Peter Jackson has stirred some controversy when he announced that he will be shooting The Hobbit at 48 frames per second (fps). Film purists are crying out loud in face of that “crime”. Stu Maschwitz – who I highly respect – has been a proponent of 24 fps for years and a clear, laid back opinion on the topic. With all due respect I have to argue …
Now that we have had a short glimpse on the basics in the first article lets move on to do something meaningful. So far it has been a purely academic discourse.
Usually, we want a script to do something with the objects we have in a scene. So the first step is to look at how we can access the scene file and go through selected objects and perform Cinema 4D commands on them.
Read more →
The Python integration into Cinema 4D is quite thorough. There are several places where you can use Python to script and Python is integrated as a first class citizen with the same level of access like Cinema 4D’s internal scripting language COFFEE as well as the C++ API.
There are different places in which you can use Python:
As you can see, there are plenty of options to use Python in Cinema 4D. For a start let us focus on using a Python script – ignoring the other possibilities for now.
I think it is pretty safe to say that Python has become the mostly widely adopted scripting language across many, many CG and VFX applications. A few years back almost every tool had its very own choice of scripting language. They pretty much still exist and from pure history they are still heavily used for existing tools or just for the fact that developers, TDs and artists rely on them because they know them well. Python increasingly replaces them across the board though.
Have some nice holidays!
Here is a small animation our team at Effects Garden did as season greetings. Enjoy!
I could not stop it and continued to tweak the car painting shaders of the Camaro. I put it in a studio environment with an analogue color to the paint job. The result is at least quite fitting for Halloween 
These images are straight out of the renderer (Cinema 4D with V-Ray) without post work.
One thing that many CG artists don’t get right at first is camera movement. It’s all too easy to do things with the camera that is not possible in the real world. Moves that defy inertia and gravity – or even space as it moves through obstacles.
One great way to learn about camera work is Hollywood Camera Work Master Class. They now also released an add-on Hot Moves for those trailer-worthy shots. The master class is a great resource on learning how to block out shots – especially character driven ones. Hot moves is more about those “wow” moments.
Luckily, all those moves are relatively easy to do in CG at no cost. Once you start to move in the physical realm it really gets expensive and complicated. So enjoy what you can do in CG Oh, and pay close attention to your frame rates, exposure and shutter speeds while you are at it. It is equally important to the way you move your camera to get a great result.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Hollywood Camera Work. I just happen to find their training videos a great resource that I like to recommend to you.
Hi! My name ist Martin Weber. I am a CG artist and director at Effects Garden.
Besides my strength as modeler and lighting TD I have a background as software developer which seemingly makes me a natural fit for everything related to scripting and pipeline development. I am a huge fan of automating tedious and error prone tasks. Oh, and I like to make things work ;)