Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create 3D Grass
Ok! This is a Cinema 4D Tutorial I’ve created which will introduce you to object manipulation, textures, fur and also general familiarity with the program itself. I’m using Cinema 4D 10 and you can download the demo directly from Maxon.
Tutorial by Adam Woodhouse: www.adamwoodhouse.co.uk
Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create 3D Grass
Step 1 - Creating a base
First of all open the Cinema 4D application, which will automatically create a new scene for you to start working with. You then need to create a base for your grass to be attached to, I’m going to add a cube and modify it - ” Objects > Primitive > Cube”.Your canvas should look exactly like this now :
Step 2 - Modifying out base
Now we have out cube, we can edit to to be more of a interesting shape by firstly clicking it, and in the Attributes pane, increasing Segments X, Y & Z to a higher number ( I am going to select 50 and this will enable me to edit the shape more smoothly )
I’m going to manually edit my cube, by selecting the orange square on the cube and dragging them to a desired position in the X, Y and Z plains. You can alternatively change the size of the image in the attributes panel by typing X, Y Z variables, but let’s keep this simple and quick.
Then I am going to hit the “C” key on my keyboard ( Make Editable from the menu ” Functions > Make Editable ” ) This allows me to then use the Magnet tool to manipulate my plain further. Select the magnet tool ( Structure > Magnet ) And click and drag the cursor on the plane to create any desired effect.
I used the tool to add a hilly effect to the plane:
Step 3 - Adding texture to the base
We now need to make out base look relatively organic, so we are going to add a soil type texture. In the materials pane, ( bottom of the screen ) click “File > New Material”, underneath where you just clicked a new texture will appear in the shape of a circle named “Mat” - Double click on the word “Mat” and rename it “Soil”.Double click on the Soil Sphere texture, and a new dialog box will pop up looking like this :
Click the arrow where the option for ” Texture” Appears on the right area of the dialog box. A list will display below, click on “Gradient”. You will notice the circle with the texture displayed in the dialog box will change. What we are going to do now is change the gradient itself, so double click where the flat gradient is displayed ( underneath the texture arrow ) and change the values in the shader properties to something like this:
We want to now click the close button on this panel, and apply the texture to our plane. You need to click and drag the texture onto out plane, this is illustrated below :
Step 4 - Selecting the placement of the grass
Ok if you have got this far you are doing pretty well. We now need to click the window icon, which will allow us to see multiple views of our scene.
Clicking this will change our view to this:
Ok, we only now care about the top right view, click the Use polygon tool - so select “Tools > Polygons ” from the menu. Now we need to select the rectangle selection tool and select all polygons in the top right window labeled “Top”. (Basically this will be the area the grass will be placed on) - So select ” Selection - Rectangle selection” From the menu. Move the cursor to the top right view and in a click drag motion, select all the polygons until they all turn orange.
Now your view will look like this:
Now come out of this view by pressing the same window icon as you did before, however, click the one in the top left ( Perspective view ). You will now be able to see your object with only the top polygons selected.
Step 5 - Adding the grass
Now we have our top layer of the plane selected, we need to add grass, ok ok, so I lied to you, it’s not grass. It’s Cinema 4d’s Fur Tool, but does a sweet job or replicating grass. All you need to do now is click from the menu “Hair > Fur” and some spikes will appear on the plane in the perspective view.We are now going to increase the amount of fur, so in the objects panel, select “Fur” which will update the Attributes view. Where you can change the ” Count ” Aka, amount of fur. It’s initially at 10000, but I’m going to change mine to 30000, but you will have to experiment to ensure you will have the full area covered in grass depending on how large you made your plane. Also we will change the Randomness of the grass, by adding a variable randomize setting of 6 degrees.
This might sound like gibberish but experiment with the attributes, and who knows, you might create some really cool stuff.
Step 6 - Add texture to the grass
That’s basically it to be honest, but we will need to add a new texture to the grass to make it green. When you added the grass, a new texture was made in the textures panel. It should be called “Fur Mat” - double click it to open the texture dialogAll I am going to do here is change the gradient of the grass to two shades of green. You can change the thickness etc via the left hand menu if you want to experiment!
Step 7 - Rendering
That’s it! You have made some grass on a plane, if you got this far… congratulations! Now we need to just render the image to see the final result, so click “Render > Render View” From the menu which will show you exactly what you have created! I just added a background ( Objects > Scene > Background ) and changed the attributes to ” Use color > Always”. Here’s my final result!
Cheers,
Adam Woodhouse ( www.adamwoodhouse.co.uk )
Quote Catcher Website Design - August 13th, 2008
I’ve just started playing with the whole 3D world. These are great instructions I’ll have to try it out.
Adam Woodhouse | Portfolio » Blog Archive » Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create 3D Grass - August 14th, 2008
[...] some basic knowledge of using Cinema 4d and creating scenes from scratch. You can find the tutorial here (No click) and be sure to check out some of the stuff on youthedesiger.com, its pretty sick. [...]
joyoge - August 14th, 2008
Maxon Cinema 4D ile 3 boyutlu Çim modelleyelim (3D Grass)
http://www.joyoge.com/oku/582/Maxon-Cinema-4D-ile-3-boyutlu-Cim-modelleyelim-3D-Grass.html
thanks for great tutorial, I love C4D
pligg.com - August 14th, 2008
Cinema 4D Tutorial - How to Create 3D Grass…
Ok! This is a Cinema 4D Tutorial I’ve create for Cinema 4d which will introduce you to object manipulation, textures, fur and also general familiarity with the program itself….
Gino - August 14th, 2008
Quote Catcher Website Design - Awesome good luck in the 3d world, Ive been playing around with 3dtools in illustrator and photoshop mainly, but plan on getting more into Cinema 4D.
uselessbrain.com - August 20th, 2008
Thanks for this great tutorial. Will try it out.
Max - August 26th, 2008
Great one, man, you are the best
Keith - August 29th, 2008
Nice tutorial. I use Carrara, which has a hair modeller that can be used in the same way. Isn’t using this method to make a sizeable field going to slow things down a bit?
Keith
Aero - August 31st, 2008
Thanks alot for this tutorial, I didn’t know making such realistic grass would be this easy!
I already knew some basics of C4D so the tut was easy to follow.
Thanks alot!
Beau - September 2nd, 2008
I feel like I’ve overlooked something when reading through this tutorial… but I’ve read it over and over again and I keep coming up with the same problem. I selected the top plain with the rectangle selection tool and when I go back into the perspective mode and add the “fur”, it wraps the fur around the entire object instead of just that one plain. Please someone tell me what I’m doing wrong. I’m basically learning this program only by tutorials and trial and error, so I know I may have overlooked somethings. If you could email me that’d be great. Thanks
michael - September 19th, 2008
hey man its really cool thx for the tutorial but the grass get on all the cube not just the surface i dont know why i do exactly what u say
paris - September 26th, 2008
OMG (ohmygod) thanx so much ive just started im a newbie your instructions were great thanks so much !!!!!!
sarah - September 26th, 2008
hey i want to ask in the step 5 pic how did u add the orange triangle in the cube … please answer me
mak - September 29th, 2008
I think the orange triangle is a selection tag that helps confine the “fur” to the top of the cube.
André - September 30th, 2008
Beau, I had the same problem in the beggining. What I did, and it worked, was: after the step 4, go to menu Selection > Set Selection, and you’ll notice the orange triangle (sarah mentioned) just after the “Cube” tags. So, do the Step 5 and voilà , the fur will grow on the top of the cube.
Gerlof - October 1st, 2008
Hey, wow, this is a great tutorial, and I love how you kept it really at a low difficulty ( for example, you did not say ‘press your scroll button to get in the 4 window view’ or start about the live selector or something, ) so good job!
Uro - October 3rd, 2008
OMG.. Thanks For your Tutorial
Manohar - October 9th, 2008
Excellent
saam - October 14th, 2008
great thanks to nice work…..
Abdullah Alhourani - October 14th, 2008
Good tutorial, but we looking for another tutorials have advanced.
Thank you.
vu - October 17th, 2008
I can’t find the “Hair > Fur Tool” on my screen from step 5. Can someone help me? By the wayz, I am using the version 11. THank you.
Anonymous - October 18th, 2008
for the orange triangle, once you’ve something selected click selection; set selection
elo - October 28th, 2008
I wonder if the version 9 has the fur tool?
chris - November 4th, 2008
Hiya, i am also struggling to find the “hair > fur tool” Any help is much appreciated
musty - November 15th, 2008
would like to get more tutorials plsssss anyone can help just send it to my email addy
Ossama Helmy - December 17th, 2008
Very good tutorial, But I face only one problem.
That when I add the Fur; the fur added to all faces of the cube not the upper face only.
Please help me to solve this problem
Elthon - January 19th, 2009
Nice tutoria! So great for beginners.
waxx - January 21st, 2009
Damn, what a good tutorial for a begginer, thank you ( i also change the Fur Count to 100.000 and the Randomize to 20 degrees, and here’s my result http://www.silverodelrazie.com/multiup/images/k6crf9cxi3mt4qeiuv.png
Thank you, wathing you for more tuts.
ejpro - March 2nd, 2009
Great tutorial, my lawn should look so good!
Rory Martin - March 16th, 2009
Great stuff, just started using Cinema 4D and I’m finding it very difficult. Like most new software its just a case of getting familiar with it…
But this little tut has cleared up a few dark holes. Cheers and anymore to come?
Wondering if you could help me create dripping water or running water?
80+ Excellent Cinema 4D Tutorials and Best Practices | Tutorials | instantShift - March 30th, 2009
[...] Tutorial Link [...]
wintermelon - March 31st, 2009
Great tutorial!!
Very detailed - step by step and super easy to understand ^^
totally awsome!
thankyou
xea - April 12th, 2009
Very nice tutorial, very nice blog congratulations!
Paul Martins - April 20th, 2009
Awesome work! very easy to follow.
fonkybeast - April 30th, 2009
first, tx for this tutorial, it really helped me knowing this crazy little module !
i was just asking myself a question,
in step 2, why do we have to increase the number of Y segment ?
isnt it lighter for the render to put 2 instead of 50 ?
tx again
arkcoss - May 14th, 2009
Problem fixed: option SET SELECTION after you selected polygons!