In this tutorial, I show you how to build a simple art gallery scene using cloners, mograph, and random effectors. Then, I show you how to light it without using global illumination or any lights at all.
Mentioned In the Tutorial
Inspired by this photo gallery
Concrete Texture
Concave object tutorial from gsg
Download my Cinema 4D Layout
Example Animation
Example Renders
Damn! Looks preety sweet! Trying that out tomorrow!!!
Great stuff !!!
Sorry due to crap internet speed, I can’t scroll through the video, do you need Mograph 2 (Rigid Body Tag)?
thats hot…im gonna try to recreate this without watching the tut first..then see if we did it the same way
need advanced tuto
Thx again Nick! =D
hey MoyGR, give credits to nick in your tutorials… at least put his name
Yeah, HMA is right. Not cool man, not cool.
Great Nick, hey MoyGR, give credits to nick in your tutorials… at least put his name…
Thanks for this Great tut Nick,
holly crap! well done, dude!!! thx for the tut!
Great stuff as usual!… i’ve got to get me R12
No need for R12 in this tutorial. It can easily be done in 11.5.
I´s a great tutorial!!
thanke you so much nick.
I cant do the gravity thing on 11.5
I just wanted to know if it is a new stuff of 12, or I´m doing something wrong
I have 11.5 to and I’m having the same problem to… A little help pleas
Did anyone ever find a solution for the dynamics body tag while using 11.5? Don’t seem to have it. Anything else that might work otherwise creating the same sort idea?
Great! I also saw exactly this photo gallery and wanted to make something with it! You`re too fast, man!
Greetings from Munich, Germany!
Ahh i attempted this to create an installation in cinema4d with skulls a while ago, this was really helpful, I may go back and try doing it this way.
This was created with Cloners, Tracers and random effectors: http://cargocollective.com/yratof/#982645/candy-Skulls
LOVE IT!
Cool renders! Love the fisheye lens
Haven’t seen many people do that in 3D. Cool!
That’s really dope!… Congrats
Andrew, was the fish eye done in C4D or in post? Nice work. Cheers!
The fisheye was done inside cinema4d, a lot of experimenting and understanding of how a lens works.
There are easier ways, however, here’s a C4D file i made for you so you can understand how to use them.
I just built a little xpresso controller so that you can play around with it getting a nice amount of fisheyeness…
Download my Fisheye example here:
http://cl.ly/6yMc
Let me know what you think ^^
Nice fish eye rig, Andrew. Would you mind If I shared that file with the community by making a blog post about it? Maybe even a tutorial? It’s really well done.
Nick, with the amount that you give, it’s only fair what we give back
you’re free to share that as much as possible. I’d love to see what other people can do with it and what you might do with it too 
Andrew, thanks for the reply and posting your file. It wouldn’t open for me. I’m on 11.5. But no worries, I can always wait for the tutorial.
Thanks again for offering that up. Cool site by the way.
I’ll see if i can get it over to 11.5 for you
Here’s the 11.5 version. it’s not exactly the same as the 12 version, but it’s pretty close
http://cl.ly/6ykB
Here’s an update on the camera for R12: http://cl.ly/71P8
Wow. Thanks man! That’s above and beyond. This is such a great community.
hey man this is awesome!
Great set up, thanks for sharing it!
Very nice images, Andrew!
Thanks a lot for sharing the file too!
Awsome tutorial as usual! You really get me excited about Cinema 4D!
Greets from Belgium
Another belgium greyscale fan !
groetjes
Same here .
hehehe .
Great tut Nick.
I know what to do tonight :
1 watch your tut
2 try to re-create your scene
3 try to find some ideas to make my own scene !
thx for everything man !!!
from France
pretty cool, nice renders. lookin a bit better than the toilet bowl
ty
Some advance tutorials would be nice! This looks good but is very simple, i thought most people could figure out how to do this by themself, atleast they should be able to.
Hey, great tutorial Nick! (as always)
When I saw the teaser I thought you made the animation by parenting the camera to the cube and rotate the cube!
Speaking of the cube, instead of creating the floor and the ceiling you could easily make a selection tag and use that for texture placement, my tip for you! ; )
Anyway, love your work!
Cheers!
Very Very Cool. Awesome Tutorial.
There are 2 sites I hit daily. VideoCopilot.net and GSG!
haha sorry dude but i found that statement to be sorta funny
I tried to do:) see there http://casadeimaginacao.wordpress.com/
Thanks a lot for attention
Nick, love your analytical and methodical approach to solving this. Very interesting to see how you went about modelling and lighting the scene, and as always you’re so personable and entertaining. Thanks for everything you do.
Awesome thanks Nick
Nick u are el mejor profesor de Cinema 4d
hot fire
Hi,
Nick Thank you so much man!!
This tutorial is soo cool \m/
Thinking of making some new cool things from this!
About a month ago,
I have made an animation using cloners and Wind effector
http://www.vimeo.com/22672783
Check this out!(THE TITLE)
I m a newbie and have learned lots of things from you!
Thank you so much NICK
(Sorry for bad English)
Hi Nick, what’s wrong with the banana camera company site? Can’t access it for a couple of days now.
Great tutorial by the way!
Have a look at the title
See the site is back since today.
Hi Nick, I realy love your tutorial, you inspire me and I learn many things with your tuts (and those of Andrew Kramer). Can I request a tutorial of a finalized video (Sound used, post adjustement etc…)
Please Nick forgive my english, i’m french and i sucks in english (luckly i understand better than i wrote xD)
OHHH No! one week before i post my new short you coming up with this. What a tragedy! But because you told me really a lot about cinema4D i’m not too ~.. with you man.
Great stuff on your site, nick and it’s nice to benefit from your willingness to show us your knowledge. Now I think i have to rerender some things because of all the Tutorial clones around the web but hey, …
I love your tutorials, Nick. You make tuts about something we’re trying to recreate. But in the process you show so many cool things which I did not know. I love the filter shader, the gravity tricks and the ‘follow position’-thing. Although I have to read up on that last one. Didn’t really get what it does.
Thanks for spending so much time sharing your knowledge and findings!
Have a nice weekend
Hey Nick, I applied the texture onto my floor plane, but it looks very stretched. Anyway I can fix that? Thanks. Love the tutorials
Just click on the material tag (the one attached to your plane). In the properties panel you’ll find X and Y cycle properties (i don’t remember the actual names of the properties). These allow you to set how many times the texture should be repeated. That should get rid of the ‘stretched out’ look. Hope this helps
nice
Wicked tutorial! Had a little go myself and went a bit crazy with the amount of colours I used for the spheres. But it got me thinking about the movie “UP”, they looked like a massive cluster of balloons. How would you go about getting the points of the balloons to all point down? Or even all tied to a single point by string? This certainly sounds like a job for the gorilla
Looking for tutorial on this…
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/plexusopmo/
play with character morph tag, metaballs, tracer object, and thinking particles…..and a whole lot of skills
That’s kinda funny, a tutorial on this, i think ‘this’ would ask for a whole lot of tutorials, but as Joshua said, experiment with those techniques, Displacement is also important in this one
grts
Hey Nick
how did you do the blue light fx in the final render? As always, very dope tutorial!
Greetings
Thanks, mainly by the new use of the gravity effector to animate dynamic. Your always surprising to us!
This is AWESOME. I like the way you explain things, too. “Now, you just have to tell the cube not to be an idiot. Let’s go do that.”
Please continue with these awesome tutorials. I’m a complete C4D newbie but making a bunch of cool little vids already because of your brilliant videos and great explanation. Awesome awesome awesome.
Hi i wild like to ask about if u can help me in how can i model and animaet anews peaper in 4d
Hi, i have one simple question how do i can make emitter give just random word or anything that can create just random number or letter.
xpresso object list node should do the trick
Thanks Nick! Great tutorial! Look it:
http://yfrog.com/h4zhbpdj
the reference gallery pic you showed was a real scene actually, made by this guy :http://www.danielarsham.com/index.php?/project/sculpture/
Nice idea. Many thanks to give us more than tutorial but also way of mind !
Here is my exercice linked to this tutorial
http://www.vimeo.com/24054865
it should be “who decides” with an “s”
song plz nick?
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whoouuouUOUUUOUU you made it !!! and with such class and style !! ” as usual !!!”
and your idea for the animation >> SU-PERB !!!
>>> the podcast that goes along with it is brilliant too ! Those advises are always good to ear !!!
cheers!
yann
there was a smart guy that say keep it simple. man you are the grate artist that iv e seen keep on man
WOOW men ….. fantastic job .. im working on it ..
This cube is… being an idiot..
Haha, great stuff; I love your unhealthy obsession with spheres
It´s time to say THANK YOU Mr. Campbell. You really are one of the good Guys.
Keep up the good Work and the beautiful spirit that drives you.
cheers
hi nick
can’t seem to find the similar dynamic tag on cinema 4D version 11.0
pls advice
The new dynamic tags were introduced in version 11.5.
Hey nick!
I have version 11.5 but the dynamic body tag does not show up, I’ve been trying to use rigid body tag, and the force setting doesnt have follow position.. I can’t get it to work. need your help!! thanks!
Thanks for the tut Nick, on question, when I duplicate the sphere to have two different colors, after applying to second texture to the new sphere, all the spheres are all the same color. I’ve messed with all the settings I can think of to no avail.
remove the texturetag on the cloner!
yeah, no dice. I also still have some spheres blowing through the box, even with the static mesh enabled.
same problem…
For the spheres going through you need to go to the scene dynamics settings and set the Steps per Frame to a higher number. Try 20 or above.
thanks,but. still, doesn’t works it..
love it da xd
Great tutorial, working on making this my own. Gonna post the video link here when I get it finished. Probably not going to look as good as your example though.
Best part of the tutorial?
“You see, the box is being, it’s being an idiot.”
Here’s my piece, critique would be awesome.
http://vimeo.com/24089211
Hi Nick,
Actually, you keep sayin actually everyday
I’m probably being very stupid here, but I can’t seem to get the gravity to have any effect on the cloner objects, it’s driving me mad!
Anyone got any words of wisdom?
Do you have 11.5 version?
Thanks alot for the tutorial, heres my take: http://vimeo.com/24085440 . Looking forward to the next one.
Hi nick from Medellin Colombia, I am a great admirer of yours and a big fan, eh echo all the tutorial that make pc, cinema 4d job for two years and I think that 3D is an excellent program even better than others, here in Colombia is not a software which is very hard but I prefer cinema 4d others and forgive my English!
Hey, thanks for a great tutorial, as always. I’m wondering how I could make the cloner morph between two objects. Anyone?
Providing both objects have the same number of points,you can use the pose morph tag (character menu,named “add point morph”.
It will still morph if the points don’t match, but will not repose the extra points.
Alternatively, you could try using xpresso and thinking particles to deform the object into the new shape.
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Great tuto, thank’s Nick. Lots of things I normally take four hours to try… without finding this “little check box” to tell the cube not to be an idiot !
(my test – http://alturl.com/dzvz7)
Great tut nick
loved the last bit on animating gravity… Simply awesome
Question :
Did you light the roof into C4D (i’m talking about the little flickering on each snare of the song) or in AE (using flare obviously) or both ?
I did that in After Effects with Knoll Light Factory.
First off… THANK YOU.
Next, my question: when I render, only one of of the three spheres in the cloner actually render. Everything looks great in the viewport, but upon rendering, all the instances of the other two colored spheres don’t blow out of the object, they just sit there, and they don;t render at all like what the viewport shows. Anyone, Bueller, Bueller?
http://vimeo.com/24068856
Hey Nick,
Awesome tut, I did everything and set it to render and went out four couple of hours when I came back render was done but the problem was when I hit play on my quick time movie it played very smoothly until it came towards the end and frames was freezing and not smooth what do you think happened here, was it that my machine went to sleep? or did i get something wrong in rendering setting, please advice
It’s probably just the image viewer playback. Try doing a ram preview to make sure.
I’m fairly new how do I check my ram preview and what is the next step thanks
If it’s a quicktime video that you have rendered, then the problem may lie with the quality settings you used and frame rate.
The “animation” compression is default in quicktime movie renders.When the quality value is set at best(also default) your P.C. will struggle to keep the video buffer ahead of the playback speed.
Look for the “option” button when you select quicktime video rendering, change the setting from animation to H.264 or just lower the animation quality a bit.
Dropping your frame rate to NTSC or PAL stanards will also help playback and save on render times.I render everything at 25fps unless i know i need high frame rate for slowmo action shots etc when compositing in AE.
The ram preveiw Nick refered to is the C4D picture viewer playback. The frame timeline at the bottom of the screen will highlight frames held in ram.On longer renders you will not be able to hold all of the frames and this will cause playback to stutter.
http://www.behance.net/gallery/MTV-Graduation-project/1484393 my project ,,, i want some feedback guys
Very nice one. I got a problem while tring to follow your steps: while applying the dynamics body tags it does nothing and the circle is not white but blue and also no mass, force etc options (I’m using r12 btw). If I apply the tag to the cloner it affects them, somehow (the circle is white and options are there) but the balls are still going through one another, like they’re not actually real. I’m newer to C4D and I can’t find a solution. Anyone?
Nick, just reporting a typo in the title: How To Make ‘and’ Modern Art…
WOW, can’t believe nobody said anything yet. Thanks for that!
lol, see my comment on May 20.
Thought you’d get it
Yeah, the new site was in the works. Thanks for the heads up!
I don’t know if it has been mentioned, but the installation you’re trying to reproduce in C4D is actually real.
I loved how you tried to demonstrate the fakeness of its shadows and all, but i’ve seen it a couple of years ago in paris.
These spheres are actually ping-pong balls glued to each other and attached to strings!
Can’t seem to remember the name of the artist though.
Bye!
Thanks for clearing that up. The closeup looks weirdly fake for sure. Thanks again!
Hey nick whats up? im trying to soften the gray that the ambient occlusion does… im thinking to do a multi-pass render for the ambient occlution and then apply a gaussian blur to it… could that be the fastest solution (rendertime)?
Thanks!
That will work. It’s always better to use the multi-pass and AE way when dealing with that kind of stuff in any 3d software package.
The level of control you have can save a huge amount of time doing renders over and over trying to get things right.Get it close, multi-pass render it then fiddle and fix it in AE.
Great tut Nick. So dumb of mine never thought I could rotate the gravity dynamics…
Hey Nick! I’m having trouble with the Depth Pass in AE…i’m using RSMB to create depth of field, but it seems to be applying the blur to the “balls” as if the blur is only contained within the confines of the object…it’s not blending with the environment at all, and therefore giving really strange results…do you know how to fix that??
I absolutely LOVE YOUR TUTORIALS, you are extremely talented! Is there anyway that i can save them to my PC so i can review them at a later stage? If not, could u possibly provide download links to your tutorials every time u upload them?
You can download them from Vimeo if you are a member.
I followed the tutorial, thanks. However, I discovered this strange behavior I’ve never noticed before in this type of dymanics (not that there’s that much experience to begin with). There is a project default in Collision Margin of 1-unit. It creates this empty space between the Collider and the Body thus creating a hovering appearance with the balls.
Examples:
http://www.cl.ly/3g1c3o2S3Y3Z3W1B3j2E
http://www.cl.ly/2I0p2k2t0Y3G0e382T25
After hours of troubleshooting I came across and changed the Collision Margin to zero thereby making the objects produce direct contact.
Collision Margin is default at 1, however in trying different scenarios, this setting doesn’t always seem to cause problems or the same results.
Does anyone have any insights on what the rules are here?
Nice tut…as always !
thank’s Nick
Hey Nick, this is my favorite tut you posted so far. So much so that I’m stealing (flattering, i know) the technique. Would love to hear your thoughts..
http://www.vimeo.com/24202925
wow ! nice work man !
go on like this !
very very thank you!
hi Nick, here is a really cool Real-life particle animation video
http://vimeo.com/23155536
awesome
Ha i thought the same thing when i saw this tutorial, saw that video the same day I was like what are the odds
Nick thanks for the layout, makes its all more clean – also for your tutorials. You rock!
Cheers
Realy cool tutorial!
Here some of the work i made of it:
http://subjectwork.tumblr.com/
Thanks,
Subject
When I first saw the animation video I assumed you connected the camera to the box and just rotated them both so the gravity changed inside but it doesn’t look like the box is moving (like they did inception, 2001). Wonder if that would have worked too.
Sounds like it would work.
See, I wondered that, then I thought, ‘nah, there has to be an easier way.’ and, as always, you know it and now I do too, thanks Nick! Though if anyone knows of any tuts about making textures work like your concrete one does, I tried to use a photo of mine and it stretches all ugly. how do you fix this?
Thanks for the great tutorial! Here’s my first (poor?) try at something like this.
http://youtu.be/s4CIIEXhnP8
Good stuff Alex
Thanks Nick! That’s really cool
Hey there Nick i haven’t gone through all of the comments here (will do that later) but this is really great !! thx.Only thing which drives me a little angry is that i just have R11.5 and so there must be a work around for the dynamics,you’ve got some tips ? would be nice !
Cheers and regards
Herne
Hey there Nick didn’t animate it yet but this what i did so far with your tut
thanx and hope you like it !
Greets Herne
http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g33/331733/331733_1306506202_large.jpg
That’s awesome man. I like that a lot. I’d love to see this animated.
Hi Nick. LOVING your tutorials – check them out daily. I’ve also got an earlier version (R11). Any workaround for separating the spheres from each other without the Dynamics Body tag?
Keep up the good work!
You need the new dynamics system to pull most of this stuff off. It’s only in 11.5 and 12.
I finally got my version up, check it out:
http://www.vimeo.com/24285769
Wow, this was a great tutorial. There’s so many things in here and you did a wonderful job making all of them work together. Quite a bit to be learned for sure!
Keep up the great work
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hello every one i am new to this c4d thing, actually came in contact will it by accident and i love it so much. i need a little help: 1 while recreating this tutorial myself, i got stock on the dynamic part. i don’t have the force, collision and all that stuff in the attribute manager of my dynamic body. so please i can i get that do i need a plugin for that.
thanks everyone for your help…
Hi
thanks for the tut! I have the problem, that some clone objects dive into the bottom plane and then they are trapped.. so do I have to adjust the collision distance?
Great tutorial as ever Nick. Many thanks.
Had a go at using the lighting techniques to see what the render times were like;
http://vimeo.com/24316416
That’s 10,000 balls. 720P frames were taking about 18 seconds or so each to render on my 8 core MacPro. Pretty decent, all things considered.
Thanks again and any comments are welcomed.
Got some inspiration from this and made this short one.
http://vimeo.com/24347865
This was a great tutorial. Thanks Nick. I tried out a few stills using an octopus as inspiration. Here they are:
http://ollyhil.tumblr.com/
Sorry that should be:
http://ollyhill.tumblr.com/
So excited I can’t even spell my own name.
Nick! Amazing tutorial!
Im just a beginner but I’ve learned so much from you! This is what I came up with, I even threw in some expresso for the lightanimations!
Take a look if you got the time
http://www.vimeo.com/24243254
Well done! Looks really good!
Seems like my next goal is to learn expresso!
Really nice attempt … I love the inside lighted balls
Hey Dude, i’m trying to make a MoText, the object for my cloner but nothing happened…
does anybody know how to use a text as an object for a cloner (to replace the sphere) ?
thx
The motext object needs to be made editable for the cloner to see it.This will stop you using the animation functions of the Motext however.
Only way round it would be with two copies one that’s still a Motext object for use as an animation position guide for the editable one.Then try to refernce the Motext letters index somehow in xpresso.
Not tried this myself,so can’t give you the exact details.
There is a long way round.
Create a Motext object for each letter then use the global position data for each one to transfer to the polygonal text version. You could then keep use of the effectors etc.
I think this may be better than above solution, because i’m not sure the letters can be indexed like normal cloned objects are.
Unable to check it out at the moment.
Hope it helps a bit.
ok
thx for the help, i ll try this and tell if it works
thx again and may the force be with you !
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Great tutorial Nick, managed to get this setup working in r11.5 without a problem. Great intro to ambient occlusion.
Hey Antony!! Can you help me out pleas?? I’m usin r11.5 and I cant get the gravity working corectly… Infact its not working at all. Thank you!:)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9603894/GSG/balls%20with%20ao2_0006.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9603894/GSG/balls%20with%20ao0019.jpg
My versions…
Excuse me nick, do you know if there is some way to make all thees animated balls of the tutorial work whith metaballs?
thank you very much and sorry for my english
Make the sphere editable, drop it into the cloner then drop the cloner into the metaball object.
Would advise starting with a low clone count or you could freeze C4D.
oohh thanx!
i’m gonna try it right now!
thanks!
oohhh it does’nt work, i don’t know if it is because of the espheres have the dynamic body tag or something like that
i’ve made exactly the tutorial, and i’m not able to make theese spheres work with metaballs
Works in R12, not able to try it in older versions.
Won’t work if you have the instances check box ticked on the cloner, that could be your problem.
Sure, Just add the Metaball object and it should work just great. Watch Simon’s latest tutorial to see how he sets it up.
you’re right!
thanxs!!!!
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Thanks for another great one, Nick!
About selecting random polygons and such you could check out the Chestnut plugin. The documentation is in Japanese or something but the plugin is in English:
Go to page 2 of http://homepage2.nifty.com/aquawave/cafeteria/chestnuts.html for the “Chestnut Selector”
I found google translate to handy: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=no&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhomepage2.nifty.com%2Faquawave%2Fcafeteria%2Fchestnuts2.html
I also have a quick question..
When the detail level of the primate spheres are reduced (to e.g. 10) will the dynamics calculations use the “perfect sphere” or the polygon sphere?
If the polygon sphere is the one used then one should be aware of that and look for intersections when considering how low poly one want the spheres to be. Depending on the project of course..
When you have the render perfect option on, all dynamics will be calculated as if it was a true sphere.
The single object point is used as the origin and the radius determines the dynamics collision field.
Great answer, thanks!
Hello there. Your tutorial was really great and the things you can make afterwords with the project, are awsome. Thank´s a lot. Grettings from Portugal.
http://vimeo.com/24939956
Hi Nick, so I decided to base my intro on one of the tuts you posted. I think it maybe exemplifies what you always stress about moving past the initial tut and making something kind of unique with it. thought I’d share with the community here.
Would love to hear a few honest words. thanks a bunch.
Lastly, since you asked, I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on IDEAS in these critiques. You have extensive feedback on execution but it seems like you could talk a bit more about the concepts behind the reels.
Hey Nick! How did you make this website i really want to make my own and share stuffs like you. btw awesome turorials i learn so much so thanks for that!