Cineversity

Does anyone know a way to generate a spline from the outline/border of an object? The effect would be similar to the auto trace function in AFter Effects, and would generate a spline based on an object’s alpha. To make things easier, the camera angle and position would be locked, and the 3D object would not move either, it would only rotate on it’s axis. Any help would really be appreciated.

Hi Neil,

There is no direct option in Cinema 4D for a model.

But perhaps say hello to Chris from me when you ask him if that works for your purposes (there seems to be two Outline options):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGV6VpVKrM&t=4518s

Sadly I have no access to this plugin; otherwise, I would tell you.

Cheers

Thanks mate, and I appreciate the speedy reply. I found this plugin too this morning, and it does look promising, albeit with a bit of a price tag. I’ll shoot an email to Chris and his team and ask a few questions. Cheers.

Thank you very much, Neil.

I’m sure Chris will give you a proper answer. Please keep in mind that we have here in the U.S. a holiday tomorrow (Monday).

The only Outline-Spline production in Cinema 4D is via Sketch n Toons ( Export>Illustrator [single image]). I assume that it is far from usable for your project.

If you can render out an alpha channel, then the Vectorizer might help.

My best wishes for your project.

Ah, ok. Thanks for the heads-up, Dr Sassi.

Sketch and Toon outline was worth a try but ideally i’d like it to update based on the object’s rotation. The plan is to then feed the spline back in to a cloner with a bunch of offsets to produce a sort of Looney Toons style border with each clone coloured from a gradient.

The Vectorizer through, now that could actually work.

Thanks for the reply, Neil.

Perhaps RedGiant has a tool for the outline.
https://www.maxon.net/en/red-giant-complete/universe/tools?categories=606795
How about Sketchify

With the Vectorizer in Cinema 4D, you might run into a few problems, hence why I hesitated to mention it. Here are my workarounds.

1
Since it works based on a flat scene representation, it needs a long lens. The arms in the scene would otherwise produce a different perspective.

2
It also auto-resizes the Spline, which I have countered with two discs in the corners. So anything inside this will stay stable.

3
Besides that, it creates a single image spline; then it stops. For that I have changed this with XPresso.

4
Render the figure out into the text folder, and if the name is the same, it updates automatically.

Example
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/HqbzWwf13XQv0aZ1DcWOPTX7dwbntc2QZrs1c8KGBVL

The Spline will change constantly, so I’m not convinced that the clones will stick, perhaps not even with a plugin, ask before you invest! But I guess the color is based on the full spline length.

Soon is midnight and I close shop.

Enjoy