Tutorial Details
- Software/Plugins Used: Cinema4D, After Effects, Xplode 1.07
- Difficulty: Beginner/Intermediate
- Completion Time: 1-2 hrs
- Scene File : C4DProjectFile.zip
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
In today’s tutorial, David Kwasnik takes us through the process of creating an amazing Cgtuts+ ident, using the Xplode plugin for C4D. This plugin allows you to very easily and quickly cut any object up into many different pieces, and in the following video David shows us how to art-direct the size of these pieces to get the required result. This process, combined with MoDynamics and Mograph 2.0, is used to create an impressive shattering effect. It’s then over to AE for some optional compositing work!
Video 1 – C4D
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Video 2 – AE
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
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Looks great, thank you! Going to watch immediately.
this tutorial may look cool, but if you spend about 5 minutes with the plugin yourself youll find that this video isnt neccesary.
you can make a cooler looking xplode explode by playing with the settings yourself, unless you wanna copy this guys video, i suggest playing with it yourself
youll find that you can make way cooler things than this video
2 thumbs down
Hi David,
Thanks for your comment – I’m sorry that you don’t rate this as a particularly good tutorial. My thought process when commissioning it was that the end result was something that might inspire users new to C4D to put together a full ident project, and in showing how the preview video was created the tutorial would also help to explain the workflow involved.
I do agree that it is a fairly typical motion-graphics concept, however as I do try to ensure that we cover as many topics as possible on the site, I considered that it was one worthy of posting, and I personally thought that the final result was excellent.
If you have any suggestions yourself as to concepts/workflows you’d like to see covered, in C4D or any other app, just leave them in a reply below and I’ll see what I can do
Cheers,
Matt
matt,
wow i didnt realize i was such an A-hole in that last message. lol. i really dont know what i was thinking, i guess i thought that it would be more advanced becuase i already had the plugin and knew the basics.
it is a good tutorial to learn the plugin for those who dont know the plugin. but no worries, ill find another, thanks for the time you put into this one,
David
No problem David, thanks for coming back and replying – a lot of people might not have!
Matt
i don’t mean to rain on your parade but i’ve seen this covered on just about every c4d tut site…i guess i’ll have to actually watch this one to see what’s considered “new”.
12 euros? pariah studios has xbreaker for free…and he has several tuts on how to break stuff into pieces.
http://www.pariahstudios.co.uk/products/
By “new” they mean “new if you just heard that there were explode plugins for C4D”…
I believe I can do this in AE alone and don’t see the need to use C4D in here that much. Still a good tutorial though!
Hey e11world,
how would you achieve this effect with only AE??, the Shatter plugin will work but it wont look as dynamic as a 3D render
David.
As we can see here – this is beginner tutorial, and since there is no other tutorials like this one on CG tuts, then why not?
I can’t say anything about the tutorial as I don’t have enough time to watch it, but final effect looks good.
Nice job David.
Well, this one´s pretty useless. We´ve seen tuts like this one too many already. Don´t you guys at cg.tutsplus filter out some of the bad stuff? In order to keep this site respected, stuff like this shouldn´t be aired.
Thanks though for a good site and concept.
/ N
Hi Nicke,
Thanks for the comment, and I’m sorry you didn’t like this tutorial. I’ve explained my thought-process above however as Rhino D’Octo has pointed out, this is the first tutorial of this type we’ve published here at Cgtuts+. We do however listen to the comments posted by our readers and they do very much have an impact on future commissions! I think you’ll love what we have coming up
Thanks again,
Matt
http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2009/12/shatter-and-destruction/
ok… here’s another FREE plugin/tut.
Ok…..
But are you able to control the size of the pieces in specific areas that you’d want??? and btw that plugin is really buggy and it doesnt always give you right resuly. Sometime some of the objects that you break up doesn’t come correctly, some of the pieces are missing.
You can… if you want.
Play with it for 20minutes or so…
and you’ll catch a way of doing it like you want.
Rob Redman is the other cool plugin..
And you can always do it urself like in fxphd tut.
So yes… pls no fee plugins where there’s ton of them free…
Or a tut that we all know even if ur n00b u’ll already see it @pariah or @GSG /spec for C4D/
I prefer more tuts that are going somewhere… if you want Basic Quick Tips – OK.
But at least name it Quick Tips
Hi Bran,
Thanks for your comments, they’ll be taken on board for future submissions.
Cheers,
Matt
Matt,
Try to pull out more tuts for C4D that are covering the modules in it…
I mean C4D is waaay more than 3ds max.
MoGraph, MoDynamics, Bones etc….
it’s insane!
I’ll contact you soon maybe.
I have some shorts that if you like..
I’ll make some tuts for them how to do it.
Peace!
bran
Thanks Bran, please feel free
Matt
RIP OFF!
Agreed with Bran – Cinema 4D has very good modules.
Almost everything can be done without any plugins, but that not means Cgtuts+ don’t need tutorials about plugins, even if they are not free ones.
I would love to see more C4D stuff here on CG Tuts! There are a ton of sites out there with tutorials about C4D, but it seems like they are all the same… It would be great to have more “inspiring” tutorials that not only show you how to use certain features in C4D, but also deal with styles, lighting, moods, materials etc..
These quick tip tutorials should be more of an inspiration to all of us rather then an actual project.
I must thank you for everything so far, and I look forward to seeing more Tuts!
Oh man, do the tutorial again, this time actually explain whats really going on.
Hi,
my cube is not breaking when i make it rigid body and press play for the animation… everything goes fine until the collision, then nothing happens…. no break of the cube. I can prepare the scene, the create the pieces using the xplode plugin, but when i add the rigid body the pieces downst move from its location.
I downloaded the C4C scene from above, and when i hit play, the balls collide with the cube but it doesn´t breaks in piecest.
any help?
Thanks
Did anyone get this to actually break apart? I have it and it cuts the geometry but it doesn’t break apart even after adding the “create rigid body” tag. I’ve tried the collider tag etc. Nothing seems to actually make the pieces come apart. I ALSO did a test in C4D 11.5 and everything works fine. But in C4D12 the geometry doesn’t break apart AT ALL. Anyone else having this issue? Any tips on how to get this working like it did in C4D11.5? Thanks.
Very slick tutorial. As a new C4D user I’ll definitely be following this one.
I love this tut! Just as a tip for people, to make it easier to align with the floor, i use the drop to floor plugin. I found it out at the start of this tut here: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/maxon-cinema-4d/lighting-and-shadows-in-cinema-4d-a-thorough-overview/
Thanks for the tip Hameed!
I couldn’t get it to work either rayzrsharp in cinema 4d 12 until I noticed in the fracture object there is a collision section in the rigid body tag just set it to apply tag to children and it should work for you.
I find this tutorial interesting…i look forward to seeing more tutorials from you
I thought it was an excellent tutorial. Well paced and explained. Why people complain I have no idea. Really WHY!!!.. Anyway Great Job. I appreciate you hard work and time. Thanks.
hmmm, still having problems with this, im using R12 and i set everything up correctly yet when the sphere collides the cube, it just bounces off. Help?
I have the same problem as FuZee. Any ideas? Seems like R12 has changed. I have mograph.
i found a solution (r13) in the fracture obj under dynamic body>colision>indicidual elements>(top level, second level, all) made it work, only need to make sure it’s not off
i found this after i read to make sure the inherit tag was to apply tag to children from ryan.
Hi,
I am trying to “explode” (based on your tutorial) a human geometry model exported from Poser as an .obj and .dxf, but when I hit the “scatter” button in Xplode, the resulting pieces come out weird; some parts of the geometry are missing or it seems to have “grown” extra chunks from the geometry. What adjustments or refining I should apply to my dxf. or .obj geometry before trying out the Xplode method?
Thanks!