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Intro to Cinema 4D: Tutorial 203 Comments

Today, I run through the basics of setting up a scene in Cinema 4D and rendering an image. We are gonna make this abstract sphere scene above using HDR lighting, The Mograph module, and Global Illumination.

Download the HDR Map and C4D Project file

Check out Tim’s site Helloluxx.tv for the layout and other great C4D tips.

Thanks to Chad Ashley for the HDRI Map.

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203 Comments

  2. Dustin Bankord

    Hey, I just have C4D 9, with no MoGraph, and I’ve just been trying to get into it for my motion graphics, should I wait to get mograph for v10 does it carry over if I got it for 9, thanks man, great tutorial

    Reply

  4. ughsassin

    LOVE the C4D tutorials man, thanks and keep it up!

    Reply

  6. Izzy

    I agree with ughsassin, PLEASE keep up the C4D tutorials:)

    …I’ll even go one better:
    I LOVED your teaching style, it was very refreshing compared to a lot of other instructors out there.
    So, I’ll be happy to PAY for anything you offer in the future regarding C4D as well:)

    Thanks again!

    Reply

  7. Nacho

    Awesome. Ever since you posted some C4D works I’ve been meaning to give it a shot, now’s my chance. Keep em coming! C4D and Ae baby!

    Reply

  8. Jeroen

    Nice tut!
    but how can i get the lay-out that you use?

    Reply

  9. illd

    Its my first time here and I already like it :)
    Nice tutorial, keep it rolling!

    Reply

  10. Izzy

    Hey Nick, I noticed that when you were rendering, your renders were LIGHTNING fast, appearing to take no more than 5 seconds for your final HD image.

    Now, I’m only on a quad-core with 16 gigs of ram, but the project as downloaded took my machine over a minute to render??

    Is there a magic setting I missed?
    I even took the antialiasing and set it back to the default, but still the time was nowhere close to yours.
    Any ideas?

    Also, Jeroen, here are the layouts:)
    http://www.hypa.tv/hypablog/?p=15

    Reply

    • finemotionvision

      did you work this out mate?

      my render for this scene took 2 minutes. See my post below.

      Reply

  12. ISP

    Great tutorial. I agree with about doing postwork in After Effects or Photoshop. Modo doesn’t have any chromatic aberration effect so I have to fake it in Photoshop to fake the photoreal look. Could you do more Cinema 4D tutorials, but this time show how to render out different passes (diffuse color, occlusion, specular, depth of field) for greater control in After Effects?

    Reply

  13. Rmax

    Hy
    Thanks for this beautiful tuto.
    What do you suggest for the HDRI pict when you have a cubic ?
    thx

    Reply

  14. Rick

    Enjoyed it Nick. I have C4D 10 sitting on the computer and have never opened it once. Why have something you don’t use… I think now I have a reason. I’m more of an AE guy, but I need as much in the arsenal as possible, right?

    Thanks again. I’ve become addicted to the webcasts.

    Reply

  17. Simon

    Is it just me or is there a problem with the .exr file…..C4D gives me an error when i apply it.

    Reply

  18. The Gorilla

    Some people have had some issues with using EXR files in Cinema. Not sure what the issue is. You can convert that file into a 32bit TIFF and it will work also. That should work

    Reply

  21. Simon

    Thanks for the hint. Really great tutorial…..could you at some point talk us through your backup strategy….i see you’ve got a raid array, drobo and time machine setup….be interesting to see just how paranoid you are!!

    Reply

  22. hanson

    hey, i m a hong kong based designer, juz wanna tell u tht ur tuts are awesome! rock’on!

    Reply

  23. martin

    hi, very interesting tutorial. only thing is that the .exr file doesn’t work for me. i always get a “texture error” when i try to render. i already downloaded your zip-file two times, always the same…

    Reply

  25. xout

    Thanks for all your tips, good stuff. If anyone is interested, add a composite tag to your sky and uncheck seen by camera. You still get the the reflections but not the image in the bg.

    Reply

  27. Fard Muhammad

    The “Clapper Thing” is called a “clapboard” or “clapperboard”, actually. Very close. :)

    Reply

  29. Winston

    Great tutorial. Thanks!
    Dumb question, but… How can you tell if Advanced Render is properly installed? Are there certain options that do not show up in the render settings if you do not have AR installed? Thanks again.

    Reply

  30. Kevin

    Wow! This tutorial is great. I’m a C4D newbie and was looking for something like this. You’re getting added to my RSS feed!

    Thanks.

    Reply

  31. Bruno

    You’re a great teacher Nick! I really like this C4D tutorial. It’s not easy to find great tutorial like this one. I learned A LOT.
    Thanks man
    Keep it up!

    Reply

  34. Demian

    Great work! for some odd reason I downloaded the exr applied it but won’t work. I get a missing it error and a red box around the material sample on the material manager! I tried resaving the exr but no luck any suggestions?

    Reply

  37. Adam@adamfarnsworth.

    Hello, really enjoying the site. Your portfolio and tutorials are very inspiring!

    You mentioned in this tutorial that your friend Chad, made the HDR map in a PC app, I was wondering if anyone has come across a Mac app for creating HDR environment maps, anyone?

    Reply

  39. Su

    Hi, after creating and animating my object how do i export it as an avi or other movie format in maximum quality?
    Thanks a lot.

    Reply

  43. Dan

    So, I just got Cinema 4D r10 two days ago and loaded it up last night. A studio bundle version just to practice on and learn the program. I was very excited to try it out and follow your tutorials. Naturally I wanted to start with the Intro to Cinema 4D tutorial. What a let down, when I found out I don’t have Mograph module to follow along what you were doing. Any ideas on how I can get that module to use and practice with? I still watched the tutorial and you do a great job of explaining. I look forward to following along on other tutorials hopefully outside of the Mograph since I don’t have it. Keep up the Cinema 4D tutorials and let me know any other references you may recommend for my learning.

    Reply

  44. Mike

    I’m also unable to get the HDRI map to load correctly. I select the exr file but then it doesn’t show up on the material and the box around the material display turns red. Any ideas?

    Reply

      • olga

        HI!!! just new to the programme but am learning really quickly with your great tutorials!!! you make it look so easy – thank you!!!

        However, have been trying to download the HDRI map so i can do the orange and blue spheres but it just doesnt want to!!! the file is there but when unzipped its empty!
        Im still just using the demo!

        any ideas???

        Reply

    • Mikkel

      Nick, the exr doesn’t work for me either … any chance you’ll upload the HDR file?

      Thanks

      Reply

  45. Qu4rtz

    Nick I can’t get the Global Illumination option to be active on my Cinema 4D v.10 program.

    I’m not using the MoGraph module so I thought I would go through the steps with a single sphere instead maybe thats the problem?

    Also I want to build an interior 3D studio/building in Cinema 4D. Do you know of any good tutorials for this?

    Thanks for your tutorials and keep up the good work!!

    Cheers

    Reply

  47. olga

    HI!!! just new to the programme but am learning really quickly with your great tutorials!!! you make it look so easy – thank you!!!

    However, have been trying to download the HDRI map so i can do the orange and blue spheres but it just doesnt want to!!! the file is there but when unzipped its empty!
    Im still just using the demo!

    any ideas???

    Reply

      • Anders

        I have used Cinema for some years, but only for “light” work :)
        There are some other work in the gallery (same link).

        Reply

  49. Martin Nielsen

    Hey! Great tutorial, in fact I love all your tutorials and you’re helping me a lot (just got Cinema 4D three days ago!).

    I ran into this problem during the material part. Here’s a picture:

    http://i31.tinypic.com/hs51xj.png

    As you can see, my material isn’t looking like yours. Mine have that dark gradient around it while yours have a lighter/white glow around it. My settings are – well I think – 100 % the same as your settings. A simple color and the rest into ‘Reflection’. I hope you’ll be able to help me out. :)

    Reply

      • Martin Nielsen

        I fixed it (only saved my final render), but thanks!

        But hey, I’ve a suggestion for a tutorial. How about rendering med Vray or something like that. I’d love to see how to capture realistic looking renders with Vray (if you have it.. :) If you don’t, then modelling would be nice. Maybe a glass with some wine in it or a couch!

        Reply

  50. Martin Nielsen

    I ran into a problem today modelling a couch. Whenever I try to use the FFD bend object and put it as a child of my model (in this case it’s the back of the couch).. whenever I mark some polys and try to modify the back of the couch nothing happens. Can you help me solve this problem?

    Reply

  52. lukasz

    can any one help me ? how to save sound in c4d i have animation with sound but when i render it its with out :|

    Reply

  54. bill

    hello & thank a lot !
    just a question, with c4d r11, global illuminaton has changed and the render seems to be very long in comparaison with your video. Any idea about this ?

    Reply

  55. Justin

    Thanks for this one!
    Although i have a question, i try to make a animation with those ones. But when i animate the DHR Map is shown, kan i disable it in the render or so?

    Thanks man! Keep up the good work

    Reply

  56. Nate Tull

    Grreat stuff man! Love your site. Had a question though. Im VEEEERY new to C4D and I saw that you use ‘Global Illumination’ in the tut. When I click on Global Illumination its all greyed out. Im I missing something or is that another extra I need to fork out cash for? Thanks!

    Reply

  57. rich

    Cheers for these nick, really helped getting me up to speed with c4d!

    Reply

  58. outreach

    Thanks for this very useful tutorial for noobs like me.. :D

    Keep it up!

    Reply

  59. finemotionvision

    Great work Nick,

    @Nick + everyone else

    I’m new to C4D. Was wondering how long a render should take on an iMac 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo,with 4 gig of ram.

    I’ve got the advanced render module.

    It’s taking 2 minutes to render the scene!

    I take it, Nick, you’re running a large ass Mac Pro and that my own render times are to be expected with my system?

    Any feedback from anyone would be great – especially anyone who’ got a similar system to mine.

    ta

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      thegorilla

      It all depends on your settings. it’s hard to give you a number without trying to render your scene here. It’s all about finding out what settings you can reduce or remove to get a good looking render with the shortest time. That, for me, is one of the hardest things to learn. Keep playing!

      Reply

      • finemotionvision

        good advice – it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there’s one magic setting. i reworked your tut and got the renders down to 20 secs. Much better. Still not lightning though.

        Reply

  60. mickey

    nice tutorial, i have made it, very easy, thanks for texture, greets from berlin

    Reply

  62. Kay

    Nice TUT GSG :) ,
    can’t seem to find Global ill. in Cinema 4d R11 though, makes me feel a bit stupid…
    any suggestions? :)

    Reply

  65. ?ukasz

    woah, how do you get your render to come out so fast?

    I’ve got a 2.2ghz macbook pro with gefore 8600M GT and it takes 3-5minutes to render what you do in a few seconds. that’s quite the different, this is a relatively new computer too.

    any suggestions? is it settings or just graphics card?

    Reply

  66. MarcyVF

    this was really helpful, thanks a lot! this actually was the first tutorial I ever took for any 3D program ever. so yeah, you kind of set me off :)

    funny to see how your room is brighter after the 20 minutes of tutorial filming. heh.

    Reply

  67. karl

    hey there. Really impressive stuff here, just found your site! I’d love to get my head around c4d, What’s it like for masking and revealing objects? It’s pretty much all I do in after effects with layers. Can you do similar in c4d?

    Reply

  69. Sam J

    Thanks Nick!
    Really helpful in more ways than 1.

    Just wondering is there a way to download the tutorial to my puter?
    Slow connection where i come from and it takes a while to load.
    Thanks muchly!

    Reply

  74. Jake Nelson-Dooley

    Great tutorial!! Especially the HDRI trick! One question: I noticed that the original image had a dark blue background, but the one you made in the tut was more gray. How did you accomplish the darker blue background for the promo image and also, is there a way to “hide” the HDRI from view while retaining the reflections it creates on the spheres? If any of this involves rendering Alpha Channels, perhaps you could make a tutorial on that in the future?? Thanks dude, you rock,
    Jake

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      The difference between the two is all in the post production. I must have made a more extreme color correction for the original image.

      As for hiding the HDRI, use the Compositing tag and turn off “seen by camera”

      Cheers!

      Reply

  75. Jake Nelson-Dooley

    Oh also, it seems that Global Illumination is a bit different now. I’m working off of C4D 11.5 and I had to apple-click in the render settings dialogue to add GI to the available options. It slowed down render time SIGNIFICANTLY but got the job done.

    Reply

    • smokey

      Nick!
      Don’t ever stop what your doing!
      Awesome content!

      Reply

  77. Devin Croda

    Hey Nick,

    I just got C4D yesterday, and this was my first run through with the program. Great work with the blog and everything, it totally gets me excited about motion work all over again with every post.

    this tutorial was super easy to follow and really helped me get going.

    here’s a link to my first render!
    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2692/4341238547_23843f35c1_o.jpg

    im gonna go through all of your stuff in the next week or so. really excited!

    Reply

  81. oxo

    its a cool tutorial and i love it
    hope to see more mograph tutorial

    thank!

    Reply

  84. David Brodeur

    Great tutorial Nick, I applied the technique you showed in the video to a logo instead of a sphere and it came out great. Thank you

    Reply

  85. pachy

    HI NIck! GRACIAS for the TUTS ….. I just got Cinema 4d 11.5 and I can’t found the GI. Is not in effects ( render settings>effects ) so all my fun is stopped by this. :(

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Sounds like you need the Advanced Render Module. It’s separate from CInema. Check Maxon’s website for more.

      Reply

    • pachy

      hummm! I checked multi-pass in renders setting and in the was the Global Illumination….It that works?

      Reply

    • Connor

      This site is amazing and I am very surprised that you keep responding to peoples questions, I was wondering if you could explain how to incorporate text in this. I tried adding text (even the mograph text object) and it was a disaster. I wanted to make the text randomly generate like the rest of the things in the scene…

      Reply
      • The Gorilla

        The Gorilla

        Hmmm, Explain a bit further. Do you want each letter to be random and fly around? If so, you may want to use the fracture object.

        Reply
      • The Gorilla

        The Gorilla

        Same as the spheres, actually. Just add the text to a cloner object and add a random effector. It’s literally just like the tutorial, but with a text object instead of spheres. Have fun!

        Reply

    • Connor

      Sorry, to be asking so many questions, but I literally am doing what you did in the tutorial and the random effector doesn’t move my text, my text stays in a bunch. I even put it into a separate null object from my other stuff and still nothing?

      Reply

  89. Big Tom

    Awesome tutorial – here are my results.
    tinyurl.com/274t9bq’

    This is my new favorite site.

    Reply

  91. Lawrence

    I just wanted to express my thanks to you Nick for giving your time to produce these tutorials. Im a Maya user and new to C4D and I have to say these tutes are awesome!

    I had a little play with the techniques and resources provided in this tutorial, you check them out here…

    Reply

  97. Carlos Jones

    I think your tutorials are awesome. I am getting ready to purchase C4D 12, Can I still render a toon sketch animation as I could in 11.5. Where is looks like it is being sketched out as you watch… Thanks…

    Reply

  98. Ben

    Hey Nick,
    I’m a absolute newbie in C4D. I went through couple of your tutorials and you really inspired me! Thanks for that! I don’t know many people doing something with such passion like you!

    Reply

  104. Matt

    Great tutorial!

    I recently installed 11.5 and my render time for this project is painfully slow. It seems to be the GI – but I’m on a fairly new MacBook pro (unibody) with 4GB of memory.

    Any tips to speed that up? Is it because I have the Advanced Renderer installed?

    Reply

    • fseuring

      You can use Best antialiasing to avoid these artefacts

      Reply

    • sam

      Im a beginner too.. just about to do this tut.. inspired another beginner can create something so awesome and shiny! well done!

      Reply

  117. Greg

    I am new to C4D and have been looking over your tutorials and they are all freaking awesome! I have one question and that is do you need an hdri when making an object reflective? Or till it just be able to use a color and where ever you put the light it will so the reflection from that light?

    Reply

  118. Bernard

    Hey! i jx started surfing here and belief me am going all the way through with.thanx for these awesome tutx keep’em coming.

    Reply

  120. Thomas

    Hi man, I am starting C4D from here. Thanks a lot.

    Reply

  121. Alex G

    Thanks for this! A great tutorial to start with. I was shown your website by a friend and have started going through all the AE and C4D tutorials! Really great resource for those looking to teach themselves the software :)

    Here’s my render:
    http://on.fb.me/qFAzz9

    Reply

  122. Matthew

    Hey Nick, do you put color correction on your final render? If so is it in C4D or in photoshop or other programs?

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Yes, I always do some sort of color correction and compositing. Either in After Effects of Photoshop.

      Reply

  123. ImJustJames

    great tutorial i used the things i learned in here to do this http://tinyurl.com/6xnuj8h …. i was having alot of trouble manipulating the materials and getting reflections but i see a few tutorials on your site that may help me with that…. great site! thanks

    Reply

  126. Emmie

    Hi Nick! Thank you very much for posting this. I learned quite a bit!

    Reply

  130. José Marques

    What about do the exact same thing, but with another solid? like a piramid, or a platonic solid? I’ve tried to apply this tut with a platonic solid, but it diddn’t work.. any tips, or other tutorials?
    (Excellent tutorial though.)

    Thank you,
    José

    Reply

  131. Lei

    after i loading the hdri.. its been all black…whats that mean…?

    Reply

  134. Stalin

    Hi man. i am starting C4D from here, thanks man, nice reflection i like your tutorial man

    Thanks for this tutorial…

    Reply

  136. V

    wow. your tut is really helpful. im new to C4D but from your tut it makes it so easy to understand. Thanks a lot!

    Reply

  137. Aftaab

    helo,i m a newbie in cinema 4d. i would like to know where can i get tutorials for cinema 4d?

    Reply

  139. Ryan

    I already commented this but I do not see my comment showing up anymore. I’m using Cinema 4D ver 13.061

    That’s fine and dandy however the random effector is not doing what I expect it to do according to your tutorial. I’ve tried different settings but nothing happens when I change various attributes in the random effector settings. Anyone who can help I greatly appreciate it! :)

    Reply

  141. Matt

    Hi, I’m not able to download the HDR map (link down). Please help me..

    Reply

  142. Andrew

    Yes, I’m sad about the HDR Map too. Chad’s website is down, the link is down. I just found out about your website and started with this tutorial. :(

    Reply

  143. Jonathan Hasson

    Just completed this tutorial and made it my own: http://cloud.jhasson.com/OoVr

    I combined the techniques I learned in this tutorial with the ones from your volumetric tutorial as well as your seamless background tutorial.

    Seriously Nick, these tutorials are amazing! I cannot believe how fast I’m learning Cinema 4D thanks to you. :)

    Reply

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