How to Morph Between Splines in Cinema 4D

In this tutorial I’m going to show you a really cool workflow for morphing between splines using Cinema 4D. This kind of spline morphing animation is awesome for using in conjunction your 2D workflow in After Effects by applying a Cel Shader material to your splines. The nice thing about using the Cel Shader or just flat colors in the Luminance channel of your material is that when you use Cineware, these type of scenes render out super fast as a Cineware layer in After Effects because you’re not doing heavy shadow or shading calculations. So to begin, I’ll go over the thinking behind the method I chose and how to achieve a nice, smooth spline morph. Then, I’ll show you how I build a spline that is able to be affected by effectors to morph from one spline shape to another. I’ll demonstrate how to use the Inheritance Effector to achieve this morph and ways to make your morph look super sexy and bouncy! Finally, I’ll show you an alternate method of using MoSplines to morph and the shortcomings of going that route.

Here’s one of my previous tutorials that shows you how to create the 2D illustrative materials using the Cel Shader that I’m using for the objects in this tutorial:

Using the Cel Shader to Apply an Illustrative 2D Style to 3D Objects in C4D

And here’s the scene file I used in this tutorial that you guys can mess around with:

DOWNLOAD CINEMA 4D SCENE FILE

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By Edward Hassenfratz|October 8th, 2014|41 Comments

About the Author: Edward Hassenfratz

41 Comments

Sebastián Viqueira October 10, 2014 at 11:41 am

nice tut!
eyedesyn October 10, 2014 at 11:42 am

Thanks, Sebastian!
iMurdoch October 10, 2014 at 5:28 pm

Great tutorial! Quick question, did you draw the splines for your text by hand in C4D? If I suck at drawing is there a way to convert a font to be a single stoke to use this awesome technique with?
eyedesyn October 10, 2014 at 5:30 pm

Thanks! Yes I drew it by hand, using another font as reference. You can look up mono-line fonts on Google and use those in Illustrator and convert them to be able to be imported into C4D that way.
Hassan Wasswa October 12, 2014 at 10:04 pm

Great tutorial!!! Thanks for sharing…
here is my experimentation with the techniques you shared
thanks again.
http://bit.ly/ZW1Nux
Oliver October 15, 2014 at 5:21 am

Oh yeah how true. Recently I had to morph a path in AE. I almost died figuring out how to do it properly ;-) Another useful tip by Mr. “inheritance effector” Hassenfratz :-D
bildebool October 20, 2014 at 11:46 am

Very cool, thank you !
eyedesyn October 29, 2014 at 10:47 pm

Awesome stuff man! Thanks for sharing!
eyedesyn October 29, 2014 at 10:47 pm

Thanks Oliver! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
eyedesyn December 4, 2014 at 1:50 pm

Looking good man!
Scott Daris December 14, 2014 at 6:38 am

Wow, so many questions answered in one tutorial. Thanks!
Daniel Betts January 21, 2015 at 2:18 pm

Fantastic Tutorial thank you so so much! I have one problem which I could really do with your help. I’m using this technique in a sweep NURB to change the shape of the metal rim that runs around an Iphone. I am unable to change the points on the second spline. I change the points on the spline in point mode, but then when I move on the timeline they jump back? Have you come across this at all?
EJ Hassenfratz January 21, 2015 at 3:56 pm

You have 2 separate splines or using just one and animating the poitns?
Daniel Betts January 21, 2015 at 4:00 pm

Hey EJ, 2 serperate splines, fundamentally the same as the tutorial, except my tracer sits in a sweep nurb as the profile spline.
Axel Bunge January 23, 2015 at 3:38 pm

First of all, thanks for the awesome tutorial. I’m trying to use this technique in a personal project right now. What I want to achieve is a four-step morph. Shape A to B to C to D. Should I “fake” it with three different morphs and animating the visibility of the objects or is there a way to keep morphing the first object?

Thanks!!
EJ Hassenfratz January 23, 2015 at 4:29 pm

Hmmm…Not sure why you’d want to be changing points in point mode as the animating of the sweep going from one to the other would be animated by just creating the second spline.
EJ Hassenfratz January 23, 2015 at 4:30 pm

You just continue the setup I laid out and instead of it just morphing from A to B and stopping at the second morph, you’d continue with 2 more steps. So same workflow, just continue the process out for 2 more morphs.
Axel Bunge January 23, 2015 at 5:48 pm

Still can’t figure it out…
– Matrix A has the Inheritance effector that makes it morph to Matrix B
Should I make a new Inheritance effector to morph Matrix A to Matrix C? (tried it without success)
EJ Hassenfratz January 23, 2015 at 5:51 pm

You got to brainstorm a little bit to think about what your’re wanting to do, because it can get complex in your scene and also be sure to name everything correctly! Since you want Object A to morph to Object B, then Object B to morph to Object C, you want to have Matrix B morph to Matrix C, then Matrix C to Matrix D. You wouldn’t get the proper movement if you want B to morph to C if you morphed from A to C, know what I mean? A’s shape is no longer needed when you’re going from B to C

Hope that helps!
Axel Bunge January 23, 2015 at 6:39 pm

Yeah, maybe I’m just not getting it 100% :P
Thanks for your help, I’ll keep working on it
Laura Henry-Baird February 7, 2015 at 6:49 pm

Hi, fantastic tutorial, thanks very much. I’ve got one annoying prob with mine, I cant get the whole of the second word to be ‘wrapped’. It’s 2 letters short. I’ve been fiddling around with all the parameters for ages, I realise I must be missing something silly, is there any chance you could point me in the right direction? Thanks again
First Prospect February 26, 2015 at 2:44 pm

Hello and thanks for the brilliant tutorial. Had an attempt at a 3 step morph and, after much playing around with the inheritance tag, got there in the end. Also added a bit of animated noise to the background to give it even more movement.
EJ Hassenfratz February 26, 2015 at 4:55 pm

Looking good man! Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid the pinching that happens in cursive letters such as the ‘P’ but you did a great job! Thanks for sharing!
EJ Hassenfratz February 26, 2015 at 4:57 pm

Thank you! You may have to go into your Spline Wrap settings and make sure that the Mode is set to Fit Spline and not “Keep Length”. Hope that helps!
First Prospect February 27, 2015 at 10:42 am

Thanks EJ – I did struggle with the cursive letters and the splines took a lot of adjustment. Fairly happy with the result but still have a lot to learn! The full clip is here if you want to take a look… youtu.be/gZIGL3nBAJQ
Mo April 7, 2015 at 5:26 pm

Hi at all, this Tutorial is awesome!

I made a clip with two strokes but I’m not happy with these bumpy corners on the “L” Letter for example. Can you help me to make it smooth like in the “seattle” text?

http://cmoritz.de/cinema4d/de_la_soul_01.gif

Thanks,
Mo
Kyle Daily April 10, 2015 at 4:59 pm

Great Lesson. Thanks for the learning!
I laid out the type with Hipster Script pro in illustrator and traced the inner lines there. Then I imported the outline and inner lines I drew into C4D, and used the outline as a guide to adjust the scale of the spline wrap.
Alexander July 28, 2015 at 10:39 pm

and what was the answer? :)
EJ Hassenfratz July 29, 2015 at 5:28 pm

Looks like it may have been the spline interpolation set to bezier! Should use a smoother, more predictable interpolation like Cubic or Akima!
Alexander July 29, 2015 at 5:52 pm

thanks EJ! I used the bezier spline and had the same issue. as a graphic designer using bezier was just more convenient.
Phase Nonapp August 10, 2015 at 12:41 am

When I add the tracer mine doesn’t disappear like in the tut. Mine becomes double instead. How come?
Jonathan Hunter August 18, 2015 at 9:07 pm

Hey I know it’s a long time since you posted this tutorial but I’d really like to try it out, i’m only a beginner.

I’m pretty much stuck at the first step. How do I create the spline letters?

I’ve opened up the project file and tried to figure it out myself. The only way I have replicated your technique is to use the Bezier tool and try to draw the letters freehand. Then clicking individual points on my spline and pulling them out to make it 3D. Is this the correct way? because i’m really struggling to write the rest of my word in a joined up cursive font.

Could anyone please help me?
EJ Hassenfratz August 19, 2015 at 1:34 am

Hey Jon-
I made the splines by hand so you’re doing it correctly, that’s the only way to do it! Not everything has a short cut unfortunately!
KEissa August 19, 2015 at 11:22 am

Hey Fantastic Tutorial thank you so much! I have a problem as you see this is a “K” letter but mograph Tracer always connect wrong splines please help me to fix this :)
EJ Hassenfratz August 19, 2015 at 2:23 pm

Like I did in the tutorial you need a separate Tracer, inheritance and matrix setup for each separate spline
KEissa August 20, 2015 at 10:14 am

thanks i will try again
Jonathan Hunter August 22, 2015 at 10:29 am

Hey thank you for the reply I really appreciate it. I spent a lot of time on this tutorial, I got frustrated a lot but I learned a few things about cinema 4d and a lot about myself really. I had fun trying to figure out parts by trial and error and i’ve definitely learnt a few techniques for the future.

I’ve decided to leave my piece where it is and move on now to something new, I got everything near enough perfect but I tried to have a third matrix inherit another, a simple dash for the ‘F’ that would inherit the position of a line underneath the ‘yeah’, but for some reason the matrix points inherited each other but the actual spline wrap would not follow.

I tried messing around with the settings but I kept getting stuck and frustrated. I might revisit this another time. But what I’m really trying to say is THANK YOU, for writing and giving me this platform to learn.

https://youtu.be/HQIm7tjMGNg

^ my piece.
Helen February 16, 2016 at 2:16 am

Hey EJ,
Firstly, thanks so much for your tutorials! They’ve really helped me out, particularly as I’ve been trying to move from AE 2d vector animation to working in 3D.

With this effect is it possible to achieve this with text that have closed splines or would that require a completely different technique? After playing around quite a bit I attempted to merge with loft / extrude nerbs but perhaps my understanding of how this works is incorrect.

Thanks in advance.
Chris Martin July 17, 2016 at 8:12 pm

Hey I’m from Seattle… could you make this tut from the beginning? I’m a newbie..
Selman Ay October 26, 2017 at 1:58 am

File unavailable, please re-upload it?
EJ Hassenfratz October 26, 2017 at 11:35 am

Relinked!