I had this idea in my head for awhile. I wanted to create a 3D model of a jigsaw puzzle that can have the pieces animated into solve it with just a few keyframes. It can be textures with whatever, it’s a puzzle so it can be a replaceable image of anything. Well I finally got around to doing it for the Aetuts+ Logo Reveal Contest.

It’s based on my old animation in Mograph, the Current Cubes animation. I thought that if you cloned puzzle pieces into a grid cloner that you could control the assembly of a whole jigsaw puzzle. You could do some could random effectors to make the pieces scatter and have it pop back into place. This logo reveal contest came up with Aetuts+ and I couldn’t come up with anything special in After Effects off the top of my head, so I grabbed the puzzle idea off my idea whiteboard and got to work. I have no graphic moral compass apparently, since I’m primarily using a 3D application to do a logo reveal for a site devoted to tutorials in a 2D application. I’m a monster.

I’m pleased with how it came out, but this project was a headache. The problems start with the splines that outline the puzzle pieces. I got the splines from an Illustrator file with each piece outlined. When you bring them into Cinema 4D, the object axis for each of these remained in the center of my X,Y, and Z axis. This creates a less desirable rotation effect when you go to scatter the pieces. It’s a bit tricky to try and offset each piece, because they vary in size, therefore have a different “true center” and won’t interlock when placed consecutively in a grid cloner. If you get the right splines and have the patience it can be done properly, but I’m working on other things and frankly I’m not paying myself enough money to sit there and tear my hair out over off-centered puzzle piece splines.

Obviously it’s going to be a RAM hogging project when you get that many piece involved. And the lights cast a ton of shadows. When you add some global illumination and some motion blur, you’ve got a beast of a render. But the good thing is I’ve built this project once, and if I need a different style puzzle I can just swap out the materials and I’m good to go.