Before I started on this, i wanted to get some inspiration, have a look at some showreels, find some 3d modellers and see what sort of things they can do.
Below is a showreel of things that have been done in Cinema 4D. I AM NOT CLAIMING TO HAVE DONE ANY CONTENT WITHIN THIS VIDEO
Every time I watch showreels done in Cinema 4D, I am amazing with the time and effort put into them by modellers and designers.
When doing my research I found out that some animated movies have been done entirely in Cinema 4D, taking years and years to build and render.
3D Designers
I decided to do some more research into what had been designed using 3D software, who created them and what more else they did.
Neville Page - This guy has been responsible for character and animal design on films such as Garfield, Superman, Prometheus, X-men, Planet of the Apes, TRON, Star-Trek & Avatar. As we know by watching these films, the fictional characters and scenery and so life like you'd think they were real.
As I can't embed the link to his showreel I have posted it here: http://www.nevillepage.com/video.html
Hanno Hagedorn - Hanno designed and built characters for the Video Game 'Uncharted 2' for the Playstation 3 and specializes in character design. I still find it incredible how people have the skill to create such life like faces with a piece of software, which shows how far technology has come over the years. Hanno is currently designing characters for the game 'Crysis'
Jose Alves Da SIlva - His character modelling is out of this world. He does animals and people for TV, Film, Video games and Advertising.
Other mentions:
Pedro Conti
Scott Patton
Scott Eaton
Alex Alvarez
Wayne Robson
Marek Denko
Mike Nash
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My work
While I was doing this project I found out that hotkeys 1,2,3 & 4 were really useful for navigating around the project and sped up the process.
Nurbs, Deformers & Actions:
Loft Nurbs - Loft nurbs are used to join two objects together.
Hyper Nurbs - Basically round corners.
Bend Deformer - This allows you to curve and bend objects wherever you want.
Taper Deformer - This creates a taper on an object, similar to a magnifying glass.
Boole - This is pretty much a Pathfinder tool.
Hyper Nurbs - Basically round corners.
Bend Deformer - This allows you to curve and bend objects wherever you want.
Taper Deformer - This creates a taper on an object, similar to a magnifying glass.
Boole - This is pretty much a Pathfinder tool.
Step 1 - Creating the base
The first stage in the process was to model the main monitor of the iMac. For this I decided to take a picture of the side and front of one and laid in onto the artboard of Cinema 4D. To try and get the size and shape right, I thought that this would be the best way. I drew, roughly the shape, including the curves the screen and then went into depth and tweaks the edges to match the shape perfectly. Once I had created shapes for the side and front of the iMac I needed to join the two shapes together so the two parts I have created are made into one, therefore used Loft Nurbs.
As you can see the above screenshot there are 4 shapes under the Loft Nurbs. The two other shapes needed to finish off the monitor are the taper on the back. I went to the screens where I placed in the image of the Mac and drew another shape to represent where the taper is. The taper on the wire frame is the smaller square on the screenshot above. As I have already placed a Loft Nurb, I can draw and create objects within the Nurb do I don't have to keep adding them to each shape. Once the main monitor was created, I rotated it a couple of degrees to give the effect of it being in situe.
Step 2 - Creating the stand
The next stage in the process was to create the stand for the monitor. I created a group for the mac body so it wasn't in the way and created a simple cube. I extended and flattened the cube to the right size and thickness for the real thing. When doing this I had to take into consideration how the bend will effect the length of it, therefore I made the cube a little longer than just the length of the stand.
Step 3 - Bending the stand
The next stage in the process was to bend the stand to make it look like a real Mac. The stand needed to bend in two places. The top where the stand goes into the monitor and at the bottom to create a base to help it stand up. I went to the bend deformer and placed one at the top and the bottom. The good thing about this tool is that it is a selection and you can place it wherever on the shape and it will bend.
On the screenshot, you can also see that the corners are rounded. This is because of Hyper Nurbs.
I have to admit this process got a little tricky as there was a fine line between curving a lot and not enough. I ended up dialling in the figures instead of controlling the curves manually with the cursor
Step 4 - Creating a taper on the stand
The next stage was creating the slight taper on the back of the stand that the iMac has. SImiliar to the bend deformer, the Taper deformer. This works in the same way, you can still choose any position and sharpness of the taper just doing a different action.
You can see the taper that I have created on the stand in the above screenshots. The top screenshot shows shows where the model is now at in the process.
At this point in the process I am happy with how things are progressing.
Step 5 - Creating a hole in the stand
The next stage in the process is to create a hole in the back of the stand for the wires and plugs to go through to power the machine. To do this I used a very simple process known as a Boole. Like the pathfinder tool, it is a simple process of cutting a hole in the middle of the sand.
I created a cylinder to an accurate size to placed it through the stand where the middle of the stand is.
The Boole was simply added to the cylinder shape and punched a hole through the stand. The Boole can be hidden, just like a Photoshop layer.
Step 6 - Creating the the USB, air vents and CD slots
This was probably the most tricky section of the process. I begun by going back to my original images I used to help me model the screen/monitor to trace over the shapes of the USB slots.
Once I had created the shapes of the USB and headphone slots, I started about lining them up and tweaking the sizes of ports.
Obviously the ports and slots were not the same shape, therefore a mixture of cubes and cylinders were used to create all the slots and ports. When all these shapes were correctly sized and positioned, the newly made objects were placed within the Boole along with the hole in the back of the stand. This punched holes into the Mac body to create the look.
The screenshots below show the Air vents and CD slots. The air vents were a little bit tricky, having to place them at the top of the Mac, just on the edge, although I changed to wireframe view which made it a lot easier to manage.
As you can see by the above screenshot, all of the objects are within the Boole, therefore have been punched to make grooves and holes in the iMac.
The screenshot above shows the wireframe views with the CD alots and Airvents highlighted in orange, both on the wireframe models and layers.
Step 7 - Textures and screens
In this next stage, I will be showing the textures and the screen I placed in the mac, ready to render, so it looks like the real thing.
The first thing I needed to do though was to mark out the sections where the different textures would be placed. This was a fairly simple task as it only needed lines drawing onto the monitor in wireframe view. Creating these sections would allow me to simply drag and drop created textures onto certain parts of the monitor.
As you can see on the above screenshot, the lines are drawn where the different textures need to go. I needed to create three different textures. A brushed metal type texture, which Apple use all on most of their products, a glossy black texture, and an image for the actual screen.
For the actual screen I simply took a screenshot of my desktop. When placed into Cinema 4D, it doesn't recognise it as a image or a JPG, it converts the picture into a texture, ready to place.
Above is a screenshot of my layers panel which shows what's what and where it is. The layer 'iMac base' is all the objects, deformers and nurbs, grouped into one place excluding the monitor its self. The layer 'iMac body' has now got the textures placed on it needed to make the model look real for the final render. The textures are the two circle's next to the triangles on the 'iMac body' layer.
The last texture I added was the apply logo. Again, when I imported the picture into Cinema 4D, it converted it has a flat texture which I could simply place on the front and back of the monitor. As it is a texture there is no need to rotate or angle it on angled surfaces as it will simply stick to the model. All is needed is to line it up in the centre and the correct position.
Step 8 - Rendering
The final step on the process is the rendering. Depending on how complex your model is and how much processing power your computer has, determinds how long the rendering will take.
Although my model isn't overly complex, it still took a while because of the settings I chose. I chose to render on the highest settings for my computer, to get the best result for the project.
Above is a screenshot of what the rendering process looks like. It carries out the rendering within a square of so many pixels at a time, so it is quicker than rendering the whole thing in one go and crashing your computer.
To be able to save a render you need to render it in something called a picture viewer. This gives you the opton, when rendered, to save it in any format you like. For the purpose of this project I saved JPEGS and PNGS, both print and web ready.
Below is a PNG of my finished model and final render. Overall I am quite pleased with how it has turned out. An expansion on this would be a keyboard and mouse to complete the set, with further developments of a whole office with printers and furniture, although my skills would need to be advanced further before I could start on that.
Final Render
Evaluation
The
process of modelling this has vastly improved my knowledge of different
types of Nurbs and deformers and how they can be used in different
situations, similarly to methods in Illustrator and Photoshop. Now I
know some of these actions I would expect them to be useful for
animations, film reels and further advanced 3D models.
When
I encounted some problems I had the wireframe view to help me, other
than just looking on the actual 3d model, which was more accurate and
precise, similar to coding a website or using commands.
The only thing I am not happy about my 3D model is the stand. On the right hand monitor of the final render you can see that it sort of bends inwards slightly, although this is only small, considering how well the rest of the model has come out, it is a fault that shouldn't and could've been avoided.
The only thing I am not happy about my 3D model is the stand. On the right hand monitor of the final render you can see that it sort of bends inwards slightly, although this is only small, considering how well the rest of the model has come out, it is a fault that shouldn't and could've been avoided.
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