I’m so excited to present the first tutorial from the hyper-talented Mike “The Monkey” Senften. Well, not a tutorial exactly, but 45 minutes of pure knowledge about how to use joints, hierarchies, and Xpresso to build natural structures that are great for spirals, curls and golden section goodness. This is definitely a bit more advanced then most of my tutorials, but you should be able to follow along. This is the first of what I’m hoping to be many more tutorials from Mike. The way that his work blends science heavy technical thinking and dead-sexy design chops makes him so perfect for this sort of thing. Plus, he is so passionate about this stuff isn’t he? Please leave any feedback you have about his presentation style or his hair cut or anything really in the comments.
Some words from Mike
“It’s 45mins of me geeking out on spiral growth. If that interests you then grab a whiskey and come along for the ride. The purpose of this video is not only to share some of the methods I use in my work, but also to gauge people’s reactions to the pace, focus, content, and style of the presentation… so please, feel free to comment.”
Joint Chain Examples From The Monkey
Update: Adam Swaab’s Batch Rename Plugins
Batch Rename Objects
Batch Rename Tags
Batch Rename Materials
F****!!!!! That stuff is blowing my mind and far beyond any measurable berzerkness! No, honestly, I really like it although I´m still watchin it meanwhile ^^
Cheers,
D-O-S
Great comment
Make me laugh.
Realy great video.
thanks to hyper-talented Nick and Mike.
oh holy crap! screw work, im watching this now!
me too!
nice ^^ but i like to learn more in for exemple… characters and bodypaint
This creature called the World Wide Web will kick your ass with million tutorials on that HAHA enjoy it!
Just jokin!
Cheers,
Dan
I’m just commenting to criticize is not the intent of the blog? kkkkk loving the tutorials but it’s good that ta avendi variations because we c4d users suffer from specialized sites for us ai the 3d max’s and maya’s are wining.
Nope, actually – BP tutorials are a rare breed out there… the only good one i know of is 3D Kiwis DVD series.
I agree Caio. not enough BP and character tuts out there.not for version 11 anyhow.
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awesome
This site gets better and better every day!
Thanks a lot for this great tut!
this deserves a joint, ill smoke and come back to enjoy mike’s screencast!
cheers and thanks for sharing your knowledge!
keep them comin!
you should upload more of these tuts and make some this complicated.
Rad.
Beautiful very very in depth but also easy to follow…I especially like the drink in hand. was it Johnny Walker red and water?
Straight Bourbon on the rocks. Usually Maker’s Mark or Knob Creek.
Makers Mark FTW !
wow this one is crazy !
hehe.. indeed
The Monkey rules! such a good presenter and humourous too.
Really enjoyed this one, could do to know what the nodes mean in the espresso editor, its something that I’ve been interested in.
Nick, is there any chance he could do a quick tutorial on how he made the floral wrap up on the example?
Excellent Video! Cheers Mike
Thanks Nick! thanks Mike!
I really liked the tutorial, It was a bit harder to follow sometimes, but I definatelly prefer to lose that if we get more to learn in less time (the good thing about video is that we can watch it as many times as we want).
PS: Golden section rules! I try to use it as much as I can!
Hey Nick and Mike,
You guys ever thought about doing a project together and then putting out a tutorial set like http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/includes/dvds/sva.php
I think it would be really dope.
Great tut by the way, Mike. Great pace, I might need to rewind a few times but it’s very engaging.
totally agree
http://www.adamswaab.com
i can’t seem to find the batch rename plugin but there are a few things on his “technical repository” that may come in handy.
http://adamswaab.wordpress.com
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Anyone out there know where you can get BatchRename? That alone was almost as cool as the tutorial!
I eMailed Adam.
He said he took it off his site, but he’ll have it back up later tonight or tomorrow. I’ll post a direct link when I hear back from him.
Alright guys… Adam said I could go ahead and post his Batch Rename plugins on my site (there are 3… one for Objects, Materials, and Tags). Just unzip them all and throw ‘em in your plugins folder. That was my bad. I should have checked before I mentioned it. Please don’t send him a bunch of eMails, he’s mad busy. Thanks.
EDIT: Links updated in the main post.
GREYSCALEGORILLA + THEMONKEY = TOTAL PWNAGE!
Wow. Mind = blown. Thanks Mike! Thanks Nick! Unparalleled instruction.
Awesome tutorial! I think both you and Nick do a great job of explaining and moving through tutorials at a good pace that don’t dumb down things too much, but instead, challenge us to have to keep up. It’s a hard tightrope to walk. Thanks, Mike!
Absolutely awesome! Great tutorial. Thanks for going quickly and covering a lot of ground. I really like how this was a more advanced tutorial and look forward to many more from Mike
This one was an awesome non-tutorial. Lots of very valuable information. Thank you guys!
Very nicely done. Pace was excellent and your explanation of why things were done was spot on. Great tutorial.
YEAH!! the master is speaking!
thanks a lot mike, it’s amazing! hopefully you liked it just as much as we did, because i cant wait for the next one!
WOW! Rise of the apes totally!!!
Thanks a lot Mike for the great tutorial. And thanks Nick for getting Mike on board… You guys rock!
Look forward to more awesomeness ahead…
Thanks again.
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I’ll drink to that, Monkey man! Keep ‘em coming, I love it when things get technical
Sir Monkey, I owe you a bottle of the finest Whiskey available (or at least a bottle of brew
)
Since the Da Vinci Code we all could have known about the Golden Section ;-P.
This Tut is great and challenging! Looking forward for more.
Keep up the good work!
Holy cow this is cool
WOW!!! … I want to get to that level
Great stuff Mike! I’m going to tinker some more with Xpresso, that’s for sure.
Well, Mike, not bad for a starter, you go smoothly, hoping your audience clings to the wagon. If they fall off, like I did, well its video so we just rewind and try catching it again. Very narrative, not to much sidetracking. Some rudimentary script might help to keep you on the tracks. But we are so grateful that you take the effort of sharing some of your knowledge and experience with us. THANKS
wow man, some pretty deep stuff there, very informative, just a suggestion but would love a video tut or run through of the time tracks, progressive keys scripts etc, that stuff blows me away! nice one anyway, keep em coming!!
yes this would be great or just a free download of the Progressive Keys and Simplify Keys script would make life so much easier …
but i somehow unsterstand maxon with this … but please MAXON intergrate that hot shit !
I couldn’t help giggling like a teenager over the fact that this is a tutorial on rolling joints.
Awesome stuff, thank you.
the_monkey- Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. You too Nick. Many out there would love to charge an arm and a leg for the things on this site.
I agree with many of the comments made above. I’d love to see how you put together the bullet vs. mic piece. Maybe indepth Scripting???
Thanx guys.
ALX
NJ
Hi guys
Absolutely amazing stuff, this skill can definately be utalized in 1000s of different ways, a definate solid layer on the Cinema foundation of necessary skills.
Thanks Mike, hoping to see you on our screens soon. And Nick, your site continues to provide endless resource to all of us!
Many Many thanks!
Eugene
Major thanks on taking the time to make this tutorial, Mike.. It was extremely informative.
I’m glad to see you’re interested in making more intermediate to advanced tutorials. Not enough of those out there! Keep up the epic tuts, Nick and Mike!
c4d p0rn
ok watch the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG9H2gnJCjs&
ok the cinema 4d how help me? is allwars easy for that? ok only cubes flying and dinamics word for broadcast?
Great stuff, really great to se how other artist work with cinema4D, super great tutorial… but the expresso part was a bit quick… it would be great if you could explain what the different expresso “boxes” do and why you need them… or maybe Nick could make a tutorial on that ?
Outstanding, Mike. Saw you present at NAB and knew this would be good – wasn’t disappointed. Had to rewind some parts over and over but loved the pacing and the topic – more, please!
Hi, Mark. Good to see you. Thanks for watching!
Awesome there was alot i couldn’t keep up with but pause + rewind are awesome too
Am I missing something? I can´t see any tutorial? If I click the photo… well… I see a photo.. Can someone tell meif I am missing something?
All the best
Peter
peter must just be moveing stuff about on the site cuz i just watched it
Ahhh.. Just needed to update my Safari browser, and there it was…. Fantastic video…
Really pleased to see a tutorial from the_Monkey on GSG.
Thanks for linking up the Batch Rename plugin too.
Looking forward to future tutorials!
Really enjoyed the subject and the use of XPresso. The reasons for why you did things provided further insight and therefore better understanding.
The style was great, although I wasn’t sure about keeping the window of yourself on screen all the time – but I guess it’s another form of communication and it didn’t get in the way of the interface.
My main criticism – and this is pretty minor – would be the quality of the encoding; this could have been better, I think.
Overall: Awesome and as I said before – “Looking forward to future tutorials!”
Thanks for the crits. I really need to record a smaller frame size so I don’t have to zoom around all the time… I’m hoping that will help with the encoding issues. I’ve never encoded anything this long for the web and it’s definitely been a learning process.
The recording of myself in the corner was more for me to see where I got hung up on this first run and it will be unlikely to show up in the future. I was just too lazy to encode the recording twice.
Am I the only one who cant see this video? I can see only jpg of preview and nothing more
Same here.. still waiting, for what I already believe will be an awesome tutorial, with a nice Belgium beer in one hand and the other hand on F5.
Nick, can you fix this or give a time indication? (it’s already midnight overhere
No, you’re not the only one. EYE CAN’T SEE A THING
xcept a jpg.
can’t see the video either…. i’m so frustrated!
Sorry about that. Should be all fixed now.
Thanks dude.. Just watched the cineversity demonstration of Mike (mainly) about audio.. I have so much to learn.. *sigh*
http://twitpic.com/1zcxla
My God I could have so used this a month ago. I had to rig an octopus, first time.
Your mind is amazing Mike. I have seen some of your sound stuff and I love the math you use to create art!The combonation is great.
germany just won an important game at the world cup, so i may have had as many more sips of beer than the monkey had whiskey. Nevertheless, this has totally blown my mind. And it was so much better than the stupid soccer game. Thanks. Both of you, monkey and gorilla, have such a great way of presenting and teaching – you demand concentration and challenge the listener but at the same time do not hold everything for granted – meaning you do not skip too many steps and let us keep up – even if those of us who are not professionals (,yet
)
by the way – living in fucking brooklyn and staying inside 10 hours for recording a great tutorial on a beautiful sunny and working free day – instead of enjoying breakfast or dinner or a beer somewhere at bedford avenue, that demands an big extra thanks!
best from germany
ps: now that i get more sober, i think i will watch the tutorial a second time
Too bad Spain got you off the World Cup just one hour ago.
greetings from Madrid.
I was going to laugh at you here, but I guess congratulations are more in place! Greetings from Amsterdam.
Excellent tutorial. I thought the pace was great.
Thanks, I don’t think I’ve watched a more enjoyable tutorial. I really like the ‘rambling’ style – that’s what it feels like when you’re learning/playing, not too goal focused, just trying stuff out.
Also wanted to say that you can get spirals out of the bend deformer, just rotate it a little in relation to the object. It won’t give you that beautiful logarithmic falloff though
Thanks again.
Hi, man
That was a really amazing lesson!
Please, keep up the good work!!
Just my notes during the tutorial;
First off, I understand the screen trade-off using the front facing camera in the tut, but the way you and Mike talk to *me* it works really well. It removes the sitting trough [another voice].
Second, Mike, don’t appologize
this was one of the best tutorials out there. And in the great filosofy of Nick: Teach why and flow, instead of click here and there. I come here to see the more indepth stuff. So it is okay to focus on advanced stuff.
Third; Love to hear more about Da Vinci’s Golden Ratio. I’m a scientific guy and know what it is and how nature applied it, but never seen it apply in 3d graphics. (again don’t appologize to go in to that stuff)
Forth; I need to know more about expresso. I see it happening, but I don’t understand why. Not a lot of information (basics) on that around on the net.
Fifth; Alcohol seems to help you talk to yourself
Sixth; You’re a genius. great move Nick! Another angle on motion graphics is always welcome
Great tut, man!
What about your layout?
It’s really cool how you got your icons aligned to the right.
How do you do that?
truly epic! loving the sacred geometry shit..
I thought that hair looked different…
I’m really diggin’ this! I’m terrible at math, still lovin’ it.
I’m really digging the idea of showing a tool-based tutorial instead of
an end result focused one. I think your approach and Nick’s fit together
pretty well.
Your pace was great and if I miss something I can always rewind.
That was a great first, so keep it up.
nick this is amazin.
seriously real deep mind frying shit.
this guys real good teaches alot of alot in those 40 min. i am pretty much a beginner talkin about animations so this stuff while amazing is way over my league, i can barely know where xpersso is nor do i have ever touched the character menu. this is better than good, again, yet throws beginner like me in the animation field a bit too deep in the water.
Dude, the monkey is like some OBI-Wan, Einstein, Super Science Monkey, What the heck?!..Probably some of the most creative displays I have seen yet. Wow man…All I can say
Awesomeness! Can’t wait to do it. I’m on this site like every day now!
nick, this site just clicked up a huge level
no longer just shiny primitives.. you are giving us the ultimate primitive. the monkey!
i hope this is the future of monkey on gorilla action
The monkey and gorilla up to some tricks! awesome tut especially for newbies like me starting out. Realized now there so much more to C4d than just animating by keyframe.
You guys should do more tuts together. passed on the greyscale site on to some of my class buddies even they in awe!!!!!
Well done guys
from South Africa
nice tutorial hope to see more about expresso
cheers
Now that is what I’m talking about! Mike is a grrrrreat asset to the site. Thank you for this awesome tutorial Gorilla and thank you Mike. Love the style of the tutorial…
Hey Nick, I am a Big fan of you!!!! I always check your blog for mind blowing tutorials.
You made me to get in deeply to Cinema4d.
Monkey is rocking!!!! please ask him to do more tutorials…. keep rocking Nick.
Hi everyone,
Xpresso question:
Suppose i have 10 Root joints, how i can control the PSR of each one with only “1″ controller ? Then from that add “random” to have different “movement”.
Dont know if i’am clear in english, i’am a froggy.
Thank you both, you rock.
Charles
It was superb.
I mean the way you explained everything was simply perfect.
We’d love to see some more tuts from you.
I told my friends about this tut and they too said that it was a really nice tut.
really, really, really great. Like the depth pace and complexity. Also really good to have an insight into such a great xpresso workflow, its been baffling me for weeks. I Would love to see more and judging from the comments above, I guess so would everyone else.
Really appriciate you sharing guys.
Tom
Amazing tutorial! Helps me a lot to open my mind into new techniques in cinema 4D.
Deeply hope to see more of these tutorials, which have so much of value information and so well explained!
Mike please keep on rocking at Greyscalegorilla!!!!!!
really thanks fot that nick…we all say thanks to you and the monkey…both of you are amazing designers…thanks for share your knowledge
Dude… My brain is all ower the floor! This is mindblowing. Where to start? I feel so small…
Thanks Mike and Nick!
Mike this is pretty complex stuff for me right now, but i loved the way you presented it..looking forward to more.
you could also try the mohawk
Awesome Tut, awesome Tutor! More of awesome please!
Mike, have a Chivas on me!
Thanks so much for sharing this, I really like having this more complicated learning material around. Big up!
“It doesn’t hurt to know more…”
…well, my brain is throbbing right now!
Seriously, really enjoyed this and liked how it challenged me; the lack of constant hand-holding through a process – I think anyone who had a go at this would come up with a different end product and learn a lot along the way. (I will do just that once my brain has recovered!)
It has made me realise I need to swot up on Xpresso as those sections lost me. I could copy what you’ve done but I don’t understand it, you know? For anyone in a similar boat, I’ve heard that RuiMac’s COFFEE book is very good: http://www.ruimac.com/coffee_book/
This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for! A simple and understandable examination of joints.
Thanks so much for this one.
Hey guys,
I really love this tutorial.
I really hope that the monkey and gorilla will work more together!
Is there no limit to this blogs greatness.
Love the tutorial.
Just did something very similar to your basic joint chain to knot a Vuvuzela 3 days ago:
http://vimeo.com/12737770
Ausgezeichnet
Very cool. Now you think you could do that to… oh say, an entire stadium?
Mike, congrats on your first tutorial.
I like the free form way you took us through the tut.
I wouldn’t change your presentation style for your next tutorial.
You’re a natural at this, and it’s a great way to learn!
Best,
J
Awesome tutorial guys – keep the advanced ones coming!!
THANK YOU! this stuff is so awesome – its easy to find a lot of tuts that show how to use all of mograph and all the other cinema tools, but its hard to find strong intermediate resources that reveal such clever and sophisticated techniques – THANK YOU THANK YOU
cant wait for more!
Hey Monkey-
love the tutorial and i hope to see more from you and the gorilla.
question: after the xpresso steps (around 20min into the tutorial), everything works fine, only, my joint chain is now 100cm off of world zero. being the axis nazi that you are, i was hoping you could help me figure out why it’s not at world zero. do i need to fix this BEFORE i make the xpresso schematic? or can i cancel the position connection from the ‘root’ to ‘joint.01′, move the coordinates back to world zero, then reconnect in xpresso?
this problem doesn’t completely kill my work, but it’s a nuisance. the axis nazi in me doesn’t like it.
You may remember I did it the “wrong” way first to show you why you need to feed data to all the joints EXCEPT joint one. If you followed me doing it the wrong way you can simply correct it it by selecting just the first joint and setting it back to 0,0,0. Remember you only want to start offset and rotation from the second joint down (well… not always, but in this example).
If you were to build a more proper Xpresso setup you would actually add a node to make sure Joint 1′s position was always 0,0,0. As it is now, it’s free to roam, which has it’s advantages (if you know that it’s free). If you prefer it locked you have that option.
If you want to lock the position just know that you can’t use the Joint 1 node that’s ALREADY in your chain because it’s being fed by the hierarchy. Just make a new one (by dragging and dropping the object into the Xpresso editor) and create a Constant node with value of 0. Feed that into Joint 1′s position and rotation (but not scale).
Also make you you set up your hierarchy correctly. I fixed the mistake after the fact (and left it in to try and show how to problem solve the issue), but that may have been more confusing in the end. Sorry.
restarting and trying again straightened me out. starting to get xpresso. thanks for your help! maybe it’s because i didn’t have a whiskey nearby? next time.
The Monkey, that was an awesome tutorial! Hope to share a whiskey with you later in the future, haha. I was looking at your 2004 sketchbook and was wondering how you did the liquid and the smoke themes. The liquid was cool when it came out and then soaked into the floor.
Can’t wait to see more from you here!
Excellent tutorial full of great stuff. I would like more in depth explanation into the expresso nodes and really what they are and why chosen. That’s the hard part, is realizing “why” you need “what” expresso node to do what you need it to do.
OhBeOne… The liquids from that 2004 sketchbook were done with Thinking Particles. In fact, I think it was a tutorial that actually came with the Thinking Particles manual (back when C4D still came with paper manuals). Believe it or not, that animation has very special significance to me because it was what inspired my first discoveries with audio driven time remapping. The Artifaks piece was pretty much born out of experiments revisiting that first sketch from 2004.
http://4dthieves.com/projects/do/ecko10/Liquids_c22a-H264.mov
This sketch will likely be the source of my next tutorial. That way I can show you liquids and timetracks in a single run. That may need to be a two part-er just because of the volume of information that needs to be covered, but I love the effect and I’m proud of the research.
If you’re referring to the blue smoke… that’s just animated noise.
Thanks you so much for putting this up, I enjoyed it very much…
and now please excuse me, I have to watch it again and try it out
Awesome explanation about joints! The Xpresso part is harder to understand why you used each of those things, it would be great to have a more in depth tutorial about it!!
Thanks for it!
oh shit. that was a great tutorial. fast paced, go go go attitude, had to watch it about 3 times to stick it into my brain. thanks a lot, looking forward to the next one…
Mike – I’d be curious how you would add some soft IK dynamics to this controller. I’ve played around with soft IK the using the joint tool before -but not with xpresso.
Any ideas?
Well keep in mind that this is an FK rig so if you want IK you’ll have to create a system where you can switch back and forth between them. Like so…
http://4dthieves.com/files/gsg/chains/IK-Spirals-H264.mov
Also, if anybody is looking for something more challenging to dissect, there is a dynamic chain that uses constraints rather than FK or IK that’s included in CS_Tools. Under CS_Examples > theMonkey > CS_BassFish. It was created with a technique that uses sequential delay constraints that I first saw described by Kai Pedersen in his “Boing” tutorial over at Cineversity.
Okay, now that I know that “FK” is “forward kinematics” – that’s making more sense. I’d be curious to know how you did the sample you just posted.
And while I’m thinking about it, why isn’t there a “soft fk?”
I’m also curious if there’s a way to clone objects with mograph using this joint chain setup. I haven’t been able to find a way.
Mike,
Thank you very much.
*struggling along* until at 35 mins EXACTLY !!
I’m hooked !
Thanks Nick and thanks Monkey.
xx
Just wow. I have just recently started seriously playing around in C4D to enhance things I was doing in After Effects (I actually found this site through videocopilot) and XPresso was kinda one of those scary unknown things in the program,lol. This helped me ALOT to understand it a little better, thank you. This site has been one of the best sources on the subject I’ve found out there. I love how its entertaining at the same time as you are learning something. I loved the rambling about the golden ratio stuff. If thats what happens after not even one whiskey, I’d love to sit down and get hammered with you,lol god knows what I may learn. As far as crits on the screencast, everything seemed great however I like how the program Nick uses shows the buttons he is hitting as he’s going along. I teach at a design school here in PA and its easier for my students to see what Im doing as opposed to me saying “hit ctrl+j on your keyboard”. everything else was top notch man. Hope there will be more to come from Both you and the Gorilla. Thank you both.
Excellent quick run through a lot of instruments and techniques that were new to me!
My first experience with XPresso – such a powerful tool! Having prograaming background I feel it the right way to do repetitive tasks and involve the beauty of math.
Thanks a lot for the superb tut, Mike!
Thank you Nick for bringing Mike in!
Dear Axis Nazi,
I am grateful for this wonderful piece of info!
Good job already!
Mike.. This is one of the best tuts that I have ever seen after starting off with C4D! Its total knowledge overflow!
Looking forward to the next “liquid Tutorial”.
Thanks Nick for this endeavor…You rock!
What can i say mmmhhh.
Damn m8 this is great.
Respect!
Wow. Excellent tutorial. Especially the golden thing confused me.
That’s awesome! Looking forward for more tuts from you Mike! Thanks guys.
Thanks for the great tutorial. Looking forward to see more like this.
It’s not too fast paced by the way.
Thanks for the excellent tutorial.
Could you do a tutorial on time tracks i really loved the way you used time tracks in your NAB presentation.I’ve been trying but couldn’t get it right..It would be helpful.