In this tutorial Geoff Devries teaches fundamentals of setup, modeling, and unwrapping; while creating a full product to be used for product or lifestyle renders. Cinema 4D from Maxon is used for the entirety of the modeling project.
Going over proper resources for starting a project to accurately create a product along with setting up the initial scene file is vital to success. The basics of scene organization when it comes to labeling your parts and grouping assemblies.
Opening up C4D for the first time and switching over into the Model workspace via the drop-down in the top right of the window. Inspection of the user interface changes, mainly the four viewports and the tool buttons along the bottom of the screen.
Recap of some of the tools at our disposal. Creating an example primitive shape while using showing uses bevel, extrude, loop path cut, and stitch & sew.
Switching to the UV workspace to look at the tools we have to use for unwrapping. Looking at the main column in the center of the layout along with the two bottom left regions and what is in them for tools.
Looking at the more commonly used tools that Geoff works with. Using a quad sphere as an example while going through the tools: Ctrl+T Transforms, automatic UVs, projection mapping, UV unwrap, UV weld relax, mirror, align UV islands, and reset UVs.
In this section a look at the resources we have to work with for the assignment and how they will be used. Cover what products we will be making (show an example image of the final product) and the goal by the end of the series.
Breakdown of how to create a bottle using poly modeling techniques. Covering rough forms, refinement, subdivision loops, UV unwrapping, UV placement that is optimal for textures/materials.
Starting with Sphere Hexahedron, deleting half, and scaling it flat. Using extrude to build the height of the bottle, bevel to add radiuses, and loop cut where geometry is needed. Taking the loops that were cut and scaling them down to match the profile of the reference that we set up.
Using the extrude tool to add thickness (.049in) to the bottle to make it physically correct. Touch on the ability to use Cloth Surface as an option.
When adding thickness all the details on the outside are added to the inner side too. Using edge dissolve where it is needed to remove the extra geometry in order to allow the inner side of the object to be more realistic.
Adding a Subdivision Surface to the model for smoothing. We will take a look for areas that were affected by this in a bad way that we need to address
Turning on and off subdivision surface as we use loop cut to control smoothing more and make sure the details hold their form where needed.
Once the holding edges are inserted, select the inner bottle geometry and copy it into its own mesh layer, and cap the top opening using a Close Polygon Hole. The liquid needs to be scaled down ever so slightly so it is not directly on top of the bottle geometry.
Unwrapping the bottle using projection mapping and pelt unwrapping to minimize distortion. Explaining the thought process as I go. Will show use of C4D built-in UV texture
Packing our unwrapped UVs in a way that makes texturing easy and moving parts that don't require specific texture maps out of the way.
Filling UVs with color, baking, and exporting the UV texture for Photoshop
Reload our reference image that is in the viewport for one that has the cap on it. Creating the first cap segment out of a plane using line cut to form the details we need. We will put a subdivision surface on it to test its smoothed form and ok it before going through the process to make the ful...
Taking the part we just made and using a cloner to array it out in a straight line. Once the spacing is correct, duplicate to save the state and name, and use Connect Objects and Delete to merge down. Once merged we can use a connect object to weld the array together into one part.
In this video, Geoff shows you how to use a spline wrap to bend the cap border of a cinema 4D object. Splines are used in many different ways in Cinema 4D and there is no limit to what you can do with them!
Creating a spline circle (making sure the segments are set high enough to be smooth) and ...
When designing the bottle, we wanted it to be as elegant and streamlined as possible. Sometimes this means making an aesthetic choice that might seem more subtle than others.
Using a taper object on the cap border and comparing it to our bottle model, adjust the taper of the cap border to fit th...
In this video, we are going to take the geometry of our border and adjust it. We will readjust some of the lines that have been drawn, tweak things where needed, finesse everything so that it all works together as one cohesive form.
In this video, we will learn how to make a plane sized to fit the cap hole with 42 edges on the width and height. This is a more difficult problem than in the last video because it requires some math and measurements of angles.
9 edges x 21 scallops = 189 edges. 189 total edges -21 welded =168 f...
In this video, we learn how to weld at the top of a cap. Firstly, stitch and sew matching edges on four sides of your material. Then weld the top to your border.
In this video, we will inspect reference photos to see how thick the cap is. We will use Cloth Surface to add the correct thickness to the cap.
In this video, we'll show you how to add a subdivision surface to a cap model and inspect the holding edges to keep the model's form.
In this video, we will show you how to create a holding edge for subdivision surfaces with the Bevel tool.
In UV Unwrapping the Cap, we use reference images to see how the design is used on the bottle cap. Pelt Unwrapping is used to separate top and bottom surfaces to projection map and relax those surfaces. Remember to check for distortion in UV mapping.
In this tutorial video, we'll show you how to pack your UV Island properly and organize it. This will help make your process go smoother.
Here Geoff shows you how to package UVs for use in photoshop exporting.
In this video, we will show you how to use reference images (View->Configure or Shift+V) to scale the size of cube primitives in Cinema 4D. This is useful if you need your reference image to be larger or smaller than the default size.
This is a tutorial about how to create the basic form of the body by using symmetry. In Cinema 4d Using a cube primitive to create the basic form of the body of the packaging. Creating the cube with the proper amount of segments then taking advantage of them to move the edges where we need and ad...
Using a plane primitive to create the basic form of the handle. Using a mixture of loop cut and extrude to create the form we need. Once the form is finalized, adding symmetry to mirror and weld the model.
The divider of the box is created using a plane primitive to create the bottle divider. Using loop cut and extrude to create the form. Adding symmetry at the end to mirror and weld the form.
Again using a plane primitive we create the bottom of the packaging. Using extrude to create the bottom and then tying into the main body of the packaging.
The carry handle area of the packaging has a hole in it for fingers in real life, in this video, we need to add this into our model. Using a mixture of loop cut, bevel, stitch and sew, and snapping to create the cutout and duplicate it and weld it back into the back inner side of the handle.
We start by inspecting the reference photos to understand how thick our carrying handle should be. Taking all of the parts we have built so far and using extrude to add thickness to them. We must be careful as there is a small amount of thickness and if we add too much, parts will start to interp...
Using a mixture of projection mapping, pelt mapping, welding, and aligning UV islands to unwrap the main body and create UVs that can be textured in accordance with the reference photos. Once unwrapped we can leave them unpacked and we will pack them later.
Using pelt mapping to unwrap and flatten out the handle for proper UVs paying attention to how the handle split up to create a continuous UV island that will work with our textures and in accordance to the reference photos. Once unwrapped we can leave them and we will pack them later.
Using projection mapping we can unwrap this part quickly, then use weld and relax to create a continuous UV island. Once unwrapped we can leave them and we will pack them later
Using projecting mapping we can unwrap this part quickly, then use weld and relax to create a continuous UV island. Once unwrapped we can leave them and we will pack them later.
Switching back to the Model layout. Add a subdivision surface to each part to smooth out hard edges and contours. We can see that our model does not hold its form very well and we will need to add in holding edges in many places for it to resemble our reference imagery.
We are doing this a little backward as normally we would add in holding edges then unwrap our model. The reason for this is that the model is fairly thin, and if we add in holding edges earlier on it will make unwrapping that much more challenging due to the close proximity of the edges.
When us...
Now that we have loops/holding edges added in we can merge our symmetry objects down. Let's duplicate all of our pieces so we have a backup, then use "C" on the keyboard to collapse the Symmetry object down and rename our copied parts.
Switching back to the UV layout. Now that we have merged our Symmetry objects we have overlapping UVs that are backward on half of our model. We can see this by going to Texture->UV Map in our unwrap window.
What has happened is that our UVs are mirrored due to Symmetry and we need to fix thi...
When packing UVs sometimes you want the ability to control a texture on your model by hand so you can see the scale of all of your UV islands in relation to each other if you have many UV islands populating the 0,1 space.
Creation of a simple standard C4D material with the supplied UV texture so...
Now that our UVs are finalized and our material applied, we will pack them in a way that will make texturing easy while moving some UVs that don't need specific placement out of the way.
During this step, we will check for the consistency of scale across our UVs and address this where we see fi...
Finally, the UVs are filled with color and completed by baking in all the UV work done to date. The careful work in this stage will ensure the easy application of materials and textures.
After showing you the tools, concepts, and techniques Geoff uses to create the intricate models he uses, he delivers his final thoughts on modeling.