C4D - Subdivision Surface Weight

In this tutorial I will show you a simple trick how to control Subdivision surface (aka Hyper-Nurbs) with Subdivision Surface Weight tag.

I am not very good at sub-d modelling, also not a great fan of it :) but its a powerfull technique and lot of great 3D artists use this all the time. As you can see in the top render, you can get really nice results from very simple meshes, what are easy to modify (not like highpoly objects).

In the top render is 3x the same object, from left to right: base mesh -> base mesh in subdivision surface -> base mesh in sub-d with edges modified with sub-d weight.

This tag allows you control the impact of subdividing, either on edges or on points.

Sometimes you need razorsharp cuts or corners and cutting the object wont help very much. On this example one side of the pipe is not exactly 90° to world axis, so near cut did terrible mess after subdividing.

If I do the cut more inside, it will look too much beveled. And in this case I want the ends of pipe look like sharp cut.

My solution is to add a Subdivision Surface Weight tag (object manager/tags/cinema 4d tags/sub...) to the base mesh. First put the base mesh under Subdivision Surface, so you can see what you change.

We want to modify the pipe ends, so we need to select the end edges. Switch to edges mode and choose loop selection (prees "v" in perspective view for popup menu - select - loop selection) and select both end outer edges. You can disable sub-d for this step, if you cant find them on subdivided mesh.

Re-enable sub-d, push and hold the "." (dot key) on keyboard and drag the mouse (left-right) anywhere in view. You have to hold the "." key. You can see the changing of Subdivision Surface Weight by changing of blue color to red.

Thats it :) Now click off the tag, to see the result better.

You can change the weight of points too (same action) and also combine point and edges weights. Also the tag allows to change subdivisions amount. Happy experimenting :)

C4D - modelling water splash without plugins

I never thought before that is possible without plugins like Realflow, but it is. Big thanks to

Nikolaus Schatz and his youtube tutorial, what makes cca 90% of knowledge in this tutorial. Also thanks for permission to publish and modify his idea. And its surprisingly not very hard work, so lets go...

1. We start with modelling basic shape of a water splash. If you find some real splash photos online, its something like a simple crown. Best way to get it, is start with simple cylinder without caps and some more hight segments (we will need them)

2. Make it editable and add a Taper deformer to it (select cylinder, shift+click on Taper). Move deformers control outside (or set it to minus strenght, with 100% curvature). Doesnt matter how much you deform it, something between minus 50-150% looks still good.

3. Right-click on the deformed object in manager and select "Current state to object" (or from top menu: mesh/conversion/curr...). Delete original object with deformer. Rename the new object to "4small"

If you google water splashes photos, you can see, that a bottom of the splash is in most cases like a wall of water, then in splits into smaller water drops. Thats why we need later two crown-like objects, on which we will clone water drops (and melt them together with Metaball)

4. 1st we model big crown for small droplets. Select object "4small". Swith to polygon mode. Select some polygons in rough crown shape (dont select much polygons in the lower half of the object), delete selected.

5. Switch to point mode, right click, optimize.

6. Duplicate object, rename it "4big". Select "4big", go to polygon mode, select polygons in upper half, delete them. Go to point mode, optimize.

7. Now create two water drops, just a normal spheres. Name them "big" a "small". Radius depends on the size of the crown, f.e. if the "4small" object is 400cm in Z axis, spheres should be around 10cm and 5cm in radius.

8. Create MoGraph Cloner. Drag "small" sphere inside it, change mode to "Object" and point it to "4small" object. Change distribution to "surface" and amount to cca 250. Play a bit with the seed number until you get nice distribution (its not a problem, if some droplets lap each other). Select Cloner object and add MoGraf effector Random. Turn on only Scale (under it select uniform scale) and play a bit with the value.

9. Duplicate the Cloner. Drag "big" sphere under it, and change pointing object for cloning to "4big" object. Play with seed and count parameter until you get more-or-less even distribution with more overlaping.

10. Select objects "4big" and "4small" and hide them both in editor and renderer.

11. Select both cloners, group them together and put the group in a Metaball object. In Metaball set Hull value to 100%, both subdivisions to 3 cm (depends of scene scale) and turn on Exponential Falloff.

12. Adjust sizes of both cloned spheres, count of clones and seeds, until it looks natural. You can turn off Metaball in manager between changes, this function consumes lot of CPU power.

13. The middle drop you can create easily with few spheres in other metaball and the rings on water are created with formula effector with sperical falloff on a highsegmented plane. You can also add displacement effector to plane to make it look even better.

14. Create a water material (IOR = 1.333) and add it to all water objects.

Have fun with your modeling :)

C4D and VRAY - lighting the scene with one HDRI - part 2

In this tutorial we learn how to make lighting the scene with one HDRI more comfortable. Unfortunately, this technique has its limits, especially by setting the scene.


First big help is Vray Domelight Texture Viewer, what you can find inside top menu/plugins/vraybridge..../

Now choose light with HDRI inside object manager and hit preview texture in viewer.

If the HDRI is good for lighting and correctly set, you can see sun object inside the preview. Only if you used Layers shader you wont see preview.

You can have this preview open and set rotation of light or scene, but I use other helper: false sun. Then you dont have new window open and you can set light rotation exactly.

This helper is made of two objects: fake sun and spline from it to the center of scene.


Its made easily: select your camera and change its position to 0,0,0. Turn on Vray Domelight Texture Viewer and rotate camera view until its centered on HDRI sun. Next create f.e. sphere and copy rotation angles from camera to it. Now just move it away from the center by the axis that show towards center.

Create 2-point line spline, in point mode set one point to 0,0,0, other to center of fake sun.

Select both objects in manager and set them like this:

Make both objects child of light object. Now you can rotate light in horizontal axis (ZX) together with fake sun and it will exactly show you direction of the shadows from HDRI.

Dont rotate light around other axis as Y (horizontal), DomeLight does not support it. If you need other vertical angle of shadows, choose other HDRI. Worst case scenario, you can rotate whole scene without light, but the you cannot use HDRI as background or for reflections then.

C4D - quick binding of generators and deformers

As you know generators and deformers must be in correct hierarchy to work correctly.

For generators object must be its child, deformer must be child of the object. Sometimes this means lot of drag and droping.

This can be avoided by two nice keyboard shortcuts. Select the object you want modify and before you select generator hold left ALT key. If you want to modify object with deformer, hold left SHIFT key before selecting it.

C4D - saving all settings

Mainly if you do often small projects in Cinema, you get also bored by setting your favorite lights, cameras and its parameters, render settings atc... It is maybe a minute or two every new scene, but if count it together...


There is simple solution: Set up ypour default scene with your render settings and save whole scene as two files new.c4d and template.c4d directly inside Cinemas folder (by befault C:\Program files\MAXON\CINEMA 4D R17)

On Win10 may appear error:

Then you have to save the files somewhere else (Docoments...), close Cinema4d and then move the files inside its folder.

After next run you will see your scene and render setup on start and also when choosing new project.

C4D and VRAY - worn edges / dirt

In this tutorial I will show you how to combine two different materials that you can get (for example) worn edges effect.

This method uses Vertex Weight mapping. So we will need object with relatively high polygon amount a we need to know how to select them. Basic process can be explained on simple object as on top render.


1. Create base cube with high segment amount.

2. Change it to editable a switch to polygon mode. From top menu Select choose Phong break selection. In the tools settings change "phong angle" until the wanted selection is highlighted blue.

3. Depends on object type, sometimes you can choose all you need with one click, sometimes you need add/remove selections. In this case its best way to sellect all polygons (ctrl+a) and via phong break selelection only remove sides (ctrl+click). With the edges selected, choose from select top menu Set vertex weight and OK.

4.  Doubleclick new icon Vertex Map Tag next to object in manager, increase strenght to 100%, change mode to "add" and hit "apply selected". Then change mode to smooth and "Apply all" few times.

In principle it doesn't matter if there is Vertex Weight added or removed, only thing important is that you need difference between parts where you want other texture. Later you can invert vertex map. Also if you want change later coverage of the effect, its good to safe now chosen polygon selection (menu - Select - Set selection)


In the Vertex map mode you can use also paint tool and manually adjust your selection / add more randomness. Its better to paint in object mode as in polygon mode. Don´t forget to smooth out painted parts too.

5. Create or load base material for object and apply it on all object (not only on selection)

6. Create or load second (and different) Vray Advanced Material and in Material Weight tab choose from shaders effects the vertex map. Click on chosen Vertex Map and insert vertex map from object. If you followed the instructions above, choose also invert. Also apply this material on whole object.

7. Select both materials on object and turn on mix textures on them.

Now you can do first test render. If you did everything good, you should see object with second texture smoothly covering all edges (plus all paint, if you made some). If you can see only one of the materials, try to turn off invert on vertex map in second material.

8. The final turn is to naturalize this effect. Return to second material, in the Material Weight tab. With the arrow next of Vertex map add the effector Layers. Click it. From "Effects..." add "Clip color" and from "Shader..." add "noise". Change Noise blending from Normal to Levr.

You can do test render now, to see changes.

9. Biggest changes you can do with editing Noise parameters inside Layers. To get into noise shader click its mini-icon inside layers.

The noise coverage between materials is defined by smoothing of vertex map. There should not be a problem to edit it or create new one later. You can also shrink or grow selection before making vertex map (menu - select - shrink/grow selection). Don´t forget to add new map manually into second material again.

With this method you can easily get very nice results, unlike some node based shaders on places you want and define. Have fun.

C4D and VRAY - Simple multicolor lego material

It can happen that you need many same objects, but with different colors. If there are 3 or so, there is no problem to make 3 different materials. But what about 200 objects with around 40 color variations? :)


Solutions is simple, C4D shader "Variation" inside a VRAY material.

In this tutorial I will show you how to choose specific colors from picture pallette that will be randomly assigned to objects. In the render below are used only 2 materials, one is for the ground. Scene is lit with one HDRI image (see last tutorial)

1. step: Create VrayAdvancedMaterial

2. step: Turn on "Diffuse Layer 1"
3. step: Click on "Diffuse Layer 1" and next click on arrow by the "Texture Map" under diffuse color. Choose shader Variation from effects.

4. step: Click on choosen Variaton shader a set it like this:

5. step: Click on arrow next to "Gradient".  In expanded menu change Interpolation to "None" and color chooser to "Color from picture"

6. step: Find a "lego pallette" picture and insert it as image to color chooser. By clicking under gradient bar you can add aor change existing colors. For every new color you need to click "+" abowe image and move the picker inside image.

7. step: Set up materials "Specular Layer 1". In my render its about 90% trasparency a very low glossines chnage 0.9-1.


Now you can clone, copy, emmit objects as you wish... With this material assigned, they will have random colors controlled only with position of sliders in gradient. F.e. as on image abowe, slider of red is at 13,52%, so of 100 lego pieces 14 will be red.

P.S.: This tutorial is based on Greyscalegorilla´s YT tutorial for Arnorld renderer, just modified to use in Vray. Lego pieces are modeled by me.