7 pro Cinema 4D modelling tips

Tips & Tutorials by Steve Holmes

Improve the start of your C4D pipeline with these expert tips
01 – Set the origin point in preparation for a new Extrude object Want to drop an Extrude,
Loft, Sweep or MoGraph object into some splines or other objects you’ve made, but don’t want
that object’s axis to be in the world centre? With the splines you want to modify selected, hold
down Alt to force the Extrude, Loft, Sweep or MoGraph object to originate where your other
object’s axis is. Digital-Tutors

02 – Retopologise faster with the help of Shrink Wrap When you have a simpler shape like
an arm or leg that needs to be retopologised, you can drop in a very basic primitive like a
cylinder, and use Shrink Wrap to wrap the geometry around the mesh. It automatically forms
the new low-res geometry to the shape of your mesh, making the retopologising process a
whole lot faster! Digital-Tutors

03 – Model organic forms with the adaptive sculpting tools Cinema 4D’s sculpting tools,
while not as in-depth or advanced as a dedicated sculpting program like that of ZBrush, offer
great solutions to creative ideas. The ability to use these sculpting tools with a Wacom tablet,
along with that of Photoshop brushes and presets for paint or stamp textures, makes for very
interesting results. Joey Camacho

04 – Create realistic droplets To create realistic droplets, like those on a bottle, I model a
variety of drops, which will then be distributed with Cinema 4D SurfaceSpread. They don’t
need to be high poly – simply pull and push some vertices until you get the desired look. In my
case I had five types, the smallest of which were cloned 4,000 times. Michael Tschernjajew

05 – To make a cool design you don’t always have to use a pen Simply block out some basic
shapes and enable Cinema 4D’s enhanced OpenGL preview in your viewport. Make sure you
enable shadows. Michael Tschernjajew

06 – Adopt the Clone tool in your work and quickly put objects on a surface You can use
the Clone tool to put objects on the surface of another object. The Surface tool picks the surface
of the object and splits it. Cinema 4D then generates a new split surface mesh. Add a new object
beneath the Clone object, then set Clone mode to Object, which is the split surface mesh. You
will now see that your new object is added on the surface you picked. You can also add a
random effector to make this look more natural. Zeng Xiaolin

07 – Boolean operations Using Booleans can be a pain as they will easily make a mess of your
model. If you must use them, select the area of your object that you would like to Boole and
section it off, either with an Extrude Inner or by simply using the Knife tool. This will isolate
the area that the Boole will add polygons to, making cleaning up your mesh much faster. Paul
Massey