Using the Cinema 4D Inheritance Effector Part 03: Make Particles Swarm Along Splines w/ Mograph

The Inheritance Effector is probably one of the most underrated and underutilized effectors in the effector menu.  In part three of my Inheritance Effector tutorial, I show you how you can fake particle or object movement that follows or swarms along a spline path that would normally only be able to be achieved with an Emitter or Thinking Particles and Xpresso.  Using a combination of the Inheritance & Spline Effectors along with other Mograph Effectors, you can achieve close to the same effect as the Emitter or Thinking Particles as a simpler alternative in your normal workflow without having to touch Xpresso.  Specifically, this tutorial demonstrates the powerful combination of using the Spline Effector with the Inheritance Effector to achieve a “swarming” effect.  As in Part 2 of this series, you can also add a Dynamic Tag to the Cloner Object to make sure your clones don’t intersect one another with this technique.

Here is a sample video where I utilized this technique to make a swarm of butterflies each land onto their own individual flowers:

Inheritance Effector Tutorial: Part 1

Inheritance Effector Tutorial: Part 2

Using the Cinema 4D Inheritance Effector Part 02: Faking Thinking Particles with Mograph

The Inheritance Effector is probably one of the most underrated and underutilized effectors in the effector menu.  In part two of my Inheritance Effector tutorial, I show you how you can fake particle movement that would normally only be able to be achieved with an Emitter or Thinking Particles and Xpresso.  Using a combination of the Inheritance Effector and other Mograph Effectors and Deformers, you can achieve close to the same effect as an Emitter or Thinking Particles as a simpler alternative in your normal workflow without having to touch Xpresso.

Here is a spot where I utilized this technique:

Inheritance Effector Tutorial: Part 1

Adding Center Crosshairs in Cinema 4D Viewport

Ever been wanting center crosshairs in your Cinema 4D viewport like you have in After Effects? Having that center crosshair is a huge help when making sure your composition is centered.  Watch my quick tip tutorial to see my simple solution.

Download the Crosshairs Photoshop file

[UPDATE:  Maxon saw my tutorial and actually created a plug-in that adds a crosshairs to your viewport, but you can only get it unless you're a member of Cineversity.  You can find it here.]

Continuous Animation Without Keyframes in After Effects & Cinema 4D


Save time & keyframes!  In this tutorial, I’ll show you a few ways to achieve continuous, keyframe-less animations inside of After Effects and then Cinema 4D using expressions, Mograph Deformers, and Xpresso.

Create Chiseled Text in Cinema 4D

Add a nice chiseled look to your text in Cinema 4D with this tutorial.  As I note in the video, the basic technique is the same across every font, letter, and even logos, but each one has it’s a unique way to get to the end result.  Here I show you the basics of how you can achieve this look for whatever text or logo you are working with.

If you have any questions or requests of how to do this effect on a logo or some other font, please leave them in the comment section.

Text Edge Effects in Cinema 4D

Don’t be limited by the Convex, Linear, and Engraved Filet Cap edges in MoType anymore. In my first ever tutorial, I show you how to use a different fast and easy method to unlock more potential in your text designs in Cinema 4D.

Check out my preset based off this tutorial, Text Edge FX, here!

Text Edge Effects

C4D Quicktip: Soloing Objects with Specific Tags

While working on recent project, my buddy had an issue with way too many objects with way too many compositing tags. He wanted to figure out a way to be able to solo all the objects with compositing tags on them. We all got to the point where we could go to the Filter Window and select all the compositing tags, but not the objects the compositing tags were applied to.

Click this button to access Filter window

Click this button to access Filter window

Thanks to some help from Alan Demafiles (@demafleez), he came up with this solution:

Make sure you select one of the compositing tags in the Object Manager first before you go to the Filter window and Right-Click “Select All Compositing”.  From that point, it’s as simple as hitting the Up Arrow which takes you from the Tag level in the Attributes window to the Object level Attributes window.  From there you create a Layer, drag and drop that layer to the Object layer property, then go to the Layer window and hit the circle on the far left, which is the solo function.  Viola!

Simple solution to a complex issue!

You can check out Alan’s site at demafleez.com/

DC Animators Meetup: Cinema 4D Workflow Tips (AKA If You’re Still Using Zaxwerks, You Should Punch Yourself in the Face)

Here’s a presentation my buddy, @daveglanz (www.daveglanzproductions.com) and I gave at the DC Animators meetup in October.  We walk through some recent projects we completed and showed our workflow and some hopefully useful techniques.