How to make a Cascading Text Animation With Cinema 4D and After Effects – Part 1

In this tutorial, I show you how to make a fun cascading text effect shown below using Cinema 4D. Mograph, shader effectors, step effectors, and extrude nurbs. I also show you how to light the scene by using some reflective white cards and my upcoming Studio Light Kit.

Based on this animation

Final Render

Watch Part 2 Here.

217 people have commented on this post. You should too!

  1. Soul Walker says:

    Hey Nick this is great! your work is nice and very useful. I was happy with my version, although I bumped into glitches; those seemed to occur on the “s” and “o”, as well as the “r”, right on their ‘folding’.
    If anyone bump into the same, just try selecting other than bold; mine was looking great at normal/medium! Thanks and keep it up!

  2. Love the intuitive interface on C4D and with the help of your tutorials, I am catching on quick! Thanks Nick.

  3. romain says:

    Hy Gorilla !
    Congratulation for your tutorial, it’s great !
    Can you use the Spline mask with a Revolution Nurbs tool ?
    (I try to make an in out animation with half sphere…C’est Galere in french !)
    Thank U

  4. Alex says:

    hey…gr8 tut. but there is one big problem :(
    when i choose the step effector,shut off scale and set the time offset it doesn’t change anything..i checked if the step effector is in the cloner object..CHECK..it just plays the animation as if the step effector dosen’t exist :S i’m confused…would be nice if you could help me.

    and sorry for my english…i’m a german dude

  5. usman says:

    hey there, thnx a million 4 teaching all da stuff. I watched the reference video but im having problem in pulling off the text effect in the very last of that video, where “POMPEIA FASHION WEEKEND” comes (tail of K , basically :( )
    sO plz plz plz do tell me how to deal this thing in Cinema.
    waitin 2 hear from ya……

  6. Hey awesome tut check out what i did with it… it is a little dark but the effetc came out great!!!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3jWmyYCR8o

  7. ryan jack says:

    awesome tutorial…

    FILLET = FILAY like the cut of meat… or atleast thats how i was told it was pronounced.

  8. MaitFx says:

    Hi! i have one question please. i have my logo it is spline and i can’t extruded with effect Spline Mask.. Thanks

  9. andrea says:

    Here, http://vimeo.com/12855180 my test scene based upon your tut.
    Thx Nick.

  10. Becky says:

    Hi! I just discovered your website. I love it! Can’t wait to try some of the other tutorials. Thank you so much! :-)

  11. akram says:

    Hey Nick this is great! Thank U

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  13. dSmith says:

    “Fillet” came over to Britain with the Normans in 1066 and over the years acquired the english pronunciation “FILL-et” . It means cut or carve.
    The same French word “Filet” as in “Filet Mignon” came to english speaking lands at a later date, and is pronounced “fee-Lay”
    File, as in File Gumbo is pronounced “Fee-lay”
    Outside of the UK “fillet” is rarely used.
    I loved the tutorial but one odd thing happened. For one frame the mask becomes visible. Why does that happen?

  14. wgold says:

    First time I used C4D! Thanks for a fun start!
    http://vimeo.com/15511528

  15. Ben says:

    Great tutorial and great effect! I just started with C4D. I will try to follow you tutorial and see how it goes.

  16. Scotty says:

    Do you have to do something differently with the Step effector for it to work in Cinema R12? I’ve got it set up the same way and the time offset doesn’t seem to do anything, the other parameters work fine though.

  17. Chris says:

    Hello nick

    This is going to sound so bad but when your rendering in c4d I render only a portion at a time, with your c4d when you rendered in this tutorial you had more portions being render at the one time in the one frame. So what im asking is does your computer need to have more ram or anything to increase the render speed? fyi, No GI or AO on at the moment

  18. Alex says:

    Hi Nick- You mentioned that you would do a tute on the ribbons. Will you be doing so anything soon? if not, I would really like to hear how you would go about creating the animation.

    Thanx

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  20. Salomon says:

    thats awsome..

    reminds me on my favourtie video from justice “dvno”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BBNZ-ejjU

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  22. This is brilliant! thank you so so much, I added your website to my bookmarks instantly! thanks again

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  24. Andrew Malik says:

    I have not spline mask in my mograph tab :( . Where is it?

  25. Paddy says:

    Where has the tutorial gone??? Can you send a link, this one seems to be broken.

  26. Bjorn Anderson says:

    hi greyscale, im using c4d r12 and im 5 minutes into the tutorial, and i cant find the Spline Mask tool, anyone help please?

  27. Bjorn Anderson says:

    hey gorilla me again. i figured the last post out but then i got to 11mintues and when i open my timeline i dont see my objects all i see is spline and then another spline anyhelp?

    • Andy Mo says:

      hey there, i had the same problem, until i remembered from one of nick videos that he mentions using the help guide that could be found in cinema 4d, from one of his videos. Anyway if you haven’t resolved your problem yet, go to your timeline: – view, show animated. You will then see you objects rather than the splines. hope this helps

  28. Justin says:

    So, I’m doing a project using this technique but wondered how to make the extruded ribbon. I have flat ribbons in my project but would love to give them a little depth. I used a Plane with Spline Wrap to make the ribbon. Can they be extruded now?

  29. Giuliano says:

    Great tut! A lot of interesting things to know!
    Thank 4 sharing!

  30. Cesar says:

    Having one problem thou! I have a 3-color gradient from green, yellow to red in the front, but when I turn on the Step Effector the red gets less saturatet, maybe -50.

  31. Cesar says:

    to apply the material shader and color with Fresnel reflection, the colors in the render out desaturated

  32. Cesar says:

    I’m using Cinema 4d R12

    • kuunami says:

      Cesar, I’m having the same problem. Whenever I render preview, my colors look washed out no matter what I do to the intensity of the lights or reflections. I added a color correction effect in the render settings and boosted up the saturation to make it much better but I would to know what was causing the initial problem.

    • Marosch says:

      Try to turn off the linear workflow in project settings

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  34. Jan says:

    tut is amazing, simple and effective!

    my question would be how can you re-do these bendy stripes you can see in the video you got this idea from? i mean these wavy and bendy long stretched lines going from top to the front behind the text!

    cheers,
    j.

  35. Carmina says:

    hey Nick! any way to make the mask work with a vector logo?
    It works for me with a text from C4D but not with a vector text I imported from Illustrator… any idea?¿

    thanks so much, I can’t wait to finish this tutorial! : )

  36. KO says:

    I tried to put the 5 steps of color using shader effector but 1st and last one get same color all the time. Do you know how to fix this?

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  38. Stoffelz says:

    Hi Nick,
    Just wanted to thank you for this great tutorial.
    It really popped some nice ideas into my head! :)
    This technique can be used for so many other things…
    So thanks for this puppy! ;)

  39. Spazm says:

    Thanks a lot for this cool tut !

    I use it a bit in this party video teaser : http://vimeo.com/20285654

    I’m 50% happy of all the renders, that’s why it’s kind of dirty, i need to know more about hair.. please show us how we can make cool shits !

    Cheers from Marseille

  40. Falco says:

    HI guys!
    I’m going crazy:) I followed this great tutorial step by step at least 10 times but the problem persists to apply the material shader and color orange / pink with Fresnel reflection, the text colors (cloner object) in the render preview looks black.
    pls HELP! ty :)

  41. Falco says:

    Sorry I forgot …
    my system: Windows XP SP3, C4D rel. 11.5

  42. Sam says:

    Plz I need help, In the animation bar, i don’t see the objects? what i DO to make the objects show up. Thx

  43. Jjhosseiny says:

    I just got into animation after effects and thank to u cinema 4d. I love this. And I’m totally hooked. I just have one question is there a written step by step. For how to do this. Cuz I’m trying to do this somewhere with no Internet connection. So I can’t load the video. If someones got a written version that would be awesome. If not no sweat. I just have to wait. Which sux because I can’t wait to finish this. Thx nick

  44. q2t says:

    file crash, can you reupload video plz.

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  46. marinz says:

    You ARE Amazing !

  47. airam says:

    you are good friend, very good.

    Greetings from Canary Islands

  48. Fred says:

    Saw it … Loved it … Conquered it … http://vimeo.com/23481798

    Thank you for the great tutorial!

  49. Sindre Ofstad says:

    Hi! I was wondering; what if i want to use this technique, but i want to use self made typo (merge objects from an AI.8 file)? I tried, but it dosent look like the spline mask detects my merge object….

  50. Vaughn says:

    I cant fine spline mash in my cinema 4d MoGraph tool can u tell me why is that????

  51. Kerry Holmes says:

    Hey Nick, I’m new to cinema 4D. I recently purchased Cinema 4D PRIME. Mo graph is not part of prime. do you have a work around for the spline mask. Is there another way to add a mask without MoGraph. BTW… this is an amazing tut. Thanks

  52. Jim says:

    Thx for the awesome tut! The word “Fillet” is pronounced as \?fi-l?t\ in this situation, sounds like fill-it, which means a concave junction formed where two surfaces meet. The word came from Old French, and it can also mean a piece of meat, and should be pronounced as \fi-?l?\ as you would in chick-fil-a. Hope this help!

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  54. Ali says:

    Hi Gorilla .
    Thank you for your great tutorials
    I think file is crash, can you fix it plz.

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  56. Be Ramos says:

    Hola!, Qué tal everybody, hi.. Gorilla.. thanks for your good tutorial stuff, brother, you are a creative talent man.
    I’m writitng because i am confused about something, i have trouble showing all items that i have in scene on my timeline board.. If You or somebodyelse could see and help me with an advice to solve that i will apreciate it. I would like see the objects that i made in a layer on timeline, but i cant. Therefore, i cant move the offset time of the last text capsule in the scene, while doiung this tutorial.. for example.
    Sorry my poor english, i speak spanish.
    Regards, love, and thanks!
    Bahir.

  57. mariahellas says:

    Great job! Many regards from Greece we are big funs of yours here! tc

  58. Jishnu Jyoth says:

    how can I get step effectors in c4d r12 ?

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