Volume 01 Issue 07

06
November 2004
October 2004 | $2.99
| $0.00

HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS ISSUE:

Carles Piles Interview

Read the interview with world

renowned CINEMA 4D artist, Carles
Piles, by Tavy Ann. Page 34

CINEMA 4D Gallery

The Best in CINEMA 4D! Enjoy and get

inspired by some of the best CINEMA
4D images from around the world.
Enter our new gallery on Page 44.

Rui Batista’s “SFX”

Read the interview on

Page 3!

Try your hand at Rui Batista’s new

CINEMA 4D tutorial, “Lights and SFX”.
Part 1 of 2 on Page 31.

© Picture by Pexel (Peter Hofmann)

Place Headline in here!
3D ATTACK
Subheadline QUICK
will be right here... INDEX

PAGE 3-6 Interview with Peter Hofmann aka PeXel by Tavy Ann

PAGE 7-8 DOF Tutorial by Thomas Pasieka “Tank”

PAGE 9-13 Interview with Rui Batista by Tavy Ann

PAGE 14-20 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial by Fluffy

PAGE 21-22 Deep Instant Tree Plug-in Review by Mark Gmehling

PAGE 23-25 XPresso “Aging Banana” Tutorial by Base80

PAGE 26-27 3D Fluff Training DVD Review by Thomas Pasieka

PAGE 28-30 Thinking Particles Tutorial by Kiwi

PAGE 31-33 Lights and Special Effects by Rui Batista

PAGE 34-38 Interview with Carles Piles by Tavy Ann

PAGE 39-40 IK Tool Kit Plug-in Review by Crew Reynolds

PAGE 41-43 XPresso Tutorial - Dynamic Spring by THL

PAGE 44-49 Best of CINEMA 4D Gallery

PAGE 50 The 3D Attack Team

PAGE 51 Editors Notes

 Interview with Peter Hofmann aka PeXel
By Tavy Ann
Peter Hofmann
Design/Architecture
Student
www.peXel.de
Tavy: Hi Peter. Your work is known
throughout the world as some of the
best CINEMA 4D artwork and 3D
Attack is honored and excited to
have you as one of our Featured
Artists this month.
Would you mind sharing with our
readers a little about yourself?
Where you grew up, are currently
living, your age, etc.
Interview
Peter: Hi Tavy, it's an honor to be
interviewed. Thank you all for the
wonderful monthly e-zines! KEEP
IT ALIVE! It's always interesting to
see what's going on in the CG com-
munities throughout the world.
My name is Peter Hofmann, but
most people know be better as
"peXel". I was born in 1982 in
Weilheim i. OBB., Bavaria, Germany.
Just a small and boring town near
Munich. Weilheim, I am sorry, but
there is just nothing there that was
interesting for a child like me.
But, I do thank Weilheim for that,
otherwise maybe I would have
never started playing PC games and
doing 3D Stuff. My parents gave me
my first pens and saw the proof of
3
this while walking through our
house. Yeah the walls, I loved
them. AH! The pens loved them
too.
Tavy: What first interested you in
3D Graphics and when did you start
doing 3D?
Peter: I have been drawing my
whole life. There exists drawings I
never drew (Kopffüssler with a body)
I'm sure. I can't remember when my
family got our first PC, but it was
very early on for the average
German. I loved the machine from
the start, so I play a lot of PC
games. While studying to learn a bit
for my German Abitur in early 2001
(11 or 12th grade, I'm not sure) I
started with a simple 3D program,
 Interview with Peter Hofmann aka PeXel
By Tavy Ann

the name of which I can't remember.
It was extremely unstable, so after
month of creating stupid things, I
decided to find out what a good 3D
program was and one that would fit
me well. I found Homeof3D. The
webmaster, Walter Schliep, became
a good CG friend. After asking him
a lot of questions he told me to buy
CINEMA 4D GO.
He said it was the best for me, so I
did it. It was the only 3D program I
knew. It was built in Germany with
a German layout. Wonderful! At
that time, to look at my grades in
school, my english was really not
the best. Now, because of betatest-
ing for MAXON Computer GMbH, I
am using the english layout only.
3D has really improved my english.
Interview
Tavy: Have you received any for-
mal education or training in
Computer Graphics/3D?
Peter: Not really. I never even did a
tutorial or anything like that. It was
all trial and error. Oh I know it's not
the fastest way, but I think it wasn't
a bad way for me. Having direct
contact with MAXON and all the
good 3D artists over the world is
good enough for me.
Tavy: Are you working as a profes-
sional in the CG Industry?
Peter: I am student at HfT Stuttgart,
Germany, for interior design/archi-
tecture. I was working as freelancer
for Behnisch & Behnisch Partner.
A very good German/American
architectural bureau. You maybe
know the Olympic Stadium in
Munich built for the Olympic Games
in 1972 ...
Tavy: When looking at your work,
much of it leans towards realism.
What are the most important points
in a scene that makes it look real?
Peter: If you want something to
look real you have to do a lot,
almost too much. A perfect lighting,
textures, and of course a good
mesh. Good textures are a must.

Now I rather dislike German words

in a German layout.

Tavy: Who are some of your

favorite 3D artists? Where do you
find the inspiration for your art?

Peter: Steven Stalberg for his nice

CG girls, Mike Robinson (Squidinc)
for his crazy modeling and lighting,
and Martin Ernst (mattin) for his
funny ideas and his Mac images.

If I am looking for reality, it's good to

have a couple or good photographs
or calendar images to work with.
Sometimes you should not forget to
have quick look at what other 3D
artists do.

By the way, I don't consider myself a

real artist.

Well maybe in traditional 2D.

Images generated with a PC or Mac
can easily be duplicated, multiplicat-
ed...Maybe I am old school. Don't
forget to use your hands for doing
stills.....

4
 Interview with Peter Hofmann aka PeXel
By Tavy Ann
Interview
In computer games for instance; low
poly meshes with a wonderful tex-
ture make the characters look real.
The combination of good meshes
and good lighting and textures make
a realistic scene.
Most artists forget that the best of
creating a still is to show only a bit.
Not a scene with thousands of
things! That's a problem I some-
times have.
Tavy: You are working with
CINEMA 4D. What are the strong
points of CINEMA 4D that makes it
your 3D application of choice?
Peter: It's probably the most user
friendly 3D program ever. The mar-
ket for CINEMA 4D grows and
grows. A lot of people sidegrade to
CINEMA 4D. It's more affordable
than most 3D programs. It's really
stable - once you try it you will like
it.
And of course, it's available in sev-
eral languages, which makes it easi-
er to learn for beginners. After using
5
it for some days you have results!
Don't forget all kewl CINEMA 4D
users around the world and pro-
grammers. I love all CINEMA 4D
plugins!
Tavy: What other applications have
you tried or are currently using?
What do you like/dislike about
them?
Peter: I have never tried another
3D program. Ok, 3Dmax for some
hours. If you start using CINEMA 4D
you will understand, what I am talk-
 Interview with Peter Hofmann aka PeXel
By Tavy Ann
Interview
ing about. I was working with MS for
postprocessing first. Yeah, MS Paint
before I started using PSD.I loved it
and now I love PSD.
Tavy: Are you currently working on
any projects you can tell us a bit
about?
Peter: I am working on several fun
projects I can't say much about. You
will see them. Currently I am learn-
ing ArchiCAD for my studies.
Tavy: What do you do in your
spare time when you're not doing
3D?
Peter: Spare time!?!? Never heard
of that. It's true I am sitting a lot
here playing and working with my
machines, but that's not all. I love to
go to the cinema, playing billiard
with friends ... as everybody does.
Sometimes I go metal detecting
[ celtic, roman stuff ] with a friend
from LDA Bavaria, Munich.
Tavy: Can you tell us a bit about
your future plans? Where do you
see yourself in 5 or ten years?
Peter: 5 or 10 years are a looong
period for 3D. I have no idea what
will be going on in years, but I hope
I can still do 3D stuff. Maybe for
work. In 10 years I´m sure I´ll love to
read this article in the 3D Attack
archives. Maybe I am lying on the
beach, beneath palms with a cock-
tail in one hand, and the other hand
is taking a wonderful woman's hand!
6
I really have no idea! We will have
to see.
Tavy: You are an inspiration to so
many young aspiring 3D artists.
What would you like to tell them?
Peter: Really!? Kewl! [ his face is
becoming red ] Don't say things like
that! I have just a small thing for all
3D users. Keep on doing 3D! That's
the only advice I can give you.
Tavy: Peter, once again, thank you
for taking time out your day to
share with our readers more about
you and your work.
Peter: Thank you for the interview.
Keep on Attacking!
 Depth of Field (DOF) Setup
by Tank
Hello there Attackers. Recently,
while browsing through some
forums, I found several people ask-
ing for a DOF tutorial. I made one a
while ago for our magazine, but I
feel like I should do another one for
our readers. I am going to explain
the DOF options (not all of them) to
give you an overview and something
to start with. The setup is really not
that difficult to do and setting up the
camera for the DOF effect is quiet
easy once you understand how the
camera works. Well, what do we
actually need for a DOF effect?
Simple answer: An object, a light,
and a camera. That's it! It's actually
the same in real life. You will need a
camera and a light source (usually
the sun) and an object of your
choice.
Tutorial
Let's start creating our scene. First,
we will create a floor/ground for our
objects to be placed on. Create
some spheres and change their
radius to a smaller size of your
choice. Once you have placed your
spheres, create a camera for your
scene. Remember, this is just one
example and you can create differ-
ent scenes and objects.
I'm just explaining it to you by using
a simple scene. You will find the file
in the DOF folder or just create a
scene by yourself. Have a look at
this screenshot (Pic01)
(Pic01)
After creating the floor we are going
to place some spheres on the
ground. In this tutorial I'm using 8
Spheres at different distances.
MAXON offers a nice little feature in
R9 where you can set up your view-
port so it tells you the distance
between your camera and the cho-
sen object directly. This is quiet use-
ful since you will need to enter the
focal point (target distance) for your
camera. To activate this option just
hit "Edit" in your viewport. Choose
"Configure" and activate the
"Camera Distance" on the right
(Pic02).
(Pic02)
You will see a couple of other
options, but we don't need to use
those. If you have done everything
right you will see the camera dis-
tance right in your viewport. If you
want to move the information then
press ctrl and click to drag and
move (Pic03)
(Pic03)
You can check the distances of your
objects in the scene by just clicking
on one of the objects. For instance,
click on Sphere1 - it will tell you that
7
the object (Sphere1) is 1650 units
away from the camera. Sphere2 is
2020 units away and so on. Alright,
now that we have set up our scene
we will need to set up our camera.
First, you will have to make sure
that the DOF is activated in CINE-
MA. To do so, go to your render set-
tings and hit "effects" You will see
"Object Glow" and "Lens Effects".
Well, we need a "Depth of Field"
effect so we will choose it from the
right upper corner.
Click on the little arrow for "Post
Effects" and choose "Depth of field".
It will be added to your Post Effects
list (Pic04). You will notice some set-
(Pic04)
tings below your "Post Effects".
I changed the "Blur Strength" from 5
to 10% to achieve a little more blur-
ry look. The higher the setting the
more blur you get. But be a little
careful since too much looks unreal.
You can also change the distance
blur, but we don't really need to for
this example. You can play around
with those settings after you under-
stand the basics of DOF. This is the
same for the rest of the settings.
Don't play around with them for now
- it will just lead to confusion and we
don't really need to change them for
this tutorial.
Let's have a quick overview. We cre-
ated a scene with a floor and some
spheres so far. We also added a
camera and we activated the "DOF"
 Depth of Field (DOF) Setup
by Tank
post effect in the render settings and
changed the Blur strength from 5 to
10% in the settings dialogue. The
next picture will show you the setup
so far. You'll see the camera placed
a little bit above the ground and
spheres. You also see a light on top
and that's it. Not that difficult so far,
is it? Feel free to create a setup of
your choice - the basics are the
same (Pic05).
(Pic05)
Tutorial
Let's move on to the camera set-
tings. First, you should place the
camera in an intelligent way as in
the screenshot above. After this,
you will need to go "into" the cam-
era's view. To do so hit "Camera"
and choose the cam (I renamed my
Camera "DOF CAMERA") (Pic06).
Now we will see the scene through
our camera. This is important, as
(Pic06)
without a camera there wouldn't be
a DOF effect. Go to your Objects
Manager and select the camera by
clicking it. We will need to activate
the cameras "Depth" option. You
can either choose "Front Blur" or
"Rear Blur". Let's pick "Rear Blur"
first. Just activate it, and the camera
will be ready to produce a distant
"Rear blur". We will have to set a
"Target Distance" now. Alright, let's
do that. Let's pick a distance. Well
let's say we want Sphere 1 to 3 to
be sharp and Sphere 4 to 8 will be
blurry. Easy task, just choose
Sphere 3 from your object manager
and check the distance from camera
to Sphere3. In my case it's 2386
units away. Activate the camera in
your object manager list again and
check the cameras "Depth" settings.
Change the current "Target
Distance" settings to 2150 units and
render your picture (Pic07).
(Pic07)
I have set the "Target distance" a lit-
tle bit in front of Sphere3 since the
blur effect will fade a little bit. To test
this we will need to make sure that
we are in Perspective view. Render
your picture now. If you think that
the blur strength is not enough then
go ahead and change this in your
render settings. Your picture should
look similar to this one (Pic08).
(Pic08)
8
You can go ahead and change the
"Target Distance" by checking your
objects distance to the camera. Play
around with the "Target Distance" to
get a feel for it. Try different dis-
tances and blur strength settings.
Well what do we have so far? We
know how to create a distance blur,
but what if we want to have some
blur in front of the camera and the
distance Spheres should be sharp?
There is a way - we will have to acti-
vate "Front Blur" for our camera.
I have set the "Target Distance" to
4000 units in this example. The
"Start" and "End" Blur is set to 0 and
600 units as you can see in the
screenshot (Pic09).
(Pic09)
Let's render this picture. What we
will get is a pretty blurred picture in
the front and a sharp middle and
back of the picture. Play around with
those settings to get a feel for it.
You learned the basics of DOF. You
can go ahead now and try some dif-
ferent settings. You should also
check MAXON's manuals to read
about the different settings you can
change for your camera. You can
also animate your DOF settings by
adding keyframes in your time frame
at different stages. If you have any
questions about this tutorial then
please contact us.
3dattack@3dattack.net
Thomas Pasieka aka “Tank”
 Interview with Rui Batista
By Tavy Ann
Rui Batista
3D Artist - Plugin
Writer
http://www.ruimac.com/
Tavy: Rui thanks so much for tak-
ing the time to share more about
you and your work with our readers.
We are honored that you would take
this special time out for us. First, let
me extended to you and your wife
our CONGRATULATIONS on the
birth of your new baby.
I'm sure you both are more than
excited and amazed with your new
Interview
little bundle of happiness. That's a
great place to start! Why don't you
share with our readers a little about
where you grew up, now live, how
old you are, and your family.
Rui: Hello Tavy. We are, in fact,
amazed and excited (and fatigued
too with our newborn son). He is
taking lots of the already little time I
have, but it is worth it, 100%. I was
born in Setœbal, a town just around
50 kilometers to the south of the
capital of Portugal (Lisbon). I grew
up there and it is also where I live
presently. I work in Lisbon, so every
day I must travel almost 100 kilome-
ters... but I'm used to it.
I was born on the 21st of September
of 1971, so now I'm 33 years old
but, luckily, I feel slightly younger.
My wife is 31 years old, but she
looks much, much younger (people
look at me like I am a pedophile lol )
And my son, Pedro, was born on
the 7th of September of 2004, the
9
day we celebrated 2 years of mar-
riage. We have 9 cats in total but I
can't remember when each one was
born.
Tavy: Rui, throughout the entire
CINEMA 4D community you are
hailed as highly skilled and probably
one of the most helpful 3D artists
out there. Why do you lend your
support and advice to so many
beginners and professionals alike?
Rui: I really love to help out and I
believe knowledge is something to
be shared. That is why I gave some
classes (FreeHand, Photoshop and,
of course, CINEMA 4D) and loved it
so much. Although, it may feel a bit
awkward for someone that says he
loves to teach to be also known as
the guy who keeps telling people to
READ THE MANUAL, but that is
because I really want the best for
 Interview with Rui Batista
By Tavy Ann
Interview
everyone and the manual usually
contains "concentrated knowledge".
So, maybe the best definition may
be "I'm the one who likes to help
people that are willing to help them-
selves" - I sounded just like
Confucius, didn't I?
Tavy: Who are some of the artists
you admire? Where do you draw
your inspiration from?
Rui: In the 3D community, I admire
many people. If I had to say names,
I instantly remember Carles Piles for
his wonderful lighting and Pupi for
his amazing modeling and texturing.
As for an "artist" that I admire in
general terms, I will have to say
Leonardo de Vinci. That guy was
amazing and I can only imagine
what a bright mind like his would do
if he had access to a computer.
Tavy: Not only are you a great CIN-
EMA 4D artist, but you are also a
skilled plug-in writer. Why did you
start developing plug-ins for CINE-
MA 4D and where can our readers
find them?
Rui: Well, thank you very much for
the compliments, Tavy. Now... why
did I start developing plug-ins? It all
goes back to when I was 14 years
old. By that time I had my first com-
puter (a ZX Spectrum 48 K) and I
started programming. I had more fun
creating my application than playing
games because I always liked creat-
ing things. Ever since then I've
caught the "programming bug". So,
whenever I have the chance, I cre-
ate my own tools. It's not only fun,
but very useful, because I don't
have to wait for someone (or even
Maxon itself) to come up with a spe-
cific tool that I need. Besides, it is a
10
tremendous intellectual exercise.
Programming helps us to think
clearer and more methodically. My
plug-ins can be found on my site
(http://www.ruimac.com) clicking on
the Plug-ins icon, or directly to
http://www.ruimac.com/plugins.htm.
Tavy: Other than writing plug-ins,
what are you currently doing for
work?
Rui: Besides changing diapers? I do
lots of stuff, Tavy. Really, LOTS of
stuff. I have my day job (I start at
10am and only get out around 7 or 8
pm, sometimes even later). I also
write 3D related stuff for forums and
articles for 3D Attack's excellent e-
zine. I also do freelance work, main-
ly 3D visualization or illustrations. I
frequent forums and try to help out
people with their problems (on the
forums or through my "Questions"
 Interview with Rui Batista
By Tavy Ann
page, http://www.ruimac.com/ques-
tions.php). I also surf the net looking
for info on lots of subjects (3D, pro-
gramming, video, special effects,
animation, etc).
Tavy: Rumor has it you're writing a
book. Could you tell us a little about
your book and when do you think
you will have it completed?
Rui: That is probably the thing that
I'm most ashamed of. Not the book
itself, but the slowness in writing it.
I have little spare time and I honest-
ly can only write it at home when I'm
relaxed. That is a very rare luxury
these days. So, after realizing that I
can't definitely set a deadline for it to
be finished, I rearranged the style of
the book to a more flexible and in-
Interview
temporal structure: it is a set of
"possible" real life situations where
several tricks and techniques are
explained. It is very generic so it can
even be used with slight adjust-
ments to solve problems in other
applications. Also, I'm making it in a
way that, as much as possible, is
not limited to any specific version of
CINEMA 4D.
Tavy: CINEMA 4D! When compar-
ing CINEMA 4D to other 3D applica-
tions, where are the plus and
minus? Why is CINEMA 4D your
application of choice?
Rui: If I had to use one word, I
would say "SIMPLICITY". From all
the big players, it is the easiest 3D
application. It is as powerful as most
other "big" applications, but is much
easier to use, much more stable, The ones that already knew (and
and faster to get results. One of the used) other applications -
best examples I could present was Lightwave, 3D Studio Max and
from when I gave some CINEMA 4D Maya - were able to do more after
classes to many different people. just a couple of days of classes than
11
 Interview with Rui Batista
By Tavy Ann

after two weeks of classes of the

other applications. CINEMA 4D is an
amazing application and it still has
lots of room to evolve. Of course,
I'm a bit suspicious when I say this,
because I'm a beta tester for Maxon,
but honestly, from the point of view
of a graphic designer (who also
does a bit of programming); it is the
best 3D application I ever worked
with.

Tavy: Many CINEMA 4D users are

a bit hesitant in using XPresso and
C.O.F.F.E.E. What are your
thoughts about this? Are they as
complicated as many users think?

Rui: As long as one knows what

he/she wants, XPresso is very easy
to work with. Of course it requires inspiring - and technique - one has home, draw, write articles and hang
Interview

reading the XPresso section of the
manual too, at least, knows what
nodes we have and what ports of
each node do. XPresso is a tremen-
dous "language" because it is main-
ly graphic. Anyone can "code" in
XPresso and the result is worth the
initial investment into learning it. As
for C.O.F.F.E.E., unfortunately it is
not available to all, it requires a
"coder" line of thinking because it is
a true scripting language not very
different from JavaScript or C++.
It is a very powerful language
(although I would love to see some
improvements) and anyone more
serious about creating tools - plug-
ins, tags, and expressions - should
take a look at it.
Tavy: What is your opinion on art in
3D? Is 3D an art form?
Rui: Absolutely! It is a very special
type of art form. I believe 3D is just
like design. Design is a blend of art
(it has to look good) and technique
(it has to be efficient). 3D is a blend
if art - it should look good and be
to know how things work and
behave to be able to reproduce
them. As I always say, I consider the
guys that do 3D as neo-renaissance
men (and women ;-). We need to
know principles of engineering, light-
ing, physics, painting, directing, etc.
And above all, we must be excellent
observers. Besides observing, we
must interpret and cross-reference
information in order to recreate it in
the computer realm. It's not an easy
task, but if done correctly, it
becomes a real art form. And it is
lots of fun.
Tavy: When you're not busy work-
ing or doing something that involves
3D, what do you do?
Rui: Oh, so many different things :-)
I like to read. I read a lot and I'm
pretty eclectic. I don't read just man-
uals, as most people think ;-) I also
like to cook, listen to music, do DIY
work at home, watch TV (especially
Discovery, National Geographic,
History Channel and stuff like that),
go to the movies or watch movies at
around in forums in general, etc.
Now, most of my (little) spare time is
dedicated to my wife and son, of
course.
Tavy: I'm sure you have visited
many 3D discussion forums. Do
you think these forums are helpful to
the beginner and professional alike?
In your opinion, what are the highs
and lows of 3D discussion forums?
Rui: Forums are great resources for
everyone. Of course, not all forums
are geared to beginners and profes-
sionals alike and that is a shame.
Unfortunately, some of them discard
the newbies because some profes-
sionals have a snobbish attitude and
forget that they were newbies once.
Nevertheless, there is also the
reverse and, sometimes, the begin-
ners don't know how to be newbies.
Let me explain: a beginner (and I
was a beginner too, sometime ago)
is someone that is starting and
wants to learn. He must be willing to
learn if he wants to become a pro-
fessional or, at least, more proficient

12
 Interview with Rui Batista
By Tavy Ann
than a beginner. But, as with every-
thing else in life, there are no
"instant-knowledge" pills. Learning
takes time and effort and most peo-
ple, nowadays, don't want to "loose"
time. Time spent into learning is not
wasted, but young people don't
seem to realize that.
A forum is a great place to learn
from other peoples experience and
share our own experience with oth-
ers. It's a shame that, sometimes,
people try to explore others and
"suck" what they took time and great
effort to learn. This is even worse on
non-moderated forums, of course.
Having said all this, it is my firm
belief that forums are amongst the
greatest resources for people want-
ing to learn 3D, besides the manual
Interview
and books/magazines on the sub-
ject.
The forum at 3D Attack is one of the
best I know and have the pleasure
to be part of. It is not only filled with
information, but the users are not
simply users. They are more like a
group of friends and that creates a
great "atmosphere" :-)
Tavy: With many CINEMA 4D
resources on the web, where would
you suggest beginners and profes-
sionals should go for their CINEMA
4D needs? Any specific forums,
web-sites, or publications that you
have found useful?
Rui: I may sound biased, but one of
the best forums I know of is
www.3dattack.net. All newbies and
pros are treated alike (as long as
they behave properly. The 3D Attack
e-zine is also one of the best 3D
magazines I ever read and it is get-
ting better and better with each
issue. Other magazines I usually
buy and like very much are 3D
World magazine and Computer Arts
magazine. Other forums I frequent
are:
http://www.postforum.com/forums/list
.php?f=6 and
http://www.3donline.com.pt (this last
one is a Portuguese forum). From
time to time I go to
http://www.cgtalk.com, but it is a
very "heavy" site.
It is filled with pros (whose attitude
is not always the best) and has so
much information in it that it is,
sometimes, hard to filter or find what
we want, or even keep up with it.
But it is one of the largest and more
information-packed forums around.
Tavy: Rui, inside you is a wealth of
knowledge that only comes from
experience. Do you have any
advice or words of wisdom you
would like to leave our readers with?
Rui: Thank you for the compliment,
Tavy. The advice I can give are sim-
ple: observe, experiment and gather
information. Observing the world
around us allows us to understand
why things act and look the way
they do.
For instance, why corners gather
more dirt or why do indentations on
the floor are shinier than the
grooves. Experimenting will allow us
to test what we learned by observ-
ing. It is not a process derived from
13
errors or disillusions, but we always
learn form those, don't we?
Experimenting is a great way to try
"what if..." scenarios and will
increase our knowledge of the soft-
ware we use. Gathering information
is done associating the observation
and the experimenting and also by
learning with the experiences of oth-
ers and reading as much as we can
about a subject.
Texts are "concentrated knowledge"
that allow us to bypass the long
"trial&error" procedure of experi-
menting. Manuals are hyper-con-
centrated knowledge, information at
its purest form. They are not as nice
to read as a novel, but each para-
graph is packed with useful informa-
tion. These advice worked with me
and I'm sure they will work with
everyone else that is willing to give
them a try.
Tavy: Once again, congratulations
to you and your wife on the arrival of
your precious baby. 3D Attack and
our readers thank you for taking the
time to share more about you and
your work. Keep on ATTACKING!
Rui: Thank you very much for taking
the time to prepare this very inter-
esting interview, Tavy. I feel very
honored to belong to this excellent
team, at 3D Attack. I hope we can
all go on giving our best to every-
one, on the forum and in the maga-
zine. I also hope that what I said
can prove useful to someone
because this is what I like the most:
helping people. Lets all keep on
ATTACKING!
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
Fur and hair in 3D have always
been quite difficult to reproduce, but
bring so much more depth and life
to a character that the effect is much
appealing to any artist.
That's where all the power of Shave
and Haircuts comes into light.
Designed to work seamlessly on
both Maya and CINEMA 4D, this
plugin is the most convincing hair
generator out there to satisfy your
needs (well, at least in C4D).
I will try in this tutorial to introduce
you to most of the features as well
as some personal experiences I've
had using it with CINEMA 4D.
First of all, we'll need a character, so
let me introduce you to, Bobo the
mammoth, that I will use in this tuto-
rial [pic-01].
Tutorial
Pic01
Bobo used to live during the Ice age
era, so he will need some fur to
keep him warm, and as I designed
him in a cartoonistic way, we'll try to
make him look cute and fluffy using
that wonderful tool.
The process of creating hair is quite
simple when used basically, the plu-
gin is easy to use once you get over
the particular interface and way of
doing things and the only thing you'll
need is creativity and patience.
This tutorial will cover the basics of
Shave and Haircuts.
Part1 : Growing hair.
To grow hair on a model, you first
need to make a polygon selection to
point where you want your hair to be
grown. My Bobo model is constitut-
ed of a main body mesh that I will
apply fur on.
>> Let's start by selecting the poly-
gons needed. Here you can see that
my character will have hair applied
over his whole body except for the
inside of the ears, so I will not
include them into my selection
(fig.02).
You could grow the hair using sever-
al selections too, but be careful with
this as S&H uses an interpolation
between hair guides to build its
effect, so if you have two separate
selections, the hair won't be interpo-
lated between them. This could cre-
ate some unnatural looks especially
while animating as the hairs would-
n't move as a whole, but be split at
the junction [pic-02].
Pic02
>> Go into your Shave plugin menu
(menu "plugins>Shave") and select
"grow hair" with the polygons select-
ed. The hairs are grown using the
polygon normals direction, so make
sure everything is aligned properly
14
and that the normals point outward.
Three things happen when you grow
hair : the hairs are grown on the
polygons, a material tag, a hairstyle
tag and a selection tag are created
in the hierarchy and a hair material
is created in the materials manager.
The hairs grown look quite funky,
and are too long for the character,
so we will need to shape them from
the plugin interface [pic-03].
Pic03
>> Go into the Shave menu and
select "edit hair" - make sure the
Shave tag is selected in the objects
manager.
The Shave plugin interface pops up
and we can now tweak the shape of
the hairs. Here is an explanation of
what the icons are used for [pic-04].
Pic04
1 - Hair selection mode, allows us to
define which part of the guide our
tool will affect. You can achieve dif-
ferent results depending on what
you are moving.
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
2 - Brush mode, works like a brush,
which means it uses a radius to
apply its effects.
3 - Normal mode - Just a click and
transform tool - the one that you'll
use the most.
4 - Shake mode - Shake mode is a
dynamic modification function, which
enables the dynamic engine and
allow you to shape hairs by moving
the view and let the dynamic engine
do its work.
5 - Translate tool
6 - Stand hair tool - Erect the hairs
to create volume and avoid intersec-
tion with polygons.
7 - Puff root tool - Similar to the
Stand hair tool, but affects only the
root of the guides.
8 - Clump tool - Clumps or stretches
a hair selection. Nice to create
whole strands of hair clumped
Tutorial
together.
9 - Rotate tool - Create big curls
with that tool.
10 - Scale tool.
11 - Invert selection.
12 - Frame selection in the viewport.
13 - Frame all objects in the view-
port.
14 - Hide hairs - Hide selected hair
guides with that function to clear the
view and select or modify more eas-
ily.
15 - Unhide all hidden hairs.
16 - Preview mode - Makes a rough
preview of how look the hair with
you current settings. Preview quality
can be increased by the depth (see
31) and number of hairs (see 32).
17 - Toggle hair collisions with the
model.
18 - Pop Zero hair - Sometimes, it
can happen that you scale some
hairs down so much that they won't
do anything else. Pop Zero hairs
reset them at their default length
value.
19 - Pop selected allows you to
reset selected guides to their default
value, along their normals.
20 - Lock selected vertexes, so you
won't transform them anymore.
21 - Unlock all locked vertexes.
22 - Attenuate hair length based on
the size of the polygon it is attached
to. Helps scaling things down natu-
rally.
23 - Cut hairs - Just cut the hairs at
selected vertexes height (the closest
from the root is the one used for the
cut).
24 - Comb away from camera. It's
like using a hair blower, it pushes
the guides away from the camera.
25 - Recomb - Very useful to quickly
distribute the hair along polygons
once you have roughly placed them.
26 - Undo.
27 - Done!! Exit the Shave interface
and validate your modifications
(when you click "ok" in the next pop-
up).
28 - Displacement parameters - It is
here that you setup your hair fea-
tures, they will apply on the active
hair material when you exit the inter-
face..
29 - Dynamics parameters - Adjust
in real time the dynamic parameters
of your hairs. Useful for animation
and while using the Shake mode.
30 - Allows you to change the
parameters either for the hairs or
the spline hairs.
31 - Increase or decrease the hair
Depth, to adjust the quality of the
preview (see 16).
32 - Adjust the hair count that will be
rendered in the preview.
33 - X, Y and Z quick projections.
Quickly switch between views (front,
top and side).
34 - Adjust the display of the model.
35 - Adjust the display of the hairs.
36 - 3D mesh.
37 - Hair guides with the end vertex
selected.
15
Part 2 : shaping the fur.
The Shave plugin interface is a sep-
arate application that allows us to
shape the fur using a wide set of
tools.
Press Shift + Click the mouse and
drag the mouse to select hair
guides. You'll notice that Shave uses
concentric circles to make selec-
tions. It's a bit awkward at first, but
you'll get used to it quickly [pic-05].
Pic05
You can add to a selection by press-
ing de 'Shift' key or delete from the
selection by pressing the 'Ctrl' key
before clicking and dragging with
the mouse.
The right-click button will use the
active tool, and the left click will
rotate the view (see documentation
for Macintosh shortcuts).
You can use a few shortcuts to navi-
gate the view too :
" > " and " < " keys are used to
zoom in and zoom out, while the
arrow keys are used to pan the
view.
>> We'll select the hair by their end
for the moment and use the scale
tool to scale them down a bit (Right-
click and drag to scale down)[pic-06].
>> In order to see what we want to
do, we need to hide the hair guides
that we are not working on. Deselect
the hair guides of the left arm using
Ctrl+left click and click on the Hide
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy

ened them, and I lengthened the

Pic09
guides of the forearm. I also adjust-
ed a few guides as needed. Shave
is not a precise science, so you
have to find what fits you best - it's
an artist tool [pic-08].

Recomb button to make the hair fol-

Pic06
selection button. Be careful not to
deselect unwanted hairs, as the
selection does apply to not visible
elements, so make sure you don't
drag the mouse over other regions
of the body that you don't need to
either select or deselect. Rotate the
Tutorial
low the direction of the polygons, it
allows us to quickly shape them so
that they follow the shape of the
body. Afterward, you can puff the
hair or make them stand a bit to
give them some volume, no gel
needed :
Pic08
You can also use the Clump tool to
You can use the Preview hair button make the end of the guides stick out

view if necessary.
>> Select the Translate hair tool, go
in front view (Z axis) and right-click
to drag the fur guides in the arm's
direction [pic-07].
to have a quick preview of how will a bit, for a different look [pic-10].
look the hair with your current hair Pic10
material settings. The preview quali-
ty can be adjusted by increasing the
depth of the hair in the hair depth
parameter.

You can adjust the type of hair in

Pic07
>> Select either the Puf Root or
Stand hair tool to straighten the
roots of the fur guides, so that they
won't intersect with the polygons
and render properly. That action
helps add some volume when shap-
ing short hairs and fur. Continue to
adjust the fur guides by moving and
puffing as necessary, using selec-
tions to shape only the needed
guides, until it looks like picture 08.
What I did here is select the guides
of the "palm" of the hand and short-
the menu on the right, adjusting
things like the Kink, Frizz, random
scale and so on, and make a quick
preview here - that is a good way of
seeing the hair without having to
render them in C4D (which is much
longer). Don't worry if the fur doesn't
look great here, it's just a preview.
[pic-09]
>> Unhide everything and select the
right arm guides (once selected, you
can invert the selection and hide the
other hair guides of the body) and
repeat the process so that they look
like the right arm's. A useful function
that I didn't mention earlier is the
Recomb function. Once you have
dragged the hair straight in the
direction of the arm, click the
Click the Done button to exit the plu-
gin interface, and click ok to confirm
the changes or Cancel if you don't
want to take them into account (you
can use C4D's Undo function if you
click OK by mistake and still want to
undo) and save your changes.
Make sure to do this from time to
time, because you can't save from
the Shave interface and changes to
the hairs are not taken fully into
account until you exit the Shave
interface and apply the shape to
your character.

16
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
>> just apply the same principle for
the legs. You can add some varia-
tion in the shape of the hair using
the Clump hair tool, which allows
you to bend the hair outward.
You can also use all these tools with
the Brush mode, which can be more
intuitive and depends on how you
prefer to shape the guides. Just
make some tests to decide what you
like the most. Keep also in mind that
you can shape the hair manually
using the translate tool, and not nec-
essarily rely only on the Recomb
and such automatic tools. Anyway,
you will almost always need to move
them manually [pic-11].
Pic11
Tutorial
For the body, we will use a variation
of the technique that has the same
result but that you might prefer.
>> Hide the hair of the head, legs
and arms and go in the top view (Y
axis view) with the body hair select-
ed. Then, use the Comb Away from
camera function to push the hair
back in the opposite direction of the
camera, as if you were blowing the
hairs, and click the Recomb button
to distribute the hair guides better
along the polygons. Then just use
the Stand hair tool to puff them a bit
and adjust as needed.Here I have
shortened the hair under the
armpits, and lengthened them on
the back, to create a heavier patch Pic13
of fur, like a buffalo. I also created
some longer hairs on the torso [pic-
12].
hairs on, like the teeth, the snout
and the lips (yeah, sometimes you
do stupid things and when you look
Pic12 at it, you realize how deep you are
in, especially during a tutorial -
Don't forget to exit the Shave inter- Nobody is perfect : ).
face and save from time to time. Well, that will give us the opportunity
to go over that particular mistake
>> Let's isolate the tail's guides now and show how easily it can be cor-
and adjust them as you learned ear- rected [pic-14].
lier (use the procedure that fits you
best). The end of the tail is not quite Pic14
good for the moment, that's because
the hair should be in fact different
and not interpolate with the hair
guides of the rest of the tail.
We could break the interpolation by
using the "Q" key, but it wouldn't
solve our problem here, as we need
the hairs to look different, and use a
different hair material. So we will
need to take that selection out from
the selection tag (in the object man-
ager) and reassign it to a new Hair
material, that will use different val-
ues [pic-13]. We are all set now with the fur of
the body, you can do a quick render
>> Exit the Shave interface, delete with the smoothed shape in C4D if
the end of the tail from the selection, you want to check how things will
and set the new selection over the look like, or you can double-click on
old one. I have also taken the the hairstyle tag and check the
opportunity to delete my hair selec- "Hairs" parameter for the editor dis-
tion from the palm of the "hand" as I play. This will show the hairs, and
don't need them here, and some not the guides in the view, so you
strange regions where I initially grew can have a rough idea of how hairs
17
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
are interpolated without having to
render them.Ok, now we'll go for the
tricky part : shaping the hairs of the
head. Sometimes, when shaping
hairs and fur, you'll need to see
other objects that don't have hairs
applied to, for the purpose of shap-
ing correctly, or just to have a better
idea of how it will look directly in the
Shave interface. In order to do this,
just apply a Gel tag on the objects
you want to include by selecting
your object in the object manager
and selecting the function "Add Gel
tag" in the Shave plugin menu.
That's what I'll do to include the
tusks and the eyes in the Shave
interface. It only works on polygonal
objects, though, so you will need to
create proxies when you want to
include other types of objects (para-
metrics, splines and so on…).
Tutorial
>> Select "Edit hair" in the Shave
plugin menu to access the plugin
interface. Make sure you have the
hairstyle tag selected before doing
this, otherwise you won't have
access to the edit function.
>> Hide all the hairs except for
those of the head.
>> Now, because the shape of the
head is quite complicated, we will
proceed with small steps. First,
select the end of the trump, and
move the hairs in the continuity of
the trump. Puff them a bit using the
Stand or Puff root tool, and once
you are satisfied, hide the selection.
Continue all along the trump, using
small sections. I used the Recomb
function for the difficult parts of the
model, like the circles of the trump
[pic-15].
Here is another really useful tool
that I used for the hair of the head :
the shake mode. The shake mode
Pic15
allows us to take advantage of
Shave's powerful dynamics engine
and use it to shape the hairs natu-
rally. Just activate the shake mode
and the hairs will react to gravity
and drag. Then move the view a bit
to "shake" the hairs and adjust the
dynamics parameters until you are
satisfied. Once you like the shape of
the hairs, just press the "escape"
key to freeze the hair in their current
position.
If you are not satisfied after you
froze them, you can use the undo
function, or pop the hairs back up
using their default position and
length with the "Pop selected along
normals" function [pic-16].
Pic16
At the top of the head, I want to cre-
ate a big patch of longer fur, to sim-
ulate a "nest" style of haircut that
18
will compliment his witty looks.
There, I will use the Shake mode
and its powerful collision detection
capabilities. But first, I need to cre-
ate a proxy, because there is no
need of calculating the collisions
over the whole body, just the head
part.
>> In the C4D interface, I select a
portion of the skull polygons that I
will use as my proxy and split that
selection to create a separate
object. I'll then apply a Gel tag over
it and check the collision detection
check box [pic-17].
Pic17
>> I then edit my hair again, and
hide everything except for the
guides at the top of the head. I
adjust the length of the hairs, add a
bit of randomness to create a more
interesting look (they didn't have
hair stylists in the Ice age era), and I
activate the Shake mode.
I then rotate the character to place
the hairs as I want them.
Notice that because of the proxy I
set up earlier, the long strands of
hair don't go through that proxy and
enter inside the skull.
This is quite handy and allows for
faster and more natural placement.
Now that everything is in place, I
just have to adjust the hairs manual-
ly if not totally satisfied. This is a
good way of placing hair quickly
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
Pic18
before fine tuning them [pic-18].
Remember that Shave is a tool that
you have to use with your feelings.
It's different for each model, and the
result depends entirely on what you
want to convey. Here is how the
hairs look once we are finished
[pic-19].
Pic19
Tutorial
>> We left out the end of the tail
earlier, to apply a different hair
material and hairstyle on, so we'll
take care of it now.
>> select the end of the tail poly-
gons, and select "grow hair" in the
Shave plugin menu. Notice that a
second hair material, hairstyle tag
and selection tag are created.
>> Go into the Shave interface by
choosing "edit hairs" in the Shave
menu plugin.
>> Shape the hair and adjust their
length so they look like figure 20.
We'll adjust the hair material for
them using specific settings later.
>> Exit the Shave interface, and
save your model [pic-20].
Holy cow. He looks smart oO>
Pic20
Part 3 : The hair material.
Ok, so now we have shaped the fur
of our entire character, and just
made a quick render. But hell, that's
horrible. There is not enough fur, the
hairs don't look like what I want to
do with them. Did I set them up cor-
rectly? Yes I did, because every-
thing else now is up to the hair
material. The hair material controls
how the hairs will look in the final
render, and even how they will
behave once animated.
First of all, you noticed that I made a
custom texture for that fellow. I will
use it to colorize the fur with.
>> Double-click that hair material
into the material manager and load
the texture into the Root color chan-
nel as well as in the tip color chan-
nel. I don't need variation from root
to tip here, because I made my own
material, and I want to achieve a
simple cartoonistic look. I won't put
any random hair as I want to keep
control of the color of the hairs using
my map [pic-21].
Pic21
>> We'll then adjust the frizz and
kink parameters, as needed. In my
case, I want to give it a ruffled
19
appearance, so I use a bit of both.
Here are my parameters. A lot of dif-
ferent shapes can be achieve with
these two options, so don't hesitate
to experiment by yourself [pic-22].
Pic22
>> Even though I want a bit of
mess, I don't want his hairs all over
the place, so I don't use any splay
at all [pic-23].
Pic23
>> On the next tab, I'll adjust the
scale of my hairs, depending on
what effect I want to achieve.
If you want realistic looking hairs,
you should make them thin, espe-
cially at the tip, but by doing this you
will need to increase the number of
hairs to render, as well as the depth
value if you want a good result - all
these things are quite long to ren-
der. So everything depends on what
you want to do…
[pic-24]
>> And finally the last tab. Here you
can define how many hairs your
character will have, the depth of the
 Shave and a Haircut Tutorial
By Fluffy
Pic24
hairs, that will influence the quality
of the hairs (how well they are
defined) - the higher this value, the
better looking the hairs, but a longer
rendertime. The number of seg-
ments will define how well the
curves of the hairs will be drawn.
For short hairs, I will use a low
Tutorial
value, as they don't curve that
much. Then you have the speculari-
ty and diffusion.
Diffusion is how the light will propa-
gate on the hairs, and how lit they
will be, just make a few test and see
what satisfies you.Finally, the self-
shadows parameter that will tell how
intense the shadows of the hairs will
project on themselves will be.
For my cartoonistic look, I will use
these settings [pic-25]:
Pic25
>> Select the tail's hair material and Pic26
adjust it to your taste using the
same technic.
Our character is now ready to be
rigged, and put in a scene.
We just took a look at Shave's basic
features, but there is a lot more to
cover so next time we'll go over
more advanced features, like using
maps to shape the hairs, animating
the hairs, rendering hairs and so
on… Bye Bobo, That fur will keep you
warm for the harsh winter :)
Don't hesitate to experiment, Shave You can download the mesh of
is a powerful effect so the possibili- Bobo the mammoth at
ties are quite big. http://www.pixiemedia.com/fc4d/dive
rs/bobo.zip
You should pay attention to details
and observe mother nature when The model is only for learning pur-
you need to, and keep in mind that pose, thanks.
it's just a tool, it's what you do with it Have fun!
that counts, not only what it's capa- Fluffy.
ble of [pic-26].
20
 Deep Instant Tree Review
By Macling - Mark Gmehling

Deep Instant Tree is a C4D plugin
from Samir Kharchi that creates
realistic, animatable Trees, plants
and grass, and is delivered witha big
package of plantcreation tools and
some shaders found in the attributes
menu in the xTexture channels of
your material editor. (By the way, the
grass plant object offers the possibil-
ity to interact with the hairdepart-
ment plugin from bgs group)
Dpit is supporting Cinema Version
8.5 or higher. Lower Versions are
not supported.
As most plant generators, Dpit
plants are created by a hierarchical
structure. Beginning with the main
trunk, which profile and growth are
Plugin Review
settings are already offering results
close to nature. The main tree
shaping works via splines too. A
level in the tree consists of a dpitob-
ject as parent with a spline responsi-
ble for the direction and a splinegen
object responsible for the profile.
The spline is a three point spline by
default.
There are also move/Add/Delete
points to achieve the trunk growth
you have in mind. If you add the
next level branches by creating one
more Dpit object and drag it into the
first, you will again manipulate the
new created spline as above. Then
you have to manipulate the "above"
dpit objects "next level" attributes
and adjust the alignment of the new

controlled by splines, you can add branches onto the trunk.

branchlevels as much as you want
as long as your hardware allows it.
(You can choose between normal-,
spline- and point display in the edi-
tor window which should guarantee
a nice workflow even when you are
working on "heavy" plants.)
The tree shape can be created in 3
different modes: Standard (creates
parametric objects; Polygonmode
(creates polys -faster editor display)
and Splinemode. The subdivision
settings can be adjusted for each
level at any time.
For each Branchlevel, a large num-
ber of sliders are available in the
attributes editor. These settings are
manipulated via sliders and splines
which offer much more intuitive con-
trol of the plant shape than the num-
ber fields would do. You can add or
delete points and adjust the control
curve to fit your needs. These main
Select the main dpit object and play
with the settings in the attributes
editors "next level" tab. Define the
number of branches growing out in
the next level and their alignment to
the parent level. (Of course you can
replace these path splines with the
main cinema splines or own spline
creations). This way adds a few
branch levels.
Its really fun when you tweak the
splinepoints and manipulate the
"next level" attributes when having
already a 3-4 Level tree hierarchy.
Notice that Dpit supports the use of
the Lattice-,Twist-, Bulge-, Shear-
,Tape and Bend-Deformer to tweak
your plants.
But as we all know, the forms in
nature vary from total chaos to
"golden cut" to perfect symmetry.
As Dpit is able to take these facts
DPIT TOOLS
DPIT Hirachy
into consideration, it has to offer
extensive controls and additional
objects. To be able to reach a real
natural look, dpit offers features like
the Multivariance, Multidubber or
Transplant object, which offer ran-
domeffects to the plant or simply
makes the amount of polys and your
ram resources friends.
(Make sure that you style the main
shaping of the plant with a small
number of branches and leaves and
keep the subdivisions settings low.
Of course, you can collapse your
dpit hirarchy to polys if needed.
Increase the number branches and
add leaves later when you are satis-
fied with the main tree shape).
Talking about all Dpit objects and
their settings would fill a book. I only
have mentioned a few things about
the animation of dpit creations: The
attributes settings can be controlled
via coffee; Dpit offers a better solu-

21
 Deep Instant Tree Review
By Macling - Mark Gmehling

tion for plant collision control with

version 2 (maybe if you animate a
character crawling through a grass
plant environment), an improved
plant wind object that offers exten-
sive force deformation control.
(…only to mention a few;))

The tree in our example is build in a

Plugin Review

few minutes with the main objects

the dpit2 tree object with 4 levels, a
multivariance and a leaf object.
Even with this simple setup you can
spend hour after hour finetuning
your tree shape and check the con-
nections between the attributes slid-
ers.
Check the image with the hierarchi-
cal structure of this quick example
done with the inbuild shaders that
offers a nice pack of tree and leaf
shaders which are able create tex-
tures close to reality.
You can download Jeso's herbarium
pack in the 3dattack.net Texture
pool to experiment with nice leaf
photos:
http://download.3dattack.net/Herbari
um_Pack.zip or check the goodies
folder.
As with many other extensive plug-
ins, it is a popular sport to "misuse"
the delivered objects. You can use
dpits possibilities for example as: a
lightning creator or to create lego-
toy geometry easily. I'm sure there
will some other things that come up
where Dpit does a perfect job Samir
never thought about. Finally, I can
say dpit is definitely a highend Plant
Creator, but you have to take time
getting to know the extensive
amount of features in order to use
the possibilities dpit offers.
Some Dpit objects will surely find a
way into your modeling workflow
even if you're not creating plants.
(Moving spline points along their
tangents for example, with the "tan-
gential tool", or the use of the pow-
erful "dubber" - a very nice duplica-
tor).
Take a look to the dpit userforum
http://www.dpit2.de, check the
gallery, and get your free trialver-
sion.
In the forum are some interesting
plant threads and nice video tutori-
als which will make a quick start
easier. Furthermore, check the plug-
ins thread "dpit 2" in the 3dattack
forum, and post your questions, tips,
or even your renderings.
(http://www.3dattack.net/3dAttack/vi
ewtopic.php?p=16443#16443)
Website: http://www.dpit2.de/
Samir Kharchi just released DPIT
Nature Spirit (2.5) with some new
features:
* Landscapist (Terrain generation Tool)
* Blocks Shader
* Waverine Deformer (Highly advanced
noise deformer with loopable noises)
* Waverine Shader (Highly advanced noise
shader with loopable noises)
* Several new Tree models of "real" trees
added to the TreeLibrary

22
 Aging Banana Tutorial
By Base80
Aging Banana Tutorial
Advanced texture manipulation with
XPresso.
In this tutorial I'll show how you to
manipulate deep aspects of a proce-
dural texture with XPresso.
In this particular example I'll make
an XPresso that makes the banana
age over time.
The tutorial is based on a banana
model and a texture made by Aurety
(Pic01).
Tutorial
(Pic01)
The banana model is straight for-
ward, it is a low polygon model
deformed by a bend deformer.
The texture is not as straight for-
ward. Aurety explains how to make
procedural textures in the next
issue. (Pic02)
(Pic02)
The texture has a color channel, a
bump channel and a specular chan-
nel with color. We will mostly work
on the color channel of the texture.
The color channel is composed of a
Fusion texture. The fusion texture is
a mix of yet another fusion effect
and two gradient effects.
The first gradient produces dark
lines on the edges of the banana,
the second gradient makes the tips
of the banana dark and gives the
overall color.
The Texture panel. (Pic03)
(Pic05)
Then we will drag the components
we want to alter over time in the
XPresso. We want the banana to
age in several ways. We want to
change the scale of the object and
the deformation. Drag the banana
(Pic03) object and the Bend-Deformer from
the object manager into the Xpresso
First thing we do is add an XPresso editor. Off course we want to use
to the Banana Model, right-click on the User-Data so drag the Xpresso-
the banana model in the object tag in the editor.
manager and chose XPresso
expression from the new expres- Then we want to get the separate
sions sub menu. (Pic04) channels of the texture into the edi-
tor. Click on the texture in the
Material manager, you will see the
texture appear in the attribute man-
ager. Click on the color channel and
(Pic04) then on the fusion button. You will
see the Fusion Shader [fusion] icon
Then we have to add a slider. Click in the top of the panel. Drag the icon
on the XPresso-tag, go to the attrib- in the XPresso editor (Pic06).
utes manager and click the User-
Data menu in the top, choose Add
User Data.... You will have to set the
slider to Float, Float Slider and set it
to percent.
This slider will drive the aging of the
banana. In general I try to minimize
the number of user-data sliders, in
this case one slider is enough
(Pic06)
(Pic05).
23
 Aging Banana Tutorial
By Base80
Inside the fusion channel we click
on the yellow gradient and drag that
icon in the editor too.
We can drag all the channels we
think are useful for our project. In
this case we want the color-channel,
the first fusion, the gradient and we
want to work on the bump.
Once a Material component is in the
Xpresso- editor it offers us all the
aspects of that component (Pic07).
Tutorial
(Pic07)
We want to alter the separate colors
of the gradients and activate all 4
color ports of the gradient. Here are
all the channels we are going to
use, with all the necessary ports
activated. The one on the left is the
XPresso and its User-Data, on the
right the texture as a whole to work
on the bump strength and the Mix
Strength of the color channel, the
blend factor of the fusion, the gradi-
ent and the models scale ports and
bend strength (Pic08).
Ok that was the easy part, we have
everything we need. Now we need
to connect the User Data to the all
ports. The relation between the per-
cent slider and the modifications is
non-linear. We want the several
aging aspects to come gradually
and in different pace.
(Pic08)
We will use the excellent Range-
Mapper node to modify the percents
in useful numbers. You will have to
figure what you want and start play-
ing around on the spline in the
range-mapper. This is done by trial
and error. In this case I want the
banana to go from green to yellow
to black spots over time. But I want
this to happen in the beginning and
the end of the bananas life. The
middle of the life is quite stable. Of
course this is only a choice I made.
You can do this as you like.
Here are some range-mapper
splines I've made (Pic09).
As you can see they are not linear
and tend to do something at the
beginning or the end of the spline.
The process is quite straight forward
for most aspects of the modifica-
tions. Just connect the User-Data
(Pic09)
24
port to the Range-Mapper and the
Range-Mapper to the port you want
to alter. The only aspect that
requires more work is the gradient.
We want to alter every node of the
gradient and we will do so by mixing
color. We need a mix-node and
color constants. The mix node has
three ports, the mix factor port is
connected from a range-mapper, the
two other ports are connected to
constants.
The constant-node has to be set to
color, and the color has to be cho-
sen. In this case we need to alter
the color of the tips of the banana
from greenish to black and the body
of the banana from green to yellow.
(Pic10).
(Pic10)
When all this is set in place it will
look like this. (I've used the REX
color result node to check on what I
am doing, the REX-Nodes are a part
of Di-Tools. They are not necessary
to the xpresso to function)
0% aging (Pic11)
100% aging (Pic12)
(Pic11)
Well this is basically it, everything is
in place. 1. Basic modification on
the texture channels
 Aging Banana Tutorial
By Base80
(Pic12)
2. The fusion blend factor and the
color-mixing to the gradient
3. Modification on scale and bend.
I've chose to make the banana
smaller and more bent at the end of
the aging slider. I've not explained
every single step of the process as
it will probably be different for anoth-
er model. The XPresso finally looks
like this (Pic13). And the different
Tutorial
stages of the banana show as fol-
lows, when you move the slide you
ADVERTISEMENT
will see, 0%, 10%, 50%, 80% and
100% (Pic14). The possibilities of
texture sub-channels in Xpresso is
endless. Every single aspect of the
channels can be modified. I am sure
many questions remain after this
tutorial and I will off course try to
answer them in the forum.
The Aging Banana is of course very
nice in an animation, but with a bit
25
(Pic13-14)
of fiddling you can make a fruit-bowl
with bananas of different ages. It will
make your models more life like.
Watch the animation to see the
whole process (you will find it in the
“Goddies” folder). Check on the
XPresso and all the range-mapper
settings (CINEMA 4D File provided
within the Goodies Folder). 3d
Attack forum: www.3dattack.net
 3D Fluff - Volume 1
CINEMA 4D Training DVD - “Design and Visualisation” by Thomas Pasieka

3D Fluff Training for CINEMA 4D CINEMA 4D class the fee would be

Who are 3D Fluff? 3D Fluff is a
company based in the UK founded
by Janine Pauke (see interview in
our October issue) and Matthew
O'Neill. Janine spent several years
working for MAXON's support and
art department in Germany and in
the UK. Janine started working as a
freelancer in 2003.
Matthew O'Neill worked for MAXON
UK's support department and also
left in 2003 to pursue a freelance
artwork and teaching career. You
can find more on Janine and
Matthew at http://www.3dfluff.com
Let's have a look at Volume 1 of 3D
Fluff's Training for CINEMA 4D
DVD Review
much higher. Through this DVD,
Janine and Matthew bring the class-
room to the convenience of your
desktop, and become your personal
CINEMA 4D coaches. Not only is
the training convenient and afford-
able, but the DVD contains nearly 4
hours of "first class" video training
along with CINEMA 4D scene files
and near CD quality audio.
your vase step by step. Even those
The DVD is titled "DESIGN & VISU- who are not advanced users in CIN-
ALISATION" and is divided in two EMA 4D will be able to follow along
parts. Part 1 guides you through with Janine’s "spoken" instruction
modeling a stylish glass vase. But and explanations.
that's not all - you are also instruct-
ed on how to add the finishing In Part 2 of the DVD Matthew will
touches to your 3D image in Adobe lead you through some more model-
Photoshop. ing. To be precise, you will model,
texture, and animate a bike wheel

DVD, "Design and Visualisation".
The price of £49 may seem a little
steep, but really it's a steal for what
you get. If you were to pay for a
There are also extra files for study
purposes. It's an easy to follow, well
versed tutorial that explains every-
thing you need to know to create
by using XPresso and Sketch &
Toon. You will also find all of the
scene files along with a "Goodies"
folder that contains some gifts for
ADVERTISEMENT

26
 3D Fluff - Volume 1
CINEMA 4D Training DVD - “Design and Visualisation” by Thomas Pasieka

the user. 3D Fluff has aimed this

DVD at intermediate and advanced
users. I would go a little further and
say this DVD is for everyone. It's
for those who want to learn and
study the new functions of CINEMA
4D Release 9, and for those who
are fairly new but willing to learn
more. If you take your time and are
willing to learn, this DVD is a wise
DVD Review

investment and worth every cent. If

you know the basics of CINEMA 4D
and desire more, this DVD is for you.
Volume 1 - "Design and Visualisation"
is a hybrid DVD which means you
will be able to view the content on a
Macintosh Computer or Windows
based machine. The video quality
(1024x768 - 25fps) is excellent, as
is the near CD audio quality. To fol-
3D Fluff's excellent video material is
easy to follow and presented in a
pleasant and professional manner.
This is, no doubt, a great product.
You get more than something for
your money!
The tutorials are well written and
narrated, and the topics are well
chosen. After studying the video
tutorials you will feel like, YEAH! I
can do that! Volume 1, "Design and
Visualisation", is the first, and surely
not the last, Training for CINEMA 4D
DVD that "3D Attack, The CINEMA
3D Magazine" will review by 3D
Fluff. Order your copy today at:
http://www.3dfluff.com
List of content:
• Basic XPresso for advanced ani-
mation
• Post processing in Photoshop
• Scene optimization
We will give this DVD - “Design and
Visualisation” a full “Hit” Rating of 5
out of 5. It’s worth every penny and
learning can be fun listening to
those who know what they are talk-
ing about
For more Information go to
www.3dfluff.com and order your copy.
Happy learning!
Price: £49
Pros: It’s all good
Cons: Can’t find any

low all the tutorials and make the
most of "Design and Visualisation"
you will need some extra modules
like Advanced Render and Sketch &
Toon. R9 is recommended and
should be used with the scene files
provided by 3D Fluff. In conclusion,
• Modeling (incl. new modeling
tools in Release 9)
• Materials and Rendering (incl.
HDRI, antistrophic highlights,
realistic glass and water)
• Sketch and Toon for technical
visualization

27
 Thinking Particles
By Kiwi
You may recall my last tutorial
was a Thinking Particles tutorial
using the PBlurp node to create a
very cool little animation with very
little work. This month's tutorial is
another Thinking Particles tutorial,
again fairly simple, but a wee bit
more complex that shows another
method of morphing between 2 dis-
similar objects.
Requirements: Thinking Particles
Module and a reasonably powerful
computer. We're going to be using
metaball particles to simulate a thick
liquid and it will really push your
computer!! Alternatively you can
use Pyrocluster textures on the par-
ticles which will reduce the load and
speed up render times.
We only need a few objects in our
Tutorial
scene. The magic is achieved in the
XPresso editor window. So start a
new scene and create a Cube and
make 1000m (or units depending on
what your default unit is) in all 3
axes. Increase the segment to 50 in
3 axes. Make it editable and posi-
tion it at 500 in the Y axis. We're
going to be using the surface of the
cube as a reference object for a
whole lot of metaball blobs.
There will then travel through space
and assemble themselves in a
rough looking sphere. Next create
the sphere with a radius of 500m
and 100 segments and position it at
500 in the Y axis and 2000 in the X
axis. For both the cube and sphere
the other positions are at 0.
Increase the segments to 100 and
make editable. Make both of these
objects invisible to the renderer by
clicking on the little spot until
changes to red. We need a very
small particle geometry object and a
pyramid object seems to work quite
well as essentially a pyramid is the
lowest polygon object that you can
make that has some height. Create
a Pyramid object and reduce its size
to 5m in 3 axes. You can experi-
ment later with this size to alter how
your blobs look. Make the pyramid
object editable and hide it in the
viewport and the renderer.
You only need 2 more objects. The
first is a metaball object. Change
the render subdivision to 20 and
leave the editor subdivision at 40.
Enable Exponential falloff and leave
the hill value at 100%. These are
settings that you can play around
with as well. Lastly, create a
Thinking Particles Particle Geometry
object from the plugin menu under
Thinking Particles and make it a
child object of the Metaball object.
For the time being, disable the the
Metaball object.
The Particle Geometry object needs
to be told what particle groups it will
use so from the plugin menu again,
display the Thinking Particles set-
tings dialog box. Drag and drop the
word all into the Particle Object box
in the parameters.
You can also go into the project set-
tings and increase the duration to
end at frame 149. This makes our
animation 5 seconds long at 30
frames per second.
Your Object Manager will now look
like this:
28
Time for some XPresso and
Thinking Particles!!.
Hopefully you are familiar with
XPresso. If not I suggest you check
out some of my simple XPresso
video tutorials over at C4D Cafe. I
assume that you know how to cre-
ate nodes and link up ports.
First thing we need to do is create
an XPresso expression. On the
cube or the sphere create an
XPresso expression by right clicking
and selecting it from the list of
expressions. I think the easiest way
to show you what to do is give this
screen shot and go through each
node and list the settings required
and give a few explanations as to
what they do. So create the follow-
ing nodes and hook them all up.
Working our way from left to right
and top to bottom. Unless I mention
it, other settings should remain at
their defaults.
Time node (XPresso)
Frame output port
Compare node (XPresso)
Data type Integer, Function >=
(Greater than and equal to)
Input 1 enter 0
All that's happening here is the Time
node is outputting what frame the
animation is currently at. The com-
pare node compares this with the
 Thinking Particles
By Kiwi
input of 0. If the frame number is 1
or higher the output is 0. If the ani-
mation is at frame 0 then the output
is 1 which if you're familiar with
Booleans equates to true. To test
this I've added a Result node
(XPresso) This isn't required for our
animation to work but I find it helps
a lot when testing and building your
XPresso code.
PBorn (Thinking Particles)
Create an On port, change Birth
type to shot. Change life to 150
(This needs to be 1 frame higher
than the duration of the animation,
otherwise the particles will disap-
pear. Change Shot to 1000 (This
increases the number of particles so
you may want to experiment with
this value)
Tutorial
What's happening here is we get 1
frame of particles generated. Any
more than 1 frame we get far to
many. Alternatively we can reduce
the Shot count and increase the On
time for the particles.
PShape (Thinking Particles)
You need to drag and drop the pyra-
mid Particle object from the Object
Manager into the box with this node
selected. This assigns the particle
some shape.
Set the Bounding Radius to 200.
The Bounding Radius is a scaling
factor for the particle. If you want
some fun and quicker render times,
disable the metaball object and
change this setting to something like
10 or if you've got the time, increase
the particle count. This could worth
experimenting with using a cube as
the particle.
PSurfacePostion (Thinking
Particles)
This is an interesting node in that
you will probably get it displaying
"None" for the port names. To fix
this, right click and select the "Ports
/ Show Names" command. You
need to drag and drop the Cube
object from the Object Manager into
Object box in the parameters.
This node essentially emits particles
from an object surface. Check out
the manual on this which is where
this tutorial was inspired from with
the little example there.
PSetData (Thinking Particles)
Add Position, Size ports to the
default Particle port.
This node sets the data for the parti-
cles. The size node takes the value
from the Constant node to set the
particle size. yet another way.
Content (XPresso)
Enter a value of 50. As usual this
can be experiment with (as I had to
do)
That completes the top half of the
XPresso code. Nothing will happen
yet if press the play button however
you should see the particles assem-
bled in the shape of the cube.
Part 2
Time (XPresso)
Same as before. In fact you don't
need this node. You could just run a
wire from the top node. However
having another one keeps things
much tidier.
Compare (XPresso) x 2
In the top one Data type Integer,
Function >= (Greater than and equal
to) Input 1 enter 15
In the bottom one Data type Integer,
Function <= (Less than and equal
to) Input 1 enter 119
29
Bool (XPresso)
This takes the output from both
compare nodes and checks to see
whether the frame position is within
15 and 119. If it is the output is 1
which as mention equates to True.
This is used to enable the PPostion
Follow node. At frames outside this
range it disables this node.
Again I've hooked this up to a
Result (XPresso) node and change
it's data type to Bool just to check
that the compare nodes are behav-
ing as I want them. Just move the
frames slider along to check this
out. Sometimes it helps to have the
"Calculate / Animation Refresh"
option enabled from the XPresso
menu.
PPass (Thinking Particles)
Drag and drop the "All" particle
group into the Group box in the
parameters. This isn't entirely nec-
essary since we only have one
group of particles but it's good prac-
tice to do this. This node passes a
group of particles from node to
another.
In this animation we're moving the
particles from the surface of the
cube on to the surface of sphere.
(For a nice rendered still image you
may want to make the sphere visible
and give it a wild looking texture)
PSurfacePostion (Thinking
Particles)
Same as the one above but in this
one drag in the Sphere from the
Object Manager into the Object box
in the Parameters as this is the tar-
get object. By the way the objects
can be anything. People or text.
Get creative!! Here's another image,
this time using a plane emitting par-
ticles to form into text. I'll include
this scene file in the zip as well.
 Thinking Particles
By Kiwi
PPosition Follow (Thinking
Particles)
Change the type to Spring and
Spring Speed to 8%. The alterna-
tive is Constant Speed which stops
the wobble effect. Suggest you try
both.
For constant speed you will probably
need to increase the speed to
something like 1100 for the particles
Tutorial
to be formed on the sphere by
frame 149.
Phew that's it. Finished. Disable
the Metaball object and press the
Play button. Your particles should
be on the surface of an invisible
Cube. They stay there for half a
second second then move and
reassemble on the surface of an
invisible sphere. All you need to do
is apply a texture to the Metaball
object and I found the SLA Cheen
Shader looked very cool. An alter-
native to the metaballs is to apply a
Pyrocluster texture to Particle
Geometry object.
I leave it to you to add in the lights.
For a cool still effect, add a volume
light inside the sphere at frame 130
or so. Here's what I came up with.
Render subdivision 10. Render time
14.23 on Athlon 2600.
Here's the finished scene file to
download if you need it.
http://c4dcafe.christiandesigns.org/tu
torials/3DAttOct2004.avi
Both divx and around 350kb
Happy animating and if you're into
http://c4dcafe.christiandesigns.org/tu animating drop by my web site
torials/October.zip www.3dcafe.com and check out the
You will also find the tutorial in our video tutorials by myself and
“Goodies” folder. 3DCrew my 3D buddy.
And here's links to final animations:
http://c4dcafe.christiandesigns.org/tu
torials/3DAttOct2004Text.avi
30
 Lights and Special Effects
By Rui Batista
Here we are again, now on the
third chapter of the lights article. In
the previous issues I "walked" you
through a guided tour of the main
light and shadow parameters. To
prevent this chapter from becoming
a revised, more in-depth version of
the manual, I decided to present it in
a completely different way. I will
present "real-world" situations or
simply specific effects and I will
explain how they were achieved
using, as a support, the light param-
eters that were used.
Let us start with the volumetric
lights. Their visual results are usual-
ly stunning but many users avoid
using them because of the usual
prohibitive render times associated
with them. But, even if they do add
some extra time to the render, there
Tutorial
are ways to reduce their overhead
without compromising quality. The
"secret" behind the speed/quality
attributes of volumetric lights is the
Sample Distance parameter in the
Visibility tab. First, let’s understand
how the volumetric lights work and
what the Sample Distance parame-
ter has to do with it all. For every
volumetric light in a scene, CINEMA
4D takes samples along the way the
light rays travel to determine if
something is hit. Then, it interpo-
lates between the values that were
sampled to create the light volume.
The Sample Distance determines
the distance between the sampled
points. [01] But why are samples
taken at uniform distances?
Samples are taken because, if each
and every point along the light path
were read, the render would take
almost forever because millions or
even thousands of millions of points
would be involved. This way, just a
few hundreds or, at most, thousands
of points need to be read. The
[Pic01]
default value (25) is good enough
for a nice balance between render
speed and acceptable image quality.
But the quality may not be enough
for some images so, a smaller
Sample Distance must be set. The
problem with this is that the render
times can sky-rocket.
The trick is to use the largest possi-
ble number without getting artifacts.
Some trial and error are required but
it is well worth it. [02] [03] [04]
What about that parameter below
[Pic02]
the Sample Distance? Brightness?
Again? Didn't we have a Brightness
slider in the General tab and anoth-
er in the Details Tab? Yes, but this
one is meant to control the visible
light brightness. It good to have sep-
arate control on how bright a light
shines and how bright is its visible
glow. For example, a light saber is
visibly very bright but it doesn't illu-
31
[Pic03]
[Pic04]
minate very brightly its surround-
ings. Now we have a weird sound-
ing parameter: Dust. What does
Dust have to do with lights? Maybe
MAXON could have come up with a
better name for it (darkness, for
instance) but what Dust does is to
darken the light visibility.
But, instead of simply reducing the
brightness, it literally introduces
"solid" darkness into the light. The
best use for this is to create smoke
and fire. Actually, lights are the best
option to create smoke and fire
(without resorting to additional mod-
ules or plug-ins) since lights are not
solid geometry, just like smoke and
fire aren't. On the file I provide, I
simply animated a few parameters
of a single omni light: the color of
the light - as if goes from yellow to
red (fire) and then to dark grey
(smoke), the size of the inner and
outer visible light - as the flames
grow into large puffs of smoke, the
 Lights and Special Effects
By Rui Batista
Dust parameter - as it goes from full
"solid" fire to hazy smoke, and the
Noise Scale - as it goes from
detailed flames to sparse smoke.
[05]
[Pic05]
Since a single light would give me a
very dull smoke with a single color
(grey), I duplicated the light and sim-
ply changed the final smoke color to
Tutorial
black. This way I could get a richer
and heavier smoke. Of course,
many parameters - that don't need
to be animated - were set for the
light to behave the way it does. The
Noise parameter was turned to
Visibility on, so that we could see
some "texture" on the light.
The No Light Radiation parameter
was also turned on because many
instances (particles) of the light
would be generated. This way the
scene will not become over-illumi-
nated and the render can finish dur-
ing our life time. The problem with
this is that the flame itself will not
produce any illumination but for that
we can simply add an independent
light to the center of the "flames"
and control it much easier by itself.
The Noise Brightness was lowered
and the Contrast was increased so
that more detail could be seen on
the flames and smoke. Also, the
Local parameter was turned off so
that each puff would "travel" along a
global texture.
Then it was a simple matter of plac-
ing the two lights inside an emitter,
add a few particle modifiers (Wind,
Rotation and Turbulence) and adjust
the whole set until a convincing
flame and smoke effect was
achieved. You can check and dis-
sect the file named
fire_and_smoke.c4d to see how it
was done.
Using similar techniques, but without
requiring any animation of light
parameters the file
traveling_through_fog.c4d shows
how to make an object travel
through a foggy environment. [06]
[Pic06]
In this group of parameters, only the
Dithering parameter is missing. But
the best way to understand it is to
watch a sample picture. [07] [08] On
the first picture, the Dithering param-
[Pic07]
eter was kept at 0%, turning it off.
So, the calculated color of the light
is simply added to the colors of the
picture beneath it. This can lead to
banding effects, especially when
32
[Pic08]
printing the images, because too
subtle gradients may be hard to
reproduce at some resolutions.
On the second picture, the Dithering
parameter was set at 50% so, some
dithering - mixing of similar colors -
is added to the calculated light color.
This disrupts any banding effect,
even when printing the images.
As seen on the histogram, the
image with dithering has some more
color information than the one with-
out dithering.
On the example showed, only one
visible light source was used but
banding can become even more
pronounced with overlapping visible
lights. In such cases, dithering is
required because there is no other
way to prevent such banding.
The Additive option is only there to
maintain compatibility with previous
versions of Cinema4D. Luckily it is
off by default because adding lights
colors results in a milky, non-natural
result, but can be used for very nice
plasma effects.
The Adapt Brightness option should
be kept on as much as possible
because, since Cinema4D's output
is not a High-Dynamic Range output
(HDR), the over-exposed areas -
and under-exposed areas too - will
simply become clipped, throwing
away any image information on that
 Lights and Special Effects
By Rui Batista

areas. So, having the Adapt

Brightness option on, the brightness
of the light is reduced enough to
assure that an even, well-balanced,
output is achieved. But, this may
prevent the creation of intentional
"brighter than the sun" lights. So, if,
no matter how bright you set your
visible lights, you get a soft result,
turn off this option. Please keep in
mind that this option only works for
spot visible lights and is specially
effective if Additive is set to on.

This is it for now. On the next month

I will finish the lights articles with
some final characteristics of lights
and a whole set of hints, tips and
advices about lighting.

Until then, have fun with lights and

keep on attacking!
Tutorial

33
 Interview with Carles Piles
By Tavy Ann
Carles Piles
3D Artist
http://www.carlespiles.com
Tavy: Carles, thank you so much for
taking time to share with 3D Attack
and our readers. This is truly an
honor. Let's start with the most
expected interview question of all.
Could you please give our readers a
little personal look at you? Where
were you born, currently living, your
age, etc?
Carles: Hello Tavy, It's a pleasure
Interview
for me to share a few words with
you. I was born in 1969 in a small
city close to Valencia, on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain and
I'm married with two small children.
My work in Spain has been as 2D a
graphic designer and musician for
many years and currently I'm work-
ing and living in Milan (Italy) as a 3D
artist.
Tavy: Can you give us a little history
about your beginnings with 3D?
When did you start working with it,
etc?
Carles: It was about 10 years ago,
although not working really, just
playing and testing different soft-
ware for about 5-6 years. A friend of
mine showed me a "drawing" he did
using a technique unknown for me
(3D) using an "extrange tool" run-
34
ning under MS-Dos called 3DStudio.
He asked me, "You never heard
about 3D?" I really hadn't, but at this
moment I was so impressed by the
results (just a simple piece of furni-
ture) that I decided that I should
learn that "extrange technique" so a
few hours later I was doing my first
tests on my PC 486 DX50 MHz with
4 MB of ram (bad times for 3D pro-
grams by the way).
Because I felt more comfortable
under Macintosh, in the following
years I tried a new program under
the Apple platform (Strata Studio
Pro) in my workplace, later again at
home with 3D studio MAX v1 and
v2, and all the different demos I
could get in those days. Finally I
tried Lightwave, which I could use at
home and in the workplace, PC and
 Interview with Carles Piles
By Tavy Ann
Mac respectively. When I started to
create something that looked like a
scene instead stupid tests and I
found the ideal program, (CINEMA
4D demo from a magazine) it
changed my point of view about 3D
programs.
I tried to install the demo and found
that the program ran directly from
CD-Rom with no installation, with
unbeatable speed and so excellent
stability... (Could it be better?) I
remember clearly when I opened a
demo scene with intensive use of
Interview
raytracing and I couldn't believe that
C4D was rendering the scene so
fast. I thought to myself, "Is this
some kind of trick?"
Immediately I imported the scene I
created in Lightwave. A few days
later, using some reflection and
glass refraction and when I pressed
render I realized that this demo
scene I tried was not a trick. The
rendering speed was true. At the
moment I am using CINEMA 4D and
I know that it will be my best friend
for long time.
35
Tavy: Most artists have sources of
inspiration or other artists they
admire. What or who are yours?
Carles: I like most classic art,
especially the realistic paintings.
I really enjoy looking at paintings by
Vermeer, Velázquez, Caravaccio,
and also different styles like Dalí or
Norman Rockwell...(and so many
others), but obviously also some 3D
artists are a big motivation for me,
so artwork from people like Jeremy
A. Engleman, Eric Hanson, Raphael
Lacoste, Meats Meier... (And so
many others), but in general I like
the images that are not only realis-
tic, but it also important for me to
feel the atmosphere and message in
them.
Tavy: Can you give our readers an
idea on how you start a new
project? What are the steps you
take is starting a new artistic image?
Carles: My personal work usually
starts as just a test of something
(usually lighting tests) so I don't use
sketches, just ideas.
First I create the model for the main
subject in the scene and I put primi-
tives with similar shape to the other
elements. In this way I can check to
see that the lighting and composi-
tion are close enough to the idea I
have in mind.
All those primitives are replaced
later for high resolution models.
Sometimes the idea inspires me to
do the test, and sometimes the test
inspires me the idea so... there are
not any rules. The main "ingredient"
I always miss is the most essential
one, TIME.
Tavy: How would you describe your
style? What do you prefer to
design?
 Interview with Carles Piles
By Tavy Ann

there, so the viewer himself can
complete my image in his mind. In
this way, my work is not only mine,
but also a collective creation
between my mind and the viewers
mind.
scale), and at same time it is a safe
place for them such as strategic
operation center.
Tavy: Of all your works, what is your
personal favorite and why?

Tavy: Of all your works, my person-
al favorite is, "Pirates Cove". What
inspired you to do this piece?
Carles: First at all it was just an
idea to create a big space. Later to
put water in this big space, and
even later I chose the pirates theme
because it's perfect for both.
The main feeling I had when creat-
ing this image was just a paradox
and I think this is the most interest-
Carles: It's really hard to define ing part of it.
Interview
Carles: I don't know really, because
each one has its own feeling for me,
so my opinion can vary according to
my mood in each moment. Anyways
my favorite is always the next one,
this one which is not done yet, but is
in my mind waiting to be released,
so my favorites at this moment are
several, but one more thing, I
haven't the main "ingredient"...
TIME.
Tavy: Are you currently working on
anything you can tell us about?

myself. I could say that my style is

realistic, but I want to clarify that for How can such a big space (cove Carles: Yes, but is not personal
me realism and photo-realism are and cave) be a hideaway for both of work. I'm working on a 100% 3D
different things. As realism I under- these huge things? So "The Pirates feature film which is being produced
stand that scenes look natural or Cove" is the ideal subject because it in Milan and I'll be immersed in this
just credible. is placed in the frontier between sea project for long time.
and land (maybe a remote island)
Maybe a good example is the paint- so you can "park" your boats outside The production has very talented
ing of Jan Vermeer, because in his in the cove, and people can be in people and painters such as Jon
works (usually small canvas) you the cove in hiding (like your car in Foster, Tim Bradstreet, Jean Marie
can see closely how the strokes are front of your home but on a huge Vives, Ashley Wood... and 3D
on the canvas so it can't be photo-
realistic like a photographic camera
does, but otherwise it looks perfectly
realistic because the lighting and
ambient is truly credible. On the
other hand, I see so many 3D ren-
ders that look photo-realistic (with
radiosity, and/or lens flares/glares,
and/or depth of field.. all those typi-
cal photographic effects) but empty
of any content for me.

I prefer the warm aspect that tradi-

tional lighting can achieve because
it's more picturesque. And, of
course, I try to create something
that will cause the viewer to think
about what's happening/happened

36
 Interview with Carles Piles
By Tavy Ann
Interview
artists like Steven Stahlberg, Martin
Krol, Jonas Thornqvist, Ulf
Lundgren, Juan Siquier, Piotr Fox,
Josep Tomàs... and the screenplay
by Roberto Malini and under the
direction of Dario Picciau.
I really love this production because,
although it's pure 3D it's not just a
FX based film, but plenty of feeling.
It is about the life of Anne Frank, so
it invites the viewer to think about
how terrible history can be some-
times, and how a child's mind sees
all that horror with extraordinary
optimism.
It is a film with plenty of soul, with a
really beautiful message, and also
the style is realistic, so it captivated
me completely.
I promise let you know when the
official website will be online with
any content to show. For now just
that... it's about Anne Frank and it
will be released in 2006.
Tavy: CINEMA 4D is your 3D appli-
cation of choice. Why CINEMA?
Carles: Comfort ability, speed, sta-
bility, quality.... (Did I miss some-
thing?) :)
Tavy: Are you currently using other
applications?
Carles: Yes, lately I'm using several
applications a little bit (Z-brush,
Maya, SoftimageXSI) because the
film I'm working on requires special
features from other software, but
mostly time I'm using CINEMA 4D
for modeling and BodyPaint for tex-
turing (fortunately).
Tavy: Your work is hailed as some
of the "Best of the Best". Many
young aspiring 3D artists and pro-
fessionals look to you as a mentor,
one to be respected and admired. If
you could tell them one thing, what
would it be?
37
Carles: Thanks for your compli-
ment. As main advice I think each
artist should be patient, patience for
learning, and of course, patience for
working.
Sometimes it is possible that fast
work can show good results, but in
general I think we should never
steal time.
Patience about learning because we
can learn a lot just watching and
thinking about those masterpieces
you can find since man start
expressing art (not only digital) and
putting all that observation in prac-
tice by doing tests, and patience
about working because for me it is
essential to pay attention to detail
because most of the small details
are responsible for the good work.
In this way, if you don't know any
technique you should learn it before
applying it to any scene (it means
tests, tests, and tests), otherwise a
 Interview with Carles Piles
By Tavy Ann

Carles: Thanks. It is also a pleasure

for me. I hope a large life for
3DAttack and also for our lovely
tool. Best wishes,

Carles

perfect scene can loose its shine

due to putting a single bad element
on it, so try to use those kind of ele-
ments according to your possibilities
and leave the elements you can't
achieve today for when you will
learn more.

Tavy: Carles, once again, thank you

so much for sharing with 3D Attack
Interview

and our readers. We all will surely

be following your career and are
anticipating your next great work.
This was truly a pleasure.

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38
 Plugin: IK TOOL KIT
Plugin Review by Crew Reynolds
From the moment you install
Cactus Dan's IK Tool Kit and crack
open the example IK Dog you're
hooked! Within a few minutes, I had
that dog sitting, begging, wagging
his tail, standing on two feet, and
begging at the table. I didn't yet
understand how to build a quad-
ruped IK dog but I could command
his moves with incredible precision.
Plugin Review
"IK is hard!"
"IK is too complicated."
"IK is so unpredictable."
All of the above statements might
apply to Cinema 4D's out-of-the box
IK solution. Don't get me wrong, IK
can be mastered and many anima-
tors do a wonderful job with the core
IK system. But me, I'm just not that
patient. I need help, big time. Enter
Cactus Dan......
Dan has produced a set of tools that
actually make IK fun to play with.
Honestly. By adding in some intelli-
gent IK expressions, the movement
of an arm becomes smooth and
predicable. It no longer bends wildly
out of place causing me to have to
figure out how to move the forearm
to coax the upper arm into the posi-
tion I want.
If you have to keep dropping into
FK to move your bones into place,
then IK is really just making you
frustrated. With Cactus Dan's arm
setup, the movement is constrained
by the addition of goal and solver
nodes. These helpers cause the IK
arm to move within a mathematically
calculated plane. This "rotation
plane solver" makes the bone
chain's movement very stable and
predicable as the documentation
states.
One of the things that really
impressed me about this package is
how thorough Dan was in making it
fit seamlessly into the core package.
He provides access to the toolkit
through the standard plugin menu
but also through a new set of icons
that you can work into your custom
layout. The IK expressions are tied
neatly to the bones as if they were
part of the core.
There are a number of expressions
provided to handle the most com-
mon rigging tasks: Limbs, feet, fin-
gers, thumbs, rotator joints, and a
special use spline IK expression.
The CD IK Setup wizard allows you
to take a standard bone chain and
39
automatically apply an IK expression
of your choice. Using the setup
tool, you can take a bone chain
(thigh, shin, foot) and add easily a
limb IK expression. Immediately
you will be able to see the effect of
the IK expression by moving the foot
up and back, down and forward.
The results are smooth, predicable,
and fully configurable. You can
move the IK solvers to different
positions or move them closer or
further away from the bone to get
the desired motion.
While each of the expressions pro-
vide a special service to an IK rig, I
would like to look at two of the
expressions here to give you a more
in depth understanding of what this
plugin can do for you and your char-
acter animation project. First, let's
look at how the toolkit handles fin-
gers and thumbs.
After building a bone chain for a
hand, you would use the CD IK
Setup tool to add a finger expres-
sion to the pointer finger. With just
one expression, the finger is ready
to use. It already knows how to
bend like a finger, curl like a finger,
and spread (side-to-side motion).
Motion dampening is available to
make the finger tip bone curl more
or less when the middle bone is
moving. All of these motions are
controlled by sliders and can be key
 Plugin: IK TOOL KIT
Plugin Review by Crew Reynolds
Plugin Review
framed individually. The thumb
expression works like the finger
expression but also handles the
"grip" and "twist" motions to simulate
the agility of the human opposable
thumb.
Within a few minutes of completing
your standard hand bone chain, you
can have it making a fist under slid-
er control, making sign language
gestures, or just about anything you
would need your character's hand to
do.
The other IK expression I would like
to look at is the "Spline IK" type.
Splines are great for making nice
smooth curves controlled by a few
points. Cactus Dan's toolkit pro-
vides a way to control a long chain
of bones using a spline as the IK
target. This allows you to build a
long dragon's tail using 20 bones if
you like. Trying to animate that with
FK would be a nightmare. Using
standard IK, it could work if all you
wanted to do was lift and wag the
tail. But what if you wanted the tail
to move in a snake-like manner with
the motion of the tail base pushing a
wave of motion down the chain?
Using a spline to control this sort of
complex motion in a bone chain
becomes both possible and easy.
The effect is very fluid and believ-
able.The plugin package installs
easily and includes clear documen-
tation with helpful illustrations. You
will find several very impressive
(and addictive) examples that show-
case a fully rigged biped (IK Bob)
and a quadruped (IK Dog).
Dan also provides examples of how
to make a piston driven wheel, a
spline controlled tail, and several
how-too examples of simple arms
and legs to get you up and running
fast. These examples along with
the documentation and CD IK Setup
wizard will have you rigged and run-
ning in no time. Given the confi-
40
dence of a stable, predictable rig,
you can refocus your time and ener-
gy on the task of actually animating
characters, what is what you wanted
to do all along.To see more about
this fantastic package, stop by
Cactus Dan's place at
http://www.cactus3d.com and check
out demo version, example movies,
and additional pre-built rigs.
I can't give this plugin any less than
a full 5 out of 5 for it's professional
quality, seamless integration, docu-
mentation, and the fluid results that
it can produce. Great job Dan.
I may become a character animator
yet.
 XPresso Tutorial - Dynamic Spring
By Thierry HL
Make a Dynamic Spring
You want to make a spring in a car,
and you don't want to check the
timeline all the time? XPresso will
manage it for you.
FIRST STAGE
Make a helix spline [pict-001]
[pict-001]
Enter the following data in the attrib-
utes manager [pict_002]
Tutorial
[pict-002]
Make a Circle spline for the thick-
ness of the spring with the following
size [pict_003]
Add a Sweep Nurbs [pict_004]
Drag the Helix and the Circle in the
[pict-003]
[pict-004]
SweepNurb in the right order
[pict_005]
[pict-005]
The result will look like this
[pict_006] Now we will put some
extra elements. Create two cubes
that resemble these approximately
[pict_007]. The blue cube will
become our handle for modifying
the spring. So when you move it up
or down the spring will follow. This is
where XPresso comes to play. We
41
[pict-006]
[pict-007]
will go through the procedure to
attach the blue cube to the top of
the spring so that it stays fixed with-
out going through it. [pict_008]
[pict-008]
So to avoid the piercing problem
above we make a Null Object on top
centre of the spring as seen on
[pict_009].
 XPresso Tutorial - Dynamic Spring
By Thierry HL
[pict-009]
Rename it "Control".
If you want to be sure to exactly
position the Null at the top of the
spring, make a copy of the spring
and convert it (C) then set the snap
settings to point, now move the null
to the top point. You can delete the
the duplicated spring once done.
Now create an XPresso on the con-
Tutorial
trol object, right-click in the object
manager [pict_010]
[pict-010]
Double click on the XPresso tag and
drag the control-null and the helix in
the xpresso-editor. Add a "positionY"
exit port to the control null [pict_011]
Then add a "height" entry port on
the helix [pict_012]
Connect the two port as follows
[pict_013]
[pict-011]
[pict-012]
[pict-013]
At this point we can test the xpres-
so. drag the Control- null up and
down(y) in one of the views.
SECOND STAGE
Now we have to constraint the
spring so that it doesn't stretch and
contracts to much. We will use the
blue cube to constraint the control-
null and the spring. Let's make a
XPresso on the cube (right-click in
the object manager) and drag the
blue cube in the XPresso editor. Add
42
a "PositionY" exit port.
Now add a "Clamp-Node" [pict_015]
[pict-015]
Then duplicate the blue cube and
add a "PositionY" entry port and
connect them as shown below
[pict_016]
[pict-016]
You can use the "Result-Node" to
check on what you are doing. Set
the clamp min. and max.in the attrib-
utes manager to where the spring is
completely compressed or extend-
ed. Here is an example [pict_017]
[pict-017]
So now we have a constrained blue
cube. And we have to connect the
cube to the control null.
Go to the XPresso of the blue-cube.
Drag the blue-cube and the control-
 XPresso Tutorial - Dynamic Spring
By THL

null in the xpresso editor. Add a

"Math-Node" [pict_018]

[pict-021]

where ever you want in space, it will

always follow the top of the spring.
Put all objects like this in a Null
Object [pict021]

[pict-018]

The math-node will be there to off-

set the blue-cube from the spring.
See the settings bellow [pict_019].
Tutorial

[pict-021]

You will find the file in the “goodies”

folder or on the web:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/huguet-
lelong/tuto/ressort.zip

And don’t forget to watch the Video-

Tutrial:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/huguet-
lelong/tuto/ressort.html

THL (Thierry)

[pict-019]
Connect all the nodes as follows
[pict_020]. Now you can test and
play with spring by moving the blue-
cube in the Y direction. You can add
any model to the control-null so that
it moves along with the top of the
spring. You can place the model

43
Best of CINEMA 4D
On the following pages you will see some of the best pictures from around the
world made with CINEMA 4D. Enjoy and get inspired by the best!

Image: Blue Afterglow Artist Comments:

Artist: PatriX
Country: Germany
Website: www.patrix3d.de
Date created: 12-11-03
Software: CINEMA 4D R8
Blue Afterglow is a drugs-saturated rendition of the meet-
ing between Alice and the Caterpillar from Lewis Carroll’s
“Alice in Wonderland”.

3
Image: Castle Passage
Artist: Peter Clevestig
Website: www.dez3d.com
Date created: May 26, 2003
Software: CINEMA 4D R8.1
Artist Comments:
Image was created using 3D Total's textures volumes
1, 2 and 3 and textures by Curio (Renderosity).

3
Image: Winnie The Pooh
Artist: Alberto "ThirdEye" Blasi
Country: Italy
Website: www.thirdeye.cgcommunity.com
Date created: April 2004
Software: CINEMA 4D R8.5
3
Artist Comments:
It was (and still is) a busy period in my life and I couldn't
spend more than a couple of days on a project. I saw a
Winnie The Pooh pic while I was browsing Google images
and voilà! The inspiration came.
Image: A Hallway Artist Comments:
Artist: Georg Niedermeier
Country: Germany Rendered with C4D XL7
Website: http://www.sadbatu.de
Date created: 06/2003
Software: CINEMA 4D XL R6.3
3
Image: Standing Out From the Crowd
Artist: John Seymour - One Pixel Deep
Country: UK
Date created: February 2003
Software: CINEMA 4D R8.1 | Adobe Photoshop
Artist Comments:
Primarily just a test of Cinema's DOF capabilities, but
decided to develop it further.

3
Image: Porsche 911 GT2 (993) Artist Comments:
Artist: Dennis Frick
Country: Germany
Website: http://www.dennisfrick.de
Date created: February/March 2004
Software: Cinema 4D R8.5 Studio, Photoshop

3
 The 3D Attack Team
Want to contact us? Need help? Got questions? Ask us!

CEO - Writer VEO - Chief Editor JEO - Writer Co-Site Admin - Writer
Thomas Pasieka - Tank Tavy Ann Georg - Sad Lennart - Lenno
tom@3dattack.net tavy@3dattack.net sad@3dattack.net lenno@3dattack.net
3D Attack Team

Tutorial Writer - Moderator Tutorial Writer - Moderator Tutorial Writer - Moderator Tutorial Writer - Moderator
Rui “Mac” Batista Antoine Aurety Sébastien Florand “Fluffy” Mark Gmehling
rui_mac@ruimac.com aurety@lev-communication.fr sf@pixiemedia.com macling@braincorps.de

Tutorial Writer - Moderator Tutorial Writer - Moderator Tutorial Writer Tutorial/Review Writer
Jens - Jeso base80 Aaron Biscombe 3DCrew
jeso@arcor.de base80@base80.com aaron@3dattack.net 3DCrew@c4dcafe.com

Tutorial Writer Writer - Moderator

3DKiwi Nigel “RubberFish”
3DKiwi@c4dcafe.com nigel@therubberfish.com

50
Editors Notes...
Hello there Readers and
Attackers!
Just wanted to extend to all of our
readers a great big THANK YOU for
your support. Through your gener-
ous donations, we have been able
to upgrade a few things and pur-
chase software that was needed to
keep our magazine going. YOU
ROCK!
This was our first paid issue and we
at 3D Attack hope you’ve enjoyed
the artist interviews, learned a thing
or two from the great tutorials,
received the information you needed
from our reviews, were inspired by
the great artwork in our new Best of
CINEMA Gallery, and were able to
put to good use the freebies in the
“Goodies” folder. We are looking for-
ward to bringing you our December
issue.
“THE PRIZE FIGHT”
Round 1(the drawing round) of The
Prize Fight is going FANTASTIC! Be
sure to look in the December issue
for an announcement concerning
our three Round 1 winners of CINE-
MA 4D R9!!! Check out The Prize
Fight here:
http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewfo-
rum.php?f=44
Tutorial and Article Submissions
If you would like to submit a tutorial
or article, or have your software or
plug-in reviewed by 3D Attack,
please click on the following link for
instructions:
http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/view-
topic.php?t=1405
All submissions must be e-mailed to
Attention: Tank at
3dattack@3dattack.net
Markus Wittl Friends of 3D Attack™
www.maxon.net
Over the past few weeks, 3D Attack www.3dtotal.com
had made a decision to incorporate www.c4dcafe.com
the wonderful world of 2D art into www.cinema4duser.com
our magazine. We were in the www.3dfluff.com
process of making arrangements to www.spot4d.co.uk
interview an extraordinary 2D Digital www.3darena.de
artist, Markus Wittl. We regret to www.frenchcinema4d.com
inform our readers that we will not www.sadbatu.de
be able to bring you this interview, www.peXel.de
as Mr. Wittl has passed away after a www.cgchannel.com
long battle with a serious illness. In www.c4dnetwork.com
the 31 years of Mr. Wittl's life he did www.3dweave.com
many wonderful things, one of which www.black-graphics.de
was his art. Please visit Mr. Wittl’s www.doschdesign.com
web-site and join 3D Attack in cele- www.gfx-scene.de
brating the Life and Art of Marcus www.3dvf.com
Wittl : http:// www.wittl.de www.3d-worxx.com
www.c4dportal.com
www.vrmesh.com
www.planit3d.com
www.cartesiuscreations.com
www.c4d.allplanforum.com
www.renderosity.com
www.designerinaction.de
www.3dyanimacion.com
www.mostyle.tv
www.jakcdesign.com
www.c4dtreff.de
www.3dkingdom.org
www.3d1.com.br
www.scifi-meshes.com
New Best in CINEMA 4D Gallery www.chinavfx.net
3D Attack The CINEMA 4D www.insidecg.com
Magazine is now taking submissions www.bubbles4d.com
for the new Best in CINEMA 4D www.deviantart.com
Gallery in our digital Magazine. If www.mediaworks.fr
you believe you have created an www.3dlinks.com
image in CINEMA 4D that displays www.cgchina.com
excellence in CINEMA 4D mastery www.c4dzone.com
and would like to see your work in www.c4d-pl.org
our magazine, feel free to e-mail a www.cactus3d.com
800x600 rendering of your work to
tavy@3dattack.net. Please include
your name, date image was created, *3D Attack™ the CINEMA 4D Magazine and all of
and CINEMA 4D Version. If your the material wherein are copyright protected.
image meets the standards we are None of the material may be duplicated in any
looking for, you will be contacted for form with out prior written consent from
further information. 3D Attack™ or the named artist.
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