Greyscalegorilla

Menu
Greyscalegorilla.com

How to Speed Up and Slow Down Your Animation in Cinema 4D 69 Comments

In this short tip, I show you the three ways to speed up and slow down your animation in Cinema 4D using Keyframes, Time Scale or using After Effects and Time Remapping.

Mentioned in this video: Stopping Time: How to make the Matrix Effect in Cinema 4D

69 comments Join the Conversation Join the Discussion
Transform
City Kit

Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

69 Comments

  2. Mike

    Very cool tutorial! It was actually the fisrt “no-brainer” tip that helped me out the most :P

    I used the frame rate change yesterday for a college project in Maya to do a slow-mo affect on my character animation. Boosted the frame rate to 120 and converted it back to 25

    Reply

  4. Vancouver Man

    Bit of a misconception here from Physics class: large objects and small objects fall at exactly the same rate, so when you’re using gravity as your force and things are set to reflect real-world behaviors, the large mass sphere should fall at the same rate as the small mass sphere. If it doesn’t it’s a computer speed limitation, not something that will look faster or slower in the final render. Or at least, it shouldn’t.
    :)

    Reply

    • Daniel

      Good point there, someone didn’t skip the physics class :)

      Reply

    • robert

      i believe what nick is talking about is the _feeling_ of size. it’s all relative. image being a fly and watching a human being. for the fly a human moves slow, because the human is bigger, and vice versa.

      so, to make objects _feel_ huge, make them move slower. to make them _feel_ small, make them move faster.

      Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Sure, things fall at the same rate but larger objects are filmed from longer distances away too. So the effect is they take longer to hit the ground. Larger objects that are relatively by ratio the same distance away as a small object WILL take longer to hit the ground. Example: A marble at a height of 10 marbles high hits the ground faster than a bowling ball falling from ten bowling balls height.

      When you use the time scale, you are effectively making everything larger and moving the camera back to compensate. Therefore giving you the feeling that it’s going slower.

      Reply

    • Vancouver Man

      Thanks for chiming in Robert and Nick. I guess when I saw your demo of enlarging the sphere, I didn’t get the visual sensation you were describing so that confused a bit. I think I follow now about scaling and moving the camera back. I’ll tinker around with it in Cinema. Just wanted to make sure everyone understood the physics behind falling objects because sometimes people have the misconception that if you dropped a marble and a bowling ball out your window, that the bowling ball would hit first. :)

      Reply

  5. Brandon

    Amazing tutorial, your motion graphics and tutorials are the best out there keep it up bro!

    Reply

  6. another Neil

    Is’nt there also some kind of “time property” track in cinema 4d which essentially does the same as the “time remapping” in AE?
    That way you will no run into the problem of stuttering when remapping footage in AE.

    Reply

  7. Simone Nucci

    Hi Guys,sorry for my english i´m very bad with it… I know another way to slow down an Animation in Cinema 4D, just using the “Time Track”, you can find it under right click with the mouse on any objects in the timeline menu and then clicking on “add special track”.
    Normally i create a new null-Object and drag it on the timeline. Then with the right click i select under special track “Time Track”. Finally i click on the “time” under the Null-Object in the timeline menu and i drag it in the atribute folder under “time track” on one of my animated Object. In this way i can easily slow down or speed up different objects using only one track.
    I hope i was clear!!!

    Reply

    • kelly

      Hi Simone,

      Thanks for your helpful suggestion – it sounds great, and I’m trying to figure out what you’re describing, but can’t yet. Could you perhaps try to explain it a little more? – I’m sorry even to ask, but I’m having real trouble with this and your method sounds so great!
      Especially, I don’t understand this part:
      Finally i click on the “time” under the Null-Object in the timeline menu and i drag it in the atribute folder under “time track” on one of my animated Object.

      Really appreciate any response.
      Thanks!
      K

      Reply

      • Daniel Rodrigues

        Hey Kelly
        I wanted to know more about this kind of Time Remap told by Simone, so i just search for “Time Track” on the Help menu, and there is the explanation for the technique that you questioned.
        It’s a long (for the Help standard) tutorial, that starts with this phrase:

        “Take your time in reading the next pages because the possibilities of CINEMA 4D’s time control offers are virtually one-of-a-kind”

        good luck! And great tutorial, Nick!
        (sorry for the brazilian english ;D)

        Reply

  8. Pablo

    Amazing man!….but i have another kind of question, if i want to make this HD view, with this slow motion thing like a glass broken, or something that looks cool in slow way, offcourse its take longer to render and the final video will be like 4552761 megabytes, and i wont be able to upload it to anywhere or even keep it in my computer cause is to big and last 10 secs for example.
    What format, and what codec its better, or how is the better way to save this file and have a nice HD slow motion video with few megabytes…:D

    Sorry about my english….im from CHILE!!!
    Thanks again nick!!

    Reply

    • Pablo

      With HD view, I mean to render a 10 sec. video in 1280×720 px.

      Thanks!!

      Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      H264 is good for web and Photo JPG is ok for archive. I keep uncompressed for most of my short form stuff though.

      Reply

  9. Tawat

    Yell Gorilla I just start C4D 1 month ago your tuts..! Is awesome Thank..Man
    Sorry about my English….I’m from Thailand!!!
    Thanks again nick!!

    Reply

  10. Chris Valente

    wow, I remember the first time I discovered time remapping in AE, I spent hours screwing around with distorting time on all sorts of clips I had. Love that tool

    Reply

  11. Linus Lundin

    Hey Nick! Linus from Hyper if you remember. Nice tut!
    One thing I was thinking about, I’m really not sure about this but shouldn’t you have frame blending activated when playing with time remapping, or when should you use that?

    Another great plugin for slowing stuff down is the Twixtor plugin for AE. just a tip to all of you.
    peace

    Reply

  12. Art Student

    Hey Nick. Just wanted to say your site is awesome and you truly are a hero for divulging such tuts and stuff so openly.

    One thing though. Could you speak on students using your tuts verbatim for projects and taking full credit for it? I’m seeing it a lot and some students don’t even bother to make any changes to your projects or to reference your site/existence.

    Reply

  14. Oliver

    Again, very cool and useful BUT, could someone tell me why it won’t work using a fracture object (exploding segments)?? No matter wich one out of the three solutions you try, the thing seems unstoppable.

    Thanks anyway!

    Reply

  15. Neal Carroll

    Hey Nick thanks for that! But what I was actually talking about was what happened when your video card couldn’t handle the scene, how can you tell how fast it is actually gone be when you render it out. I think I would do the 60 frames a second but I’m already gonna be rendering this for an estimated 24 hours so I don’t want to double that time…

    Reply

  16. Bort

    I’ve been working with pre-rendering comps and then time remapping them in some of my more heavier projects – what’s the best render format to time remap?

    I’ve had luck with lossless quicktimes and have tried targa sequences, but I’m wondering if there are better routes to take.

    Reply

  17. MarcyVF

    And NOW when we hit render…
    Love that quote.

    Thanks, I’ve seen some of it before, but it’s nice to have sort of a “round-up” of all the methods and which one is appropriate and so on. :) Thanks!

    Reply

  18. Stephen Matute

    Hey Nick!!! Great Tutorial… Thank you 4 share this wisdom… I have a nice question… Can you give us some nice Tips To How speed up our render time in Cinema4D???

    Blessings…

    Reply

    • Ramott

      Hi,

      that’s easy in C4d, text in centre of circle, glass textured objects around it. Put a compositing tag on the text, turn off seen by camera. Place a camera to rotate around the piece, and voila, done.

      Reply

  22. Kevin Snyder

    Another great solution that was introduced in R11 is the use of motion clips in Cinema 4D. You can create a clip from an entire scene and then time remap it in Cinema…works out great and prevents longer render times from increased frame rates.

    Reply

  23. ScottCorey

    Total n00b question, can you slow down film footage in AE?

    Reply

  25. very newbie boy

    Hi Gorilla, sorry for my english.

    I have an issue about motion tracking, would you tell me about it?and maybe a tutorial about motion tracking would be helpfull. (i mean, a brand new tutorial) thx =)

    Reply

  26. Matt Ciaglia

    Say you have an animation and you pass it off to an editor and they totally time-remap it in the Avid or FCP and you have to go back an redo the timing in C4D to match a new reference video the editor output. How do you do about retiming it in C4D to match?

    Reply

  27. Nillerus

    Awesome tut as always. I say always, although I just found your site yesterday. I was so amazed at the amount of cool shit on it, that I’ve been watching your tuts instead of doing course work, and have gotten through amost of them by now. Relativity and all that.

    Keep up the fantastic work.

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Thanks for finding GSG. So glad you like the site. Thanks for watching all the vids. Let me know if I can help with anything.
      Cheers!!!!

      Reply

  28. Tyler

    Hey Nick,
    Another great tutorial, You have helped me so much with Cinema 4D and After Effects and I really appreciate it. You are a inspiration to me, thanks for all the tutorials you do, its all the little helpful tips in them that help me out the most. Your a great guy Nick,
    Thanks again

    Reply

  31. david

    hi nick!
    i always have problems with rendering more frmaes

    in my project settings saids 90, in my renders settings says 90 too but in the actual render the program does 3 times more frames but not as you explained, it extends the timeline….

    can you help me?

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Sounds like you are set to 90 frames per second. Set those to 30 and set your frame range to 90 in your Output box.

      Reply

  33. Dennis Fegan

    I’ve been changing up the speeds on projects for a long time now but I just noticed that when I use a cloner object and change the frame rate even by 1fps the animation of my objects drastically change. I’ve been trying to figure this out for the past 6 hours and it’s driving me nuts. I tried the Mograph Cache tags you talked about, changed frame rates, time scales, some formula for substituting the default gravity for the correct gravity. I changed the collision margin to 0, added extra substeps, messed with scale. AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WORKS!

    PLEEEEASE HELP!!!

    Reply

  34. BonKerzHD

    Heyy there just wanted to let you know Gorilla That your Tuts are awesome and this really helped me out alot Thanks

    Reply

  35. mCho

    Awesome ! ..
    thanks nick, i’m a recent follower of GSG, thanks for all the tuts .. i’m really learning cool things from you .. regards from MEXICO !! ..

    Reply

  37. No Gravity

    Thank you man, u opened my pupils, expanded the mind again.

    Reply

  38. Timothy Mubaiwa

    Hey Nick

    Got a problem, tried to create a scene that is similar to this one were objects fall into another open object but instead, they have been landing on top of the object as if it had a closed polygon. What may be the problem?

    Thanks for the great tuts by the way.

    Reply

    • Steve

      See GSG tutorial “How to make a Dynamic Chain with Cinema 4D” for info about this one in the older posts

      Reply

  41. Alex

    Thanks for great tutorial! But I didnt have MoDinamics in 12 ver. It named just Dinamics and doesnt change the speed of MoGraph objects. Have any ideas?

    Reply

  42. Arthur

    Hi Nick!
    After watching the video I got confused with one thing..
    Is there any wat to slow down the “time” only for a different object and not for the whole scene.
    I mean when you wokring with not the keyframe animation.

    Best regards,
    Arthur Sheikhaliev

    Reply

  43. esteban

    it’s there any way to slow down an animation with the clothilde tag in it? it’s seems like the tag have it own timeline and it’s not affected by the framerate

    Reply

  44. esteban

    finally i find a solution, te key was to use the point cache to slow down animations with the clothilde tag

    Reply

  45. Steven

    YES! Exactly what I was looking for! Been looking through all your tuts. Great stuff! Keep up the great work! :)

    Reply

  46. Gokhan

    Hi Nick,thank you very much for this great tutorial,but I have a question to you;

    How can I add different speed to different objects in C4D,I want to create a galaxy system and I want to some objects slower than other objects but how can I do that I don’t know?

    can you help me please?

    Thank you very much :)

    Reply

  47. Adriano

    Thanks a lot Gorilla! Another wonderful tutorial. Anyway, i have a question: in witch format did you export the file from C4D? I saw that in AE the video is .tif, but when i export using .tif it creates just a lot of images. How can I create a video using that images? Normally i export in .mov, am i wrong?
    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Adriano

      I saw just now the Tutorial “How to Export Your Scene From Cinema 4D to After Effects” and well… the answer was in there.

      Reply

  50. Ramott

    Exactly as Simone Nucci said,
    The right way to do Matrix style from within C4d is to use Time tracks from within the timeline.
    Don’t waste time with this, got to Maxon directly:
    http://www.maxoncomputer.com/tutorial_detail.asp?tutorialID=271
    This whole tutorial is basically Greyscale Gorilla not knowing that fact and therefore wasting everyones time, plus promoting bad practice. The real way is the best and the easiest.

    Reply

  51. Alin

    Thanks , I came here to learn how to do slower animation to make my next project SHIP in space :> Thanks so much. BTW did anyone say that you look like Russell Crowe? For a moment I thought you were him =)))

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.