Cel Shading - Flat 2D effect
Firstly we opened up a file containing some basic shapes and
we began by creating a basic material (double clicking the workspace creates
one) and un-ticking colour and specular before ticking the luminance on. This is
because we want a flat colour that has its own luminance.
We held down cmd while dragging the material across the
material window to create duplicates before changing the colour of each as to
give a different colour to each shape and that of the background.
Next we learnt how to create a dotted line.
Where the “Spline” has a cross select this so it turns to a
tick and it will be visible in the liveview. However to make this line visible
in the render we need to get it a material also. For this we need to select
create>shader>hair material within the material window, this creates a
new hair material.
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| Basic Line Created Using Hair Material |
Next we altered the properties and colour for the material.
Firstly open up the properties by double-clicking the material and delete one
of the colour flags present within the colour section, then choose a colour for
the one remaining flag to take. Next we selected the thickness option and set
the root and tip to 3cm, as we want this to be the same length across and are
visible within the image. To see how this appeared in render we created a
render view, to ensure it is visible within this you need to make sure hair
render is ticked within the render saving options.
Cinema 4D-part1 from Nicole H.D.W. Sinclair on Vimeo.
Dotted Line
To create a smoother dotted line we created a capsule to
which we would add as a child to a cloner. Before doing this however we needed
to hide the spline, to do this without it removing the object from the actual
frame rather then changing the tick to a cross we need to turn the traffic
lights sat next to this option to red. Then create the capsule and its parent
cloner and set the properties accordingly.
To create a cloner you select “MoGraph” from the toolbar and
choose “Cloner”, to set the capsule as a child simply drag and drop this onto
the cloner. We altered the radius properties for the capsule accordingly to
create a thin smooth line like appearance. When selecting the cloner we need to
set the mode to object and then we drag the splice into the object box before
setting the capsule’s orientation to +z. This aligns the capsule elements with
the splice line, this creates our smooth dotted line.
Shadow
To give the graphics some depth of field we need to go into
the luminance properties for each coloured material and carry out the following.
We create a Cel shader, remove the surplus colour flags and then using the RGB
values change the one remaining to match that of the original material’s
colour. Now we having a matching base colour we create a new flag, set this to
a lighter tone and also a flag to the other side of the spectrum and choose a
darker tone, this creates the initial shaping to the flat object while staying
within 2D. It is good to make sure the camera (this is the camera lighting) is
un-ticked and tick lighting, this creates much more natural looking light. This is only the start of adding shade to the
item and if you do a quick render you will see it is currently very basic and
uninteresting. 
Now we need to go back to the same settings within the material and select the “Shadows” and “Specular” options. Under these options we need to remove the middle flag, this being grey and leave the black and white and adjust as we wish. While doing this you can go to the render option(which sits within the toolbar based in the live view window) and select Interactive Render Region, this gives you a rough quick render so you can preview the alterations while making them.
Export
To export as a video we altered the render settings to render as a QuickTime movie file set at 25fps and with H.264 compression, it is important to ensure that all frames is selected within the output section.
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| Video Render Settings |
Cinema 4D - Part 2 from Nicole H.D.W. Sinclair on Vimeo.
Sketch and Toon
To activate sketch and toon go to the render settings and
select Effects>Sketch and Toon. This will slow the render down, so it is
best to keep this in mind.
In order to apply the “Sketch and Toon” tool to the subjects
tick the appropriate line types you want it to apply to the shapes. In this
case we are using creases, border and folds. This will create a sketch mat,
which you will be able to customize from the materials window. Other options to
keep in mind when setting this up is the “Shading” tab within “Sketch and
Toon”. For this stylising we want the shading options to be set at Quantize and
we can manually control how many layers of colour this produces by altering the
amount, such as 3 in this example.
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| Using the Interactive Render Region While Altering the Sketch and Toon |
If you want a smoother or crisper line within a shape then
select the “Phong” tags(positioned next to the traffic lights within the layers
window) and alter the threshold accordingly. The aim of this tool is to soften
lines featuring within the frame, to create an overall smooth look.
The main element we have in our timeframe, which is causing
this feature to slow down is the cloner and capsule so for the next exercise we
removed this. In replacement of the capsule created line we created a duplicate
of the “Sketch and Toon” material and applied it to the spline. Now the spline
has a material we can open the material settings, navigate to strokes and
select the pattern tick box, this may automatically select dotted line for you.
You can customise the sizing of each line and animate the line with the offset
option as before. Keep in mind that for this option you will need to set the
control level to “Advanced” or the options wont all appear.
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| Sketch and Toon - Thickness Adjustments |
If you want to pan around your objects within an animation
then you will need to alter a setting within the thickness options for the
sketch and toon material. This is because by default the lines will remain the
same size no matter how far you are viewing the objects from, therefore possibly
rendering your object into a scribble. To avoid this go into the thickness
settings and tick the distance box before setting its range to camera. This now
will use the position of the camera as a guide to how thick the line needs to
appear in render.
Cinema 4D - Part 3 from Nicole H.D.W. Sinclair on Vimeo.
Flying Saucer - Rotating and Null Objects
There is a further part to this workshop which we learnt, in
regards to creating a new scene based on a saucer flying around the earth, due
to time limitations we unfortunately ran out of time to finish this piece.
Therefore I will continue this in my own time, following the instructional PDF
for the exercise and once complete this will also be added to my blog.
Evaluation
I have really enjoyed this workshop and in the first half, found
the steps to create the smoother dotted line and in particular the shading and
highlights really interesting. In the second half of the workshop an element I
found of high interest was the rotation around null objects and creating the
2-D look to it using a combination of the previous effects we had learnt. I
look forward to using these techniques within my work in the immediate future
and developing these skills further.
