Learn How to Control MoSplines in Cinema4D

In today’s tutorial, Dogocan Bilgili walks us through how to take advantage of the MoSpline module in Cinema4D to add animated curves to your projects. Let’s take a look!

Step 1

Create a Text spline with any text in any font you desire, and then make it editable (using the C shortcut key).

Step 2

Add a Mospline object to your scene.

Step 3

Under the settings of the Mospline object, choose the Object tab and change the mode section to Spline. With that done, jump to the Spline tab and assign your text spline as the source.

Step 4

Under the Spline tab choose even for the Generation mode and give something around about 1000 as the Count value.

Step 5

Create a Sweep NURBS object.

Step 6

Create a Circle object.

Step 7

Drag and drop our Mospline and Circle objects onto the Sweep NURBS. Now go back into the Spline tab of the Mospline object, and set the Width value. Here I’ve used 10m .

Step 8

Now go to the Animation layout.

Step 9

Select the Mospline and go to it’s Object tab. Here, set the Grow mode to Separate segments.

Step 10

Now decrease the value of End to 0 as shown, and then hold down the Ctrl key and click the little dot right next to the value to add a keyframe.

Step 11

Go to frame 30 and change the value of End to 100. Add another keyframe.

Step 12

Go to frame 31 and add a keyframe for the Offset value, using the same technique as shown above.

Step 13

Advance to frame 60 and increase the value of Offset to 100, adding another keyframe.

Step 14

Go to frame 61 and add a keyframe for the Start value.

Step 15

Finally, go to frame 90 and change the value of Start to 100 and then add a final keyframe.

Step 16

Create another MoSpline object using the settings below and add use the same Sweep NURBStechnique as shown above on this object as well.

Step 17

Decrease all of the settings under the Object tab and add a keyframe for the End value.

Step 18

Increase the End value to 100 and add another keyframe on frame 45. Also, add a keyframe for Offset section here as well.

Step 19

Now jump to frame 90 and increase the value of Offset to 100, adding another keyframe.

Step 20

Go to the Standard layout preset and create a Camera object, setting it as the main camera.

Step 21

Go to the top view (F2 on your keyboard) and draw a Spline that will act as the path of the camera.

Step 22

Add the Target tag to the Camera object, and set the Sweep NURBS object as the Target Object.

Step 23

Add the Align to spline tag to the Camera and then set the correct spline as that tag’s path. The Camera will be now align with the surface.

Step 24

Now select the Align to spline tag and, on frame 1, add a keyframe in the Position section.

Step 25

Now go to frame 90, change the value to 100 and add another keyframe.

Step 26

Create a material with any color you desire and turn on the Glow channel. Change the Outer strength to 200 to ensure a bright glow.

Step 27

Copy that material and change the color. You can now use these materials for the different MoSpline objects in your scene.

Step 28

Enter the Render settings. Choose a suitable resolution from the Output section and also change the To value to 90 frames.

Step 29

Go to the Save section and set name/place as usual. I also changed the Format to QuickTime Movie. It’s now time to hit render!

And we’re done! If you have any questions feel free to ask, and Happy Holidays!

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