The Perfect Introduction

This training offers a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to CINEMA 4D basics, which lets you quickly and easily get started with CINEMA 4D. Whether you're an absolute beginner in the field of 3D visualization and animation or if you're switching from another product to CINEMA 4D, the MAXON Certified BASIC Training lets you get up and running in a short time and will show you how to use CINEMA 4D effectively to bring your imagination to life.

All workflows and techniques needed to get started with CINEMA 4D are discussed and demonstrated in this course. Instructional content is based on extensive teaching experience by numerous CINEMA 4D trainers and recognized authors.

Prerequisite: Previous 3D experience is helpful but not required.
Possible certification: MAXON BASIC CERTIFICATE

Content (excerpt):

• Introduction to working in 3D space
• Import and Export functions
• Program layout and navigation
• Project preparation and basic settings
• Basic parametric shapes (primitives)
• Working with polygonal objects, Spline and NURBS objects
• Modeling tools and modeling objects
• HyperNURBS Modeling
• Deformers
• Simple particles and modifiers
• The material system
• How to use shaders
• Scene objects
• Lighting
• Creating environments
• Camera simulation
• Animation basics
• Render settings
• Optimizing scenes and settings

Special CINEMA 4D functions for professional use in complex subject matter and branch-specific workflows

MAXON Certified QUICKSTART Training offers a selection of courses that teach enhanced skills in specific fields of use in a short period of time. If you already have good basic CINEMA 4D skills and want to qualify yourself in a specific field of use or expand your existing knowledge, MAXON Certified QUICKSTART Training is the ideal solution. In a 3-day intensive training you will learn how to use the software more efficiently and be introduced to techniques and workflows that will help you master your production pipeline with more ease and faster than before.

MAXON Certified QUICKSTART Trainings may not make an artist of you but they give you exceptionally solid and practice oriented basic know-how that give you an excellent start on your way to becoming an artist! MAXON is constantly adapting and expanding this program to ensure that new features are integrated as quickly as possible and that the needs of course participants are met.

Only MAXON ATC partners and MAXON Certified Instructors - who have taken special exams to demonstrate their proficiency as instructors for a specific subject matter - will be selected by MAXON to instruct in these areas. Go to the ATC partner information page to find the right ATC partner for you.

Structure and Pre-requisites:

MAXON Certified QUICKSTART Training courses are very practice oriented. Following a theoretical introduction, course participants work independently on small but challenging projects and are accompanied on an individual basis by their Certified Instructor.

Because the course content is very challenging and comprehensive, solid basic CINEMA 4D skills are required to participate in this training.

This QUICKSTART Training covers CINEMA 4D's Dynamics functions. Dynamics are used for various purposes in almost all aspects of 3D animation. Since these functions are used to simulate physical coherences, there is almost no limit to the way in which these settings can be combined! Whether you want to create realistic-looking grass for an architectural visualization or dynamic effects for motion graphics projects, simulations offer a wide range of possibilities for achieving these goals and for simplifying your workflow.

The high degree of flexibility requires the user to select the right tools and settings. The wide range of possible settings often proves to be overwhelming for those without the necessary know-how.

During training, course participants will be introduced to a wide variety of practical exercises on how to use and adjust simulation functions in CINEMA 4D for several areas of application.

Pre-requisites: Skilled CINEMA 4D user. Solid polygon modeling and animation skills.

Possible certification: MAXON Certificate SIMULATION

Contents:

• Rigid and Soft Bodies
• Assigning Dynamics properties
• Collision settings and properties
• Hierarchies and collision types
• Scene density and mass for objects
• Soft Body simulation
• Caching Dynamics scenes
• Mixing keyframe animation and dynamic simulation
• Connector types and their use
• Placement and orientation of connectors
• Linking connectors
• Link types and center of gravity
• Motor types and their uses
• Force and counterforce
• Gravity and aerodynamics
• Basic Dynamics settings
• Time scale and bullet time effect
• Expert settings
• Cloth simulation
• Correct Topology
• Assigning Simulation tags
• Adaptation to a simple Character
• Dress - o - Matic
• Polygonal objects vs. Generators
• Correction
• Cloth properties
• Use of Vertex maps
• CNURBS generator
• Hair simulation
• Creating and placing hair
• Various methods of creating hair
• Hair IK
• Hair material and rendering
• Useful light setups for hair
• Basic settings for the Hair renderer
• Special features of the Physical Renderer
• Creating feathers and fur

This QUICKSTART Training is designed to meet the needs of product visualization and construction specialists. Course participants are shown which steps are involved in creating professional product visualizations and which techniques can be used to easily achieve impressive results with the source material.

These courses were developed by experienced product visualization and modeling specialists. MAXON placed particular emphasis on solid project structure and a representative selection of modeling techniques for the development of these courses, which will help course participants avoid common mistakes made by 3D professionals.

Course participants will be taught the most important techniques and workflows and will learn how to implement CINEMA 4D from the blueprint through to final rendering.

Skillful texturing, the right lighting and purpose-oriented rendering will be thoroughly explained and demonstrated, which will quickly get course participants up and running.

Pre-requisites: Good CINEMA 4D skills. Solid polygonal modeling and animation skills.
Possible certification: MAXON Certificate PRODUCT DESIGN & ENGINEERING

Content:

• Basic project settings
• Units, scaling scenes, view clipping
• File import (e.g., AI, DWG, STL)
• Modeling using 2D CAD files / sketches / photos
• Placing reference images in the Viewport to assist in modeling
• General modeling functions
• Object axes
• Workplanes, guides and snapping
• Modeling axes
• Polygonal modeling
• Polygon and SDS modeling (HyperNURBS)
• Various techniques for modeling edges, holes and mass
• Various techniques for avoiding common CAD import errors
• Spline modeling
• NURBS objects
• Generators and Deformers
• Instances
• Connecting objects
• Symmetry function
• Boolean operations
• Cloner objects and important Effectors
• Shading
• Phong tag / Normals tag
• Break Phong shading
• Important tools for precise modeling
• Using the Measure & Construction tool
• Optimizing the scene
• Spline intermediate points – how they affect topology
• Parametric object segments
• Perfect sphere
• Working with level of detail (LOD)
• Combine Project function
• Finding and deleting invisible CAD import elements
• Effective use of hierarchies
• How to use layers
• Cleaning up and organizing Projects
• Materials, textures and channel shaders
• Project types
• Editing UV maps
• Using bitmaps (.psd, .tif)
• Shaders (e.g., Fresnel, Noise, Ambient Occlusion, SSS, Brick)
• Analysis of reference images
• Properties of real materials
• Creating metals, plastics, glass and wood
• Lighting situations and illumination
• 3-point lighting
• Light dome
• Simulation of Global Illumination
• Cavities
• Advanced reflections with and without gradients
• Lighting tools
• Ambient Occlusion
• Global Illumination, indirect illumination
• HDRI images for reflection and illumination
• Animation
• Constraints
• Introduction to XPresso
• Object, point and parameter dependencies
• Set Driver and Set Driven functions
• Composition and cropping
• Angle and growth
• Proper use of Boole objects
• Exploded view, various techniques
• Effectors
• Pose Morph
• Manual Animation
• How to hide and unhide objects
• Animating the Display tag
• Visible in Editor/Renderer
• Rendering  
• Render tag
• Background compositing
• Object channels
• Basic antialiasing settings
• Limit antialiasing
• Important antialiasing modes and settings
• Output for compositing
• Multi-Pass rendering
• Sketch and Toon

CINEMA 4D offers a comprehensive set of functions for professional use right out of the box. CINEMA 4D's functions can be enhanced, automated and controlled by using custom scripts and Expressions.

The use of scripts is almost a must when creating simulations or motion design projects in order to get the most out of CINEMA 4D.

However, for users who are not inclined towards math, these powerful tools can prove to be difficult to surmount. The Script & Expressions course is not designed to be a programming course: the goal of this training is to offer a solid introduction and to remove the fear of creating custom scripts and enhancements.

This course teaches how to use CINEMA 4D's scripting and XPresso features. In addition, basic vector and matrix mathematics are taught, which can be used to create custom Expressions and scripts that make modeling and animation much more efficient and take advantage of the full power CINEMA 4D has to offer.

Pre-requisites: Solid basic CINEMA 4D skills, basic understanding of vectors and matrices
Possible certification: MAXON Certificate SCRIPTING & EXPRESSIONS

Contents:

• Standard Expressions
• Using vectors and matrices
• Creating parameter links
• XPresso Editor and XPresso­ nodes
• Presets and menus
• XPresso Manager and XPresso­ pool
• XGroup functions
• Navigating the display area
• Object and RangeMapper nodes
• Display options for connections
• Arranging nodes in the editor
• Ports and their function
• Assigning an Object node via drag & drop
• Different file types (Boole, Integer, Float/Real, String, Vector, etc.)
• Adapter nodes
• Expression­ priority
• Managing and using User Data
• Basic matrix construction
• Object matrix structure
• Local and global matrix
• Perpendicularity of object axes
• Mathematical cross product
• Norming of vectors
• C.O.F.F.E.E. node and C.O.F.F.E.E.­ commands
• C.O.F.F.E.E. tag and C.O.F.F.E.E. script
• Replacing Object­ nodes
• Recursive invocation using own functions
• Script Manager
• Executing complex commands
• Python­ syntax basics
• Alternative instructions
• Defining vectors and matrices
• Working with the BaseContainer class
• Reading out and defining object parameters
• Thinking Particles
• Basic settings
• Grouping and controlling the flight of particle emitters
• PSturm, PSource or PMatterWaves, PBlurb, PFragment
• Auslesen und Setzen von Partikel­‐Daten
• Wind and gravity
• Linking Thinking Particles with CINEMA 4D­ objects
• TP Geometry object
• Special XPresso nodes
• Time n­ode, Spline­ node, Bitmap­ node
• Simplify mathematical formulas
• Looping with iterators
• Boolean nodes and Logic nodes
• Ray­ collision
• Random init

The visualization of buildings and architectural landscape projects is a very important part of project development. Clients want to see the finished result even before the first hole is dug. This offers many opportunities for 3D artists who are looking to expand their field of work.

CINEMA 4D offers numerous possibilities for creating impressive and effective architectural and landscape visualizations - if you know how. Impressive visualizations not only require good texturing and lighting skills but also the ability to correctly position imported CAD files in front of a background image and which CINEMA 4D tools should be used to achieve a convincing, photo-realistic result.

The Architectural Visualization course covers basic techniques and tools used in this field. The course content contains valuable know-how for optimizing workflow for bringing visions to life.

CINEMA 4D offers numerous possibilities that are difficult to discover if self-taught. This training conveys expert know-how and helps course participants create impressive visualizations for their clients faster and easier than before.

Pre-requisites: Good CINEMA 4D skills
Possible certification: MAXON Certificate ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION

Contents:

• Import and optimization of CAD projects
• Combining projects
• Grouping textures and objects using layers
• Composition
• Composition helpers
• Camera settings
• Tilt Shift
• Camera calibration
• Basic lighting techniques for indoor and outdoor scenes
• Global Illumination
• Render optimization using GI saturation strength
• Render optimization using color mapping
• Enhanced lighting techniques for indoor and outdoor scenes
• HDR lighting with sIBL
• Lighting situations (cloudy / sunny)
• GI lights
• IES lights
• Differences between GI modes
• GI portals
• Standard renderer and Physical Renderer
• Texture optimization
• Layer shader
• Reflection and mirroring
• Fresnel and IOR shaders
• Bump and Normal maps
• Important attributes for Light objects
• Creating and assigning textures
• Procedural textures
• Displacement mapping
• Replacing textures
• Advanced texture mapping
• UV mapping
• Avoiding texture distortion
• CINEMA 4D Content Browser
• Landscape architecture projects
• Creating grass using the Hair feature
• Creating realistic-looking grass with MoGraph
• Dispersion and growth restriction for plants with MoGraph
• Random color dispersion with MoGraph
• Special modeling and animation techniques
• MoGraph and Spline Wrap
• MoGraph & Dynamics (lighting methods by Franceska Rogers)
• Using Cloth
• Creating Textile floor coverings using the Hair feature
• Post processing
• Multi-Pass layers
• Photoshop: Masks and gradients
• Useful third-party plugins and products

In preparation