Here’s the end results of the lessons in chapter 10 of my book on Dynamics in Cinema 4D. I cover most of the dynamic features of the program like the Dynamics Body tag, springs, connectors, Soft Body dynamics, how to make MoGraph cloners dynamic, dynamic cloth, dynamic splines, and hair.

The key advantage of using dynamics is you can create realistic looking reactions and collisions without using keyframes. You set up a world and how your objects interact, and let Cinema 4D handle the rest. In my opinion it’s one of the the more fun areas to explore in the program, you can do some very creative and interesting stuff (like making cereal for example!) with dynamics.

You can find my book avilable for purchase here.

I finally finished writing my book about Cinema 4D. I started in March and wrote 10 chapters over the course of the rest of the year. I would have been done sooner but I had to revise a decent portion of it when Maxon came out with Cinema 4D release 13 in August. Look here it’s a real thing I swear not just something I made up to sound cool.

The final word count:

*faints

Yikes. Kind of makes me want to go back in time and smack myself whenever I felt stumped by a stupid 5 paragraph essay in school. Teenagers are so dumb. The page count is inflated because of the formatting and the pictures. It will be 500 or so I think.

Writing was a draining process; I’d come home from work and end up just doing more work almost everyday. It’s especially tough when you aren’t really making any money until you finish and hopefully sell the damn thing. And it wasn’t just writing, I had to design dozens of projects and examples to teach the software and take screenshots of all the lessons. I can’t wait until it’s finally published and tangible instead of a Word document.

I still need to prepare some sample videos and stills to help promote it on here, but the heavy lifting is done. I’m glad I finished before the holidays and I’m looking forward to setting some these new goals, in order of increasing difficulty:

• Relax for the holidays
• Complete online traffic school for going way too fast
• Fix my Xbox
• Find and consume at least one bottle of Brooklyn Black Ops
• Learn Spanish
• Find a girl who can stomach me for more than one date
• Learn some new software. Maybe Nuke, Realflow, or Syntheyes… yea that’s right ladies

Should be fun.

I have wanted to update my site but I’ve been locked in on a rather interesting and time-consuming side project. I’m halfway through the first draft of a book about how to use Cinema 4D. Yes, the same guy who cranks out a ho-hum blog post every month or so is writing an entire book. Makes perfect sense.

I’m still not 100% sure why I was the one asked to write this book, they could have picked a million other designers to do it. It must be because I am an industry leader in 3D animation using Cinema 4D and sarcasm they drew my name out of a hat or something. Whatever the reason, I didn’t ask any questions and I got to work ASAP before they changed their mind. I’m taking the project quite serious because it’s obviously a great opportunity at my age to become a published author. It’s also a much better side project, and I don’t have to waste time racking my brain trying to come up with a new tutorial or creative design file I can sell for a $1.25 at the Envato Marketplace.

The book will be a thorough overview of the essentials features of Cinema 4D. It will have roughly 80 short lessons that go over just about everything you need to know to become well-versed in the program. A general concept I try to infuse into the lessons is to compare how certain techniques can be achieved in Cinema 4D versus how they are accomplished in real life, and I draw from personal experience to make recommendations and encourage further exploration of the program. You could write whole books on individual components, menus, and tools within the program, so I did my best to cover the most useful and straightforward topics to turn the reader from a novice to advanced user if the book gets read from cover to cover.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to channeling my unfiltered creativity and seek the proper inspiration as I forge ahead with my pièce de résistance.

Sent from my iPad 3 via WiFi at Starbucks while adjusting my dark rimmed glasses.

I made a tube in Cinema 4D.

I will now answer your questions about the tube:

Q: I’ve watched the tube and I’m confused. What exactly does this tube do?

A: The tube doesn’t really do anything per se, it is what it is. It moves, and then the pieces inside it move.

Q. I see. How did you go about creating this tube?

A: Well I was trying to come up with a different way of presenting/containing/revealing some text in Cinema 4D. Instead of having the letters just sit there, I put them in a tube that kind of looks like those things at the bank or the basis for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I used MoDynamics to get the right feel for the letters to behave in their new vacuum sealed world. Then I altered the position and rotation of the tube to shake things up and have the contents bounce around. I added some marbles inside there because I felt like it. Then I added reflections and materials in order to make it look cooler and we arrived at the tube which stands before us today.

Q: Are there more of them like this?

A: I assure you this tube is the only tube of it’s kind.

Q: Precisely how long did it take to make this tube?

A: I spent a good 6-8 hours designing it to look and function correctly, and it took about 17 hours for my computer to render out the video that is less than 10 seconds. I can tell you are very impressed or possibly concerned.

Q: Wouldn’t it be better if it was like…a snow globe or something?

A: It definitely would be, it certainly lends itself to a design like that. But it’s not as simple as adding mittens, snowmen, cuteness, etc. The snow would have to be a particle system rather than dynamic clones, plus you’d need fluid dynamics to simulate the movement and turbulence of someone shaking the globe and dispersing the snow. If you would like to pay me lots of money to make you a snow globe I will consider it.

Thanks for your time.

I added a few clips to my reel. I also picked a less obnoxious music track. Watch it and get your funk on.