the work-
ings of clothilde.
Now we have roughly 400 spheres we need to
apply clothilde to it in an easy way. You can sim-
ply select all the spheres and use the Connect
function to create one single geometry object of
all the spheres. Reference in Picture 1. When you
have the combined geometry it is advisable to use
the optimize function to prevent any sudden sur-
prises and then add the Cloth tag to it.
8
01
The oranges should react to each other so it is
very important to enable the Self Collision option
and perhaps even the Self Repulsion option, but
only when Self Collision itself can't do the job.
The Self Collision will basically prevent the
spheres from intersecting and the Self Repulsion
will make it even better looking by making the
spheres bounce off each other with more vigor by
adding some force to the collisions. In this scene
it is set to off however as I wanted to keep the
calculation time down. To make the oranges slide
a little faster I raised the Gravity to 40.
And that is one of the setbacks of this technique,
it does take long to calculate. For instance the
calculation for this scene takes up about 170 MB
of memory. So you better have a fast computer if
you want to tackle this kind of fake particle. Or
you could just not use this many spheres to keep
calculation time down.
The settings for the Collider tags on the funnel
slide aren't very important for the influence on the
particles. In this case the friction and bounce have
been set to 0 allowing the gravity in the Cloth tag
to push the oranges down the funnel without hin-
drance. The floor and the conveyor belt both have
bounce values of 20 and friction values of 30.
The conclusion is that this is not as realistic as
dynamics as a lot of the oranges are still inter-
secting when they drop down but its pretty con-
vincing if you don't look at it too closely.
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen

If you fail to recreate the effect you can look at the
'ClothParticles.c4d' file for reference. In this file
clothilde isn't pre-calculated keep in mind that it
will take some time to do so.
02
The benefit of hanging from one point is that the
blinds can still turn around their Y axis in the wind.
Then I simply added the cloth tag, enabled Self
Collision so the blinds won't intersect, selected all
the top points of the triangles then used the Fix
Points option in the clothilde Dresser tab, enabled
wind with X direction 3, Wind Strength 0.6, Wind
Turbulence Strength 2 and the speed set to 2.

When I tried this I quickly noticed that the blinds

would spin a lot more than I anticipated and
looked completely awful.

To remedy this terrible spinning I simply put an

elongated cube (blue in pic. 3) behind the top of
the blinds with a collider tag, just low enough for
the broad part of the blinds to be able to touch the
cube when they turn.

Now the blinds will be able to turn a little on the Y

If you would like to see another example of what axis but when one of the broad corners hit the
this technique could be useful for take a look at cube they will stop, thus giving a limited rotation
the 'Rockslide.mov' movie. This is exactly the and preventing the unrealistic spinning. Refer-
same principle made to look like a cartoonish ence in Picture 3.
rockslide. The only difference here is that the fun-
nel has a more elaborate shape and the spheres
have different sizes.
03
Vertical Blinds

This one also uses the combined geometry

method, but here I can show you how you can
exercise some control over the objects to do what
you want. Look at 'VerticalBlinds.mov' to see what
we're talking about here.

Every single blind is one plane that is one polygon

wide and six polygons high, made editable, dupli-
cated, then combined with the Connect function
into one single object. before connecting I gave
the rotations of the blinds a bit of randomness so
that when the wind catches them they wouldn't all These sort of blinds are usually made of quite
be blown in exactly the same way. sturdy cloth, usually even plastic or aluminum. We
need to make sure they don't flop around like a
The top of each blind is a triangle which I added flag or other clothing.
with the Create New Polygons tool (before con-
necting and duplicating of course), I made it a In my scene I went for sturdy cloth and set the
triangle so each blind can hang by just one point. Stiffness to 100 and the Flexion to 80 in the blinds

9
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen
cloth tag. If you want to go for a harder material I
suggest higher values or just use a single polygon
plane.
Of course with the single plane there wont be any
bending at all. For reference you can look at the
'VerticalBlinds.c4d' file.Picture 4.
04
The BubbleBall
This is a scene on which I have had many re-
quests for an explanation. Well here it is, it might
look tricky but is very easy to create. Look at
'BubbleBall.mov' to see it in action.
The first thing to determine is how many subdivi-
sions our sphere must have. I wanted the sphere
to deform and react to colliding objects in a realis-
tic way, which means a lot of subdivisions. Only
spheres with lots of subdivisions collapse in on
themselves with clothilde.
So I figured a good solution would be to set the
Gravity to 0.5 so that won't force the cloth down
and secondly remove the underside of the sphere
that you don't see and blow wind into it from be-
low so that it will stay upright.
Wind settings are Y direction -2, Wind Strength
0.4, Turbulence Strength 3 and Turbulence Speed
2. The settings for the bubble itself are pretty sim-
ple, Stiffness 20, Flexion 40, Bounce 60 and Fric-
tion 30. So its pretty loose.
10
Instead of removing the underside I ended up just
selecting the points of the underside and Fixing
them with the dresser tab, the wind influences the
sphere the same way as if the underside would
be removed. Easiest way to select the underside
like I did is enable Isoline Editing, going into Point
mode and clicking once on the underside. Refer-
ence in Picture 5. I made the sphere a hexahe-
dron so it has nice quadrangle subdivisions.
05
Now that the sphere is set up its time to make the
colliders. The colliders are simple spheres with
collider tags attached to them. The spheres have
been animated in the most basic way.
Record the position keyframe at the start outside
the bubbleball and then create a frame where it
intersects the bubbleball and lastly duplicate the
first frame to the end of the timeline so that the
sphere moves back again.
You can add more spheres around the object that
slightly nudge the ball or pound into it full force, or
create capsules that hit it from above by animat-
ing the rotation only, its all possible.
You can look at the 'BubbleBall.c4d' file for refer-
ence. Its fun to experiment with different shapes
and forces to see how the bubbleball reacts to it,
of course if you go too far the ball will start inter-
secting with parts of its own and it will fall apart.
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen
Finding the balance can be tricky, experimenting
is the key! Picture 6.
Double Torus
This experiment was an attempt to create a rub-
ber material with clothilde. The two objects fall
down, should not intersect with each other and
bend and wobble a bit on impact.
The experiment turned out pretty well with only a
few imperfections.
The setup is easy, simply hang two torus objects
anywhere over a floor. Combine their geometry,
attach the right cloth values and hit calculate. Of
course its finding the right values that is the diffi-
cult part.
First of all I tried the scene with self collision only,
Stifness 50 and Flexion 100, this way the torus
will remain pretty rigid instead of becoming cloth-
like. It worked pretty well only a problem with
these sort of dynamics is that sometimes objects
11
06
that are supposed to lie stationary sink into each
other. To remedy this I enabled Self Repulsion
and fiddled with the values until the objects
stayed on each other without intersecting, it be-
came pretty acceptable at Distance 5, Force 15
and Damping 0,3.
But the problem wit Self Repulsion is that this
creates a constant friction with two objects lying
on top of each other as it constantly tries to repel
the other torus, giving a constant annoying jitter-
ing in the movement between the two.
You can spot it clear at the end of the
'DualTorus.mov' Movie. Also in the movie you can
see a cylinder casting a shadow over the objects,
never mind this as I was testing some SSS at the
same time, I was just too lazy to re-render the
movie without the cylinder.
For reference look at the 'DualTorus.c4d' file.
Of course we again use the combined geometry
technique. But this can also be achieved with two
separate objects. You can recreate the scene with
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen
two toruses set to Ring Segments 16 and Pipe
Segments 8. The Radius settings aren't too im-
portant, make them anyway you like, its the low
subdivisions of the segments that prevent the tor-
uses from collapsing inward.
Make the toruses editable and give both a Cloth
tag. To keep it easy make sure that the Stiffness
50 and Flexion 100 settings are the same in both
tags.
Now select the cloth tag of the torus closest to the
ground. Both objects are using their own cloth
calculation and will ignore each other when you
calculate the cache for both.
To make them react to each other go the the Ex-
pert tab of the cloth tag and drag the higher torus
object into the Include field. You only have to this
in one cloth tag, you also only have to calculate
this torus cache to make it work. When you calcu-
late this you can see that the result is far more
terrible than the combined geometry method, we
12
07
need to do some tweaking to make this method
more acceptable.
You can increase the Collision values to make the
detection better and increase Mass to get some
better behavior but it probably won't get any better
than what you see in 'DualTorusAlternate.mov'.
There is intersecting and the torus is being fixed
in position by the intersecting.
If you manage to find a better way to make this
work through experimenting please let me know
on the 3D Attack forum. I'm always eager to see
what people cook up with clothilde. Picture 7.
Sphere Plow
This experiment is interesting if you want to cre-
ate underwater vegetation or other fields of stuff
with something wading through it. The scene is
created using a simple plane, stretched to the
length of the path that our sphere travels and ad-
justing the subdivisions to get a uniform square
pattern. Then the squares were extruded using
the bevel extrude tool. You can adjust the subdivi-
 Clothilde Outside the Box
By Bram van Gerwen
sions to get different effects on how the tentacles
react to the sphere but again if you set them too
high the plowing sphere will simply make them
intersect and collapse.
Of course you'll have to select all the underlying
points of the plane and fix them using the dresser
in the cloth tag. The Sphere can have a default
collider tag. Determining the settings for the ten-
tacles was tricky, first they had too many subdivi-
sions and the geometry was simply pushed flat by
the sphere, then after the subdivisions were right I
had to adjust the cloth settings to get the right self
collision and not make them intersect horribly.
The gravity of the cloth tag on the tentacles is set
to a plus value to make the tentacles go up and
bend back up when the sphere has pushed them
away. Look at 'SpherePlow.mov' to see the effect.
The settings for the cloth are Stiffness 5, Flexion
20, Bounce 30, Friction 70, Gravity 9, Wind Y 2,
Wind Z 10 and the strength 1.
The wind addition makes it seem as if underwater.
To finish it off we could give the sphere a compo-
siting tag that makes it invisible to the camera, put
an animated fish in its path and we have an un-
13
08
derwater animation. One thing I didn't do in this
experiment is randomize the arrangement of the
tentacles, so now they wave about pretty uni-
formly. It can be fixed by extruding the tentacles
from the beginning with a random variable. Also,
to complement this, you can increase the turbu-
lence settings of the wind.
For reference look at the 'SpherePlow.c4d' file.
That's it for now. As you can see the best way to
get to grips with clothilde functions and its work-
ings is to experiment, especially if you want to use
it for other things than clothing.
For more experiments or explanations please join
me in the Clothilde Experiments thread on the 3D
Attack forum. I'm always interested in seeing what
other people cook up with clothilde.
Bram
 Mograph - Module Review
By Will Frazier
When I first heard the news that MAXON had re-
leased a Module specifically for Motion Graphics
artists, my heart definitely skipped a beat. When I
saw the early examples of what it was capable of,
I found myself breathless.
Then, when I saw how simple achieving this
magic appeared to be, I felt completely dumb-
struck. Like Wayne Campbell staring at the white
Stratocaster, I felt the words enter my mind "It will
be mine.... oh yes, it will be mine."
Then came the day that the little package from
MAXON arrived. I tore it open like a 5-year old at
Christmas and set about installing it right away. It
14
was shortly after this that my first reality-check
slapped me square in the face.
On my first 3 attempts to use the Module in some
simple experiments, I encountered crashes. This
is, quite honestly, not something I am accustomed
to. I can count on my hands the number of
crashes I have experienced with CINEMA in the
last 4 years. Could it be that my hopes were to
be dashed?
So, I decided to start from square 1. I deleted
CINEMA and it's preference files from my Quad,
and did a fresh install. That seemed to do the
trick (though there are some idiosyncrasies in 9.6
 Mograph - Module Review
By Will Frazier
in general, but this is neither the time or place for
that particular soapbox), and I set out on explor-
ing this gift from the 3D Gods.
I started off doing some basic little tests, familiar-
izing myself with the Cloner Object, and the vari-
ous Effectors. Overall the workflow was pretty
intuitive and my initial results were fairly impres-
sive. Then, came the real test.
About a week after getting the Module, I starting
working on a project as the solo artist on a Televi-
sion commercial for a Turkish energy drink. The
spot was to be entirely 3D and focused around
the product with a barrage of high energy "fire
bands" moving about the screen. A perfect sce-
nario for MoGraph.
To my dismay, I found that I couldn't quite achieve
the look I was going for with MoGraph on the en-
ergy bands themselves, as they needed a certain
subtle randomness I could control, and the Ran-
dom Effector is a little limited in this capacity.
However, I found a work around using regular old
Sweeps, the Replica plugin, and my friend and
yours, the Selection Set. I find it a touch frustrat-
ing that the "randomness" of the Random Effector
15
is so arbitrary, but not so much so as to make
want to give up on MoGraph.
The next task I had was to create a floor that was
an abstract representation of a highway crossed
with a dance floor (after all the target market for
an energy drink are club kids and truck drivers).
"Great!" said I, as here was another opportunity to
make MoGraph shine. It was here that I found a
little more frustration, as the effect I was trying to
achieve seemed like a simple feat for the mighty
Mo, but try as I might the Shader Effector was
simply not doing what I felt it should.
I posted my quandary on the forums and called
MAXON Tech support, as what the manual im-
plied was a different version of reality from what I
was experiencing.
Tech Support came to the conclusion that the
manual was incorrect, but a few folks on the fo-
rums had some how seen through the veil of un-
fathomable confusion and had workable solutions
to suit my needs perfectly.
I adapted these slightly and ultimately used a se-
ries of Random Effectors, with a box fall-off key-
framed on Z and the results were spot on!
It was then that I found what my real issue with
MoGraph was. Not so much the Module, but the
documentation that is in places either vague or
misleading. I fully respect how hard it is to write a
reference manual, but nonetheless, it shouldn't
have ever gone to 'print' in it's current state.
I have seen this sentiment echoed by others in
the community, so I know I don't stand alone on
this one.
However, once I got past that hump, and began to
really understand what the tools and parameters
in MoGraph are all about, through sheer trial and
error, and experience, I have found it to be far and
away the most incredible and useful tool Maxon
has ever produced. And don't let the name fool
you, this Module is good at much, much more
than Motion Graphics work. As a modeling tool it
truly excels. Being able to dynamically build in a
 Mograph - Module Review
By Will Frazier

truly procedural environment allows for an un-

precedented level of flexibility and control.

Now that I have become buddies with Mo, and

have a fair understanding of what are it's true
strengths and shortcomings, I have three things I
would like to see in the next release (aside from
better documentation):

The first being that effectors should be able to be

emitted as particles. When building the road in
the aforementioned commercial, it would have
been swell to have made 1 effector and have it
emit as a particle to give me many streaks
screaming down said road, instead of having to
make a row of 6, and make 10 copies of that row.
Sure I was able to use selection sets to minimize
the work as much as possible, but as a particle,
the task would have been a breeze.

The second thing I would like to see are clones

that are able to be affected by the particle effec-
tors. Imagine what one could do with adding a
little Wind and Gravity to the party. Finally, I would
like to see a better implementation of the Materi-
als system in MoGraph, I have seen this particular
aspect covered quite fully in other reviews, so for
the sake of not being redundant I will not expound
further on that, but rather, lend my support to the
notion expressed by my contemporaries out
there.

In summation, I will say that for a 1.0 release,

MoGraph is truly an amazing and much needed
addition to CINEMA's arsenal. A truly indispensa-
ble tool for every C4D artist, it's abilities stretch far
beyond the niche of Motion Graphics. If you are
new to the Module, and have experienced frustra-
tion, I understand. But, once you get to know the
tools, and get past needing the manual, the world
will truly be your oyster. What this toolset is ca-
pable of, and the glimpse of the future it affords us
is beyond merely exciting, its inspiring.

-WF

Info: All images are taken from MAXON'S website at:

http://www.maxon.net

16
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling
Hi there Attackers, in this tutorial I want to show
you how to model a sneaker efficiently (I hope). In
Germany we have a worldly wisdom that says
something like – ‘The footwear of a human is say-
ing a lot about his characters strength.’
When your heart beats for character animation, I
recommend having a bunch of shoes in your li-
brary. A well modeled, and detailed shoe will en-
hance the appeal of your character for sure.
This part of the tutorial is based on modelling. In
the next issue I’ll optimize the geometry for better
use in animation, and texture and light the model.
You can follow all steps if you own C4D R 6 at
least.
First of all, I use a cube to roughly get the shape
of the sneaker I have in mind. So I create a cube
(Objects-primitive-cube) and adjust its attributes
to the following: Segments x/y/z: 4/2/4, further-
more I change the z-size to 400. I’m using 4 seg-
ments along the x-axis because this leaves 2
segments when I deleted half of the model to
work with a symmetry object.
This saves time till I need to make the symmetry
object editable for adding the asymmetry a shoe/
foot needs. I hit the c-key to make the primitive
cube editable.
As mentioned above, I go to top view (F2) and
point mode to rectangle select the left half of the
“sneaker cube”. Before I delete these points, I
disable the “only select visible objects” option in
the rectangle selection attributes. Thus leaving
17
the rectangle selection for selecting all points, and
the live selection for only visible points, has be-
come a good workflow for me.
So when I deleted the selected points (backspace
or delete button) I alt-click the symmetry object-
this makes the cube a child of the symmetry ob-
ject automatically because I’m a proud owner of
C4D Rel.9. If you own an older release, you have
to create the symmetry object (Objects-Modeling-
symmetry) and drag the cube on it to make the
cube a child of the symmetry object. Before I go
on to tweak the cube to my liking, I alt-click a hy-
pernurbs object with my symmetry object se-
lected. As explained above, the symmetry is now
a child of the hypernurbs. In side view (F3) I use
the rectangle selection and the move tool (E) to
tweak the cube in a more-“shoeish” shape.
PIC_01
01
OK, The side view looks acceptable, so I go to top
view (F2) and adjust the outer points by rectangle
selecting and moving (E). The overall shape is a
flavor thing.
I have a quite stylised shoe in mind and go to
perspective view (F1) to adjust the rounding of the
upper shape, this time using the live selection. In
the end I’ll use an ffd lattice deformer to tweak the
shoe in the direction I like. Now I switch to poly-
gon mode to model the hole for the foot. I select
the polys shown in PIC_02 and extrude them in-
ner (I). I delete the poly at the symmetry axis and
in point mode I bring the three points at the sym-
metry axis back to x:0 by live-selecting them and
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling

typing x size and x-position:0 in the coordinates

manager fields. It’s a good idea to disable the
hypernurbs-smoothing temporary to have all
points visible (Q). PIC_02

03

02

Before I cut the hole I go in side view (F3) and

adjust the shoe shape again by rectangle select- 04
ing and moving (E) points. Back in perspective
view (F1) I switch to polymode and live-select the
polys I created before. Before extruding I set their
y-size to 0 in the coordinates manager to be sure
the extrusion is straight.

Then I just delete the selected polys. At this point

I decide to not model with thickness- the physical
thickness can be added later- at the moment
modeling the surface only offers a more straight-
forward workflow. In point mode I adjust the hole
to a rounder shape with the move tool (E).
PIC_03 05
Now it’s time to separate surfaces. I select the
polys shown in PIC_04 and go to functions-split.
(If I remember correctly, you’ll find this function in
the structure menu in older releases.) A copy of
the selected polys is created and I can delete
these polys from the original shape.
inserting three cuts with the knife tool (K) in line
Now I have to place the cube and the new shape mode. I hold the shift key to be sure the cut is
in a null object to make sure both will be affected 100% horizontal. (Another possibility is the loop
by the symmetry and hypernurbs object. Next I mode that will do the job too, but owners of older
define the sole by switching to side view (F3) and C4D releases are restricted to the line mode.)

18
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling
PIC_04 To tweak the shape I use the rectangle
selection and scale one loop smaller as seen in
PIC_05. Now I decrease the height of the sole a
little bit and adjust its shape by rectangle select-
ing points and move them along the y-axis. At this
point I realize that I need one more loop along the
z-axis – again I cut with the knife tool (K) in line
mode- this time vertical. These new points make
cause be to be able to adjust the sole-shape to
my liking. PIC_05
Now I add another cut to bring the shoe into a
more believable shape. This time I use the knife in
loop-mode. Next I want to detach the tip and the
back of the shoe, so I select the polys shown in
pic_05 and go to functions split.
This time there is no need to delete the original
polys. I slightly scale the new geometry smaller
(intersection with the shoe shape is ok) and
thicken the shape by extruding it (D). Again it is
needed to remove the polys created along the
symmetry axis. PIC_06
06
Now it’s point-tweaking time. Rectangle selecting
and moving (E). It’s important for me to have the
tip and back connected to the sole in a believable
way. Here and there, it is needed to cut the shape
to insert more points to be able to tweak the ge-
ometry in the desired shape.
Take a look at PIC_07 to see where I inserted
new horizontal point rows with the knife tool (K) in
loop mode. Then I added one more vertical point
row and tweaked the geometry. When I’m satis-
fied with the alignment I split one more segment
19
of the original cube/shoe shape. Take a look at
PIC_07 to check the polys I split. As you see the
split shape overlaps with the last shape I
tweaked, so I have to move the overlapping
points first. PIC_07
07
When I tweaked this shape, the glide tool came in
quite handy here (Users of earlier C4D releases
need to do that the old school way with the move
(E) tool). When the shape is tweaked I extrude
the polys (D).
As explained above, I delete the polys created at
the symmetry axis (via disabling the symmetry
object –live selecting them and deleting them- In
top view (F2) I set the points at the z-axis back to
x:0 position and size.)
One more part to detach- look at pic_08 to see
what polys I want to split up next. I think the pro-
cedure is clear now- again I use the glide tool to
bring the points in place, and again I need to
clean up the symmetry. The only thing different to
the other split/tweak procedures before is that I
extrude a poly. PIC_08
Now I add thickness to the first part I split- Take a
look at PIC_09 to see the tweak I did to it using
the move tool (E). I need to insert some more
points, so I use the knife tool again.
Then I select it in the object manager and in
polymode ctrl/apple-a select all polys and extrude
them slightly (D)…and again I care for the sym-
metry object and delete the polys created at the
symmetry axis. The shoe already looks quite
shoeish- to get in detail a little bit more I create a
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling

08

torus (Objects-primitive-torus) and set its attrib-
utes to 4 pipe and four ring segments and the ring
radius to 75m. After that I hit C to make it editable
and drag it in the null object my other geometry is
in.
tention to set the position of the new points to x:0
in the coordinates manager, after that I delete the
points left of the z-axis. I use the move (E), scale
(T) and rotate (R) tool in global mode in perspec-
tive view (F1) to bring the cube in place.

With the scale tool (T) I flatten the y-axis of the

torus a little bit and bring it into place using the
scale (T), move (E) and rotate (R) tool- take a
look at PIC_09. When I’m satisfied with its posi-
tion and size I ctrl-drag 3more copies of it in the
object manager and bring them into place again.
PIC_09

Now I need to add the bootlace. I just create a 09

cube again (Objects-primitives-cube) set its seg-
ments x/y/z to 3/1/2- a make it editable(C) then I
drag it to the other geometry in the null object to
get it smoothed.

I adjust the shape with the scale tool (T)- and in

top view (F2) I cut with the knife tool and pay at-

20
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling
As expected, now I need to tweak the cube to fit
into the torus shape while being aligned to the
shoe. I need to insert a point row at the right end
of the cube and take some time to tweak the
points to make it believably blend into the torus.
When it looks ok, I ctrl drag a copy of the cube
and place it in the next torus and so on. PIC_10
10
When I look at the sneaker, now I think the part at
the ankle could cover the edge totally, so I select
it and in point mode I select the outer points and
move (E) them into place.
At this time I don’t care about the shape in-
between, this will be fixed by inserting one point
row and tweaking its position. The last thing I
want to add to my sneaker are stripes- So I cre-
21
ated another cube and adjust its attributes to x/y/
z: 2/3/1 and make it editable (C)- drag it in the null
object all geometry is in and bring it into place
using the move tool (E). Furthermore I use the
scale tool (T) to adjust it in global mode to my lik-
ing- take a look at PIC_11.To align to the rounding
of the shoe I need to insert two point rows in the
middle of the y-length with the knife tool (K).
When the stripe is aligned nicely I ctrl-drag two
copies in the object manager and bring them into
place as I did with the bootlace. PIC_11/12
All in all, the shoe is quite finished now. After all I
have a bunch of geometry inside my null object.
In the second part of this tutorial, coming with the
next issue, I want to show you how to collapse all
 Sneaker Modeling Tutorial
By Mark Gmehling

11

this together and texture it properly with some

procedural shaders and how to give it a nice light-
ing. Furthermore, I’ll generate a few different
shoes with unsymmetrical shapes using deform-
ers.

I hope you had fun following this tutorial, and I

hope to see some of your sneakers creations
coming along with your characters in our forum. If
you encounter any problems don’t hesitate to post 12
a thread in our WIP section- the community will
help you out for sure. CYA on board and Keep
Attacking!

Mark

22
 Vital Disclosure Volume 3 - Hair DVD Review
By Mark Gmehling

Hi there Attackers, last week I reviewed the Vital

Disclosure DVD- Insider Secrets Series Volume III
that is about the Hair Module. The Package con-
sists of two DVS’s: the project Disc and a manual
disc- all in all a runtime of 300 minutes.

As you may heard of trouble from the first DVD

(resolution trouble)- this time Vital has some trou-

ble as well: They forgot to implement the project

files on their DVD’s- clients needed to download
the files from links Vital provided. According to
Vital, this problem has been corrected and now all
DVD’s come complete with the project files. But
let’s talk about the content now:

First of all –in the introduction/dive in part- the

Hair Object including all menus and tabs is very
well explained along with an example- for sure, a
great addition to the Hair manual coming with the
module, where the user often misses the possibili-
ties of certain things relating to daily work.
The next chapter is dedicated to the tools for ma-
nipulating the hair and the hair material attributes
are shown roughly. Furthermore, the hair tags are
explained. Seeing the tools and their attributes in
action along with an example again makes the
understanding lots easier. The hair materials
could have needed some explanation along with
renderings, because the hair material is a very
powerful and complex thing. Here is only the ma-
terial window preview used to explain the settings
roughly.
The next chapters are the tutorial chapters:
The first two tutorials (quill and arrow) deal with
the feather object and its possibilities.
The grass field tutorials (wind and crop circle) are
mainly about dynamic interaction, dedicated to
the forces tab and some explanations on how to

23
 Vital Disclosure Volume 3 - Hair DVD Review
By Mark Gmehling
created realistic dynamic interaction using the hair
objects map tab.
The Spline Dynamics chapter has two tutorials:
Falling rope and harpoon gun and as you may
guess its about spline dynamics and their anima-
tion.
The Dwarf tutorials are explaining how to add hair
to a character (Helmet, hair, eyebrows, beard)
This chapter is especially useful in the case of
troubleshooting- The ways to solve common little
problems when it comes to adding hair to a char-
24
acter are shown here. As mentioned above Vol-
ume III comes with a second DVD- the so-called
“interactive manual”-disc.
The manual disc bears some 1:1 repeated stuff
from the project discs parts arranged in an alpha-
betical (index, and topic (directory) related order.
In some cases the disc is useful and explains
more than the modules-manual. In other cases,
one sentence is not a satisfying result when you
search for a certain thing, even when it is a video/
audio file.
What I’m missing is a right click, or on Mac the ctrl
click option to jump back to main index. You’re
forced to watch a whole episode before having
access to the menu again, or you have to exit and
start the disc new…not that comfortable in my
opinion.
Sometimes the cut of the different movie parts is
quite weird- 15 seconds of black screen till you
have access to the menu, or cut audio tune.
Don’t get me wrong here, the content of the DVD
is good: the tutorials are well taught and interest-
ing, but the execution of the DVD lacks in points
of technical execution (Even on the project files I
downloaded some texture files are missing), so I
recommend buying the chapters sold separately,
provided by 3D Attack.
All scene files are included with your download. I
recommend this method because you can view a
great tutorial without the technical problems the
DVD seems to have.
Check the 3dattack shop for further information
http://www.3dattack.net/shop/index.php
Due to the technical problems related to a price
tag of $75.00, I can only give max 3 of 5 possible
attack points.
Mark Gmehling
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista

Remember those classes, at school, when then

teacher would give you re-runs of previous
classes? Usually, that happened because there
was a test approaching or simply because some
subjects were, in fact, too complex and required
extra attention.

This is exactly what is going to happen in this

month’s C.O.F.F.E.E . class: we will revisit our "old
friends", the objects. Why? Because, this is in fact
a complex subject and, since I have the luck of
getting feedback from my "students", I realized
that I should not advance any further into new
subjects until this very important concept is fully
understood.

On the last lesson, I introduced you to objects, as

in "object oriented programming". Since it’s an
abstract concept, dealing with data and functions,
accessed like they were super-variables, I gave
you all a more graphical example, making use of
an analogy with cars.
Since the "ice" was already broken with the last
lesson, I decided that I could explain the concept
again but, this time, using the "real-life" objects,
used by CINEMA 4D. This way, the students that
already understood the concept of objects will not
get disappointed with this "repeated" lesson. For
the ones whose concept of objects is still drifting
outside your head, fear not! This time, I will use
some pictures ;-)
sample object, #A5, #A6 and #A7). It’s by those
names that we access the data and the functions.
When you create new objects (usually they are
created automatically, without you even noticing it,
as you perform other operations), what you are
creating are, in fact, clones of that initial "master"
definition.
The powerful part comes when you start creating
objects based on other objects. For example,
object B is defined like this: [Image below]

Ok, lets start (again) with this object stuff. What

the hell is an object? (Objects of the programming
kind of course... the CINEMA 4D geometrical
objects will be referred, from now on, as
primitives.)

Imagine an object as a structural entity. It can

contain data and functions that deal with these
data or any additional data that we may provide.
[Image on the top right]

That structure is simply a definition of the object,
not the object itself. It defines what type of data
the object stores and what functions it has. Those
data fields (still empty) have names (in our
sample object, #A1, #A2, #A3 and #A4). The
functions also have names, of course (in our
But, when it was created it was based on object
A. So, object B will inherit all the attributes of
object A (its data structure and functions). [Image
on next page] It is a more powerful object than
object A because it can do all that object A does
and, in addition, some more things.

25
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista
You can create an object C, also based on object
A, but provide it with different data structures and
functions. You now have two objects, B and C that
have all that object A has but also, each one, with
something more. [Image on the top right]
If you now create an object D, based on, for
example, object B, it will have all the
characteristics of object A and B and, of course,
you can add to it some more data structures and
functions. [Image on next Page]
If this is still difficult to understand (I hope I don't
have to repeat this too many more times ;-)) I will
now present a real world example of objects,
inside CINEMA 4D.
Let us take, for example, a spline primitive. One
of those that you draw with your mouse or pen.
So, you have drawn a little wavy curve and now
you have a new spline primitive in your Object
Manager. As everything else inside CINEMA 4D,
this primitive is an object. What type of object?
Internally, the spline is defined as a SplineObject.
The name is logical enough? Don't forget that the
26
SplineObject is the name of a type of object.
When you created the spline (using your mouse
or pen), CINEMA 4D created a clone of the
internal definition it has of a SplineObject and
filled it with all the relevant data.
What type of things can you do with a
SplineObject? Well, for example, you can get its
length with the function GetLength() because
GetLength() is a function that is attached to all
SplineObjects.
You can also get the number of segments of the
spline (if you have drawn the spline yourself,
without any further edition, you should only have
one segment but splines can have many more).
You can also calculate a position along any of the
spline segments. There are many other functions
associated with the SplineObject.
But, you may think, a spline primitive has more
than just segments. It has control points, for
example. Does a SplineObject also provide ways
to have access to those points? Yes, of course.
Because, a SplineObject was derived from
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista
another class, called PointObject. And the
PointObject type of object provides lots more
functions. Functions to get the number of points of
an object, to get or set the location of any point, to
get or set the selection of points, etc.
Besides points and segments, a spline primitive
also has a few more parameters. It has a name, a
position, a scale, a rotation, etc.
Can we access all those parameters too? Sure
we can, because the PointObject object is derived
from yet another class called BaseObject. This
type of object has many, many functions. As its
name implies, a BaseObject is a class that holds
27
all those informations (and functions) that are
common to all types of primitive objects inside
CINEMA 4D. As you know, all objects have, at
least, a name, a position, a scale, a rotation, and
an editor and render state (those semaphores
that define if an object is visible or not, in the
editor or when rendering), etc.
This is big "family" already, isn't it? We have the
SplineObject class that is a descendent of the
PointObject class that is a descendent of the
BaseObject class.
Are there any more members of this family? Sure
there are: the BaseObject class is a descendent
of the BaseList4D class. This class gives us
access to the parent (if any) of the object or to its
first child (if any). What are those? You know... in
the Object manager, you can place objects inside
others, creating hierarchies.
Well, the BaseList4D functions allow you to have
access to those hierarchies, namely the parent
and child of our object and a couple more
functions related to them.
Finally, the BaseList4D class is a descendent of
the BaseList2D class. This last class controls
even more basic stuff. Stuff like little bits of
internal information (if an object is selected in the
Object Manager, for example), the editor color of
the object, the type of object, some basic search
functions, etc.
You didn't have to do anything more than just
draw the spline, but CINEMA 4D, internally,
created all this. Well, it just had to create a new
SplineObject. All the other objects and their
correspondent attributes are already implicitly
attached to it.
So, it’s like the newly created SplineObject
already has all this amazing amount of functions
and data attached, just because it inherits all the
stuff from all the members of its "family". Let us
now review the whole family again: [Image on
next page - top left]
What if you had created a new polygonal object?
A polygonal object can be created in several ways
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista
but one of the simplest and fastest ways is to
create a primitive (a cube, a sphere, a plane, etc)
and hit 'C' to convert it to a polygonal object. How
is it described internally?
It’s exactly the same as the SplineObject, until the
PointObject part. Then, instead of it deriving into a
SplineObject, it derives into a PolygonObject.
Since the PolygonObject derives from a
PointObject, it has all the characteristics of a
PointObject, a BaseObject, a BaseList4D object
and, finally, a BaseList2D object. Are you starting
to get all this object and inheritance stuff?
To put all this theory into practice, lets see some
actual code that does something. Create a new
Null primitive, add it a C.O.F.F.E.E. tag and type
this script:
main(doc,op)
{ supposed to only store data, right? Right, but if a
var new_sphere;
if(!(doc->FindObject("My_Sphere")))
{ So, the doc variable is, in fact, an object of type
new_sphere=new(SphereObject);
d o c - > I n s e r t O b j e c t
(new_sphere,NULL,NULL);
new_sphere->SetName("My_Sphere");
} One of the functions present in a BaseDocument
} object is FindObject. It requires a parameter that
28
If all goes well (no typing errors), as soon as you
execute the code (or do anything to your
document, like dragging the time slider or
zooming in or out) a new Sphere primitive named
"My_Sphere" should appear in your viewport and,
consequently, at the top of your Object Manager
list.
It is a faceted sphere because it has no Phong
tag attached. We would have to add it ourselves.
Don't forget that we are creating everything from
scratch, using C.O.F.F.E.E., not using the
shortcuts CINEMA 4D provides you.
So, what is happening in this script?
First, we define a new variable named
new_sphere. It will store the object/primitive we
want to create. Yes, it will be an object because,
as we learned at the beginning of this lesson, all
primitives are, in fact, objects (of the programming
kind... this is the last time I say it ;-))
Now we must check if there is already any object
named "My_Sphere" in the document. If we didn't
do this, the script would create a limitless amount
of sphere primitives and fill the whole document
with them. That is not a good thing, is it?
So, how do we check for the presence of an
object with a specific name?
Since we are searching the document and the
doc variable - kindly provided by the main function
- already points to the current document, we can
use one of its functions. Wait!! A function of a
variable?!?
Do variables have functions? They were
variable is storing an object, it behaves like an
object and objects DO have functions.
BaseDocument with all the data values and
functions related with documents already
attached.
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista
is the name of the primitive we want to search for.
It will return an object of type BaseObject pointing
to the first primitive it finds with that name. If it
finds none, it returns Nil.
So, the line:
if(!(doc->FindObject("My_Sphere")))
could be read as:
if NOT found in the document an object named
"My_Sphere"
Sorry for the lame English, but it’s hard to keep
the same sequence of statements present in the
script and translate that into a coherent English
sentence.
Have you noticed all of the parenthesis? They are
necessary and it’s very important to assure that
they are balanced. With this, I mean that there
must be as many opening parenthesis and there
are closing parenthesis. Otherwise, you will get a
syntax error.
The most inner parenthesis are the ones
surrounding the "My_Sphere" parameter. They
are required because all functions require that
their parameters be enclosed in parenthesis.
Even if the functions have no parameters. Really!!
For those, you simply type an opening and a
closing parenthesis, like this: ()
The next set of parenthesis enclose the doc-
>FindObject("My_Sphere") statement. They are
not really required but, since I want to test for the
negative of this whole expression with the
operator ! this whole expression becomes more
legible.
If I hadn't placed the parenthesis surrounding this
expression, it may look as if I was testing for the
negative for the document, not for the presence of
a primitive. It’s just a matter of style ;-)
The outer parenthesis surround the whole
expression and they are required by the if
statement. Imagine that the if statement is a
function and it also requires that its parameters
are inside quotes (but this is just to serve as an
29
example because the if statement is NOT really a
function). Ok, we tested for the presence of a
primitive named "My_Sphere" in the document
and, if there isn't any, all the code inside the
{ and } symbols after the if statement is executed.
The first instruction to be executed is:
new_sphere=new(SphereObject);
The new command creates a new instance of an
object of type SphereObject and this new object is
stored in the new_sphere variable. The
SphereObject object is already internally defined
and it’s just like the SplineObject example I
presented at the beginning. It already has all the
"family" of objects attached, up to the BaseList2D
object.
Luckily, CINEMA 4D also provides with it, all the
default parameters already stored inside the data
part of the SphereObject. What this means is that
the newly created sphere already has the default
"Sphere" name, the default 200 units of radius,
the default 24 segments, etc.
We have a new sphere object stored inside a
variable but it still has to be placed into the
document. That is done using the statement:
doc->InsertObject(new_sphere,NULL,NULL);
Since it is a task we are performing on the
document (placing something in it), we use the
doc variable again. This time we use its
InsertObject() function.
It requires three parameters: the object to be
placed, a parent object inside which we want to
place the object and an object, after which we
want to place the object. Weird!! Must we provide
all that? Not really.
The only really required parameter is the object
we want to insert in the document. The other two
are optional and, in this case, I simply replaced
both parameters with the constant NULL (a
constant is like a variable that you can't change.
CINEMA 4D already has lots of constants defined
and NULL is one of them. It simply stands for...
nothing).
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista
So, what happens if I don't tell the InsertObject()
function what primitive I want to use as a parent
of my newly inserted object or after what primitive
I want to place my newly inserted object? Nothing
special. It simple places the object at the top of
the primitives list, in the Object Manager, just like
if I had created a new primitive by clicking its icon.
Now, we do have a new sphere inserted in the
document. But it has the default name of
"Sphere". We must change it to "My_Sphere" to
make sure the conditional expression at the
beginning will, in fact, find such a primitive the
next time it runs and doesn't create yet another,
and another and another sphere (ad infinitum).
The new_sphere variable still stores the newly
created sphere. In fact, everything we do to this
variable, we are doing to the sphere primitive that
is now in the document.
So, to change the name of the primitive, we use
the function SetName(), like this:
new_sphere->SetName("My_Sphere");
I believe this is clear enough and requires no
explanation. Even so, I will tell you something that
may not be too obvious. The new_sphere variable
holds an object of type SphereObject, right?
Right! And if I told you that the SphereObject
object HAS NO SetName() FUNCTION
DEFINED! But we just used such a function... you
may say.
Well, the SphereObject object itself has no such
function defined but the BaseObject object does
and the SphereObject is a child of BaseObject,
inheriting everything from it (and from his "grand-
daddy", BaseList4D and its "great-grand-daddy",
BaseList2D).
Do you understand now how powerful objects
are? I hope you do :-) Try deleting the new
sphere. A new one is automatically created. Try
renaming it. It stays with the new name you typed
but, instantly, a new sphere named "My_Sphere"
appears in the document. Wanna fool CINEMA
4D? Create a new primitive that is NOT a sphere.
30
A Null for example, name "My_Sphere" (without
the quotes, of course). Now delete the sphere
named "My_Sphere". No more spheres are
created. Why? Because the C.O.F.F.E.E. script
found a primitive named "My_Sphere", even if it is
not a real sphere, and, like instructed, created
nothing. We could check out if the object with that
name is, in fact, a real sphere, but we can leave
that for another lesson.
Oh, you may have noticed that, like I said before,
the newly created spheres are faceted. That is
because we only created a primitive and no tags,
namely a Phong tag. When you click the primitive
icons, CINEMA 4D fills out lots of stuff for you in
advance. This is usually useful because, most of
the time, the defaults are what most people
require. But, in C.O.F.F.E.E., you have complete
control in everything and you only create what
you need as it is needed.
I have been talking about all these objects and
functions, but you may have already wondered,
where did all this information come from? Isn't
there a book or something about C.O.F.F.E.E. that
explains all this?
About this question, there is good news and bad
news. The good news is that there is, in fact,
documentation. The bad news is that its not a
book and it is written by technicians so, if you try
to learn C.O.F.F.E.E. from this documentation
without some sort of support (like these lessons) it
would be like being blindfolded, taken to an
airplane, fly for a couple of hours and being
dropped in a completely foreign country.
So, to finalize this lesson, I will tell you where to
get that information. You may download it and
start browsing it. It will do you no harm... on the
contrary, it will give you some insight into how the
information is structured. In the next lesson, I will
teach you how to use that documentation to find
out what you need.
Just for you to understand how important this
documentation is, 90% of what I know about
C.O.F.F.E.E. came from it and I always keep it
open when I'm coding any script or plug-in. I
always keep it near, as it is invaluable.
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista

To get it, go to www.plugincafe.com and click on

the link that says SDK Downloads R9.5 [Image on
the right]

You should, now, download the C.O.F.F.E.E. SDK

95. You have the choice of downloading the
HTML version or the Windows HTMLHelp version.
Choose the one you prefer. Oh, by the way, SDK
stands for Software Development Kit :-)

If you downloaded the HTML version, you simply

have to drag the index.html file to a browser (or
double click it).
install the help files. But if you are a Windows
If you downloaded the Windows HTMLHelp user, chances are that you do know how to do
version, then you are on your own. I don't work that. Anyway, once you’ve done it, you will be
with Windows (I would only do it if threatened by presented with a window similar to this one
some sort of weapon) and I don't know how to [Image on next page]:

31
 Cup of COFFEE - Part 4
By Rui Batista

I will wrap this lesson now. As usual, if you have

any doubts or suggestions, feel free to contact me
at rui_mac@ruimac.com

Keep on attacking my friends and have courage.

Learning C.O.F.F.E.E. is hard but rewarding... you
will see :-)

Till next time…

-Rui Batista

(I assume the Windows HTMLHelp version is

similar).

As you can see, there are a few links to

interesting stuff like "Introduction" or "The
C.O.F.F.E.E. language" or even "Tutorials". You
should also read the "About this documentation"
page, as it contains some references about
additional sources of information.

I will not talk any more about this document in this

lesson. Simply keep it accessible and wait for the
next lesson :-)

Oh, by the way, the www.plugincafe.com site has

lots more useful stuff besides the C.O.F.F.E.E.
documentation. One of the greatest sources of
information is the forum.

I advise you to register there (don't worry, its free)

and to use it often. If you have a doubt or even a
problem you can't solve, chances are that
someone else passed for the same situation. Do
a search in the forum before starting to pull out
your hair ;-)

32
 Reference Shader - Plugin Review
By Chris Montesano
How many of you have experienced a situation
like this? You're setting up a new material. You
have a Noise shader in the Color channel. You
copy and paste it in the Bump channel, and
maybe copy and paste it again to the Displace-
ment channel.
You copy it here and there, making minor
changes along the way. After you're all done you
have 10 copies of the same Noise shader
throughout your material. You realize that you
need to adjust the scale of the noise. Just great...
now I have to go and make that same change to
10 copies of the noise.
There is now a solution to this problem: The
BlackStar Reference Shader. It's like an Instance
object for channel shaders. It works like this: you
add a reference shader and click "Select", then
you choose from a list of every channel shader in
your scene.
Once you choose a shader, the Reference
Shader will make a "live" copy of it, meaning that
any changes to the original shader will be re-
flected immediately in the Reference Shader. Now
we can make a change to our noise (such as ad-
justing the scale) and have that change propagate
through every Reference Shader that points to
that noise!
This might force your workflow to change a little.
Basically you cannot adjust parameters of the
Reference Shader directly. For example, let's say
you have a Reference Shader in the bump chan-
nel pointing to the Noise shader in the Color
channel.
Now you want to adjust the High Clip/Low Clip,
but you can't do that because it only points to the
original Noise. To get around this I've gotten used
to using the Filter, Colorizer, and Layer shaders to
make changes with the Reference Shader.
The Reference Shader also has a few nice fea-
tures, such as the "Goto Source" button, which
will automatically load up the source (or pointed)
shader in the Attributes Manager. There is also a
"Transform" button which will replace the current
Reference Shader with a copy of the source
33
shader... similar to the "Make Editable" command
for objects. This is useful for sharing projects with
someone who does not have the Reference
Shader.
The Reference Shader is also smart enough to
catch cyclic references, meaning that it won't let
you point a reference shader at itself, which could
result in an infinite loop causing C4D to hang or
even crash. It just gives you a message stating
that cyclic references are not allowed. It has also
been updated recently to work with the NET Ren-
derer.
As much as I love this shader, there is always
room for improvement. I have found a few things
about this plugin that I'd like to see fixed. First is
that when you click "Transform" the Material
Manager page blanks out and sometimes a new
blank Attributes Manager window will open.
Second is that if the Reference Shader that you
are transforming points to another Reference
Shader, the result will be the source Reference
Shader, so you have to click "Transform" again.
Another problem is that if you alter the position of
the source shader (i.e. adding a filter to the
source after it is already being referenced) the
Reference Shader will not update itself, but there
is a workaround for this outlined in the manual.
Also, if you reference a shader that is not as-
signed to an object, that source shader is not cor-
rectly marked as being in use, so the "Remove
Unused Materials" command removes the source
shader. However, as I'm writing this the guys at
BlackStar have told me that these issues are be-
ing addressed with the next update.
At the moment I have only one feature request: I
would like to see a global "Transform All" com-
mand, which would (as the name implies) go
through every material in the scene and "Trans-
form" every instance of the Reference Shader.
All in all this is a great plugin at a great price. It
sells for 19.95 EUR (about $25 USD), and for the
amount of time and effort that this plugin saves it
is easily worth double. The Reference Shader
 Reference Shader - Plugin Review
By Chris Montesano

works with Cinema 4D versions 8.5 and higher. For the slight problems that it has (soon to be
There is also a demo available (Windows 32-bit, fixed), this plugin gets a 4.5 out of 5.
Mac OSX PPC, and Mac OSX UB) at
http://www.blackstar-solutions.de , however the -Chris
demo is only for 9.5 and higher. The website also
has some sample videos and documentation. So http://www.blackstar-solutions.de
download the demo and try it out for yourself. You
might find that this plugin becomes an essential
tool in your arsenal.

34
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

So, you want to make models for Half Life 2? No

problem!

You must own Half-Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1,

or similar Source Engine license to get the free
Source SDK (found in your "Tools" list/menu in
STEAM). Please install the Source SDK if you
haven't already. We will model, UV, create a base/
reference texture, and compile an oil drum model
to use as a prop in Half Life 2. After these assets
are created and compiled you will be able to view
them in the Source SDK Model Viewer or place
them in your Hammer maps for HL2. 01

A few brief tips;

1. Pay very close attention to paths/directories

inside STEAM, there are many that are similar
and easily confused.

2. Count on errors and frustration when compiling.

3. Valve regularly updates your Source SDK with

new features, bug fixes, and new bugs. It is NOT
unusual for a Source SDK update to "break" 9 out
of 10 mods in development for a few days. Valve
always corrects these "breaks" as quickly and
honestly as they can and I thank them for every-
thing they do for their fans and indie developers. 02

Model Texture & UV:

Start up CINEMA 4D and add a Primitive Cylinder
Object. The default attributes are a bit too high button. To fix the slight inward movement of the
poly for the engine and the models purpose of a polygons when we scaled them we activate
simple prop so change the following attributes of "Normal Move" in the Structure menu and set the
the cylinder primitive; move value to 2 and click the apply button. (Im-
age 03)
Radius = 70
Height = 210 Now we'll "Bevel" the same 2 loops of polygons
Height Segments = 7 we've been editing to create the reinforcing rings
Rotation Segments = 16 of the oil drum. The only thing to change in the
Cap Segments = 1 Bevel options is the Inner Offset, I set it to 3m and
(See Image on top right) clicked the Apply button. (Image 04)

Press "c" to convert the primitive cylinder object
into an editable polygon object. Now switch to the
Polygon Tool and activate Loop Selection. Select
the loops of polygons shown in (Image 02). Acti-
vate "Normal Scale" from the Structure menu and
set the Scale value to 25% and click the apply
Ok, the model is done at 320 faces. In CINEMA
4D it says 176, but when polygonal geometry is
moved into a game engine it is triangulated. Thus,
we end up with all the cylinders polygons (not the
caps since they are already triangles) doubled.
We're almost ready to UVmap our oil drum but

35
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

03 05

04 06

first create a new material and apply it to the oil

drum model with UVW Mapping in the texture
tag's Projection setting. Now, start up BodyPaint
and switch your layout to a "uv edit" layout. (Im-
age 05) 07

Select the "UV Polygon Edit Tool" and with "Live

Selection" select the caps of the oil drum. With
the "Move Tool" simply move the caps off of the
texture space. Invert your selection. (Image 06)

To see if our UV map is creating any stretching
and to make sure the UV's are even let's rename
our material "uv test" and add the "Checkerboard"
channel shader as the "texture" for the color tab.
Change the checkerboard shader properties "U
Frequency" & "V Frequency" to "10" and turn off
Specular so we can see the checker pattern
clearly. (Image 07)
Now we can see that there's some squashing on
the reinforcing rings, and the checkers on the
caps (top and bottom) are not even with the walls
of the drum. Make sure your UVpolygons selec-
tion is the same as seen in Pic 06. Now, on the
UV Manager's "Relax UV" tab, make sure that
only "Keep Neighbors" is checked and click the
"Apply" button 3 times to "relax" the uv polygons.

36
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

Notice that the checkers on the drums rings are
not squashed. (Image 08)
Now right click on the Cylinder in the Objects
Manager and add the "Bake Texture" tag from the
"CINEMA 4D Tags." The Source engine requires
converting ".tga" files into ".vtf" files for the engine
and all texture dimensions MUST be in powers of
two but do not have to be square, i.e. 256x256,
128x512, 1024x1024, 64x2048, and so on.

For now copy my Bake Texture Tag settings

shown in the following picture and for now use the
path to your "SourceSDK_Content" folder, mine is
C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\your steam
08 username or email\sourcesdk_content\hl2\materi-
alsrc. You should save your ".tga" textures to the
"materialsrc" folder for the game or mod you are
Now, with "Scale Tool" (the uniform scale tool) working on. (Image 10)
and the "Move Tool" let's get all our UV polygons
back onto the texture space. Move the uv poly-
gons we just relaxed so they are aligned with the
top and left edges of the texture space or "Can-
vas." Now use the Scale tool to scale down the
uv's. Note; Click and drag on the top left corner of 10
the selection.

Now "Invert" your selection again to select only

the caps. Click and drag on the bottom center of
the caps selection and scale down. Pay attention
to the size of the checkers in the viewport and the
size of the uv selection in the texture canvas.

It is CRITICAL that the checkers are as uniform

as possible to make painting easier, and that we
are using as much of the texture space as possi-
ble so that we don't have lots of pixels not being
used to add detail to our texture. I separated the
top and bottom caps and still I have too much un-
used space in my texture. (Image 09) Last thing in CINEMA 4D is to export a Wavefront
".obj" file for 3DS MAX, where we will convert the
Try to scale and move your uv polygons to use as OBJ into a SMD, and then we will use a QC with
much of the texture space as possible. an EXE to create a MDL! Doesn't that sound fun?!
I exported "oildrumC4D_obj.obj" from CINEMA
4D. Close CINEMA 4D.

3DS MAX (8)

3DS Max is the most reliable and fastest way to
convert your CINEMA 4D models into ".smd" files.
09 Since ".smd" is a special file type you will need to
install the SMD exporter plugin for MAX 6/7 (it
works fine with max 8). With the plugin installed I
start MAX up and import my "oildrumC4D_obj.obj"

37
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

with the OBJ importer settings shown in image

max_001, and then click on the tab I circled in
red; (Image 11)

13

11

14

To enable the UV's we created in Bodypaint add

an "Unwrap UVW" modifier from the Modifier drop
down list. (Image 12)

12

add the texture. Close the Edit UVW's window

and simply drag our "uv test bakecolor.tga" from
our '...sourcesdk_content\hl2\materialsrc' folder
and drop it onto the model in the MAX viewport.
(Image 15)

Now click on the tab I circled red shown here;

With the Unwrap UVW modifier selected you can
already see that our UV seams are where they
were in Bodypaint, this tends not to happen for
me in XSI|Modtool. Click on the "Edit" button to
double check our UV's imported correctly. (Image
13)
The UV's are ok, (Image 14) but there's one more
thing we must do before we export our SMD file,
(Image 16)
And under the File menu we will choose "Export"
or "Export Selected" change file type to "Valve
HL2 SMD (*SMD)" name the file "oildrumC4D"
and save to the "modelsrc" folder (A:\Program
Files\steam\steamapps\YOUR STEAM AC-
COUNT\sourcesdk_content\hl2\modelsrc) (Image
17).

38
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

15 18

17
16

$modelname oildrumC4D.mdl

$cdmaterials "models"

$surfaceprop "metal"

$scale 1.00

$body studio "oildrumC4D.smd"

Change the SMD Exporter option to "Reference"
as shown here; (Image 18) click the "Export" but-
ton and you should get a confirmation message
that your SMD was exported. In case we need to
re-export an updated SMD save this scene as a
".max" file. Close 3DS MAX.
Creating the QC file
Now we need to create a ".qc" file that tells the
compiler called Studiomdl.exe (among other
things) what files to compile, how the model will
interact with the environment, and where the files
are located.
In your modelsrc folder create a new text docu-
ment, open it up, copy the following lines, save
your file normally (i.e. ctrl+s) and your QC file is
done:
$staticprop
$sequence idle01 "oildrumC4D" ACT_IDLE 1 loop
fps 15
$collisionmodel "oildrumC4D"
{
$Mass 100
$concave
}
Now save this file with "Save As..." and note the
File name ending with ".qc" and the "save as
type" is set to "all files" as seen here; (Image 19).
The $cdmaterials "models" tells studiomdl.exe
where to find the "Valve Material File" or ".vmf"
file. The VMF file, in turn, tells the engine (NOT
the compiler) where the valve texture file or ".vtf"
is located. This way you can edit or swap textures

39
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

19 20

in the engine without having to reapply a different

texture in max and exporting and compiling again.
We will create the VMF file after the QC file is
done.

For this model $cdmaterials "models" = current

directory/materials/models folder, which is actually
"C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\YOUR
STEAM ACCOUNT\half-life 2\hl2\materials\mod-
els"

The value of $scale should always be set to 1.00.
If the model is too big or small you may change
this value and recompile for testing purposes. The
final models scaling should be done in the model-
ing application and this should be set to 1.00.
For details on these and other commands visit
this page;
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Qc#Indivi
dual_commands
Compile the Model:
Start STEAM, load the Source SDK and select
Half-Life 2 from the current games menu. (Image
20) This must be open in the background when
compiling.
In your C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\YOUR
STEAM ACCOUNT\sourcesdk_content\hl2\mod-
elsrc folder you should see your QC file, SMD file,
and studiomdl.exe. To compile we would simply
drag and drop the QC file onto the studiomdl.exe
but for this created an error. What I did was I cop-
ied my SMD and QC file and pasted the copies in
this folder C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\Y-
OUR STEAM ACCOUNT\sourcesdk\bin This time,
when I dragged the oildrumC4D.qc onto stu-
diomdl the model compiled without problems.
Viewing Models and Textures in Source:
Make sure that the correct Current Game is cho-
sen, in this case Half-Life 2, and load the applica-
tion "Model Viewer" then in model viewer go File--
>Load Model and you should see a mdl file name
oildrumC4D, double click on it. (Image 21)
-To rotate the model click and drag with the left
mouse button.
-To tilt the camera click and drag with the left
mouse button OUTSIDE of the model/circle.
-To zoom the camera in and out click and drag
with the right mouse button.
-To move the model hold shift+left mouse button
and drag.

40
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad
21
The purple/black checker is a default texture
model-viewer uses when there's a problem with
the vmf or vtf. To fix this and view our texture we
need a specially named VMF file in the location
we specified in the QC, and a VTF (the actual
texture map) in the current games materials
directory/subdirectory.
Now, in "Program Files\steam\steamapps\YOUR
STEAM ACCOUNT\sourcesdk\bin" there is an
application called Vtex. Drag the "uv test
bakeColor.tga" from the materialsrc explorer win-
22
41
dow and drop it onto Vtex. Here are my windows
after compiling; (Image 22)
Use the "uv test bakeColor.vmf" I created and
place it in C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\(y-
our steam account)\half-life 2\hl2\materials\mod-
els folder.
Now back in Model Viewer press the F5 key to
refresh the model and you should see the oil
drum you modeled in CINEMA 4D with the baked
reference texture on the model.
To move the light hold ctrl+left mouse button and
drag.
Everything looks good but the model has lost it's
phong tag smoothing, we will fix this quickly in
MAX. Start 3DS MAX and open up the saved
oildrumC4D.max scene. Select "Editable Mesh" in
the modifier stack, click "Yes" if a warning mes-
sage pops up and select the "Polygon" child of the
editable mesh. Now select all the polygons on the
model in the viewport. (Image 23)
23
Below the Modifier stack are the properties of the
currently selected modifier (Editable Mesh), at the
bottom you'll find the "Surface Properties" with
"Smoothing Groups."
In the "Auto Smooth" enter a value of at least
25.0, I entered 90.0. Press enter or click the Auto
Smooth button. (Image 24)
 Making Models for Half Life 2 (Game)
By Darrin Frankovitz aka Nirrad

24 25

dusty and other types of surfaces. If you have any

Export an updated SMD file, overwrite the previ-
ously exported SMD and drag the QC file onto
studiomdl. Press F5 in Model Viewer to refresh
the loaded oildrumC4D model.
problems or errors while compiling double check
directories and the QC file in the Goodies folder.
Feel free to private message me in 3D Attack and
I will gladly help you out.

If you can see your smoothed model with the test/ Darrin aka Nirrad
reference texture in model viewer then all you
need to do now is create a few more image maps,
create a vtf file for each map, edit the material file
to change or add texture maps and refresh model
viewer.

Using the checker texture we baked, I painted a

rusty clay-like texture (in goodies folder
"oildrumCOLOR.tga"), with a bump map and
compiled a vtf for the color and for the bump, up-
dated the vmt, refreshed model viewer
and...(Image 25)

Next time I will take a brief look at one of the

newest Source Engine shaders and add bump/
normal maps and specular maps to a model while
learning some of the ways these maps are modi-
fied in the VMF file to simulate wet, reflective,

42
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas

Contrary to its predecessor (interPoser Ltd.), that
only rendered possible importing already set
Poser scenes, the Pro edition of this CINEMA 4D
plugin by Robert Templeton seems to be a com-
plete solution that offers the possibility to use
commercial and other Poser content inside the
CINEMA 4D without having to install the Poser
software at all.
Namely, the plugin offers almost all elementary
Poser functions needed for preview, loading and
manipulation of various Poser content directly
inside the CINEMA 4D.
That means that CINEMA 4D users could finally
get rid of the painfully non-standard Poser UI and,
in spite of that, still be able to use numerous
Poser content without having to leave the comfort
of their favorite 3D program.
Background
If you're using a 3D software for a more serious
purpose than to test every new release or to
make a photorealistic render of an existent car
model every now and then, sooner or later you'll
run into a situation where you will need a more or
less realistic, static or animated human or animal
3D figure in your project.

43
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas

There are various solutions to that problem, from

using various RPC-tricks through buying a ready-
made 3D model to modeling (and eventually rig-
ging and weighting) the whole figure from the
scratch. While some hardcore modelers will try to
convince you that the latter is the only correct way
to go, at least if you're considering yourself a "true
3D artist" (whatever that might mean :] ), many of
us know very well that the answer is more com-
plex than that.

There are numerous situations in everyday ama-

teur or pro practice, when one needs a human or
animal figure or figures in a 3D project and the
high originality of the figure is not the prime direc-
tive. Sometimes the customer's budget, some-
times the deadline and sometimes both do not
allow for extra days or weeks to create and ani-
mate an original 3D figure from scratch.

Not to mention that there are many CG artists out

there who really don't care what some of the
narrow-minded experts, sitting at big 3D industry's
conveyor belts, think of their "professionalism".
Instead of just showing off with their technique
they tend to care about the final goal - the illustra-
tion or animation, following the principle that the
ends to justify the means.

So, they'll just grab any legal solution out there

that will allow them to equip their project with a
desired figure, as fast and cheap as possible.
One of the viable and extremely popular options
is to use the Poser software for that purpose.
internet. The latest releases of the program in-
clude such improvements as cloth and hair dy-
namics, node-based material editor and some
serious re-workings of the rendering engine.

About e frontier Poser software
Even though this article is not about the Poser
software, I'll try to outline it - especially the rea-
sons why an average CINEMA 4D user would
prefer NOT to have to use it. This well known
figure-generating software from e frontier (former
Curious Labs) offers a well-supplied library of
predefined human and animal figures, animated
poses and movements and lots more, at a very
reasonable price.
In addition to that, loads of the Poser content can
be bought or even downloaded for free on the
The program is incredibly popular, but I'm sad to
say, mostly amongst those who are not using a
full-featured 3D program. The reason for the
popularity is probably the fact that almost any-
body, even a person without any previous knowl-
edge in the field of 3D graphic, can relatively eas-
ily and quickly create a posed 3D human and
animal content and render it as static images or
animations in the program.
One of the unpleasant consequences is that to-
day's internet galleries are full of so called "gen-
erated" or "instant" 3D art: various renderings of
different figures and their surroundings, featuring

44
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas
extremely low quality posing, texturing, lighting
and rendering - and more often than not, a seri-
ous lack of taste.
Many users of a true 3D software, on the contrary,
are put off by the Poser's non-standard, childish
UI with tasteless 3D icons, the rather slow render-
ing engines that don't support multithreading (use
of more than one processor at once) etc. and
doesn't like the program at all.
They'd prefer to work (especially when it comes to
modeling and rendering) in their preferred 3D
software and still be able to use the Poser content
in there. Unfortunately, until now such a luxury
was unimaginable. At least not possible in an ele-
gant way.
The usual procedure involved loading a figure in
Poser, posing and eventually animating it there
(while cursing over the slow and exotic UI), ex-
porting it (usually through the Wavefront format)
to their 3D program and if everything went OK,
searching for, copying, reapplying and adjusting
the textures "by hand". In the case of CINEMA
45
4D, there are a couple of plugins on the market,
intended to automate some aspects of the proc-
ess but nothing else, one of them being the old
interPoser Ltd. plugin by Robert Templeton.
interPoser Pro was born...
Fortunately, for the CINEMA 4D users, Robert
decided that it can be done better. Therefore he
envisioned a new plugin, the one that would en-
able numerous Poser content to be used directly
inside CINEMA 4D. So the interPoser Pro plugin
was born.
As with most of the other CINEMA 4D plugins, the
installation procedure is pretty simple: you just
copy the files to your plugins folder, restart the
program and enter the serial number when asked
to do so. The new plugin will be hiding in the Plug-
ins menu and you can transfer it from there to a
more suitable menu location. The installation will
also add a new tag group, the InterPoser Tags, in
the File menu of the Object Manager.
A click on the plugin will open the interPoser Pro
window. It can be left to float and to be open,
closed or minimized when needed, but I'd suggest
to dock it instead at a convenient location so that
it is not in the way and then save the CINEMA 4D
layout as the Startup Layout.
Using the Poser content
As noted before, the plugin does not need the
Poser software in order to function, but of course
it is desirable to have at least one folder with
some Poser content (i.e. Runtime folder and its
basic structure) anywhere on the disk. When you
first run the plugin, you have to set path to that
folder(s) and save the configuration.
Once the paths to Runtimes are set, the use of
the plugin is pretty straightforward, especially to
someone who has at least vague experience with
the Poser software. First you select a basic figure
from the user-friendly, Explorer-like view of the
content library.
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas

The plugin even features large, Poser-like pre-

view icons, if they are available in the library. If
you still can't find the figure, prop or anything else
you need due to the large library, you'll just love
the built-in, full-featured search and filter func-
tions! After clicking on a figure, it will be loaded
into the CINEMA 4D working space, retaining the
original joint hierarchy. Yes, the skeleton of an
imported figure is actually joint-based instead of
using the CINEMA 4D bone system.

If you ever tried to re-rig an imported Poser figure

in CINEMA 4D, you'd probably find out that it is an
almost impossible task, due to the different "phi-
losophy" of the skeleton; you'd practically need to
remodel and re-weight the character from the
scratch for that.

The actual differences between the two rigging

methods are beyond the scope of this article,
though. The joints (i.e. the skeleton) in interPoser
Pro are represented as a hierarchy of "iPP Base"
objects, with a special bone joint icon in the Ob-
ject Manager. New content (non-conforming hair,
clothing etc.) can be added to a Poser figure in
two basic ways: as a figure or as a prop. The in-
terPoser plugin follows that logic.
To add a prop, you first select the main figure,
while another figure can be conformed to the ex-
isting one after importing, using the special Figure
tag and the drag-and-drop method. Besides the
Poser figures it is also possible to conform a
CINEMA 4D polygon geometry to another figure.
It has to be prepared in a special way, though, (as
described in the manual) and to carry a special
tag (iPP C4D Figure tag).
Importing a Poser scene
Scene tab.
The textures, belonging to the objects in the
scene will load correctly, including the .BUM for-
mat that automatically gets converted to a stan-
dard grayscale texture (great!). Since the conver-
sion process can take some time it is possible to
turn off that option in the interPoser Pro prefer-
ences.
The reference is still created in the Bump channel
of the affected materials, so you can convert the
texture(s) later at your own leisure, using an inte-
grated conversion function.

If you want to load an already made Poser scene
(.PZZ or .PZ3) in interPoser Pro and continue to
work on it in the CINEMA 4D environment, the
process is even simpler: just click the Actions >
Load button and select the scene file.
It will load in CINEMA 4D according to the previ-
ously defined settings, regarding the import of
Poser cameras, Poser lights and/or the Ground
Plane. All that can be set under the Preference >
The Copy Textures to Scene Folder button is an-
other thing you might find very useful, even
though the same result can be achieved by the
"Save Project" menu option in CINEMA 4D.
The suggested practice when working on an im-
ported Poser scene is to save it immediately as a
CINEMA 4D file for further edits, thus avoiding the

46
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas

need to convert it all over again when needed for

another purpose.

Setting up the pose

After importing a figure, either as content or from

a scene, and selecting its Figure tag or its body
part joint, the Poser dials for setting up various
parameters for the part that appears amongst
other settings in the Attribute Manager. They are
represented as standard CINEMA 4D sliders.
Each dial is represented by the dial name, a Float
Slider with EditField and an Edit button. Of course
this representation can be changed by using the
User Interface option in CINEMA 4D.

The good news is that they are very quick and

responsive compared to working with dials in the
Poser, even with C4D viewports set to Gouraud
Shading mode. All Poser dial types are supported
(Transform, Morph, Hand Controls etc.). Every
change of a "dial" value generates a correspond-
ing keyframe and the change can be monitored in
the Timeline window.

These "dial" sliders are the only way to pose a

figure in interPoser Pro. Cinema 4D's own coordi-
nate system and the PSR tools can not be used
for that purpose, since in author's own words,
"there has been no solution for converting CIN-
EMA 4D HPB rotations into Poser axis-oriented
rotations consistently".

For those who might thus miss the possibility of

interactive posing there's another tool in the
package, the iPP Tool. When activated, it offers
the interactive transformations on the selected
body part by manipulating the three colored
bands with the mouse, plus by offering some use-
ful additional information in its window in the At-
tribute Manager.

Those of you who used to work in Poser would

ometry of the body part there (or even add some
probably appreciate that the standard Cinema 4D
hair using the Hair module etc.), without influenc-
Undo / Redo system is available and fully func-
ing the posing process (you must enable that op-
tional while working with interPoser Pro. Another
tion in the interPoser Pro preferences first). Keep
good news is that if you own CINEMA 4D 9.0 or
in mind, though, that whatever you do in the sub-
later, it is possible to go to the Point, Edge or
model modes, the Point/Polygon order and count
Polygon modes and edit the corresponding ge-

47
 InterPoser Pro 1.00 - Plugin Review
By Daniel Lovas
shouldn't be altered, since morphs and weighting
are based on them.
Conclusion
In general, when it comes to importing scene or
content files and posing an imported figure, inter-
Poser Pro has proved to offer not all, but most of
the tools featured in the Poser program, while
being faster and using more standard and user-
friendly UI.
The purpose of this article is to give a general
idea of what the new plugin functions and feels,
and not to serve as the plugin's manual.
That's the reason I skipped lots of various and
very useful additional settings and options that
this plugin offers (for example, setting the import
scale, enabling and disabling Bulges, numerous
options for materials and dials conversion, figure
parts visibility settings, root-parent-child relations
etc...).
When reviewing a program I usually try to be as
neutral as possible and to dig out the bugs and
glitches in the program as well. In the case of the
interPoser Pro plugin, that proved quite difficult.
I've been playing with the final (1.00) version for
about a couple of days now and while the beta
versions crashed every now and then when
pushed to certain limits, the final one seems to be
surprisingly stable so far.
I say "surprisingly", considered the complexity of
the plugin and the fact that some badly prepared
Poser content is known to crash the Poser itself.
Some of the known, minor issues are described
by the author in the manual and some of them are
being resolved as you read this. It is true that
many of the Poser functions are not implemented
yet. Some of them, like the support for the Poser's
Magnets and other deformers, Dynamic Cloth,
Dynamic Hair, Image Based Lighting and Ambient
Occlusion are of second importance to CINEMA
4D users (at least to those ones owning the Ad-
vanced Render, Hair and Clothilde) even though
48
some of them might come in handy when import-
ing Poser scenes made by others.
One Poser feature to be missed is definitely the
Python scripting - even though it is not only the
case with interPoser Pro, it could apply to the rest
of the CINEMA 4D environment as well ;) . Other
Poser features one might miss in the interPoser
Pro include Face Room Morphs, BVH import onto
Poser object, PMD (external Binary Morphs), Cus-
tom Figure, Alternate Geometry, Smooth Scale,
Curve and the Taper (included with the dials but
not yet fully implemented).
The price is $100 (only till October 15; will be
$150 later!), upgrade from interPoser Ltd. is $50
and any additional license will set you back for
another $20. From what I've seen so far, the
plugin is imho well worth the price.
Let us hope that the plugin support will continue
and that it will stay compatible with the versions of
Poser to come. And of course - don't trust my
words, as my habits, preferences and expecta-
tions might be completely different or even oppo-
site to your own.
Check the developer's site instead, visit the fo-
rum, download the fully functional 30-day demo
version (if you use it with CINEMA 4D Demo, it is
time-unlimited!) of the plugin there and see it for
yourself.
The developer's site:
http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/inte
rposer_pro.html
Daniel Lovas
 Spotlight on Brian Harrison
Featured Artist of the month
Name: Brian Harrison
Age: 21
Occupation: Currently applying for Graphic
Design Work
Location: Yorkshire, England
Software: CINEMA 4D, Bodypaint
Favorite resources on the web:
http://www.3dattack.net
http://www.c4dcafe.com
http://www.3dcafe.com
http://www.3dworldmag.com
http://www.renderosity.com
I’ve been into most forms or graphic design /art since I
can remember. As far back as I can remember I’ve
been fascinated by art. I have tried just about every
way I can think of making art all the way through
school. There’s just something about graphic design /
art. I couldn’t get enough of it.
When I went to college, I started studying web design
and programming with Visual Basic. This also intro-
duced me to basic 2D graphic design where I got expo-
sure to graphic design on computers, using paint shop
pro to create logos, backgrounds, buttons, etc for my
web pages. I got a free copy of CINEMA 4D CE 6 on a
magazine cover disk about 2 years ago. That was my
first introduction to CINEMA 4D.
I haven’t stopped since that day! I was amazed by how
easy it was. After trying other 3d programs, and coming
to a dead end, CINEMA was just so user friendly and
easy to come to grips with. I used CINEMA 4D CE 6 for
about a year creating simple scenes and basic models
and animations. That’s when I knew I was hooked on
CINEMA 4D.
Then on Christmas 2005, I got the chance to use cin-
ema 9.5 and I haven’t stopped. I don’t mind admitting it,
but it’s become a bit of an addiction. I just couldn’t be-
lieve it could be so easy to create quality images. I re-
member the first model I made with CINEMA 9.5, it was
a bathroom scene. This was also the first thing I posted
on the 3D Attack forum in the WIP section. Being com-
pletely new to the CINEMA 4D community, this was the
first time I saw the work from some of the seasoned
49
CINEMA 4D artists, posting in the WIP section. Sud-
denly my work didn’t look quite so good any more. But
instead of it being disheartening, it inspired me to learn
new techniques and skills and eventually I got better.
I remember seeing the work of Matthias Bober and
Jamie Hamel-Smith for the first time in the WIP forum.
It’s astounding to see that you could create such fine
works of art with CINEMA 4D. Seeing their work has
been a big inspiration for me, giving me something to
work towards.
I don’t really have a main subject or focus. I like to
model a variety of items. Just anything that captures my
current state of being. I have modelled everything from
key rings to full cars and cartoon characters. I like the
challenge of trying to model different objects. The fun
thing for me is finding the best way to model items that
I’ve never attempted before.
If I had to pick my best subject to model, it would have
to be out door scenes. There is just so much you can
put into an outdoor scene. You can get really creative
with them, as there are no boundaries, which is what I
like. Since coming to the 3D Attack forum, I have
learned a lot of modelling and lighting skills. My textur-
ing is what I am working on at the moment, as I know it
could be a whole lot better. I am currently learning how
to use BodyPaint, as this seems to be an in-
dispensable tool for texturing.
I’ve also learned most of what I know now from the 3D
Attack community. I must also give credit to the guys
and gals over at the c4d café because they have
helped me a lot over the past 9 months. As for the fu-
ture, who knows?
I hope to find a job working with CINEMA 4D full time,
but there really aren’t many opportunities for 3d artists
where I live. Until the right one comes along, I will keep
creating and posting for you all to look at.
Thanks for reading about me and I look forward to see-
ing you online!
Bri.
Spotlight on Brian Harrison
Featured Artist of the month

50
Best of CINEMA 4D - Gallery
Selected Art by 3D ATTACK

Artist Name: Anthony Minto

Image Name : Clown Prince of Crime
Date Created: September 8th 2006
Software Used: CINEMA 4D XL7 & Photoshop
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.freewebs.com/minty1974
Best of CINEMA 4D - Gallery
Selected Art by 3D ATTACK

Artist Name: Mark Gmehling aka macling

Image Name: my House Goblin
Country: Germany
Software Used: CINEMA 4D Rel.9 / Photoshop
Date Created: Jule/2006
Website: www.braincorps.de
Best of CINEMA 4D - Gallery
Selected Art by 3D ATTACK

Artist Name: Matt Roussel

Image Name: Happiness
Date Created: September 2006
Software Used: CINEMA 4D photoshop
Country: France
Website: www.mattroussel.com
Best of CINEMA 4D - Gallery
Selected Art by 3D ATTACK

Name: Michael A. Daglas

Country: San Diego Ca. U.S.A.
Softwares: Hexagon and CINEMA 4D 9.5
Date Created : 9/5/06
Image Name : Old School
Best of CINEMA 4D - Gallery
Selected Art by 3D ATTACK

Artist Name: Jason Clark

Image Name: Mobile Oil Rig
Date Created: August 2006
Country: Canada
Software Used: Pro/ENGINEER, PolyTrans, CINEMA 4D,
finalRender Stage-2, Photoshop
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling
GERMAN VERSION
In diesem Tutorial möchte ich Ihnen zeigen, wie
man effektiv und zielgerichtet einen Turnschuh
modelliert. In Deutschland gibt es ein Sprichwort:
die Schuhe eines Menschen sagen viel über
seine Persönlichkeit aus. Wenn euer Herz für die
Charakter-Animation schlägt, empfehle ich euch,
ein paar Schuhe in eurer Objekt-Bibliothek zu ha-
ben. Detaillierte und sauber modellierte Schuhe
werden das Erscheinungsbild deiner Figur mit
Sicherheit aufwerten.
Der Fokus des ersten Teil dieses Tutorials liegt
auf dem Modeling. In der nächsten Ausgabe wer-
den wir die Geometrie für eine bessere Animier-
barkeit optimieren, texturieren und ausleuchten.
Sämtliche Arbeitsschritte können mit Cinema4d
ab Version 6 nachvollzogen werden.
Zunächst benutze ich einen Würfel um die grobe
Form des Schuhs zu Modellieren. Ich erstelle also
einen Würfel und ändere seine Attribute folgen-
dermaßen: x/y/z 4/2/4. Außerdem ändere ich die
Z-Größe in 400.
Ich benutze 4 Segmente entlang der X-Achse,
denn dadurch bleiben mir 2 Segmente übrig, so-
bald ich die Hälfte des Modells lösche, um es in
einem Symmetrie-Objekt zu verwenden. Auf diese
Weise kann ich Zeit sparen, bis ich das
Symmetrie-Objekt editierbar mache, um die
asymmetrischen Elemente eines Schuhs/Fußes
hinzuzufügen. Nun drücke ich die Taste C, wo-
durch der Würfel editierbar wird.
Ich schalte in die Draufsicht (F2) und den
Punktmodus um die linke Hälfte des Würfels mit-
56
tels der Rechteck-Selektion zu selektieren. Damit
auch die nicht sichtbar Punkte selektiert werden,
deaktiviere ich die Option nur sichtbare in den
Attributen der Rechteck-Selektion. Für mich ist es
zu einer guten Angewohnheit geworden, mit der
Rechteck-Selektion immer auch gleichzeitig die
unsichtbaren Objekte selektieren zu lassen, die
Live-Selektion aber ausschließlich für sichtbare
Objekte zu verwenden.
Nachdem ich die selektierten Punkte gelöscht
habe (Entfernen- oder Rücktaste), erstelle ich mit
gedrückt gehaltener Alt-Taste ein Symmetrie-
Objekt, da, in Cinema4D 9 und höher, dadurch
automatisch zum übergeordneten Objekt des
Würfels wird.
Frühere Versionen sind noch nicht mit dieser
praktischen Arbeitserleichterung ausgestattet.
Hier muss deshalb erst ein Symmetrie-Objekt er-
stellt, und der Würfel dann von Hand untergeord-
net werden. Hierfür muß der Würfel auf das
Symmetrie-Objekt geschoben werden.
Bevor ich den Würfel an meine Vorstellungen an-
passe, markiere ich das Symmetrie-Objekt und
erzeuge dann mit gedrückter Alt-Taste ein
HyperNURBS-Objekt.
Wie schon weiter oben erklärt, wird das
Symmetrie-Objekt dadurch dem HyperNURBS-
Objekt untergeordnet. In der Seitenansicht (F3)
verwende ich jetzt die Rechteck-Selektion sowie
das Verschieben-Werkzeug (E), um den Würfel in
eine tatsächlich an einen Schuh erinnernde Form
zu bringen. PIC_01
01
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling
GERMAN VERSION
In der Seitenansicht sieht das schon ganz passa-
bel aus. Darum schalte ich nun in die Draufsicht
(F2) und passe die äußeren Punkte mit der
Rechteck-Selektion und dem Verschieben-
Werkzeug (E). Die Grundform des Schuhs baue
ich frei nach meinen Vorstellungen - es soll ein
ziemlich stilisierter Schuh werden. Nun schalte ich
in die 3D-Ansicht (F1) und passe die Rundungen
des oberen Teils an.
In diesem Fall verwende ich die Live-Selektion.
Abschließend kommt noch ein FFD-Objekt zum
Einsatz. Im Polygon-Modus modelliere ich noch
die Öffnung für einen späteren Fuß. Dazu werden
die in PIC_02 gezeigten Polygone markiert und
nach innen extrudiert (I).
Das überhängende Polygon wird gelöscht und
nach Wechsel in den Punkte-Modus werden die
drei zu weit hinter der Symmetrie-Achse liegen-
den Punkte im Koordinaten-Manager auf X=0 ge-
setzt. Für diesen Arbeitsschritt empfiehlt es sich,
das HyperNURBS-Objekt vorübergehend zu
deaktivieren, damit auch alle Punkte sichtbar
werden (Q). PIC_02
02
Bevor ich das Loch schneide, aktivierte ich wieder
die Seitenansicht (F3) und justiere die Form des
Schuhs erneut. Auch hierbei kommen Rechteck-
Selektion und Verschieben-Werkzeug (E) zum
Einsatz. Zurück in der 3D-Ansicht (F1) schalte ich
in den Polygon-Modus und selektiere die vorhin
neu erzeugten Polygone mit der Live-Selektion.
57
Um sicherzustellen, dass die bevorstehende
Extrusion auch gerade verläuft, werden die selek-
tierten Polygone im Koordinaten-Manager auf
Y=0 gesetzt. Jetzt werden die Polygone einfach
gelöscht.
An dieser Stelle treffe ich eine Entscheidung:
Ich werde dem Modell vorerst keine Dicke geben,
da ich diese auch später problemlos hinzufügen
kann.
Mit dieser Vorgehensweise lässt sich schneller
und praktischer arbeiten. Zuguterletzt wird die
Öffnung im Punkte-Modus mithilfe des
Verschieben-Werkzeugs (E) noch etwas runder
gemacht. PIC_03
03
Jetzt ist es an der Zeit die Oberflächen zu separi-
eren. Dazu werden die in PIC_04 gezeigten Poly-
gone ausgewählt und über Funktionen -> Abtren-
nen (in älteren Versionen dürfte sich diese Funk-
tion im Menü Struktur wiederfinden).
Durch Abtrennen wird eine Kopie der selektierten
Polygone erzeugt. Die ursprünglichen Polygone
können gelöscht werden. Damit der Würfel und
das soeben erzeugte Objekt gleichermaßen vom
HyperNURBS-Objekt und dem Symmetrie-Objekt
erfasst werden, müssen beide einem neuen
Null-Objekt untergeordnet werden.
Als nächstes wird die Schuhsohle definiert. In der
Seitenansicht (F3) schneide ich deshalb mithilfe
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling
GERMAN VERSION
des Messers (K) drei Kanten. Die Schnitte sollen
exakt waagerecht verlaufen, was ich durch ge-
drückt halten der Shift-Taste erreiche. Dies würde
bei Verwendung der Option Loop automatisch
geschehen, doch steht diese Option in älteren
Versionen von Cinema4D leider nicht zur
Verfügung. PIC_04
04
Eine der umlaufenden Kanten wird nun mit der
Rechteck-Selektion markiert und etwas ver-
kleinert PIC_05. Ich reduziere die Höhe der Sohle
ein wenig und passe die Form mit den üblichen
We r k z e u g e n ( R e c h t e c k - S e l e k t i o n u n d
Verschieben-Werkzeug) entlang der Y-Achse an.
Mir fällt auf, daß ich noch einen Loop entlang der
Z-Achse benötige. Dafür benutze ich das oben
beschriebene Messer (K) und schneide mittels
der Option Linie eine neue Kante in das Objekt.
05
58
Dieses Mal jedoch vertikal. Die so entstandenen
Punkte helfen mir dabei, die Form der Sohle nach
meinen Wünschen zu gestalten. PIC_05
Jetzt füge ich einen weiteren Schnitt hinzu, um
dem Schuh eine glaubwürdige Form zu geben.
Dieses Mal benutze ich das Messer (K) im Loop-
Modus. Nun möchte ich die Spitze und die Rück-
seite des Schuhs separieren.
Ich markiere deshalb die in Bild PIC_05 gezeigten
Polygone und benutze wieder die Funktion Ab-
trennen, kann mir aber diesmal das Löschen der
ursprünglichen Polygone sparen. Ich skaliere die
neue Geometrie ein wenig kleiner
(Überschneidungen mit dem Schuh sind kein
Problem) und mache sie durch eine Extrusion (A)
dicker. Auch hier ist es notwendig die Polygone zu
entfernen, welche entlang der Symmetrie-Achse
verlaufen. PIC_06
06
Ich kümmere mich nun um die richtige Positionie-
rung der Punkte, was ich mit der Rechteck-
Selektion und dem Verschieben-Werkzeug bew-
erkstelligen kann. Es ist mir wichtig dass die
Spitze, sowie die Rückseite auf eine glaubwür-
dige Art und Weise mit der Schuhsohle verbunden
sind. Verschiedentlich muss sich weitere Schnitte
Einfügen, damit ich das Objekt in die gewünschte
Form bringen kann.
Bild PIC_07 zeigt, wo mit dem Messer im Loop-
Modus weitere, horizontale Kanten geschnitten
wurden. Daraufhin füge ich einen vertikalen
Schnitt ein und ändere die Geometrie noch ein-
mal. Nachdem ich mit der Ausrichtung zufrieden
bin, trenne ich noch ein weiteres Segment des
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling
GERMAN VERSION
Schuhs ab. Auf Bild PIC_07 kann man sehen,
welche Polygone abgetrennt werden sollen. Das
abgetrennte Objekt überschneidet sich mit dem
vorher manipulierten Objekt, weshalb ich zuerst
die sich überschneidenden Punkte bearbeiten
muss. PIC_07
07
Zum verändern dieser Objekte ist das Gleiten-
Werkzeug sehr Hilfreich (Benutzer von älteren
Versionen müssen das auf die herkömmliche
Weise, also mit dem Verschieben-Werkzeug, tun).
Während ich das Objekt manipuliere, Extrudiere
ich auch die Polygone (D). Wie schon weiter oben
erklärt, müssen die Polygone, welche entlang der
Symmetrie-Achse verlaufen, gelöscht werden.
Hierfür deaktiviere ich das Symmetrie-Objekt und
selektiere das betreffende Polygon mithilfe der
Live-Selektion.
In der Draufsicht (F2) setze ich die Punkte der Z-
Achse unter Position und Größe auf 0. es gibt
noch einen weiteren Teil, der abgetrennt werden
muss. PIC_08 zeigt, welche Polygone das sind.
Die Vorgehensweise sollte jetzt kein Hindernis
mehr darstellen. Nachdem der Vorgang ab-
geschlossen ist, benutze ich das Gleiten-
Werkzeug, um die Punkte korrekt anzuordnen
und schließlich bereinige ich die Punkte des Ob-
jekts. Der einzige Unterschied zur weiter oben
beschriebenen Vorgehensweise ist das zuvor ex-
trudiere Polygon. PIC_08
Jetzt füge ich dem zuallererst abgetrennten Teil
eine Dicke hinzu. Auf Bild PIC_09 kann man se-
59
08
hen, was mit dem Verschieben-Werkzeug (E) zu
tun ist. Wieder müssen Punkte eingefügt werden,
was ich mit dem Messer erledige. Im Folgenden
selektiere ich die erzeugten Punkte.
Ich werde im Objekt-Manager das abgetrennte
Objekt aus und selektiere mithilfe der Tastenkom-
bination CTRL-A (Apfel-A) sämtliche Polygone
des Objekts und Extrudiere sie ein wenig (D) und
wieder muss ich mich um die Polygone entlang
der Symmetrie-Achse kümmern, indem ich genau
diese lösche.
Mittlerweile sieht der Schuh schon sehr nach
einem Schuh aus, doch es fehlen noch einige
Details. Aus diesem Grund erzeuge ich ein Ring-
Grundobjekt mit 4 Rohr- und 4 Ring-Segmenten,
sowie einem Radius von 75 Metern. Dieses Ob-
jekt mache ich über die Taste C editierbar und
schiebe es in das Null-Objekt, in welchem auch
die anderen Objekte stecken.
Mit dem Skalieren-Werkzeug (T) drücke ich den
Ring entlang der Y-Achse etwas zusammen. Um
den Ring in die richtige Position zu bringen ver-
wende ich das Skalieren- (T), verschieben- (E),
sowie das Rotations-Werkzeug (R).
Bild PIC_09 zeigt, worum es geht. Nachdem ich
mit der Positionierung des Objekt des zufrieden
bin, schiebe ich es mit festgehaltener CTRL-Taste
3 mal in den Objekt-Manager und positioniere
auch diese an die richtige Stelle. PIC_09
Jetzt kann ich endlich die Schnürsenkel model-
lieren. Ich erzeuge einfach einen komplett neuen
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling
GERMAN VERSION
09
Würfel, setze seine Segment im Attribut-Manager
in X/Y/Z auf 3/1/2 und schiebe es - nachdem ich
es editierbar gemacht habe (C) - zu den anderen
Objekten in das Null-Objekt, wodurch es ebenfalls
vom HyperNURBS-Objekt beeinflusst wird. Die
Form passe ich mit dem Skalieren-Werkzeug (T)
an.
Nun schalte ich in die Draufsicht (F2), setze einen
Schnitt mit dem Messer und achte darauf, die Po-
sition der neuen Punkte im Koordinaten-Manager
auf X=0 zu verschieben. Danach lösche ich die
Punkte links der Z-Achse. Durch Skalieren- (T),
Verschieben- (E), und das Rotations-Werkzeug
(R) verschiebe ich das neue Objekt an die richtige
Position, was ich in 3D-Ansicht (F1) durchführe.
Wie ich es schon erwartet hatte, muss das Objekt
nun an die Ringe angepasst werden. Am rechten
Ende des Würfels füge ich eine weitere Punkt-
Reihe ein und nehme mir genügend Zeit, die
Punkte so in den Ring einzulassen, dass ein
glaubwürdiger Übergang entsteht.
Nachdem ich zufrieden bin, erzeuge ich kopien
des Würfels, indem ich ihn mit gehaltener CTRL-
Taste verschiebe. Ich wiederhole die Anpassung-
sprozedur, und mache dies mit jedem weiteren
Objekt ebenso. PIC_10
Wenn ich mir den Schuh so ansehe, habe ich das
Gefühl, der Teil hinten am Knöchel sollte die
Kante komplett abdecken. Deshalb wähle ich das
entsprechende Objekt im Objekt-Manager aus
60
10
und selektiere seine äußere Punkte im Punkt-
Modus. Jetzt kann ich sie an den richtigen Ort
verschieben (E).
In diesem Fall kümmere ich mich nicht um die
Form dazwischen, weil diese korrigiert wird, in-
dem ich eine Punkt-Reihe einfüge und dann seine
Position manipuliere.
Abschließend möchte ich an meinen Schuhen
noch seitliche Streifen haben. Dafür setze ich
wieder einen Würfel mit Segmenten X/Y/Z auf 2/
3/1 (im Attribut-Manager) und mache ihn editier-
bar (C). Wieder schiebe ich das Objekt in das
Null-Objekt und platzierte es in der 3D-Ansicht mit
dem Verschieben-Werkzeug (PIC_11).
Um den Streifen der Form des Schuhs anzupas-
sen, erzeuge ich zwei Schnitte (K) entlang der Y-
Achse. Hat der Streifen die richtige Form, kopiere
ich ihn 2x wie oben beschrieben und positioniere
dann die kopien, wie ich es auch mit den
Schnürsenkeln gemacht habe. PIC_11/12
Im Großen und Ganzen ist der Schuh jetzt ziem-
lich vollendet, doch das Null-Objekt strotzt nur so
von Objekten. Im nächsten Teil dieses Tutorials,
den wir in der nächsten Ausgabe bringen, werde
ich zeigen, wie all diese Objekte zusammengefügt
und mit prozeduralen Shadern texturiert werden.
Außerdem werde ich die Schuhe ein wenig in
Szene setzen und die Form der Schuhe mithilfe
von Deformatoren etwas weniger symmetrisch
 Turnschuh Modelieren
Author: Mark Gmehling

GERMAN VERSION

11

gestalten. Ich hoffe ihr hattet Spaß mit diesem

Tutorial und würde mich sehr freuen, den einen
oder anderen Schuh an euren Charakteren zu
entdecken.

Sollten irgendwo Schwierigkeiten auftauchen,

scheue dich nicht, einen WIP-Beitrag im entspre-
chenden Forum zu schreiben. Unsere Community
wird dir mit Rat und Tat zur Seite stehen.
12
Bis bald im Forum und keep attacking!

Mark

Uebersetzung bei: Georg Niedermeier aka "Sad"

61
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