Cinema 4d Ice Cubes!!

[Dave]

I am wondering how would i go about designing some cool looking ice cubes in cinema 4d with reflections??

Any advice will be great thanks =)

[.soulty]

Davy!! Ah finally your getting into the 3d!

[DDD]

definately polygon modelling would be they way to go with a lot of smoothing. A nice shiny transparent material with a refraction of about 1.575. A cube primitive to start. hmmm what else. Actually I think I say a tut on www.3dbuzz.com. Not much knowledge of cinema but it should be relatively easy.

[mdipi]

good project. i would think a melt modifyer might help too?

[.soulty]

check out my sad attempt at ice cubes , lol,


3d-iva where is the tutorial ?


:::took the image out cause it sucked , lol :P

[mdipi]

Soulty, looks kinda like contreat. If there was like a glare on them it would look a whole lot better.

[.soulty]

i know, i was only playing around , lol, havent really used cinema before, just jumped in and press stuff. lol, if you want i could make a ice particle storm in maya!

[mdipi]

lol that would be sooo cool! i threw open 3ds and got a pretty good looking one going but then of course i couldnt get a material...grr

[.soulty]

particles are great fun, but time consuming, great thing about it, is that you can replace particles with actual geometry. So say you create a detailed ice cube, and you want them to fall in random, actually say something like a avalanche , you could have objects like snow balls and rocks fall past and close to your camera, in high detail.

[.soulty]

for the ice you could make like a hail storm or something, have the hail scream past your camera.

:::sorry dave about flooding your thread about nothing related to your question, i still cant find the tut on ice cubes for cinema in 3d buzz.

3d-iva? where is it?

[mdipi]

hmm i never really played with particals before, i should try it...

[DDD]

do a search on 3dbuzz.com I thouht I saw one there. Hey post the image again I did not see it.

[.soulty]

its crap, but anyway :P

edit:::took image away again cause was it was crap.

[.soulty]

the tuts not there.

[mdipi]

there are still a bunch in the first sticky i think

and at the maxon site

[DDD]

I know you are using 4d but here is a max tutorial. Maybe you could look at this tut. I know the methodology is the same just different placement of tools. I will continue to look I know I saw one somewhere. But this tut couldprobably give you an idea.
http://www.maxhelp.com/content/tutorials/icecubes/icecubes.htm

[mlk]

i could have rendered with caustics but i simply can't afford to wait 3 hours for a single render...
The texture needs improvement but basically here's what i did:
- no colors
- reflection with slight turbulence
- transparency with slight turbulence too and some blur (26%), refraction set to 1.6
- a slight bump (turbulence) although i shouldn't have done it
- most important is the DISPLACEMENT, set to 39% with again turbulence.
http://mlkdesign.online.fr/misc/kirupa/ice.jpg
:toad: mlk

oh, and i also set a FFD for the cubes but I dont think that matters....
i'll post the c4d file/texture if needed

[.soulty]

Nice dude.

:::: Mmmm wonder if i could of done my version better in Maya than i did in cinema, lol. :P

:::soulty::smirk:::

[DDD]

sweetness....i like it.....you did that in maya or 4d

[mlk]

c4d... if i have time one day' ill render the caustics...
:waits for the photon raylighttracing:
:waits for the photon raylighttracing:
:waits for the photon raylighttracing:
:waits for the photon raylighttracing:
:shuts down PC in anger:

[DDD]

dude mlk your footer scared the hell out of me.....I was going to click to check out your site and the hallelujah was hella loud in my headphones....thats funny

[mlk]

haahaha i know it would do that... it's only 11k btw.. Oh and, just PLEASE dont go check my site.. because a) it's in froggyfrench and b) it's been "under construction" for something like 6 months now...

[mdipi]

mlk that looks great! *goes and takes the tut 3d gave*

btw why do you have french keyboards?

[DDD]

If you wanna switch up and use max or LW I can write a cool tut for you on the ice thing. Take a look at these cubes. Hey dippy if you see this post that tut I gave you does some kinda weird things. Like using reflection maps. If you have probs with that tut I can show you a diff way. Basically you do not need reflection maps. and I do not know what the "v" thing was for. well let me know.

[.soulty]

looks good, 3d-iva !

Using caustics for the latest pic?

[mdipi]

3d i will let you know how it turns out, right now i cant even get my glas to werk right *grrr* so i am just gouing to do it and not worry about the glass. but if you could write up a little tut or something that would be great!

[mdipi]

Ok i finished! i ditched the glass cause it just wasnt werking! but i'd say it turned out ok!

btw its set to 1/2 quality and its small so i could render real fast and start on a new project.

[.soulty]

should of zoomed in more on the ice cubes, nice though :beam:

::soutly::smirk:::

[Dave]

So the ice cube competition is on :alien:

[mdipi]

soulty, i will re-render and such in a second. i just want to finish this smoke tut. lol maxhelp.com is like THE recorse!

dave, no comp, just a "race" lol.

[DDD]

Hey Soulty Nah no caustics but I figured out how to fake them. I need to get my hands on a plugin for caustics...any recommendations?

Dippy That tutorial was not that good after all sorry I recommended it the reflection map is not necessary those are used (to me) when you are trying to immitate a light source but do want to have the light source in the scene. Refraction ( about 1.1 -.13), transparency (about 50), Noise on the object and a real noisy bump is really all you need. Also up the segments on the chamfer box will give you a lil better ice. Mine is not great but eh......I'll see if I can put a tut up. Remind me if you dont see one in the next day or so. (bad memory)

[.soulty]

Hey check out my PHOTO realisitic Ice. :smirk:

[mdipi]

hmm i will try all that, overall i think it was an OK tut. i mean it got the basics down yah know? i kinda could figure out the shaky parts but i will re-render, i thought it came out ok over all though.

[DDD]

dude! thats really a photo huh? If not that is good.....

dippy change your footer to "41" yours ice came out good. If you take out the reflection map you will see what i am talking about.

[.soulty]

HHAHAHA , lol, sorry had to do that. getting my camera ready for tomorrow. :beam:

lol, Well i could do that in maya, havent tried yet. :P

::and rendering with mental ray 1.5 will take toooooo longgggg.
:sleep:

[mdipi]

hey soulty! that IS a photo! or is it? lol really looks it if its not...

[.soulty]

see above post, lol, yeah it is a photo. :P

[mdipi]

oopps never refreshed the page, and 3d. i cant change it to 41 cause we were a min. apart, he was 01 i was 02

[mdipi]

ok 3d NOW i can change it to 41 lol. i finished my smoke, i will take out the reflec map now. 3d is FUN!

[mdipi]

3d here is the new pic with 3 different materials:
--
on the far left is left the same;
in the middle is w/o the REFRACTION;
on the far right is w/o the REFLECTION;
--
personally i like the one on the far right the best, and that is the one that you recomended no?

[DDD]

the one in the middle and the far right look the same. I would add more noise to the bump and add a falloff to the diffuse channel.Can you post a screen shot of you material settings. Seems like the reflection map is still there. On the first one what is the refraction?? It should be like 1.1 to 1.3.

[mdipi]

3d i donno yet i will check. but i got a question, i made a movie right. and its 17.8 MEGS! can i reduce this w/o lossing quality?

[.soulty]

Here is a test render of some ice, looks alright but weird, still fixing the material.:smirk:

[DDD]

wow 17megs.....hmm how many frames and of course you kno reducing the size of the render. Turn of mutipass if you have not already. If you are rendering caustics transparencies and raytraced stuff that is going boost the megs. There is a plug in for this stuff just cannot remember the name. You can set the quality at the end of the render when you select a format. Hmmm let me think what else. Are you doing high poly modeling? You can drop some polys also.

[mdipi]

it was just that explosion thing. i am not going to worry right now. i relized i got 80 megs left and i might go to another 100megs and some more bandwith for 10 bucks!

[Dave]

mlkdesign::

Hey! i saw ur design! I like it.

So wats the easiest way to achieving some kind of look like that in cinema?

Can you post the "c4d file/texture" too pls!!

:)

[mdipi]

yeah his does look good!

[mlk]

here i uploaded the file
http://mlkdesign.online.fr/misc/kirupa/ice.c4d

All I did was mess a bit with the shape of the cubes - fillet them so they wouldnt have 'hard' edges (btw the 3 are replicas) and add a texture that has refraction, reflection, displacement map (check out the texture of the file, that should help) - could be improved (such as adding a bit of white texture [i]inside[i/] so i would really look like ice)
I'll render a new view with caustics if i have time....


if you look at the file you'll see some FFD (freeform deformation) actually i think what I did was useless, you might easily go with simple cubes and a good texture)

[mlk]

well, i finally rendered with caustics but I thought it would turn out better, i think I like my first render a bit more...
Mmh. Still took me 14 minutes to render :sigh:
http://mlkdesign.online.fr/misc/kirupa/ice2.jpg

[DDD]

nice caustics......now you gonna make me re do my ice with real caustics. Actually I am going to try in maya. Have had it for a while and have not really used it. Give myself a lil proj.

[.soulty]

heres a update from my try, still working on the texture and the lighting.

[DDD]

I think you are getting further from ice and closer to cosmic gem stones. I like the other ones a lil better. Still would like to see what you end result will be. BTW maya is confusing

[.soulty]

yeah it can be confusing sometimes, lol, i'm pretty lazy lately as well, so havent really been able to really work out this material.

::: Gem stones, yeah i agree :( might lose it all together and try a different material :-\

[mlk]

BTW maya is confusing
Maya is aimed at professionnal studios - I dont think freelance user have a really good chance at this prog since you need 1 modeler, 1 renderer, 1 texturer, 1 animator and all that...

I stick to Cinema 4d because it's powerful, simple and has a very good renderer.

[.soulty]

not saying i cant use it :beam: lol, just lazy lately. :smirk:

[.soulty]

back to the older texture, added a blue light.

[DDD]

I use LW and 3ds max. I am a little more than a freelancer but. .... It is just the placement of things it is confusing to many little pictures in the interface It is kinda distracting. I am going to try a few things in it but I think I am going to stick to 3ds and LW. But we will see. I need to try cinema 4d also. Also wanna try Universe.

[mlk]

I dont know Universe ?? Is it a good prog ?
I use to work with Carrara and fell in love with it, although it was VERY bugged and rendering sucked - but it was the best with amapi at modeling...

Soulty, try taking the grain off and adding slightly more reflections/transparency....

[DDD]

Yeah tweak those and about a 1.1 refraction maybe 1.3. Add some noise to the object and to the bump on the material and you should be on the money.

A buddy of mine uses uses universe he produces some cool stuff.....I just want to know a lil about the major apps. But LW and 3ds has been very good to me.

[.soulty]

New update, actually felt like working on 3d today,

Caustics render:

:::btw i was only rendering from maya native renderer before

[mlk]

Hehe sorry to bring that post up but if some of you are still looking for C4d water/ice textures and more i found a relatively good link
http://www.maxon.net/deepshade/shader/shaders/water/ix_wat1.html

[mdipi]

oh boy i havent seen this for a long time@! good memory, and someone has to be still interested

[Dave]

yep!! i am, thanks for the link, everything helps :)