New in Cinema 4D R19: Insert Objects as Parent, Child, or Sibling of Selected Object with Modifiers

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Instructor Cineversity

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  • Duration: 05:49
  • Views: 15291
  • Made with Release: 19
  • Works with Release: 19 and greater

Cinema 4D Release 19 improves on the incredible power of hierarchy based modeling with the introduction of new Object Insertion Modifiers.

Cinema 4D Release 19 improves on the incredible power of hierarchy based modeling with the introduction of new Object Insertion Modifiers. Operations that used to take dozens of clicks can now be accomplished with a control, shift, or option-click - with even more possibilities when you combine them.

Keyboard Shortcuts:

  • Shift: Insert as Child

  • Alt/Option: Insert as Parent

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Transcript

Cinema 4D Release 19 improves on the incredible power of hierarchy-based modeling with the introduction of some new object insertion modifier keys. Operations that used to take dozens of clicks can now be accomplished with a Ctrl+Shift or option click with even more possibilities when you combine those keys. So here, I've got a scene with a bunch of individually-drawn splines and I want to sweep them. And I've also got a bunch of these hexagons that I want to extrude. So let's start with the hexagon here. Now, you might be familiar with adding in a single object as a parent but Release 19 makes it possible to use multiple selections. So I'm going to go to my "Extrude Object" here and I'm going to hold down my Alt or Option key as I add a new object as a parent. And you can see that all of our hexagons have now been extruded. Each one gets its own separate extrude object. I can come in here and reduce the size, and it's also been carefully positioned and oriented to match the object that was selected before. Now, in addition to adding an object as a parent, you can also add objects as children. So I'm going to select all of my spirals here and I want to sweep them. So we use that same command again. So we're going to hold down Alt or Option as I add a sweep to add it as the parent. And then what I want to do is add in a child directly below this. So I'm now going to hold down my Shift key and add a circle spline. And you can't see it right now because these circles are so large but if I reduce the radius, you'll see that I've individually swept each and every one of these splines which allows me to come in here, for example, and adjust the ingrowth parameter on each of these individually and animate them by hand. Now, the fun doesn't stop here. You can also work with deformers, and here is a simple word that I've rigged up for animation inspired by a tutorial by Brett Baize also available on Cineversity. And what this allows me to do is come in here and manipulate my objects through repositioning. I can control all of these various elements of my character using this rig. And I created this rig with the assistance of these object modifier keys. You can see I've got a bunch of these individual letters. I've got four. But each of them has a number of deformers underneath, a number of control objects and these were all generated on the fly with all of them together. So I'm going to go through this with you now. So I'm going to go to a simpler starting version of the project and I'm just going to select all of my letters. So the first thing that I want to do is add the ability to bend the letters. So I'm going to add a deformer and we're going to use that same key we just used which is to hold down Shift and add a bend deformer as a child. And now that it's added as a child, you'll also notice that the deformer has been auto-fit to the size of its parent, and this is something that was there in R18 but now we have multi-object abilities as well. And now I can come in here and adjust the bend of each of these letters, and you'll notice that they're bending around their own access. And you can get these sort of fun effects like these. So now that this is here, I'm just going to hit redo to get that back, what I want to do is add in some twist. So I'm going to hold down my bend deformer again here. And if I hold down Shift one more time, well, that doesn't give me what I want. It's added another deformer but it added it as a child of the selected bend objects. So I'm going to hit undo and I'm going to introduce a new modifier key which is the Ctrl key. So if I hold down the Ctrl or Cmd and add a twist deformer, it is now going to get added directly after the selected objects. So Ctrl again will add an object after. Now, if I come in here and twist these, that's looking good. If I grab my bends and I want to play around with those, for example, we start to see that the effect kind of breaks down and goes a bit wonky, and that's because the order of these is backwards. I actually want to have my twists before my bends. So what I'm going to do is hit undo and get back to the point that all my bends are selected, and I'm going to go down here, I'm going to grab my twist, and I'm going to hold down Ctrl again, because I do want to add it as a sibling but then I'm going to hold down Shift as well to move it just above the selected objects, so just previous to them. And the trick that I use to help remember this is that Shift is above Ctrl and the new objects will be inserted just above the selected objects. Now, I've got my twists in here, I can twist, I can grab my bends, and I can bend those as well. So that's working out quite well. Now, another thing you might want to do is to take each of these objects and add a controller outside of the hierarchy. And for that, we can again hold down Ctrl+Shift. So I'm going to add some circles in here, put them on the X-Z plane and reduce their size. So now, I've got something like that. You know, if I want, I can also create an object that will encompass all of these. So in the past, you might have used Alt or Option G to group your objects, which is great if you want to know as your parent but if you don't want to know, well, in Release 19, there is actually something you can do. So what I can do is, come in here and I'm going to grab a rectangle, and in order to group my objects together under this rectangle, I'm going to hold down Ctrl and Alt or Option at the same time, and this will group all the selected objects underneath the object that I'm inserting. And you can see I've added a rectangle, I can adjust its width and height here, and now I've got a spline that I can grab and use to manipulate all of these objects together. Now, you can certainly go in there, start setting up your constrains and finish rigging this but I just wanted to show a use for these modifier keys in a situation that would actually come up in a pretty regular basis. So I know that this can feel a bit overwhelming. These are a lot of keys and the combinations of them can feel a little bit tricky but as I've worked with them, I've become quite familiar with them and they're a real boon to my workflow. But if you need help remembering, I've created this little chart here in the form of a scene file. And here, you'll see the label of what it's doing and the position that it will take in relation to this selected cube right here as you add these different objects. If you are still curious and you want sort of another take on it, just go to your "Help" file, go to "Show Help," and navigate to the "Create" menu. And inside here, there is a full breakdown of every one of these properties, and I'll link to this as well in the description for this video. Hey, thanks for watching. If you've found this interesting or helpful, you may want to check out the rest of our "What's New in Cinema 4D Release 19" videos here on Cineversity. You can subscribe or stay tuned over the next few months for more quick tips and reference videos.
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