In this tutorial, I show you how to recreate the Discovery Channel Cube Effect that is the main part of a recent Discovery Channel Rebrand made by Royale. I have been trying to figure this out for a while now and I always had trouble controlling the boxes in such an organic, yet specific way. It wasn’t until I started playing with the shader effector that it dawned on me that this was the solution. Anyway, check out the tutorial where I also use a Cloner Object, the Plain Effector, Object Buffers, Ambient Occlusion and Specular Highlights to get this animation ready for composite.
Want to learn more about this technique? Check out this Mograph.NET Discussion about how to achieve this effect. It was while reading this when I finally decided to figure this thing out once and for all. Finally, many of you have mentioned this Russian Tutorial about the same subject. The final render looks good and he has a slightly different solution to the same problem. Which reminds me. There is no right way with motion design. Remember, if it looks right for the final render, then you did it the “right way”. Keep experimenting!
Final Render
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88 Comments
Yes! I’ve been waiting for this. Thanks Nick!
Cutles on May 25th, 2010 said...
This is hectic man!
Sweet! My mouth has been watering for this since you started talking about it! Thanks for sharing and for all the hard work Nick! You sir.. are my bloody hero!
Bout time, Nick! I’ve been salivating.
Awesome, watching now.
Actually the guy u talk about in the beginning of the tut is Russian. His name is Mike Udin, his tut too is really good, expecially for the displacement he uses to fake the projection of images on cubes. Thanks nick for all your great material as always. You rule dude..
The Gorilla on May 4th, 2010 said...
Yeah, I blanked out for a second there. I have a link to his tutorial below mine. His result is nice.
CreativeJuice on May 4th, 2010 said...
Yeah saw the link after watching your tut too. As you said, there is not a right or wrong way to do the same thing. I think I’ll mix your tecnique and Mike’s one to do a 5 sec little film production title. The one I really liked about Mike’s tut is the possibility to make different cubes dimension with Fracture Object.
Again, thank you for all your work and also to answering me, I watch you so much that now I feel like talking with a rockstar…keep going!
Nick, at about 30:00 you say, “sorry I’ll try not to sing too much”
Obviously you’re being humble and kind of joking, but I think that’s just the kind of thing you’re talking about when you distinguish your tuts from others. Sometimes you have to sing along to figure out if your timing is right!
Great stuff.
The Gorilla on May 4th, 2010 said...
Thanks KC. Yeah, sometimes I like to get a song in my head when I’m trying to to feel out the timing of a scene.
I’m excited to watch this one. Can’t wait till I have more time later this week to see it start to finish. Nick have you seen the Science Channel’s “cube-wipe transition”? Been trying to figure out how to do that. Similar concept.
A series of rotating cubes move across the screen and at points reveal the video behind. So the live rotation of the cube field creates a “live mask” to give the show-through parts a random stair-steppy effect. The video is not given the look over being part of the cubes though; it’s behind them. Also, the cubes are orange so this pretty much seals the coolness factor if there was any doubt.
as always… a great tutorial. Thank’s gorilla
NIce, the tut is here. Looks great, I will give it a try tonight.
Nice job
very cool. i wonder though how you would do it royale style, where their cubes are all random sizes? this one makes perfect sense, but to recreate the actual campaign may take a few more tricks…
wtf_cakes on May 4th, 2010 said...
You’d just have to calculate the size and space of the different cubes to fill perfectly. Just one extra step to get to the same result.
This tut is awesome, great job once again! Now let’s see if we’ll see this effect coming back in interesting varieties
Thanks for the great effort!
Great tut man. Can’t wait for part 2.
hey great tut! Looking forward to part 2!
In the original video the blocks have a different sizes and the discovery logo is reveals with rotating the cubes around the place on the logo not as in your result where the logo is on the picture.
michael on May 4th, 2010 said...
yeah thats right! the cubes have different sizes and also in the original the don’t rotate at random like urs,.. instead they begin to rotate from a specific side like they start to rotate from the left and go through to the right side to reveal the next image
mike
Awesome Nick.
I noticed that somebody already mentioned you about the fracture & projection method.
However when you were giving the cube colors. Why were you splitting it all up when you could have selected the polygon side of the cube and just drag a color to it? Like you said, there is no good or right, but I would like to know why you did it this way.
Awesome tut and now I learned something about new: Plain & Shader effector. Keep up the awesome job. Maybe bringing with each tutorial a new effector to light?
The Gorilla on May 4th, 2010 said...
By separating the sides, I was able to put the Object buffer on each of the four sides. That’s not possible with selection tags.
ah man, another great tutorial, can’t wait for part 2.
thanks for sharing.
will definitely watch this.
PS: I think you forgot some code in your blog post, all other posts have huge fonts now.
Joshua on May 4th, 2010 said...
All the css should be fixed now! Thanks!
good stuff! can’t wait for part two! thanks!
hey, Nick I think you’re CSS/hmtl code is messed up. Fonts are different and some are HUGE.
Nice tutorial. I tried the russian (Mike Udin). Yours seems easier and less steps, but don’t know how much flexibility (different rotations (h,p,etc) yours has.
I think combining both of your tutorials will result in some great pieces. I’ll finished my cubes animation soon and post it.
Joshua on May 4th, 2010 said...
The CSS issues should be fixed! Thanks!
Hi, great Tutorial. Can´t wait for the second part, too.
I think in the original version from discovery channel the cubes changing from the left site to the right and not all at the same time various. So instead of a noise i added a gradient with turbulence to the luminance channel and animate the gradient. You can also play around with diffrent gradient types.
I think that gives a great look good, too.
max on May 4th, 2010 said...
cool! thanks for the tip
I love the WHY part in your tuts nick !
teacher ok the video resolution is very slow but u cam look that? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1D1Sa3gVww
sarah on May 12th, 2010 said...
yeahh dude nice but the resolution is bad!
upload or render in high rsolution
Nick, I was watching another tutorial that used ambient occlusion except that it was applied to each material separately in a layer material multiplied with the luminance. The Accuracy, Minimum, and Maximum sample adjustments from each material were then linked up to some master global sliders on a null controlled by Xpresso.
That being said, when you add the overall Ambient Occlusion effect in render settings, do you sort of “get what you get”, or can you go into individual objects and specify how much the AC effects them or rather how much shadow they cast, how dark, etc?
Simply put: I want my AC shadows to be more dense/thick. Is this something dealt with best in AE using the multipass AC that we rendered out? Or is there a global shadow adjust ment I can mess with?
Thanks for your awesome tutorial!
The Gorilla on May 4th, 2010 said...
You can add AO to different objects by adding it to the luminance layer of the shader. Adjust the Maximum ray length and the contrast to make the shadows more dense. Sounds like a good idea for a tut?
Benji on May 4th, 2010 said...
Yes, a great idea for a tutorial. Fine tuning the GI and AC seems to be part of what makes the good stuff POP, but there are a lot of ways to go about doing it.
Maybe in the tutorial you could link to this excellent write-up as a resource: http://tinyurl.com/lzm2e9
By itself it is a little overwhelming but I think paired with at tut by the Gorilla it would be very helpful
I wish I had known about the shader effector a few weeks ago. I recently finished a commercial in the same style for a bank and used the plane effector to get it done. It was a pain getting the blocks to come back to their zero point.
Please, check ‘em out and give me your opinion:
http://www.youtube.com/cheekymonkeystudios
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Nick.
Glad the tut is finally here! So it seems where I would have used a target effector, the shader was the way to go. This effect had me stumped as well, so thanks for the creative problem solving! Just finished up my result, if you wanna take a look: http://vimeo.com/11475074
Thanks again.
Hey Nick, this is a great tutorial!
I totally agree with you about explaining what it is you do. If all you do is push buttons I learn nothing. Thanks again for this great tut can’t wait for Part 2
The Gorilla on May 4th, 2010 said...
Thanks for watching, E!
this a amazing tut, i hope part 2 comes out soon, but im gonna try do part 2 myself and see if i can do it right
Those gun targets over your shoulder make me wonder if you’re a dead-eye shot, dead-eye.
BORDERLINE HOMOSAPIE on May 5th, 2010 said...
that was borderline homosapien.
Super!
Minor tip: after making an object editable, you can select the faces and drag the texture on top – no need to disconnect it.
Davy Menge on May 5th, 2010 said...
Yeah but like nick said in an earlier reply. If you don’t disconnect them you can’t use the object buffer for the export.
Matt Frodsham on May 5th, 2010 said...
you can’t add object buffers to poly selections thats why he disconnects them
Heres my go at it. Went alittle too far i think, but i got carried away i guess!
http://www.vimeo.com/11481167
Morten kühl christen on May 5th, 2010 said...
http://vimeo.com/11496683
a little tut i did
…’nother minor tip:
instead of messing around with the handles of the keyframes, you can just lassoo two of ‘em and change it to “linear”…
My guess is that he use the compositing to the background and applied the different background materials (the photos) to the faces of the cubes.
HI Nick i’m a new fan of you website . Good job for all the work that you have done.Very use ful tutorials keep up the good work.
Cant wait to start. man i hope my computer can handle everything this time. it rocks yo!
actually easier way to split up your cube is before making it editable,in the attributes,select make seperate surfaces.then make it editable. nice and simple.
Matt Frodsham on May 5th, 2010 said...
cool tip thanks
I really like this tutorial so far and can’t wait the AE part of it. Anyway I have two (maybe noobish) quistions: neither I have handles on the falloff box (orange/red squares) nor I have the cone of the camera (the green cone). I don’t think I disabled them, but do you know how to re-enable them again? Thanks, hegearon
zymos on May 5th, 2010 said...
If you followed the tutorial closely, you might still be in face selection mode from when you had to split the cube into faces.
On the left side of the interface get back into object selection, and the handles should come back.
….cause that’s what happened to me…!
hegearon on May 5th, 2010 said...
Thanks for the tip, it brought back the handles of the falloff box, but I still don’t see that green cone at the lens of the camera. Thanks again!
zymos on May 5th, 2010 said...
Are you looking through the camera? (is the little box to the right of the camera icon in the object manager black/unselected, or white/selected?)
Cause you can only adjust it when the camera is not active.
hegearon on May 5th, 2010 said...
I marked on the picture what I mean: http://www.pict.com/view/3464454/0/camera
little trick for the next part of the TUT.
) .
if by mistake or lack of time the 3D guy you are working with or even yourself, doesnt give you the object buffer passes, wich happen sometimes for many reasons, you can either use the colors of the main RGB pass to key within after and get the alpha as a replacement or ask and wait for these missing passes to be rendered
great tut again, Nick, you rock!!
You are very generous with your time and knowledge. Thank You!
thanks man for the great tutorials actually you learned me everything i know in cinema 4D thank you so much please keep the great things come don’t stop
Great tutorial! Can´t wait for the second part …
Thanks & Greetings from Munich!
Hi Nick ! Very nice tut, once again !
I suppose you’re gonna add photos on After Effects, but why don’t you use photos directly in C4D ?
Egon on May 5th, 2010 said...
Yup, that was the kind of technique I’ve used for the Rubik intro of this movie :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZef-oYOFDA
Each face of the cube had it’s own UV directly inside Cinema, I guess it can be used to make the Discovery channel trick.
The Gorilla on May 5th, 2010 said...
I didn’t want to use cinema for the photos mainly because we didn’t have to. Besides, In AE, we can swap out the photos and hit render to get a result in seconds instead of minutes. It’s rare that “doing it all in 3D” is the answer.
Keep singing.
a UV pass would be perfect to simulate the rotation in AE.
so you render all your rotation in your 3d package, and you use the UV pass in your compositing package to remap any picture on the cube.
That would work perfectly !
This truly rocked!!
Thank you very much for this awesome tutorial.
Nick….you the man!
Any tips for using different sized cubes?
I’m using Cloner Objects in linear mode, each with a row of cubes of one size (each Cloner has one row of a certain size, in other words).These are all arranged into a flat object by parenting them to a Cloner.
My problem is that to make my final object square and flat, I have to move the object axis of my cubes-if not, they will not all be in a flat plain, and the edges of my whole array will not be straight but crenelated.
However, when I rotate the cubes using the Shader Effector, they of course rotate around each cube’s object axis, which is no longer in the center, so after say 180 degrees, my array is no longer a flat plain.
Maybe instead of using a Cloner to arrange my sub-units there is a different way?
Stumped for now…
zymos on May 5th, 2010 said...
…I guess I can just arrange each row manually…more fiddly maybe, but once I have everything lined up I think it’ll work the way I want it to…
Made a reply on vimeo for what i did to get different sized cubes
http://vimeo.com/11496683
zymos on May 5th, 2010 said...
Watched it-cool idea-never would have thought of drawing it in Illustrator!
Chris Seibold on May 17th, 2010 said...
Hey Morton,
Here’s a simple way to do the different sized cubes;
http://lovecreative.com.au/storage/transition02.c4d
I finally found the time to do this one my way, and i think i nearly got it.
Here’s the video :
http://vimeo.com/11503445
This time i tried to have the simplest object tree. So i did it with one cloner object, 2 cubes as childrens, and 2 effectors per transition. Mograph Selections helped me a LOT there !
Love your tuts, especially the “hummmmm….”
This rocked my socks!!! Thx Nick!
I’m in the middle of watching this so forgive me if I ask a question that you already address.
How would you go about making squares of different sizes?
jim on May 6th, 2010 said...
You would need to eliminate some cubes with a volume effector and replace them with larger (or smaller) cubes from additional cloner objects that have the same shader effector transitions on them.
Make sure the volume effector uses complimentary geometry so each cloner object has complimentary holes that form a solid wall when combined.
Chris Seibold on May 17th, 2010 said...
Here is a simple way to get random smaller cubes;
http://lovecreative.com.au/storage/transition02.c4d
eyedesyn on May 24th, 2010 said...
Chris-
How did you go about making this file? I’m trying to figure out how you got the holes in the one cube array and filled in those holes with the smaller cube cloners.
Great tutorial Nick…Thanks for sharing…
Unreal Gorilla man! Have followed tut and for a newbee like me its great that you take time to talk through the methods behind your madness.
Question: As per the discovery example they have different size cudes rotating in different directions etc. How do you get it to do that? Might be stupid question but I am a newbee!
Thanks again man!
Your Doing Great Job !
Awesome Awesome! i am loading going to see these now!
Nice technique! Could you make the blocks video available for download? I only have After Effects…
Thanks.
Hi Nick, that’s another great tut from GSG!
I’m having a weird problem.. after i made all the work on C4D, when I try to open the cubes_comp.aec, my After Effects says:
After Effects error: Can’t import file “cubes_comp.aec”: unsupported filetype or extension.
I’ve already rendered twice, and my seetings are just like yours.
Do you know anything that is causing this?
Bruno on May 6th, 2010 said...
I used the C4D plugin for AE included on Maxon’s folder and now everything is ok.
Let’s head to part 2!
hi nick. thank you four this and the other tuts. my english is very bad. sorry for this.
i have a question about render time. my computer rendered 44 frame in 3 hours. how many hours did you rendered it? what am i supposed to do minimize the render time? (my render settings are the same with yours. the only change is anti-alising best.)
computer feature:
processor: AMD Phenom II X4 925 2.80 GHz
RAM: 4 GB kingston
Graphic Card: ATI RadeonHD 4890 1GB
thank you.
vd on May 9th, 2010 said...
is anyone help me?
zymos on May 9th, 2010 said...
That does seem slow- my computer is similar to yours (Core2 Quad at 2.83 GHz), and it took me a bit less than 3 hours to render 275 frames of this project at 1280 x720, using the “Best” setting for AA.
Are your settings for Ambient Occlusion about the same as in the tutorial? Are you rendering at a really high resolution?
The Gorilla on May 9th, 2010 said...
I kept my AA to geometry since there are no reflections or transparencies. I think my final render was 40 minutes or so.
vd on May 10th, 2010 said...
ambient occlusion-accuracy was %100. i think its the problem. now %60 accuracy.. and render time take 4 or 5 hours. thank you zymos and thank you nick.
Hey Nick, I got a question that has been bugging me. I don’t get the render instances box to show, it’s just not there. And also the plain effector does not do anything at all. Like yours shows in realtime when you change the rotation value, mine doesn’t. Any idea what might be wrong? Could it be that Im still using Cinema4D 11.0 ? Thanks for the tut, love it.
KJ on May 11th, 2010 said...
Im finding the same problem with the plain effector not working. Any solutions? Im on Cinema 11.5.
gela on May 11th, 2010 said...
same problem here. what do i have to do if the plain effector doesn’t work?
sam on May 17th, 2010 said...
in the cloner object effectors’ tab there should be the shader effector AND the plain effector.
if not, just drop the plain effetor there.
Ganesh on May 27th, 2010 said...
Thanks Sam!
Man, I love your way in teaching. First, you don’t edit out the problems that faces you to teach us how to solve it, then using step by step method to make us think not just follow. Thanks for all of you tutorials Nick and Keep Moving Forward.
Thanks for a great tutorial.
I have added the smaller blocks randomly placed with the bigger blocks to be more like the original ident. I used a cloner – it’s a neat little trick that I think will come in handy.
View it here;
http://vimeo.com/11829103
Download the scene file here;
http://lovecreative.com.au/storage/transition02.c4d
What is we DID want the picture to stick to the cubes as they rotate. I have tried this many ways and can not get it to work. Either I use Frontal projection and the material slips as expected as the cubes rotate or I use flat and the entire picture is repeated on each cube.
Any suggestions?
Thats damn sweet Nick! Thanks for sharing!
Hey Nick,
In the whole idea of going beyond the tutorial I made an alternative of the tutorial. I personaly like it when the cubes come together before creating a wall for the images.
This is my version: http://www.vimeo.com/11896272
I’ll admit its a bit to fast, butttt i have other work to do so i was to lazy to fix it…but you get the idea
Thanks once again for all the effort you put in it!
hey Nick,Im doing the tutorial but I keep coming up with lines. Seems like my squares are not completely flush. even if the rotation is 180or 90 they seem to be off by a couple of degrees. You have any suggestions or tips?
You can view the pic here:
http://videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37556
The Gorilla on May 21st, 2010 said...
Your white or black levels may not be all the way white or black. Try pushing the contrast a bit.
Digging the tut. However when I add the plain effector and change falloff to box it no longer effects the cloner object.
Any suggestions?
i got some problem with downloading the videos, if the download is canceled once the download requires resume from the first every time, i think there have some bugs in this website, am i right?
Your Blog is really great! It’s amazing the color balancing that you do here. Very clean and pretty!
A hug from Brazil!
How long exactly will this tutorial will be displayed.. because i have work the next day and would love to catch more of the discovery channel graphic transition effect.. please notify my.. ThanQs
) you’re the best sir!
The Gorilla on May 24th, 2010 said...
All of my tuts should be available for a long time to come. Take your time and come back to review any time.
Me.. typo
NIck, we all highly appreciate The Gorilla !! you’re king..
hi neck
I’m a big fan Morocco
you’re the man, i love your tutorials even that i have problem with English still you’re the best.
my question please if you can give us a head’s up on how this design is done
http://www.weareroyale.com/work/28 (Direct TV HD) how they they bring little cubes to text and v vs
thanks in advance i hope to hear from you soon
The Gorilla on May 26th, 2010 said...
Maybe there is something I’m missing, but that’s what this tutorial is about at the top of the page.
Meliani on May 29th, 2010 said...
Hi Nick
the clip I’m talking about is the commercial for direct tv HD
hey nick, it’s a very helpful turorial, playing with the rotations is pretty fun. well this is my final render.
http://www.facebook.com/jjhay.alimagno#!/video/video.php?v=130206326991844
thank you very much
This is really cool! I just finished a photo slide-show type project too , wish I had seen this sooner
I think there is an easier way to adjust the interpolation between the keyframes if you want a linear motion. I believe you can select the two keyframes and choose “clamp” in the window
sorry bro, but the multi use of “ah” & “um” in your speech is very annoying.
I noticed you made the cube editable first to separate all sides, a faster way is to highlight cube in objects manager then in your attributes manager click object then check separate surfaces then make editable to separate polys, a few less steps
Thanks for the nice tutorial. In the original animation you also see cubes spin in the other direction. I tried to figure out how to do that and my solution was to make 2 shader effectors and make a checkerboard material, then copy it but replace the black and white. now i gave the shaders the 2 materials. have to make sure the shader effectors materials are set to frontal mapping. everything else is pretty much as you explained.
Ive finally gotten around to starting this in C4d and im having trouble with the plain effector not working like the previous people. Any one have a solution?
nvm i got it! sorry!
Hi there,
Wow that’s a cool tutorial, i never worked with C4D of other 3D programs, isnt there someone who could post there C4D project so peole like me can use it too?
I hope so.
Greets!
hi! I tried rendering many times but i just can’t seemed to have anything appearing on my Object buffer 2 and 3. I can only see the cubes movement on my object 1 and 4. Any idea what is wrong?
HI!
I am getting an error when i try opening the project on AE CS4, it says unsupported files. Can anyone help please Thnxz.
The Gorilla on June 22nd, 2010 said...
Sounds like you may have to update your AE connect plugin from cinema.
Andrew on June 22nd, 2010 said...
Sorry I am new at this, any hints on how to do that?? thanks
hey there, thanks for the great tut, I am new in cinema 4d with extensive 3ds max background, so my question is:
In the original discovery clip all of the blocks vary in size, I have tried to achieve this effect with multiple cloner objects, but with no luck, so if i am just to build up the wall with multiple cloner objects and collapse them in to separate boxes, which mograph modifier would i need to use to put them all in and apply shader midifier?
Hey, I have a question
What you make in early in the video after of insert the effect (ramdon effector). you delet it before of insert the shader effector? I don’t speak english and beginner in Cinema 4d, sorry..can u help me?
Hey Gorilla, great tutorial. I have a question: howcome after it finishes rendering i cant use the file for AE… AE doesnt recognize it… :S Any idea-? Gracias. From Perú.
The Gorilla on August 1st, 2010 said...
Sounds like you need to install the Connect plugin from Cinema 4D into after effects.
Thank you, man. I solved it… was what u said.
Im finishing mi proyect… ill upload it soon. Thnaks a lot, continue with ur great work.
Hi nick,
Just to let you know that i love your logo. Don’t change it for a bannana or another gorilla stuff, pity !
Thanks again for being there.
The video has lost it’s link?
Why can’t I see it?
since it is awsome
Here is my version of this video http://vimeo.com/14414975
I didn’t read through all of the comments but in the beginning when you’re separating the cube, you can also do it by checking “separate surfaces” before you make it editable. Just FYI =) Thanks for the awesome tut.
Thanks again for time, effort and great tutorials, Nick.
I have a small question for someone who might know, though; I feel we always tick the “render instances”-checkbox during cloner object and also now for this. If it’s better and not checked by default; when is it a good idea to leave it unchecked?
Thanks
~Thomas