Make Dynamic Chain Mail In Cinema 4D

“Heeey everybody! Here’s an old test I did resurrected as a tutorial. I’ll quickly create chain mail on simple geometry that can be used to quickly make the chain mail act dynamic! A few lights and textures then BOOM. Chain Mail. Somebody make something neat with this please!” – Chris Schmidt

Example

About Chris Schmidt
Chris Schmidt is a self taught Cinema4D user since version 6 in 2001. After teaching C4D for 4 years at Prairie State College and creating a series of tutorials for Maxon on Cineversity, he cofounded Chicago’s C4d user group ChicagoC4d. With a general obsession of all things C4D especially character rigging, animation, Xpresso and Thinking Particles. Most recently co developed the City Kit with The Gorilla.

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

  1. ouss says:

    thank you

  2. Chris says:

    I LOVE it when things that look complex are so simple. Thanks Chris!

  3. Michael says:

    Ah that’s brilliant, great techniques too that I’m inspired to try out. Thanks, Chris :)

  4. Steve says:

    Great tut

    are the modelling tutorials still continuing?

  5. Alex says:

    Your tutorials are always great! Keep up the good work Chris.

  6. Ulvi Yelen says:

    wonderful tutorial O.o thank you very much chris

  7. Rovino says:

    Hmm trying to watch this on my iPad.. Do you not make your Vimeo videos mobile compliant? Im pretty sure there’s a setting for that in Vimeo.. Just curious if you don’t, why not?

  8. Rod Rubber says:

    Thanks for your time and great job.

  9. Michael Masters says:

    In R13, I choose the rigid body tag for the plane but it gives me the collider body tag instead. Can anyone help me with this?

    • rich says:

      not sure why it would do that, but you can change the dynamic roll down from off to on on the dynamic tab. That makes it a full rigid body tag again.

  10. Ron says:

    The combination of Nick and Chris is great. Nick knows how to make it look great and Chris knows all the X’s and O’s if you will. This works and thanks guys for the awesome tuts. I have learned so much from GSG. (NEWBIE SPEAKING, OBVIOUSLY)

  11. Sirius says:

    Thanks Chris! Great tutorial!

    I’ve seen you use VrayforC4d and also there’s a small tutorial on your site. It would be great to have some video tutorials about shading and lighting in Vray.

  12. omid abdollahzadeh says:

    thanks for all of tutorials

  13. mahmoudhassan says:

    i cant find dynamic tags when i right click why is that!

  14. Godmil says:

    Thanks so much for this tutorial Chris. It’s brilliant following along and finding you’ve made something really cool in less than 30mins.
    Also I learned little tips throughout (particuarly Instance, lumas, and the Naki noise).

  15. Steve says:

    As you pointed out in your previous tutorials how to speed up the work by using shortcuts there is one which you should try. Instead of opening the project settings window to change the total frame number, just use the little box between the preview timeline and the goto start of animation button. Nice work

  16. Postman07 says:

    Could you use this to make spiderman webbing. It kinda looks like that

  17. Rasha Sh says:

    Wonderful As always

  18. Zeb says:

    Hi Chris, You should use nice plugin from http://www.forcedimension.jp/qdg/plugin.html called solobutton, to solo an object without cliking on others objects, very useful !
    Thanks for your acknowledge ;-)

  19. Kyle says:

    Its very cool but it looks like the texture doesn’t stretch with it or its sliding. I love how easy it is to do this in cinema I’m a AE & Maya user and stuff like this makes me want to get cinema. Thanks

  20. Dr. Dre says:

    Not sure if you’ve done an interview with Chris Smidt yet, but I thought it would be cool to meet the man behind the nerd. Something like the MotionWorks unplugged interviews maybe.

  21. MichiSchwarz says:

    The modelling part is very good indeed. Useful tips when it comes to be able to handle dynamics. Like your tutorials Chris. The “jump to current object” was a real eye-opener, even after 4 years of Cinema. The lighting however was a bid…lets say: short:) On my laptop I didn’t even see the chain mail on the sphere, because it was so dark lid.
    Keep up the good work.

  22. Artyous says:

    All the tutorials are great, thx a lot for this work, i’ve learned a lot from your tuts,
    thx dude :)

  23. Pingback: Creating Fast Chain Mail Cinema 4d Tutorial | CGMOTIONBOX

  24. loxfear says:

    hmm interesting robber chain mail

    maybe it is a bit to bounchy

  25. loxfear says:

    and that is allso the reason why they are intersepting

  26. george says:

    This may be a beginner question (I am a beginner), but in regards to simply the plane object with the dynamics tag (prior to the clone additions); if you wanted to export the soft body plane to an OBJ sequence, it only uses the original plane (without the soft body dynamics) in the export. Is there a step after adding the dynamics to get the exported OBJ to retain the newly added shape changes (due to the tag) instead of using the orignal object shape? Sorry if this is confusing… and thanks!

  27. Mike says:

    Thanks’ a lot Chris for another great tutorial, I know where I can put this technique to good use. It really is interesting to see how you come up with new ways to use the dynamics system to achieve complex routines.

    Nice Work!
    Thanks’ again.
    Mike

  28. rich says:

    Great tutorial chris, was wondering if soft bodies are better for simulating cloth that the actual cloth module? They seem to do a pretty similar thing, are there any areas where using cloth is better than soft bodies or vice versa

  29. Murdoch says:

    Great stuff once again! Love the pace of these

  30. kamran shaikh says:

    another great tutorials… thanks GG

  31. Marco says:

    as always, thanks it’s a great tutorial

  32. It looks like the elements are stretching once they hit the sphere which is of course wrong. Metal doesn’t stretch at all.

  33. Pingback: Dynamic Chain Mail In Cinema 4D - GFX WARRIOR / GFX WARRIOR

  34. Great Tut! Can’t wait to try it out. Thanks!

  35. TuhinBagh says:

    y suddenly in r12..??
    btw can any 1 tell me how to move texture in r13
    i mean if u guys have seen tht dog tag tut of nick’s , there he uses tht tool to move tht tex..!! but in r13 in missing

  36. elromeo3xr says:

    check out wat i used the chain mail for and keep in mind I’m just a month in on my training and its all possible because of you guys thanks a lot for all your tutorials…..sending u love all the way from JAMAICA where its alway hot and sunny :)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIFHOxokoWA&feature=share

  37. çet says:

    I’m inspired to try out. Thanks, Chris

  38. Zeno Flore says:

    Hey Chris, very cool tutorial. I’m working on a snooker table,which I am animating with dynamics. when a ball gets potted,it goes through a net.But I’m struggeling to make the net move when a ball falls in ,so for now I keep it a solid piece of geometry.Could I use something like the chainmail to make the net and have it move with dynamics?
    I’d like to upload the c4d file,on here, but don’t know how.

    Greetings, Zeno Flore

  39. Lonnie says:

    Thanks for another awesome tut! I built this thing and can’t stop watching it!

    You are amazing!

  40. chris says:

    Great Tutorial! You were asking about showing you things we might do with this, well here is mine. ——- http://www.shapeways.com/shops/spacetime I made a bowl and it’s available on Shapeways. I pause the animation and made sure each link was intersecting just a bit with the links next to them and then turned that upside down. The finished bowl is 6 in. wide and can be ordered in white, black, pink, purple, and grey flexible plastic OR go wild and order it in STAINLESS STEEL !

    Thanks again for the great tutorials!

  41. Perilous7 says:

    Thanks for an excellent tutorial :-) i managed to get this a bit further and make a sleeve out of maille,has anybody made a body piece? a full dynamic maille garment would be awesome to see

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