Cineversity

I am a student and just learning the program.

Below is a link to a rough movie of my animation showing a channel being made from the back river to the front river.

I need to make the ditch that currently animates in, have the river running behind it, or at least not be a solid triangle (I tried adding blue to it, but it’s still a triangle in the back). How do I make the back of the “channel” hollow like the front?

See the screenshot, currently I am using a Boole > Extrude > Spline combo to make the current “channel” and animate it in, I am open to better ideas. Every time I move the spline point of the channel closer to the spline points of the back river, the river or channel disappear. The back river is made with a Sweep > Arc > Path

In theory the water should flow from the back river through the channel to the front river. Thanks for any help on this. I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

It wouldn’t attach, the movie is here… https://youtu.be/OBQ17sBeWDQ

Hi williams.7489,

Thanks for the YouTube link.

Please have a look at the file below, and then tell me what works and what doesn’t
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/L1qKR8h9Bvu4SJ7TjxpfIMoDxorytmvxrd7XEqq9wkN

There are many more ways to create something like that. Let me know if you like to see other options.

Here is a little bit more detailed version
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/rDlE4f0kBJWBbCRcWbiWSZjeXsYWbLrSyHcxoSgeVHC

My best wishes

P.S.: here is an alternative:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/Nb9LHSpLWkOvBwrCdeo0VfFvQmBGH9Amv1sUKFKhgl6

Dr. Sassi, thank you so much for your help! I love both of these examples, very helpful.

The animation needs to show how farmers channelized from a stream (back river) to the Red River (front river) using a V-shaped channel. I need to show the channel as a V-shape before the water flows through it. As the animation progresses there is a rain storm (working on that now) and as more water flows through the channel the V-shape will need to morph into a wider and deeper U-shape with “dirt” falling off the sides of the channel as it widens and some logs flowing down from the back stream to the river in front. That’s the whole animation.

I am trying to use the first example where you used a MoSpline and a Displacer, but I am unclear about the Fields. Sometimes they act like masks or constrainers, sometimes not. I’ve done a bunch of tutorials about them, but don’t understand the practical usage of them yet. How would I make a V-shape where the MoSpline is? Keep in mind that the shape will also need to animate into a U-shape from that V. In what I had created I was planning on animating my Arc using a Point-Level Spline animation, which probably isn’t the best way of approaching it.

This project is due next week and I am racing to get a great version finished, your help is much appreciated.

Here is a link to my most recent file (before you sent way better ways to do most of what I had done).
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/1PtvgS4YWIt3z5uqBFHFX23w0i0m52fuvfpoXakIpWY

One other thing, the creek in the back is a real creek (Willow Branch Creek). The video that is featuring this animation is a feature about that creek, so I was trying to use the actual layout of the creek, which I have as an Illustrator Path. I might want to use this file for future animations, so wanted to have the land laid out with Willow Branch running through it correctly. How would you go about doing that with this method? I used Sweeps in my version and they didn’t look great where the river turned.

Hi williams.7489,

Thanks for using Amazon for the files, very much appreciated.

Let us start with the rivers and how to get those changes organically integrated. Boolean operations are very mechanical, and for landscapes, often not really the way to go. I would suggest using your set up with Extrude or Sweep to create the shapes and process the whole thing in Volume Builder and Mesher. It will look better in a shorter set up time. However, the rendering might be a little bit longer.
An example file, based on some elements of your scene:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/2JZSdpY905RvFvk1MUIXh5U3U3Ux4FoyhYRH0Bj9oiS

To set up splines as a falloff means you place minimal information into the scene and have a radius applied to it in fields. The falloff means that the effect of the deformer works only in the defined field (or outside if inverted). Sorry that the tutorials so far haven’t given you a good base to use them. Here is a short rundown of the setup. If at any point you get stuck, please let me know. As usual, set up things first in a sandbox file, i.e., a file that is not used later on and where you can mess around to explore things. The biggest mistake that I see since I started mentoring people is to start and toss it into the final scene. Even there was no need for it, nor that it was used in a savvy way. The sandbox helps. I do it in that way, and I use 3D longer than nearly three decades by now.
screen capture
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/7ZEfc9PDCpMEWWbbs0GOVuUF7rWFMLjIqMM8e22tA8B

All the best

I actually loved working with the Deformers and started over (my Materials and all can come in later). I added a link to what I have so far, it’s going along really well, except that I do not understand how to change the direction on the water using the Vertex Map Tags. I can see the color difference of red and yellow and understand that the yellow needs to go over the water, but can’t figure out how to manipulate the colors. Help was not helpful. EDIT: actually I can’t use the “water” plane because I need water to NOT be there when the channel first comes in.

Here is my new file with no materials or sky or anything…
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/cieluvmGomyvlRU5wU8Qtb2pqp7amRk6TdEE8JNjR4G

Thanks for the help! It’s a god send, there are so many ways to do stuff in this program that my head was about to explode.

Also, need to add rain, is this best done in AfterEffects (which I’m pretty good in) or is there a smooth way to make rain with the Emitter?

Thanks for the file, williams.7489.

The vertex-maps defines (limits) where the Displacers works. Inside the Displacer, the Noise Shader movement does the work, including a straight direction.

With a system like that, I think three directions for the water might do it. Switch the Displacer off and then one by one on again to see the effect.

The change in the material is more about variety, to cut through eventual repetition.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/yiZso9Tv0TQZLppwF02zEXLWpHNg1mP44xDG0Mrp5rt

Particles are best for the rain of course, but Ae might be faster. I think that is an artist call.

Enjoy your weekend

Here is the latest file:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/CkEQIMUJQfWFXlyWs6uAdqgY0pb8piSJN1USzT9NxZR

Whenever you can help me again.

My first problem is that we need to see the channel without the water, before the water flows into it. I tried a bunch of things to mask out the water plane in just that section, and none of them worked. If you can point me in the right direction on how to do that it would be super-helpful.

I’m trying to improve my surfaces. They look stretched. In the old model I added different textures to the edges of all the water. The texture applied to the Land Plane is a Node Material (called “Texas Land”), but the edge we see by the front river is only one square section. When I tried to add the “Sandy Cliff” material to the edge of that river it looked terrible and didn’t blend at all with the land behind it. Not sure how to give the ditches that hold the water a different color or even just darken them.

Lastly, I wanted to darken the sky when it started to rain. No idea how to do that, I didn’t see any settings in the Sky element to do that with. My rain probably needs some expert advice as well.

Mostly I need the surfaces to improve and with it being one plane that stretches I now don’t know how to do it.

Thanks for your help!

Hi williams.7489,

I can’t really tell you anything about the material, as the file does not contain any textures.

You might have a different idea about those water-based edges. If they are natural and growing based on the water, the top layer (if it has grass and roots in it) stays longer intact, which means there is a small shadow area. You might use this. Think of Polygon selections and limiting the material with it, so you have more control. If this needs to be animated, Polygon selections can be used with fields as well. More elegant (with slow transitions) are Weigh maps and fields to use here, whereby the weight-map is placed into a Vertex Map shader. This is then used as a layer mask between two textures (Layer-shader.

If the channel opens, what would make the water stay out of it?
Anyway, add a PoseMorph Tag as in an earlier scene shown. Set it to point, and with a soft-selection pull, all the points below the surface need to be below it. Then take a Pose Morph Deformer (also in that scene), and with fields, you can let the water in or out as you need it.

In the rain, I would place the emitter into a Cloner Mode> Object. The capsule is then set as a child to the cloner. Then set the Instance mode to Multi-instance. Lower the capsule heigh segments to one, and perhaps other values as well. Rain works best when the light is behind it, which typically darkens the image and set bright highlights into the raindrops. Which is a focused light, That increases the energy and so produces a noticeable line via motion blur. Yes, that can be faked with a longer object. I would place an Environment object in it. Heavy rain scatters the light and limits so its influence. The motion blur of the rain drops can be faked with a gradient, see file below.

To influence the sky, perhaps change the time of the day while switching the Sun off in the Sky. Set a manual Sun if needed (Infinite light, Object Manager> Tags>Render Tags> Sun, in details switch off the stars, Moon, etc.
Much easier would be to have a large black sphere as a child to the camera (exact same position) and change the alpha value. (Material named in the scene: Sky Filter)

Here is a little example of the sky and rain. Please bake the particles from frame -500, so it is full raining at frame zero if that is needed.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/zIvjgowUXpiToDh1alBSavzHTcpdylDBDZlZIGvUbgz

Have a great Sunday.

P.S.: Here is a file with some ideas in it:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/QuSEPF7hmjBqU6ZBSWZxx3BGEpo2FUKqgthZyMAKh61

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You have had asked in a different thread about this but never followed up on my request for a file. Since I assume, it is the same project, here you go.
You want to use a Node-based material to get the surface’s Normal to differentiate among all possible surfaces.

Here is an example
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/X03ejaL3ZKZesq1EtwAzhUZdsRbwXizHQFIkD7cwdBQ

In the TopSpot node, you find two parameters to adjust the “reach” of the layer-mask.

Good morning. Well I had to get a draft in this morning, but it’s still not right, especially the materials. I just found the latest file you sent, I will check that out. I don’t know how to attach the Node Materials to the file, should I have done that when I imported the HD photos?

Here is a link to the current file,
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/gYc4JrMl7xJbKzkNYI15CNssY4dI3BOwaqHd5pJStGD

Here is a link to the render, which took two days, obviously I over did a bunch of things for render. For starters the rain was really pretty, but there were only a few drops, so I added more simple rain in AfterEffects. Here is the video so you can see the issue I’m having with materials. It looks like Ireland rather than Texas.
https://youtu.be/PAKtX0f38xk

For rendering, I included Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion, is that what caused the render to be SO slow? Also I will not use the rain in Cinema 4D again. Rendering is it’s own section and I have a lot more to learn about it.

Things I now have to figure out…

I have to make the bank on the edge of the Red River (front river) much more sloping, sandy and bumpy. See the attached photo of the actual Willow Branch creek after channelization, it cut a deep hole in the land.

I made the Red River out of a different water plane because it needed to be lower than the channel so that you could see the channel’s V-shape, now the water from the channel and the water from the river don’t match with each other. I tried painting in the same level of yellow color in the Vertex Map tag, but it didn’t seem to work. Before adding the 2nd plane for the Red River I tried adding a second Pose Morph tag on the original water plane, but it caused massive chaos. Can you add two Pose Morph tags to one object?
Is there a way to go back to one plane? That seemed to make the water flow together better in general.
To answer your correct physics observation, the water coming through after a delay is not realistic at all, but it is necessary for the viewer to see the shape and size of the channel before the water runs through it.

Also in my current render there is a ton of noise moving around, where do I reduce that?

Hi williams.7489,

Please have a look at the file below:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/kkm4RjRs0ONLh7kEIlJ3Mkf4VGqb9Mg1pWuDpIJgpks

Press play…

It was an interesting idea to cover the largest object with one material. But it is pretty impractical, to be honest.

In 3D, anything is split up as much as possible to gain the most control over it. See alone the parameter in lights. Anyway, the point that I like to make is that it might be wise to split the area’s top layer and the underlying soil into two objects. As I mentioned above, the Grass has roots and keeps the soil more intact than below it, hence the edge.

I tried to download the file, but to my surprise, it tells me 3hours. Something is off, so please allow for some time.

All the best

Thank you for those files. Although I think that the last file that you sent might be the best way to show the true fissure in the land, I would have to rebuild everything that I have done thus far, and don’t have the time or the brain left to do that. My next iteration is due on Friday.

Working with the animation the way it currently is. How would you make the top of the land grassy and the edges made of dirt? I got a bad review on the first round which has me feeling pretty frustrated. They thought that I attempted to make my model too realistic and failed (they are not entirely wrong as I didn’t have time to get my material right). So now I am trying to make it much more basic and scientific. Here is a video of the current version…

https://youtu.be/5yXgO160EXs

And here is the current version of the C4D file…

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/QtuXNiZq2I1QS8oWJeRyzPSdLPk8hnmiEPXkAqpdm2w

Is there a tutorial that you could recommend for learning Vertex Maps? I watched a couple but they lost me immediately. This video started with a polygon (got that) then he said to choose under “Select”, “Set Vertex Weight” which is greyed out for me, clearly there was a step beforehand he didn’t cover? Any help with understanding how to use these would be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfQR4k-rIh0&feature=emb_logo

I also tried UV Mapping and that worked, but I don’t know how to blend beyond the squares, so I end up with a squared pattern with no mixing of the two materials on the plane.

This is the current version of my animation (by another artist in Blender) and I really need to do better than this…
https://youtu.be/TXJ0ECnGSSc

Lastly, there is an “.aec” file that I am trying to open in AfterEffects. I downloaded a plugin to add to AE, but none of the tutorials are current and they folder they instructed me to put it in doesn’t exist. I put it in some logical places (plugin folders inside AE), but the file is still greyed out when I try to open that .aec file in AE.

Thanks for the update, williams.7489.

I have the feeling the Vertex Maps looked good. For anyone following along, here are some basics.

The Vertexmap is information storage. For every point, a value between 0 and 100%. It was grayed out because (best guess) you were not in Point (Edge or Polygon)mode. If the Use UV Editing Mode is active, it is grayed out as well. If that was a Cineversity tutorial, sorry about that, it should have been stated clearly.

You can set all points at once with the Set Vertex map. When this Vertex Map shows up as a Tag in the Object Manager, then you can select it and (POINT MODE) paint on it to refine it.

Besides, in your case, click on the Vertex map and then check the box Use Fields. The fields will set those point values. For example, a Linear Field is like a gradient. Wherever the gradient is, it has a certain value at the position a single point is, that value will be given to the Vertex Tag. All points that are affected by this Field will be determined in value by this Field. However, if the Points are deformed, you need to use the Deformed Points checkbox to progress.

Inside the Field List, you will get options to combine those Fields. Standard comment here: It is like Photoshop Layers. Kind of.

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Any critique should be given in a way that you tell what you want, and the other side tells you what works and what doesn’t. We all get lost from time to time, nothing wrong with that. This should ALWAYS be done in a motivational manner, with tips and examples. Anything else is just a failure on the education side.

Anyway, please focus on what you like to do. You have been staying in communication, and you keep going. That is already half the “battle”. Always keep in mind, there are no failures, only gained experience. And that should be the permanent mantra from everyone. You keep going – that is what not everyone can do.

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So, as I mentioned, we like to split things into workable units. So we can work on one part, and when this works, we do the next. If we like to do it all at once, like the texture covering the grass and the changing V shaped formations, you are not splitting things up.

I have used the mesh, here the polygons to split the texture. There is a top layer (the green [yellow] material applied as UV, and the Gradient, which is applied as Flat with a 45º rotation to get the most sides of the rivers detailed. The most right-sided material would be on the top. So I used the Polygon selection to limit its area to the top. The sides start with the same green tone and move then into soil colors.

Please have a look here.

Another option would be to texture the model in the two versions. The first one from frame 0 to the point the channel is established.  The second starts just before the channel grows and then to the last frame. Since you said you are familiar with Ae, you place these two renderings on top of each other and draw a mask (animated where both overlap). This mask unveils quickly the changes. So, you could really paint your two version on a texture and use each for one of the clips.

Let me know if there is any further question. I’m happy to look into it.

Cheers.

P.S. AEC, it should work if it is placed here, I checked it with the latest Ae.