In part one of this tutorial, I show you how to set up a camera projected scene in Cinema 4D using a photograph. Then we animate the letters using Mograph 2 and light the scene by using a combonation of Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion.
In Part Two of the tutorial, I will show you how to set up this scene for multi-pass rendering, Depth of Field and for compositing in After Effects.
WATCH PART 2 HERE
Final Result
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88 Comments
Great Tutorial! Thank you very much! Can’t wait for part 2!
This looks brilliant, i can’t wait to watch!
Wow Nick…your really taking the site to the next level with all these tutorials in 2010…Keep it up…your an inspiration to a lot of young motion designers..just like myself
Cool thanks for this, I am about to do a project that involves camera mapping. I am going to use footage though, I would love to see a tut using film.
I hope you’ll address the daunting task of combining photographs in part2. Not for the faint of heart in my experience, even with C4D and Projection Man.
Wow Nick, you’re giving away everything! We’ll all be out of a job soon!
Very cool!
Agustin on January 13th, 2010 said...
Great tutorial! i can´t wait to see the second part! Keep it up Nick!
Hi there Lawrence!!!! I meet you everywhere! hahaha
Completely awesome insane tut! Kudos man…
chris on January 18th, 2010 said...
can this be done using mograph 1 ?
The Gorilla on January 18th, 2010 said...
No, Unfortunately, You need Mograph 2 to get the dynamic tags.
Hooraay, this is the kind of tutorial I expect from a leading digi-artist
Thanks again !
Amazing tutorial, I am learning so much!
thanks nick!
You’re awesome Nick. This is a really great look at camera projection. I always pick up a thing or two watching you work and I really appreciate the time you put into it.
Nice job as usual Nick, fun to watch your process. One thing that I think would have been helpful to explain is that the Background object is there purely for reference in order to build your projection geometry, and isn’t used at all as part of the final render – and can in fact be turned off. Otherwise, it gets a little confusing to see both it and the planes included in the renders.
djuna on February 12th, 2010 said...
hi Mark, I have that problem. How do you turn that off though?
Thanks! There are so many entry level tutorials and not enough tutorials like these for people like us who are really trying to further the design knowledge we already have.
excellent tutorial. but I was expecting Alexia do to the tutorial. a little bit disappointed here.
Thumbs up! Soooo useful. Looking foreward to part II
I really wanted to learn this stuff. Gives a lot of tips, thx Gorilla.
Exactly what I wanted a tutorial! Thanks so much man.
Very, very useful.
Thanks.
My buddy Brian helped me use camera mapping in C4D to create this: http://dropbox.teamgroup.tv/data/travel/MVF_Live/MVF_Live_2010/richman-head-1-post.mov
The Gorilla on January 13th, 2010 said...
Nice one, Dave. Did you model the face?
Shawn B on January 13th, 2010 said...
Thats Hella Creepy!
Robby on January 13th, 2010 said...
Yeah, how detailed was the model?
daveglanz on January 13th, 2010 said...
The model for the face was just a modified head from a .obj file I had. The model was not very detailed at all – my main concern was making sure the front of the head looked just convincing enough to pull off the effect.
Yong on January 14th, 2010 said...
wow Dave.. can you please tell me how to do that?
It’s so real !!!
Jswift on January 20th, 2010 said...
Sick!!!
Very Nice. I’ve done a lot of camera mapping but was always fighting with matching the lights. Never thought a ’simple’ V-gradient on the sky would be such a flexible sollution!
Still deciding if I should upgrade from R11 to R11.5 or wait for R12. Mograph 2 and the Tile rendering probably justify the upgrade on their own!
Any idea when R12 will be released?
P.S. – Can’t wait for the HDR Lighting Studio thingy!
ding it, i’m in love with a gorilla… thx so much for the awesome tutorial! one thing, though: have you ever encountered the problem with the mograph dynamics that when you render, everything falls differently than you see it unrendered in your scene? I’ve bumped into that problem a lot and couldn’t find any way to fix it. that’s pretty frustrating of you’ve tweaked the settings just so you like it and when render and everything falls/hits/smashes differently. however, this tutrotial really made my day. best from germany – roman
ps: we’ve actually met at ae ny, in case you remember – in case this helps – the guy with the strange german accent
Pommbaer on January 15th, 2010 said...
Check your project settings – Output Framerate should be the same as the project setting Framerate.
Viktor on January 18th, 2010 said...
This does not work either. 30 fps both in render settings and project settings.
Jeppe Rasmussen on January 21st, 2010 said...
When tweaked – bake it
Roman on January 28th, 2010 said...
baking it is the answer! why it does that even when the frame rate is identical, remains unclear to me… anways, thank you!
I was just watching a tut on fxPhd and they did this in 3dMax and I was wondering how to do it in c4d.Nice.
Alright, I’ve made it all the way through part one, and things are looking great. I’ll be watching out for part 2.
http://dcbryan.com/external_hosting/progress.jpg
Josh on January 14th, 2010 said...
Are the shadows of the cubes coming from the left? Or left with R around ~17degrees.
And the sun is in the back.
Still the sun produces some really hard shadows when the cubes some area?
Althou the Color Grading is perfects in my opinion
Great Job. I liked it 
Looking for the animation
David on January 20th, 2010 said...
Hey Josh, here’s what I ended up with.
http://vimeo.com/8874043
como siempre increible nick!!!!!!!
you’re the “man”
Nice one Nick!
Was really cheering you on with that Solid Body tag!
Very enjoyable as usual. Much appreciated!
Hey nick,
Is this technique possible if your image is panoramic? For example say I have a panorama that sweeps around 360 degrees… can I somehow use camera mapping on it? Thanks!
Thank you again Nick, really love the C4D tuts and the Web is lacking quality ones like this.
Awesome awesome job. Can’t wait for PT2.
nick thx for u exist AUHUHAUHA yeah someone should take the attitude and disseminate the lessons of cinema 4d
This is great Nick, taking it to the next level.
thanks for sharing so much knowledge, I have learned a lot with your tutorials, thank you very much
another classic.
Keep um coming Nick!
I thought I would test out the tutorial and do some post too
Thanks for the awesome direction Nick.. I copied the style best I could which I guess is not too beneficial, it was more of an experiment!
http://vimeo.com/8732316
Rendered at 5fps because GI is just way too slow on this macbook.. Mac Pro coming on the 16th!
Josh on January 14th, 2010 said...
Hi Jon
Is there any AO?
and you managed to find a big grass pic as I can see. That’s nice, but you should interact with it, when the letters come down.
You can add some hair /grass/ on the ground and do some compositing with elements coming from the ground when the text BOMBS.
I mean some dust, air etc… as now the Text seems BIG for the land
Although it’s Good
I liked the flare
Jon Como on January 15th, 2010 said...
I can only reply to my post so uh, no ambient occlusion, I thought I could get away with out using it. I use particles instead of a lens flare too, waiting for optical flares woo!
I agree that the text just plops down on the grass and did consider using hair to make grass and use the text as a hair collider, that would look awesome.
I dont have a seperate ae filter for depth of field either which sucks, I have to work that out. Thanks for the comment!
Nice Job as usual Gorilla!
Can you tell us How do you do yellow lens flare in final rendering please?
The Gorilla on January 14th, 2010 said...
That will be on part two. Stay tuned.
Outstanding! Thanks Nick.
Thanks Nick for this AWESOME tutorial!! I had a little trouble with the step effector part (changing settings didn’t do much on my text), so I played around with the Rigid Body Tag settings to make the right effect. I guess it’s whatever gets the job done right? Looking forward to the second part.
ITV teacher on January 14th, 2010 said...
I also was telling you (nick) to play with the bounce on the RBtag when you couldn’t get the bounce right. Of course you couldn’t hear me, Doh! Thanks for all you do.
Really useful tutorial. Thanks Nick
Desde Spain: Veryyyy thknssss, cooll stufff..
Hey, Nick
Can you put some project files in Part 2.
I mean .c4d .aep together with the footage etc.
That would be really nice. for the followers of the tutorial.
ofcourse you can watermarked it…
Thanks
The Gorilla on January 15th, 2010 said...
I can’t give away that photo, unfortunately. It is a stock image. It would be better if you used your own photo anyway. That way, what you make can be yours to use.
Oh wow awesome!
Thanks Nick.
Great tutorial! ) Thanks, Nick.
Nick = AWESOME
Thanks for all the great stuff.
looking forward to watching this when I get a minute, been wanting to try this out
thx man , it gave me a good new knowledge.
seeya in stockholm
Looking forward to part 2, superb tut as per usual!
Hey great tut Nick,
I started my text in a urban environment, with a shadow falling over half of the foreground. Looking forward to getting it to move soon.
http://www.miketan.net/cargo/myuncle_alley.jpg
Nick you safed my life…! Since 2008 I´ve been desperately trying to learn maya and I hated it. Too many windows too many buttons! As I stumbled across your blog and saw the interface of C4d I decided to try Cinema instead… and I love it! And thx for all the other stuff…. GSG rocks!
Chris
The Gorilla on January 14th, 2010 said...
Thanks, Chris. I’m so glad you’re here and not screwing with Maya anymore.
Let me know if you have questions.
Lawrence on January 15th, 2010 said...
Too true, I’d been messing with C4D for about 6 months and loved it, then uni told me to use maya so it I trained in that for 8 months solid with pretty crappy results, now I’m back where I belong… I love this shit. Great work Nick.
HELP!
I can’t make the Mograph Text Object to make every letter a separate dynamics object-particle-thing. I’ve tried to do everything over again and do everything exactly as you did, but still, the text object is behaving like a single box of text, the different letters won’t move separately.
I don’t really know what I did wrong, is there any settings I may have forgotten about?
thanks for the help, great tutorial!
The Gorilla on January 14th, 2010 said...
Just apply the Rigid Body tag right to the Text object. Don’t use the Fracture object. Have you tried that?
ryan on January 14th, 2010 said...
In the Rigid Body tag for the Text Object go to Collision and set Individual Objects to All. Otherwise the letters will be grouped together.
Yep, that’s what I’ve done. It still acts just the way it did when it was in the fracture object. I have all the necessary plugins and everything, so I don’t understand why they still don’t interacting separately.
Tiffer on January 14th, 2010 said...
i think on the mograph 2 text object you have to go to rigid body go to collision and put it to all
This is a great one Nick! Thanks for the tutorial!
you handsome devil, I bet you get the babes
rob by the d on January 15th, 2010 said...
your weird
YOU ARE THE MAN, Nick, very needed tutorial, well explained and perfect.
May the force be with you.
thanks. great useful demo as usual. you probably know this, but rather than scaling the whole scene in a null to change the mass and apparent speed of fall i think you could also just increase the global time scale and/or gravity in the dynamics tab of the modynamics project settings. you can also “stop time” with that same tab by keyframing the time to 0. i think it has the same effect as scaling the whole scene but is a bit quicker perhaps.
Dumb question, how do you get the handles on the XYZ axis so that you can move it freely in C4D?
I had in R10 but now I can’t figure it out in R11
Greetings Nick,
I have found it difficult to select just the right picture to work on a project like this. Is there anything specific to look for Composition wise or certain things to avoid? I thought about doing something as a test with a picture similar to this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Windsor_Castle_at_Sunset_-_Nov_2006.jpg
But cant figure out how many planes to use and where to put them.. Think you can give some pointers? Thanks!
hey sniffles,
your voice has changed since ive been back…. a little higher. Congrats on the recognition on aetuts and several other places your gorilla self has appeared. just not diggin the voice change i know you probably have more skill in the cracks of you wacom tab than i have in my entire mind….but go retro. or you will become an honorary lion from the d.
Very nice tutorial Nick. I was just wondering. You show us the finished scene first and then you start the tutorial. So you’ve made the scene before but still you get stuck sometimes (like with the falling text). How come? Did you forget how you did it the first time?
Just wondering caus I love the problem-solving process you show in the video.
Juan on January 15th, 2010 said...
Hi Zwoep, he actually says on the video: “mmm how did I do this?” So I guess he did it first, and then when trying to do the same, he forgot one step (happens to people that knows too much, sometimes there’re different ways to achieve the same result and they don’t know which way they’ve used)
I love the problem solving process too
The Gorilla on January 15th, 2010 said...
Yeah, I did the scene and rendered it once before the tutorial. There were a few days difference that and the recording, so remembering EXACTLY how to do it was difficult. This is really what it’s all about though. There is no ONE way to do things. It’s all about knowing what to try next to get the desired result.
Hey Nick,
Great tutorial!!! Thank you so much for all the help!
Thanks, going to work through the tut now
I excited 
thanx again nick, best tutorials as always!
Trying to dome some mapping myself. But, I have a problem. I am using textured, kind of concrete letters with the text object, but when the letters fall down with mograph the texture stays on it’s place and not sticked to the letters. Anyone an idea how to solve this?
The Gorilla on January 15th, 2010 said...
Sounds like you have a camera projected material on your letters. Make sure your letters DONT have the camera projection on it. You need to put a normal separate texture on the text to make it stick.
Hugo Goudswaard on January 15th, 2010 said...
I’m using uvw mapping for the material, tried cubic as well. But when letters fall the texture moves over the letters.
chris culp on January 17th, 2010 said...
Check the ‘fix texture’ box in your mograph cloner object to avoid any texture swimming on your dynamic mograph objects.
I guess you could try the ’stick texture’ C4D tag too.
Totally nice..
thanx man..
but somehow my “background” do not show when i set tje projection to “camera” instead of “frontal” …
keep up the great work
Very nice tutorial!
Could you give some more info on the gamma parameter in the GI setttings, and why it’s important to get it right?
The Gorilla on January 17th, 2010 said...
Gamma is a tough question to answer quickly, but for new, just know that you have to match your monitor’s settings output to get a more realistic render. I’m looking into plugins like “DeGamma” to help this process.
great tutorial!! thanks. Would this be posible with video as a background?
The Gorilla on January 18th, 2010 said...
That may work. If the camera is on a tripod and there isn’t much movement. For example, if the trees were waving, then we probably could use the same technique.
Thanks Nick. I have version 10.5 and the Rigid body tag is not part of Mograph. What do i do to make the text bounce around?
The Gorilla on January 18th, 2010 said...
You need Version 11.5 and Mograph 2 to use the new physics and dynamics for this tut.
Awesome tutorial Nick.
I’ve got a problem with how Modynamics render to picture viewer.
You see, when I hit render in general view, letters collide and bounce differently from when I hit shift+r. All the animation gets fucked up as a result.
Both project and output framerate is 30 fps.
Viktor on January 19th, 2010 said...
Sorry for double post, I just wanted to share screens to show what’s going on.
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/804/screenshot20100119at414.png
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/804/screenshot20100119at414.png
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/5783/screenshot20100119at413.png
Just watched your MoGraph 2 intro and tried to bake the sequence.
Now it works like a charm hehe.
Thanks
GREAT JOB MAN ) – THX))) helloa from Moldova.
really appreciate what you are doing!!! – i was just planning to figure out all this GI thing ) – i’ve too noticed that it’s really counts ) – and i didn;t looKed in google )-
A one really GooD consequence )
into the CG myself )
OF COURCE CINE 4D is the best ! ) – this is Twoo )
TNX )
Hey Nick Im using C4D r11 and Letter wont cast a shadow onto the floor with the Compositing Backgrund box checked and when theat’s not checkedthe floor plane is discolored. Did I miss something?
The Gorilla on January 20th, 2010 said...
It might be new to 11.5, actually.
Jswift on January 20th, 2010 said...
Thanks Nick! Keep up the amazing work!
Hey Gorilla!
Great tutorial! Thanks for that!
One Question:
If want to insert 2 text objects like “Nice House” and make them start falling at 2 different frames, how would you do that? Like “House” is coming down, 2 sec later “nice” is coming down in front of “House”?
Sorry for my bad english, school is long ago
Greetings from munich,
Dominik
Viktor on January 25th, 2010 said...
Different heights, maybe
)
Actually, you should be able to freezeframe in C4D.
Thanks a lot Nick!!!! This is the best tutorial I have ever seen!!! Really thanks!!!
Also Waiting for some Hair module tuts!!!!
What do you do if you dont have mograph2 for the animation part.
John,
Your tutorial is amazing, the best of the web.
Very practice!!!
best regards
Nice, you are on videocopilot in the blog with your tutorial, thanks
Thanks a lot Nick for this tutorial, as this technique is something I have been wanting to learn. At the risk of sounding like a dummy, however, I get really confused pretty early on in the process. I’ve got my photo loaded as a material, but it looks squished. My picture is of a skyscraper and is vertically oriented, does the photo need to be landscape? More importantly, I’ve got my background added to the scene and the material linked to it. But I cannot adjust the background plane. Your background plane that you used to set the perspective of the camera has handles, and mine does not. I am very new to C4D, and I’m not certain that I am explaining my questions in the most clear way. Am I missing something that you hit on the keyboard or a tool that you selected to enable the ability to move the background? Any help that you or anyone could provide would be most appreciated. Thanks!
those microphones are suppose to be talked into from the side not from the top ! anyway , great graphic stuff
love your work man!!
i appreciate what you are doing!!
good job
I can’t figure out why every time I try and set up a depth pass, and I set everything up like the camera, multipass image and all the rest, as soon as I press Shift+R to render my images always come out all black :/
Any ideas anyone please?
the little switch next to the camera that you say click to come out of camera, it wont switch black to white when i click it.
Hey Nick!
What’s the trick using Mograph on a font or logo that you create in Illustrator, and that you have extruded in C4D?
Mograph works great with text, but doesn’t seem to have any affect on the illustrator/extruded object.
Best,
Jim
Jordan Montreuil on June 8th, 2010 said...
Drop the extrusion into a Fracture Object like he tried in the tutorial. Then add the Rigid Body tag and MoDyn will recognize the object.
I believe other effectors will work with it too.
Great video nick! I’m having a bit of a newbie problem though. My text isn’t casting any shadows for some reason, I’ve tried a normal light as well but no luck. Any suggestions? Thanks and keep up the great tuts
Hi Nick,
I’m trying to do this tutorial, but when i add the rigid body to mine Text layer and one on mine plane the Text falls solid but the lettres doesn’t fall seperated. What did i do wrong !? i followed everything step by step… I have Mograph 2 and C4D 11.5.
When I put in the move camera and zoom in slightly it seems the material on the ground plane becomes distorted, it still looks fine in the projector camera, has anyone else had this problem, if so help would be much appreciated..
The Gorilla on April 5th, 2010 said...
Sounds like you may have zoomed in too far. You can’t distort the image too much or it will fall apart.
he gorilla,
great tut!!! i’ve joined your clan since 3 weeks..! actually started with cinema after watching one of your tutorials! cheers for that!
question: ( just started not so long ago with cinema so it’s probably a easy/stupid mistake)
when i play it in the building mode, the letters drop fine.. but when i render it the letters drop different.. and makes it ugly again. do you know what i did wrong?
cheers and keep up your style!
yori
The Gorilla on April 9th, 2010 said...
Never had that happen. Have you tried baking the animation before you render?
Hi Nick, I´m in the minute 22 of the first part, everything´s fine, but I can´t get the dark shadow that appears below the extruded text, the one on the grass, i´m projecting a beach image.
Could you help, maybe there´s some function that I have not Checked.
Thank You
Nice tutorial. One tip I might add is that http://www.vreel-3d.de/plugins/PhotoMatch/links.html is your friend in complex scenes.
I found orginal photo on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirmildredpierce/49278871/sizes/l/
Creative Commons-licensed content
ilike ur toturials it istoo good
sometimes work with rebons howcan animate
it