NOTE: Some images might be NSFW

Pierre Bourgeot – Vlassic

Balázs Pápay – Guardian

Albert Feliu Gomis – Faves – Demon Abomination

Pablo Vicentin – The Hellmaker

Cheong Hoe Yi – BoB Alien

Cheong Hoe Yi – Gzhopper-Man

Cheong Hoe Yi – Roundeye Dragon

Cheong Hoe Yi – Wolf-man

Mariano Steiner – Boo!!

Mariano Steiner – Skinny Alien

Xiaoyu Wang – Pigsy

Damien Canderle – Gremlins

Damien Canderle – Le Neunoeil

Damien Canderle – We Are Not Alone 2

Anto Juricic – Frankenstein

Pawe; Brudniak – Fortress of Brugorth

Balazs Kiss – Goblin

Balazs Kiss – Orc

Marcin Klicki – Glutojad

Marcin Klicki – Jezyczek

Ian Joyner – Hellgate: Fiend Savage

Michal Suchanek – Mountain Patrol

NSFW Dmitry Kuzznetsov – Mongrel Girl

Jonathan Clark – Red Skull In His Trophy Room

NSFW Jonathan Roméo – Darkness Sulfure

Jeff Miller – Brute Chieftain #2

Alessandro Baldasseroni – Chaos

Sven Juhlin – Hammerhead

Sven Juhlin – Yeti

Sven Juhlin – Goblin

Sven Juhlin – Red Skull/a>

Eoin Rogan – Mean Machine Angel Portrait

Ahmed AL Barazengi – The Gangster

Ryan Dunne – Revenge of the Octopus

Ryan Dunne – Adaptation of the Malesquis

Ryan Dunne – Tako no Fukushuu / Revenge of the Octopus

John Kearney – The Fallen

John Kearney – Hunt of the Malesquis

Meats Meier – Praying Devil, Meats

Fred Bastide – The Chase

Fred Bastide – My Uncle Cthulhu

Marc Tan – The Vampyre

Philip Herman – Corak the Hunter

Chris Nichols – Cthulhu

Chris Nichols – Beast of Burden

Chris Nichols – The Gunslinger

Jason Findley – Crabman Shot01

Harsh Borah – Alien Queen

Guohua Xing – Dark Dancer

Guohua Xing – Orc Warrior

Guohua Xing – S-1214

Carl-Mikael Lagnecrantz – A Storm is Coming…

Carl-Mikael Lagnecrantz – Ring Of Many Connections, Rivendale

Sebastien Sonet – Mutant

Sebastien Sonet – Tortured Souls

Jan Jinda – Conall, The Werewolf

Pascal Raimbault – Wired Prisoners

Damir G. Martin – DinoMonsters, New Breed of Superheroes

Damir G. Martin – Biggest Smile in Galaxy

Marco Menco – Labirinth : the Homeless Minotaur

Ruben Darío Karamañites Arango – Tarantula Sorcerer

Krishnamurti Costa – Vampire

Krishnamurti Costa – Pumpkinhead – Stan Winston Tribute HMC 16

Krishnamurti Costa – Bio-Mechanic Allegory

Per Haagensen – The Avatar of the Great Enemy

Per Haagensen – High-Captain of Angband

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This is Day 2 in a series. Go to Day 1.

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

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This is Day 2 in a series. Go to Day 1.

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Topics covered in this tutorial include:

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Okay, full disclosure; I’m not saying that what I’m showing here is going to work for everyone. This is just how I’ve done design and dealt with clients during the years that I’ve been doing this, and I can only hope that you take away something when it comes to moving on and looking to do this as a career. Remember that this is just an example and a guideline on the “hows and whys” of project workflow and management, and not the final word. And if any of you seasoned pros out there have any of your own tips to add, please be sure to share them in the comments so the greenhorns can learn something!

This is Day 2 in a series. Go to Day 1.

Final Effect Preview

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

This is Day 2 in a series. Go to Day 1.

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This tutorial is Day 4 in a series – Go to Day 1, Day 2, or Day 3.

Now in the fourth part of our mammoth series, we will follow Laurens as he completes the high poly mesh of his hot rod, all the while making sure that is will be suitable for baking onto a low poly realtime model.

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

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

This tutorial is Day 4 in a series – Go to Day 1, Day 2, or Day 3.

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Final Effect Preview

Step 1

Open the NAMETHISFILE.c4d file provided. It contains a track link already modeled.

Step 2

Drop the Link into a Mograph Cloner object (Mograph menu>Cloner Object). Set the Count to 60, the Mode to Linear, and the Displacement to 24m on the Z axis.

Step 3

Create a Bezier Spline object (Objects>Create Spline>Bezier), and draw out a spline similar to the one below. This spline was drawn from the side view (Press F3) and is roughly 600m long by 100m high. Be sure to click and drag when you create the new points to give smoother curves.

Step 4

Insert a Spline Wrap object (Mograph>Spline Wrap), and group it with the Cloner object by selecting both objects in the objects manager and pressing alt+G.

Step 5

Click on the Spilne Wrap object in the Object Manager. In the Attribute Manager, set the Banking to 270 degrees, the Mode to Keep Length, the Axis to Z+ and drag the spline from step 3 into the Spline box.

Step 6

Depending on the total length of your spline, the links will either have a gap or an overlap (overlap is pictured in this image).

Step 7

To remedy this, adjust the number of Count in the cloner object until you reach the closest fit without overlapping. From there, adjust the Z value to fine tune. In this case, the Count was reduced from 60 to 58, and the Z value was increased from 24 to 24.1. This closed the tiny gap that was left over

Step 8

If all is well, your track should look something like this. Now on to the wheels and rigging.

Step 9

Create a cylinder (Objects>Primitives>Cylinder).

Step 10

Set the Orientation of the cylinder to X+, the Rotation segments to 50, and the Height to 20.

Step 11

Move the cylinder into place and adjust the Radius setting so that it fits between your top and bottom tracks. In this example, the cylinder was reduced from 50m to 48m.

Step 12

Right click the cylinder in the object manager and select Make Editable (alternatively, press C with the object selected). Then, select the Phong tag and set the Phong Angle in the Attribute Manager to 22 degrees

Step 13

Go into Polygon mode and select the Knife tool (Structure>Knife). Set the Mode in the Attribute Manager to Loop, and make two cuts as shown below.

Step 14

Use the Loop Selection tool (Selection>Loop Selection) and select the ring of polygons in between the two cuts.

Step 15

Extrude the polygons selected (Structure>Extrude).

Step 16

Go into Point mode, select the center point of the wheel, and move it back by 10m. Hold shift once it’s moving to snap the movements to increments of 10.

Step 17

Create a Tube (Objects>Primitive>Tube). In the Attribute Manager, Set the Inner Radius to 10m, the Outer Radius to 15m, and the Height to 5m.

Step 18

With the Tube selected, use the Transfer tool (Functions>Transfer), and hover the cursor over the wheel. A line will appear between the Tube and the wheel. Click and the Tube will be transferred to the surface of the wheel.

Step 19

Create a Cylinder. Set the Height to 8m, the Radius to 2m, and the Orientation to Z+. Name this Cylinder “Bolts”.

Step 20

Insert a Cloner Object (Mograph>Cloner) while holding alt, and the Cylinder will be placed under the Cloner in the Object Manager. Set the Mode to Radial, the Radius to 12m , and the Count to 6. Name this Cloner object “Bolts Cloner”.

Step 21

As with the previous step, select the Cloner object and use the Transfer tool (Fucntions>Transfer) to center the array on the wheel by clicking on it, the rotate the Cloner by 90 degrees so it will line up with the wheel.

Step 22

Place the Tube under the “Wheel” object in the Object Manager. Then, select the Cloner for the Bolts and the Wheel object, and group them (Right click>Group or Alt+g). Name this group Wheel.1.

Step 23

Use the copy paste function to copy the wheel out. Once you have four wheels, select them all and duplicate them. Move this new group behind them and offset it as shown below.

Step 24

To build the gear, create a Cogwheel Spline (Objects>Spline Primitives>Cogwheel).

Step 25

Scale the Cogwheel Spline to fit in the path you’ve created, then in the Attribute Manager, adjust the number of Teeth to fit your path. In this case, the magic number was 13. The Inner Radius in this image is 45.6, while the Outer Radius is 55.8.

Step 26

Drop the spline into an Extrude Nurbs object (Objects>Nurbs>Extrude Nurbs) and set the Movement to 8m. Be sure to zero out the other Movement boxes. Position the gear to fit inside the stirrups.

Step 27

Select the Wheels, the Gear, the Spline, and the group that contains the Splinewrap and Cloner and group them all together. A good name for this group would be “Track”.

Step 28

Select all 8 wheels. right click them, and add a Roll-It tag. Roll-It is a free plugin and can be downloaded from the link at the top of this post. We’ll use Roll-It to automate the rolling of the wheels and gears, which will in turn deform the track.

Step 29

Under the Roll-It tag, manually set the Radius to that of your wheel. In this case, the wheel was 96m in diameter, so the Radius is set to 48. The Calculate function should not be used as the tag is on a null object and will always result in a radius of 0

Step 30

Add a Roll-It tag to the Cogwheel spline (not the Extrude Nurbs object). The Radius value for the gear is very tricky, and will be tweaked later on in the tutorial.

Step 31

Right click on the Spline Wrap object and add an XPresso tag. XPresso is Cinema 4d’s node based programming environment. It’s proven to be a valuable time saver and today we’ll build a very simple script.

Step 32

Double click on the Xpresso tag and you’ll be greeted with a grid. From the Object Manager, drag and drop the Spline Wrap object and the front-most wheel into the Xpresso window as seen below.

Step 33

Right click on the small red box on the wheel (this is the output box for your wheel) and add a Rotation.P port (Coordinates>Rotation>Rotation.P). Now right click on the blue box (input) on the Spline Wrap, and add an Offset port. (Object Properties>Offset). The Offset value controls the position of the track in its journey around the spline.

Step 34

Right Click anywhere in the XPresso grid and add a Math node (New Node>XPresso>Calculate>Math). Position it between the Wheel and the Spline Wrap node, and drag wires between the inputs/outputs as illustrated in the image. The output of the Wheel’s rotation is “carried” over to the Math node, which will hand it off to the Spline Wrap.

Step 35

The problem now is that the output of the Wheel’s rotation doesn’t translate directly to the Offset setting for the Spline Wrap. It has to be geared down, so to speak. Click on the Math node, and look over to the Attribute Window (below the Object Manager). Set the Function to Divide, and set the Input to 30. This is a number you will have to tweak, as it is affected by the length of the spline, the diameter of the wheels and so on.

Final Tweaks

The last step is to tweak the values of the Math Node to ensure that the track sticks to the ground and doesn’t slide forward or backward when moving the parent object. The value of the Radius in the gear’s Roll-It tag should also be tweaked to match up with the track. In this case, it was reduced from 55m to 51.5m to match the speed of the track.

All that is needed to animate the track and roll the wheels is to move the parent object (named Track in this tutorial) forward or back. This group can also be dropped into a larger parent object such as a tank and will animate automatically

Further options

An optional addition to the rig is to add a Morph Tag (Right click>Character Tags>Morph) to the Track Spline, and to set a Morph Target of the spline straightened out as shown below. This is achieved by simply moving one of the points on the spline upward. On larger vehicles such as tanks, the heavy metal tracks straighten out like this when the vehicle accelerates or suddenly hits the brakes. The Morph Target value can be keyframed to work this into your animations. This step is mostly unnecessary for smaller, rubber tracked vehicles such as robots.

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Step 1

Ok, first write down your text, choose your type ( mine is “ Neona “ ), and convert it to an editable spline.

Step 2

Now erase the vertices and segments you need so it only a single line remains.

Step 3

Do the same to all the letters of the sign.

Step 4

Now bend each line terminal backward. You may want to add some vertices to give you more control.

Step 5

You should have something that looks similar to this.

Step 6

Now we have to give the lines a “tube” appearance. You can do this 2 ways: You can create a circular shape and loft it with the lines as your path, or your you can simply select the letters/ lines ( one at a time ), go the modifiers panel, and in the rendering tab select “show in viewport” and “ show in renderer”. Much easier.

Step 7

Give it a thickness of 0.3. Don’t worry, it has to be thin. I will explain why later. Now, change the sides to a number you think you think looks smooth enough. Be careful though, as more sides will increase the render times significantly.
.

Step 8

Do the same with all the other letters, and you’re almost done with the modeling part.

Step 9

Now duplicate all of the letters 2 times. Each copy will work as a layer of the neon light, and each layer will have its own material. This will create a more believable final effect.

Step 10

The middle section has to be thicker than the left section, and the right thicker than the middle section. This will work like an onion skin. Give the middle section a thickness of 0.7, and the right section a thickness of 0.9.

Step 11

Now lets add the materials. We’ll start with the thinner section. We have to create a light material because this section will be our main light source.

Step 12

In the materials panel, simply select “self illumination” and choose a bright color. I’ll choose blue ( R:0 G:188 B:255 ).
For the ambient color choose the same color but a bit darker ( mine is R: 0 G:106 B:251 ).

Step 13

Now click on the standard button, select “VRayMtlWrapper”, and keep the old material as a submaterial. After this, increase the “generate GI value to 1.3”. We do this is because it’s easier to control the light generated from the geometry without interfering with the self illumination color in the event that the material needs some tweaks. If you want to have more interferance of the light in the scene just increase the “Generate GI” value.

Step 14

Now that the Main Light material is created, let’s create the material that will be the most responsible for the color of the neon, as well as its round appearance. Simply copy the material you just created, then change its colors to a more saturated tone. Mine is (R:0, G:141, B:255) for self illumination, and the ambient color is (R:0, G:24, B:255).

Step 15

Now change the Self Illumination Opacity to around 35 so the Main light can stand out from inside the geometry that will have the material you just created.

Step 16

Now to create a glass material so for nice reflections. First get a Vray material, and change the diffuse color to black, the reflections to white, and check “fresnel reflections” but change the value to 0.2. This is done so the reflections are more noticeable and realistic. Change the refraction color to a light gray color (R:161, G:161, B:161) and leave the rest at the defaults.

Step 17

Add a falloff map to the refraction slot, and change the black color to a dark blue color if you prefer ( R:14, G:0, B:64). This will darken the edges of the glass giving it a more rounded effect.

Step 18

Now for the final material. Get a new Vray material, name it “background”, change the diffuse color to a dark gray (R:44, G:44, B:44), and the reflection channel to ( R:17, G:17, B:17). Back in the “MtlWrapper” properties, check “matte surface”, “shadows”, and “Affect alpha”. Change the “Alpha Contribution” to -1.0 so it will render the alpha channel properly. We do this so you can insert the neons into another background in photoshop and do any kind of tweaks you like to the image individually.

Step 19

Now select the thinnest neons and apply the light material (first material), do the same to the middle neons with the second material, and the thickest neons with the 3rd material.

Step 20

Place the tubes inside of each other like so.

Step 21

Finally, lets create the lights and scene for the render. First create a plain box (this will be the wall), place it in the back of the neons, and apply it the “background” material to it.

Step 22

Next, create a Vray light and place it on top of the neons. Under its properties, give it a value of 1.

Step 23

Duplicate the light three times. This is so the neons will have something to reflect.

Step 24

Hit F10 to go to the render set up. I used the following settings for my render.
Note: Do not use GI environment because it will illuminate the scene, and your environment needs to be dark for the neons to stand out.

These are the main settings i used. Nothing special about it, and the rest is left at default. Use your own tweaks as you like.

Step 25

Choose the best view, hit Render, and you should come up with something like this.

Step 26

Save your image and be happy;) I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

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1 The Plus Project

As you may know we have some pretty big plans for these Tuts+ sites. While today they are humble little tutorial blogs, we’ve thought for some time that it would be cool to build an entire platform for education. We’re going to call that platform Plus. You’ll know Plus content as our premium content, but no longer.
Our premium content is now ‘Premium’ (go figure!) and Plus is the brand for the educational platform we’re building, which, just like Psdtuts+, will be completely free for the most part.

With Tuts+ well established now, we’ve finally begun work on the project! We’ve acquired the domain Plus.org which will be the home of the new platform (yay for our first four letter domain!) We’ve also brought over our resident code genius Ryan Allen (who built our ActiveDen platform all by himself back in 2006) to team up with Tuts+ developer extraordinaire Fred Wu and kick ass front-end guru Derek Herman. And Skellie and I have been busy spec’ing out the plans for the new site, and it’s pretty, damn cool if I do say so myself!

Right now the Tuts+ sites are fairly passive, but we’d like to get the whole community involved in writing, teaching, answering questions and generally learning. The new Plus.org platform promises to incorporate all that plus some nifty ideas we’ve taken from gaming to come together into a social education platform.

It’s going to take a long time and we’re going to roll it all out in pieces over the next 2 years. We’re super excited about it all, and I hope I’ll have more updates in the coming months!

2 Creative Sessions and Mobiletuts+

While Plus.org will take a long time, we do have some new goodies coming much sooner including Creative Sessions which is being built now, and also Mobiletuts+ which will be all about mobile development!

3 Server Update

About a week and a half ago we had some major problems with our servers. I’m happy to say that we’ve now completely resolved these issues by moving hosts and reengineering our hosting setup completely from scratch. The new setup is much quicker and has a much greater capacity for growth, so fingers crossed, that will be the last server outage for a long time to come!

4 The Redesign

The new theme has a few neat features you may want to check out including:

• Basix!
  While Tuts+ has always been known for intermediate to advanced level content, we’ve been thinking it’d be good to separate out tutorials and articles better suited to people just getting started. So we’ve created the Basix tag for quick browsing. You’ll find it in the top menu, and expect to see more Basix content soon as we beef up our library of novice-friendly content.
• Easy access to Videos, Tips and Premium Posts
  We’ve also started tagging videos, tips and Premium membership posts so that along with Basix content you can quickly find what you’re after. We’re generally going to be working to clean up our category/tagging across the network in the coming months to get it more standardized.
• Tutorial Details on Posts
  We’re also going to start standardizing all tutorials to have a "Tutorial Details" section at the top with difficulty and other pertinent details. Eventually we’ll get all the archives updated … but with over 2000 tutorials, that will take a while!
• Bigger, more readable content area
  We’ve expanded the site to be optimized for bigger 1280px wide screens, with a bit of JavaScript to resize for smaller resolutions. This has given us the space to clean up the content area to be a bit bigger and more readable generally.
• Latest Creattica content for inspiration
  We’ve also started porting over the latest Creattica content into our sidebars. There’s actually a redesign of Creattica coming in the next few weeks and we’ll be expanding the gallery to cover even more types of inspiration. The new sidebar widget will give even more exposure to those talented creatives on Creattica!
• General UI Improvements
  Most of the improvements on the new design are small, subtle improvements such as a reduction in the number of clicks needed to browse categories, a clearer search field, faster loading pages and generally cleaner, more optimized code.

One change that we have also made is to remove the community link feed. Over the years this was a great way to get exposure to community links, but unfortunately was also home to a lot of spam. So with this iteration we’ve left it behind.

Also at the moment sites with Flickr groups don’t have it showing, but don’t worry that’ll be back. There’s just a problem with our Flickr plugin at the moment!!

There are still some more tweaks to do to the new design and a lot of post formatting to do to get our archives matching up with the new theme. But for all intents and purposes the new theme is now alive and well! Enjoy!

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