Modelling on Cinema 4D with Jay Payne
Todays Process and production lesson was with Jay Payne again and the lesson focus was on modelling in Cinema4D. The end product was a little character animation where the camera spun round the character.
The first step was to create the basic shape of the character. This started with a cube that we edited and manipulated. As you can see from the screen shot the cube was manipulated to create a chunky body with legs and a head.
The next step was to add arms so we added a box on the side of the character and used extrude to make arms that stick out as well as little feet.
Once the body was done we added a feature called subdivision surface which allowed us to view the character as a smoothed out version. Whilst in this setting we edited the character slightly by moving points to change the shape of the body to how we wanted. I made mine tubbier and changed parts of its body to how I wanted. I also changed the face shape slightly.
The next step was to add colours and textures. I added black and white for the eyes and the we got to choose a colour for the body. I choose light pink because it is my favourite colour. The colours were added onto the geometric surfaces of the character but appeared smoothed in the smooth mode. One problem on my character was that because of how I had edited the eyes the white extended to the rest of the face. It is not really what I wanted but kind of looked like it was wearing a mask! The colours also revealed that one eye was bigger than the other. This made my character look a bit crazy and creepy which is funny.
Once the colour was added I made a white floor and background so the character was in an environment. I then learnt that we were also animating this character by having a camera that filmed the character spinning around so you can see all parts of the character. Lighting was also added so that a shadow was cast.
The next step was to add cell shading. This is the digital equivalent of illustrator vector drawings. The advantage is the ability to do realistic 3d. For this I added a setting called sketch and toon. You can see from the screenshot above that this added shadow and highlight to the character. I edited the colours and area sizes off the shadows. light pink is the highlight, theres the normal body colour and then a slightly darker shadow and then a lot darker shadow. When the character spun the shadows worked with the camera and lighting and make my character look 3D.
Below is the final video. I found the lesson interesting but there were lots of steps and setting which made it quite difficult. It would definitely be a huge challenge for me to try make a 3D character on Cinema4D myself. I think my little man is quite funny and the feedback of him has either been that he's cute, or creepy!
