Janine

By Tobias Deml - thegentle0@gmail.com

Click here for the original german version.

This is a modeling tutorial for Cinema 4D. I'm going to show you a quick way to create detailed greeble or nurnie type structures without a dedicated greeble plugin. The modeling in the picture above took about 15 minutes. I've found the technique by accident. But let's get on with the tutorial:

Requirements: You will need Cinema 4D and - yay - a plugin called CHESTNUTS <-- click link.

We're going to use the Chestnuts Selector. You can use this to make a random polygon selection from whichever polygons are currently selected. Doesn't sound that amazing but it's perfect for making Nurnies.

After installing Chestnuts, continue with...

Step 1
Create an object, anything you like, I'm using a plane. Make sure there are enough polygons to start with. The more powerful your computer is the more polygons it can deal with. Convert the object to a polygon object and select all the polygons (ctrl+A in the viewport). Load up the Chestnuts Selector.



So far so good. You'll find several parameters, some of which we're going to change as follows: Change the Select Mode to "Polygons" and Rate to 70% - meaning that only 70% of the currently selected polygons will remain selected.



The rest of the tutorial is quite intuitive. Extrude the remaining polygon selection slightly (shortcut "D"). Then do an inner extrude (shortcut "I").



Click the Chestnut Selector again, and another 30% of the polygons are deselected. Do another slight extrusion.



Press ctrl+A, click the Chestnut Selector, now we're back to having 70% of all polygons selected. Do a slight inner extrude on them (it's possible that the viewport starts slowing down now and you might be having trouble doing extrusions in realtime, in this case you'll have to type in the extrude value manually and press "Apply". Depends on your computer speed.)



Extrude the polygons, remove another 30% from the selection, and extrude again. Now your pc will probably start choking quite a bit. But stay calm, maybe take the opportunity to have a little coffee break.



Done! Go on and do a little happy dance and press the render button. My result looks like this:



I hope you've enjoyed the tutorial and hopefully it was understandable enough for everyone.

Tutorial by Tobias Deml - thegentle0@gmail.com

Attached Images

 

DCB

Thanks, that's sure to be a useful tutorial for lots of people, especially those modelling spacecraft and the like.

It's good to see translations of German tutorials for those of us that only speak English. I assume you translated this yourself Janine? There are a lot of other German tutorials that could do with translation if you are feeling bored.

__________________
"Vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins and eskimos."

juanje

Thanks, Janine, great tutorial!

Erik Heyninck

Thanks. It works fine with something I have been musing on for a long time now...mmm...I should work this out and then find a plugin creator who is interested in creating another free plug...

__________________
Loving the possible more than the real...

petrosh

Janine,
congrats for your works, are beautiful.

in this tutorial i followed you until


but my render is not like your last one


I tryed many lights parameters, but I think it's all about the material you applyed.
could you kindly give us just few hints about the last step?

many thanks
alex

Janine

Hi Alex, I didn't write the tutorial, I only translated it. There are many ways to achieve the look of the final image, try googling for "gi dome" or "ambient occlusion".

Janine

petrosh

ooopps,
ok thank you Janine, I'll try

alex

Vozzz

Registered, jsut to say thankyou I am so greatfull for this, been looking for something like this for so long.

Thank you Thankyou THANKYOU

DCB

The following images are showing up as dead for me -

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/1...reeble10kd.png
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/4...reeble27qh.png
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/4...reeble37od.png
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1...reeble42lp.png

Tried it in both IE and Firefox.

__________________
"Vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins and eskimos."