Cineversity Tutorial: Using Cinema 4D to Create Broadcast TV Promos

Learn techniques and tricks used to create broadcast promo videos for action, comedy, thriller, and sci-fi shows in Cinema 4D.

Special thanks to Cineversity for recording the presentation, and to Maxon for hosting these great speakers.

Part One: Action and Comedy Promos in Cinema 4D

First, in the action promo, Dan shows you how he uses Cinema 4D’s Voronoi Fracture to procedurally break apart buildings and roadways. He’ll showcase several techniques for creating fractures and controlling their dynamic animation.

Let’s jump into part one.

Here’s a timestamped breakdown of the presentation courtesy of Cineversity.

03:24 – Technical Brief: Fox Presents
07:15 – Action Sequence
09:20 – Quickly Model a Building
13:05 – Voronoi Fracture Trigger on Collision / Meteor Attack
19:54 – Voronoi Fracture Trigger via Effector
26:18 – Comedy Scene
30:14 – Dynamic Conveyor Belt / Motors and Cloners
38:34 – Sculpting Donut Icing
42:40 – Soft Body Dynamic Donuts / Mesh Deformer

Part Two: Sci-Fi and Thriller Promos in Cinema 4D

In Dan’s second presentation, he’ll move onto a sci-fi promo, where he models interesting wall and floor designs with C4D’s Knife tools. He then models an articulated arm and shows you how to animate it with Inverse Kinematics (IK). He also creates hanging wires using Spline Dynamics.

For the thriller promo, Dan will create a procedural landscape by layering noises and gradients within a Displace Deformer. He’ll populate the landscape with trees using the MoGraph’s Cloner object. Then he’ll apply MoGraph Selections and the Hide Selected command to art-direct the location of the trees. He also uses the Spline Defomer to add a roadway, and animates a car along the road via the Align to Spline tag.

Dan concludes his presentation by talking about C4D’s Take System and After Effects integration, which are invaluable when creating multiple versions of similar promos.

Here’s a timestamped breakdown of the presentation courtesy of Cineversity.

07:05 – Sci-Fi Scene
08:19 – Wall Detailing
12:22 – Floor
16:08 – Articulated Arm – IK Rig
22:09 – Hanging Wires / Hoses (Spline Dynamics)
30:35 – Thriller Scene
31:18 – Procedural Landscape (Displace Deformer / MoGraph Selections)
36:13 – Roadway (Spline Deformer)
41:25 – Versioning (Take System and AE Integration)

More from Dan Pierse:

“Ever since I was a little kid, I remember getting excited about seeing the production logos at the beginning of movies or seeing the Stephen J. Cannell production card at the end of my favorite tv shows. I sometimes loved title sequences more often than the actual shows themselves. I never really knew why I loved them, but funny how life works out as now I’m lucky enough to work on them. I’ve been creating motion graphics for film and broadcast since the late 90s, dipping in and out of freelance and staff, holding every position from Runner to Creative Director. I try to be inspired by as many things as possible, the beautiful, the mundane and the ridiculous and, hopefully let that all come out in my work. Sometimes a job just pays the bills but I like to think I’m one of the lucky ones who truly loves what they do.”

Website – theautomator.tv

More from Cineversity:

• 50 More Minutes of Tips and Tricks for Cinema 4D – Chris Schmidt
• Make Beautiful Renders in Seconds with Cinema 4D – Nick Campbell
• Learning Cinema 4D Through Experimentation – Zachary Corzine
• Using 3D to Enhance 2D GIF Deliverables – Andy Needham
• Creating Multi-Screen Experiences with C4D – Sabour Amirazodi
• Speeding Up Your Animation Workflows with C4D – EJ Hassenfratz
• Cineversity NAB 2017 Rewind Playlist