Create a Detailed Zune HD MP3 Player in Cinema 4D – Day 1

on Nov 3rd 2009 with 58 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Software: Maxon Cinema 4D
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1 Hour

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Create a Detailed Zune in Cinema 4D

Creating convincing product visualizations can sometimes be a daunting task, due to the high level of detail and fidelity the artist must achieve in order to make it believable. In this multi-part, intermediate to advanced level tutorial, you will learn the many techniques needed to model a Microsoft Zune HD. Setting up your workspace for your reference images and using them as a guide, modeling complex shapes from boxes, and polygon pushing will all be covered, and can be adapted to virtually any 3D package.

You can download the reference images here: http://d2d04grx5ahzvh.cloudfront.net/070_C4D_MP3/ref.rar.

Video 1

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

Video 2

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

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By

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Hi my name is Mountaga Kane, and I am a 17 year old digital artist living in Pennsylvania. When I first became interested in 3d, I decided to start out with Maxon's Cinema 4d because of its mid-range price, ease of use, and short render times. In my free time I like to watch cheesy B movies with friends, and help to moderate the 2d graphics forum: www.audigex.com.  

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  • asd

    nice one! and just 17 years old. where you got the reference?

    • M.kane
      Author

      Here is how I get most of my references for electronics. All you have to do is google “product name press release”. Most corporations will release a press release with images and text that they want reviewers using, the great thing for us is the images are extremely high quality tiffs most of the time.

      • http://www.jakedillard.com Jake

        Ok, ive looked for a good hour. I cant find ANYTHING about HQ or tif images. I searched exactly what you said..i found some low quality ones but no HQ ones…

      • M.kane
        Author

        Alright, I emailed Kaleb with a rar containing the reference images I found. So pretty soon they’ll be posted on this page for you to download (along with some additional images I looked at while modeling).

      • asd

        thx.
        part 2? XD

    • asd jr

      where you got your english skills? good luck finding a job in the real world and being taken seriously if you can’t even speak properly.

      • Magma

        Who’re you talking too? Quite obviously english is his first language. Also, speaking of proper english, it is not”where you got your english skills”, but “where did you get you’re english skills”. Christ, the hypocrisy in your post is amazing.

      • Eliza

        Magma: It’s not “where did you get you’re english skills,” it’s “Where did you get your English skills?” Or, more formally, “Where did you learn English?” Christ, the hypocrisy in your post in amazing.

      • http://www.ctrlaltdesigns.co.uk Tom Lynch

        The english is perfectly fine, I have no idea what you’re on about

  • CHAOS

    Thanks Man for c4d tut!

    Greetings from Germany!

  • Georgi “Vrednia” Zahariev

    17?!? wow kudos dude you are great I love people who know what they’re doing on such age…kudos on the tut too…keep it up

  • korn_sir

    His 17 years old as a “digital artist”. Meybe in usual life his mach older!)))
    (sorry for my eanglish)

    • M.kane
      Author

      I turned 18 on the 28th (finally!) and started my first year of college, so I guess you could say I am older now, thanks for watching. I want to see some great results from people.

  • Stefan Frank

    This was a good tutorial for modelling in Cinema4D. It was a well taught piece of work. But the final result needs some work on the materials, the light and the reflections to make it real. Nevertheless it was worth the watch!

  • Maya

    Hi

    I’m a beginner and stuck right at the start :-(

    Where to find the reference images 1back.jpg etc

    Grateful for any help…

  • Novesfora

    Where can I find the reference images?

  • C4D user

    Very nice tutorial!

    great job man!

  • piper

    this is very useful indeed, many thanks, just a lil detail, as it happens often , the ones who made the tutorials are used to work quickly, it’d be a bit more useful if the clicks were more slow, so we don’t have to stop the video every 3 secs. :S
    thanks again

  • Bob Smith

    Liked it. More C4d TUTS

  • http://www.expo-multimedia.com Robbie

    Excellent tutorials, good luck at college, Its nice to see a great artist at work – truly a master of the program. Waiting toi see what else you produce! NICE WORK!

  • Novesfora

    For those looking for the reference images I found this one (http://www.dapreview.net/i/newspost_images/zune_hdoff2.jpg) – it has the 4 views used in the tutorial and the same dimensions for cropping.

  • http://www.imcalledandy.com imcalledandy

    Just wondered where the reference images and zune logo can be downloaded from?

    • http://www.imcalledandy.com imcalledandy

      There’s usually a Project Files link – hopefully this will be made available soon – what a great tutorial – you have very good modelling knowledge. Cheers.

    • http://www.jakedillard.com Jake

      Mountaga said he emailed the CGTUTS editor the images, so he will put a download link with them here. Although, after reviewing the video twice, i noticed his images arent high quality, they are around 400 px. So if you look on google you can find a picture of all 4 views, then import that picture into PS and slice them up.

      • M.kane
        Author

        Hi Jake, the reference images are at the top of the page. My pictures are actually sliced from the image you were talking about (2100*1400) straight from Zune’s press release website: http://www.zune.net/en-us/press/pressresources.htm

        Also a great place for other views.

        Cheers

    • John Doe
  • http://folio.aeooon.com m

    Great series mate… reallly really helpful for beginners like me. First the studio setups, then modelling and texturing the model…. keep it up :)

  • Designer

    The tutorial is great. Except for the way some things are done. For example when making a polygoon off the black layer, you are doing way to many actions without explaining it. Same goes for the knife and loop selection on the back portion where those two middle parts are impossible to select. But other than that its great.

    • http://www.brandonbotha.net Brandon

      Have to agree with ‘Designer’ ‘s post (Designer – November 4, 2009 at 11:21 am) – the tutorial is good, however maybe a bit too quick, especially 29 minutes into DAY 01) – keep getting duplicated bevel lines and it’s just a mess.

  • Nico Hartto

    Very cool stuff, thanks. Although I don’t use Cinema4D it’s always nice to see new ways of doing small things that are software-agnostic.

  • Jan

    Hey man, learning a lot here! Thanks
    Although I can’t find the zune logo in the ref files?

    More C4D tutorials like this would be great!

  • Karim M.

    Great tutorial! Can’t wait for the second part! When is it coming?

    Greets

    Karim

  • Jan

    Hello, don’t know where to ask this, so i’ll do it here.
    I’m working on a macbook, and was wondering where the shortcuts are for moving around in C4D. The alt key does a spin, zooming i can do with my mousepad and two fingers. but i wasn’t able to find the other move, the little black cross on the right top of the window.
    Using 123 on top of my keyboard doesn’t work.
    Maybe i have to set them manually in my prefs?

    • M.kane
      Author

      Here are the shortcuts, holding down alt modifies your mouse buttons: Left mouse button now rotates, middle mouse button now pans and right mouse button zooms.

      Cheers

      • Jan

        ok thanks man! Btw I learned a lot of your modeling. In the beginning I had to do it step by step, but after a while i could guess how you were going to model the next step. And that’s the most important part of learning, not only copying the mouse clicks, but understanding why, and you’re approach of teaching was great to achieve this. One of the best C4D tuts around here for the moment. I hope the next part and other tutorials are going to follow soon!

        King regards
        Jan

      • M.kane
        Author

        Hey you’re welcome! I’m glad you are learning, always great to hear.

  • shane

    Hello,
    This is great. When will part 2 be arriving?

  • Max

    hi,
    i like your tutorial series a lot and they helped me a lot!
    Maybe you can make a series of modeling a car, rigging a character or sth. with xpresso!

    thx from Germany
    max

  • bob

    Hey!
    I really like ur tutorials!!!
    I hope we get part 2 soon and i hope you make some tuts about rigging characters or robots or make a transformer o.O

  • http://www.imcalledandy.com imcalledandy

    Cheers for the links to the reference images – when will the next part be online?

  • miscle

    Character, Robot, Transformer TUT pls!!!!!

  • Marius

    Yeah a Transformer tutorial would be great!!!!

  • Max

    Is there any possibility to download the files like psdtuts ?

    btw.: I would also enjoy a Transformers Tutorial !!

  • coverb

    Hi
    I really like the tutorials.
    When are they going to be continued ?
    Cheers

  • http://brockmedia.co.uk Lawrence

    Wow, this is a great tutorial, I wish I’d watched this 2 weeks ago, but hey. Just finished my first paid C4D modeling job and never realised what a serious tool it was, I thought there was a big difference in terms of quality from maya, that I used to use, but it’s really down to the user as I have learned. I’m buying some training before xmas but this is an awesome (and free) stop gap before then. Many thanks and warmest regards

    Lawrence

  • Pedro (Portugal)

    Hi. I can’t find the Zune.ai, which is used for model the logo.

    By the way, great tutorial ;)

  • Ichweissnicht

    oh man what ist that klick nois ervery time thats nerved me the wohl time

  • Kurtis blow

    Nice… just learn how to place your mic so we dont have to listen to you swallowing or smaking your gums! kinda grossed me out thruout the process of this lol

  • C4DUser123

    i don’t know what to do after Doing Invert

    • mnbw

      “i don’t know what to do after Doing Invert” me too!!!

      knife and invert and press what???

      please,,,,

  • http://monolithcreative.com jason

    i’m trying to follow as best i can but i get to the point where you optimize the screen and nothing happens. i’ve repeated this step maybe 5 times and nothing optimizes like it does in the tut. i’ll probably skip this step just so i can make some more progress. can anyone shed some light on what i may be doing wrong?

    thank you for putting this tut together. i am very interested in learning more modeling techniques for industrial design.

    • Nik

      What did you mean by ‘nothing happens’? In most cases, optimising the model doesn’t have any visual effect, but just cleans up your model, e.g welding together points which occupy the same space.

      Does that answer your question?

      • Nik

        Also, you need to be in point mode or polygon mode to optimise the model. Make sure you don’t have any points or polygons selected, otherwise it will only optimise your selection, instead of the entire object

  • http://hstrial-Jims3DAdverti.homestead.com/ Jimmy

    This guy sucks.. for one he sounds like he has a jaw breaker in his mouths. He goes way to fast for people trying to learn… this video is trash

  • yyy

    ..”invert” and press ……what?????

  • chatu

    where can I get the zune Logo. what is this archive, and where can i get to it. sorry i’m new to CGtuts+. help would be much appreciated :)

  • Marten

    Dear Author,

    I watched your tutorial and I really enjoyed it. Great way of modeling shapes like this.
    But now I came up with a question. After watching your tut I started modeling a HTC Rhyme.

    But how would you approach the curves back?

    I used these references:

    http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/media/tracyandmatts_blog/windowslivewriter/thehtcrhymeisannounced_df24/rhyme_3v_hourglass_2.jpg

    Thanks for any tips!

  • http://N/A Dnt Wrry About It

    Where is the illustrator file, not to be rude but you need to stop swallowing so damn loud while ur talking, it gets so annoying. -___-