Learn Cinema 4D: Low Poly Planet

1. 01 Intro: Hey, guys, My name is Jonathan Land. I'm an artist. That future gains of London, a ubi soft studio In this class, we're going to learn the step by step process of how to create an abstract low Polly planet by modeling it in cinema four D, starting with a basic shape or take a few all the tools and skills necessary for the project. Well, then, take a look at how to render your model so that you can save it as an image or take it into programs like Adobe Photo Shop, where you can add some final touches to make your illustration really stand out. Some of the major topics that will be discussing in this class with includes basic three D modelling techniques creating a small locally tree, how to add lighting to the scene and some basic rendering techniques. By the end of the training, you will have learned how to create an abstract, low, partly planet that you can use in your own illustrations over the again projects. This class is perfect for designers, illustrators and anyone else who'd like to then a little bit of three D modeling toe add to their designs. So sign in or sign up and let's get started 2. 02 Create Sphere: Hey, guys on Welcome back to the low Polly three D mini planet Tutorial. So in this video, we're going to go through just how to create the basic shape Teoh start off our planet. So to do this, the first thing that we're going to have to do is to go over to the blue que button here. So as cube object and we're going Teoh left, click on the Cube left likened hold to bring up this new sub menu here, and you can see in this sub menu we've got a few more options than just a cube. So we've got disc pyramids cones, but we're really interested in this fear option here. So this is going Teoh be the basic object for a planet. So we're going to select this fear and spoil it. In our view, I'm just going to zoom in here so you can have a closer look on. There are a few options, a few things that we have to do first before we can really create on model our planet. So the first thing that I need to do is to go over to the phone tag here on we're going to delete it. That's not it s so make sure you have the funk tax selected and then hit delete on the keyboard just just to delete the phone tag. Andi, you can see that what this has done is that it's created a sort of edgy look for the sphere . So if I bring the funk tag back in and if I zoom in a little bit more in this fear, you can see that this sphere is a lot smoother. And with Fong take deletes it. It becomes a JIA just like what we want for our low Polly are locally planet. So making sure that the sphere is selected again, we're going Teoh, change a few of the properties here. So first thing we're going to do is to antic render perfect on. Now, over here, we're going to change a few of these properties. So for a low police fear low Polly planet, we're going to want less segments. So we're going to change 24 to something like 15 and see what that looks like. So I'm going to hit enter here and this is a lot low Polly than what we had before and Now we're going to create a new radius. So I wants the planet to be a little bit bigger than what we have here. So we're going to change Change the radius from 100 cents meters to something like 2 50 see what that looks like. So zooming out here. Great. No. The final thing that we're going to do to this fear so that we are ready to model our three d planet is to go over to the type of sphere here. So if we go over to this drop down menu here, you can see that there are a few options, a few different options that are available to us, that see if I can bring this up here so you can see it. So right now we have a standard sphere, which is what you see here. And if I go over to this option, you can see that it's completely changed. So the way that the polygons are rearranged to create this fear is very, very different. It just go over to each of these options to see what kind of sphere that we want to create on. But the one that we want Teoh we want to use Is this one here? So I co so he drunk, right? So now that we have this selected, all we need to do now is to make this make this fair creditable. Now, the way that we do this is to ensure that the sphere is selected on. We're going to head over to this button here, which is on the top left of the screen on. We're going to click on that button to make it creditable. Next thing that we're going to do is we're going to duplicate this fear. So we need to spheres, and I'll explain why in a minute now, the way that we duplicate objects is we select it on holding the shift button. We're going to click and drag and then release. It's not the shift button. It's the control button case are holding the control button. We're going Teoh, click and drag. And then you can see that the cursor has changed to this arrow and plus button here. Then we're going to move it to a space to duplicate it. So now we have two spheres, right? So from here, we're going to rename these fears just to make it easier for ourselves. So to do that, we just need to double click. And I'm going to name this one the Earth, and I'm going to name this one. The water. Excellent. Right now that we've duplicated our spheres, the next thing that we have to do is we're going to learn how to add color to, ah, to a planet. And we'll do that in the next lesson. See you guys there. 3. 03 Colour: Hey, guys on Welcome back to the low poly many Planet tutorial. So in this video, we're going to go through how to create some color for our sphere. So we've created two spheres, one for the earth on one for the water on. What we're going to do here is we're going to go over to this creates create button on the bottom left of our screen. We're going to click on it, and we're going to go over to new material. Once we've done that, you'll see that we've got this sort of whites white circular globe material here and we're just going to double click on this to bring up our material editor. And now we're going to choose what colors that we're going to use for us fears. So there are two main colors that I'm going to use for now. The first color is going to be green for our land on the second color is going to be blue for the water. So let's go ahead and create those. First thing we have to do is we have to antic reflect ints, and then we're going to make sure color is selected here on I'm just going to hit this button here to create, to look over our this, to have this view here. Just prefer this view too, to see to select my color. I'm just going to see what colors I can create. I'm just going to go for a sort of light green color for the for the land. And then once you're happy with that color or you need to do is hit it the close button and then you've created that material color. Now, to apply your material color to the sphere is very, very easy. All you need to do is click and hold on that material and drag it to the object that you want to apply the material to. So in this case, it's the sphere. So I'm just going to release my mouse button and you can actually see it because we've got our second sphere here, which is blocking the sphere underneath. So I'm just going Teoh unshowy that sphere to hide that sphere. And now you can see that we've got our land our earth sphere selected here on its fully green the other way, Teoh put materials onto objects. If I delete that that material here is to drag it to the object on this on this side here so we can drag to earth, and it does exactly the same thing. Okay, so now I'm going to do the same thing with the water. So I'm going to hide our earth sphere, and I'm going to show the water sphere on. I'm going, Teoh duplicate the material. So the same way that we duplicated us fears here. All we have to do is click and holds three control button on our mouths on our keyboards. We're going to drag a click and drag with the mouse here. And you can see that the cursor has also changed. Exactly. Same way is what it did in the previous video to this arrow and plus sign. Once we released both buttons, we've duplicated the material. So at this point, I'm going to want to rename our materials. Some going to double click rename this green. Oops. Let's get rid of that on double click. I'm going to rename this blue. So this is going to be blue for the water double click on this and the same way that we chose the color for? For a land the same way that we're going to choose the color for a water close that apply this. And now we've got our blue water sphere and we've got our green earth sphere here. Accident. Now, the next thing that we're going to want to do is we're going to want Teoh. Make the water sphere smaller than the earth sphere, and you'll see why in a minute not to do that that's make our water sphere visible again. On what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the middle mouse button or the mouse wheel on our view here to bring up all four views and then making sure that the water sphere is selected. I'm going to go over to the scale tool Click on this scale tool on. I'm going to click, making sure that I'm not clicking on any of the notes here because if I do click on the one of these nerds, you'll only scale according to the axes. So, for example, if I'm going t o click on this green note, I'm only going to scale like this, and it's the same with the blue one. I'm only going to scale this way, and it's the same with the red one. You can only scale this way now. Well, I want to do is I want to scale the whole sphere. And to do that, you don't click on any of those you just thick anywhere on the screen, which isn't a node on. I'm going to just click and drag to the left. Now you can see on the other four windows how big and how small this fear is going to be. Now, this only needs to be a little bit smaller. So I'm just going, Teoh, make it about, let's say, 90% release. And now we have our small water sphere here on our bigger sphere. Excellent. Now, the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to create the river and I'll show you how to do that in the next video. See you guys. There 4. 04 River: Hey, guys on Welcome back to the low Polly three D mini planet tutorial. So, in the last tutorial recreated a two spheres, one earth sphere and one water sphere one which was smaller than the other on. In this lesson, we're going to go through how to create the river for our planet. So to do this will begin by going back into us perspective view. And to do that, we need Teoh hover over the perspective of the view that we want and then just simply click on the mass the middle mouse button again to bring that back up. Excellent. Now what I want to do is I want to go over to this button here, the life selection tool. Click on that. And then we're going to go over to the Polygon tool, which is on the left side of the screen, and click on that. What this does is if I select on the F sphere, which the one that we want to to manipulate is it sort of gives us a tour to select the polygons with, and we're going to use this tool to create a river. Okay, so let's go around the sphere, and I'm going to select certain polygon to Let's start with this one. All you need to do is click hold and drag the polygons to create a River eight. And then, if you want to continue the river, just hold shift, continue. Hold, shift, click and drag again. So want to create an interesting shape for the river? And if he wants to delete selections, just hold cult and click groups in the old whole control and click. It's delete what you've created. It's a bit too tight. So I'm just going around the Cube. Not the Cube, the sphere here. And then just sort of selecting what I think is the most interesting path. Four hour Arlo Polly. Although police Senate just going around and seeing what is the most interesting sort of winding river that we can create, then just connecting it like so right. So that is the path for our low Polly. Hello, Polly. Hello, Polly River. This is a little bit too random. I think so. I'm just going to delete some Oops. Delete some selections here, then connected hand like that. And then I'm just going to circle around our planet to see, what's the most interesting view that we can get for our although police on it. So once you're happy with your selection, all you need to do from here is to right click on the on the path that you've created, and you're going to go down here and look for the extrude tool. Okay, so we're going to click on the Extreme Tour, making sure that we've still got path selected here. We're going. Teoh left. Click on drag to the left. You can see what that does is it brings our selection inside itself to reveal the water or the water sphere underneath. Okay, so once you're happy with that, let go left off the left mouse button, and you can see that, actually, this fear inside our earth sphere is a little bit too is a little bit to fight further down for my liking. So I'm going to select the water sphere again. Um, let's go. That making sure that the whole model is selected. So not just the polygons on the whole model selected. I'm going Teoh, go over Teoh the scale tool and once again making sure that none of these nodes are selected. I'm going to scale the water sphere up a little bit more pots, Teoh Like that. So that doesn't look too deep. All right, so now that we've got the water showing, well, hop on over to the next. Listen where we'll go and learn how to create mountains and landscapes for our earth sphere . See you guys there. 5. 05 Mountains: Hey, guys. And welcome back to the low Polly Mini planet Tutorial. So, in the last lesson, we created a river for our planet on. Now, in this lesson, we're going to start making sort of mountains and hills another sort of landscape things to make our low Polly planet a little bit more interesting. So to do that, we're going to head over to the life selection tool again and again. We're going to go to the polygon the polygons tour on. We're going to make sure that the Earth Spheeris selected and what I'm going to do from here is I'm going to zoom into our into our planet on. All I'm going to do is I'm going to select different parts off the sphere off the land, which I want Teoh sort of extrude and make into sort of mountains and hills. So the way that I'm going to do that is exactly the same way as how we did. Our river is I'm going Teoh. Just select these polygons here like that. And then I'm going Teoh, right? Click on us on the selection on. I'm going to choose. Let's choose Bevel and see what this does so spelling that out and you can see that you can create a mountain out of that just by sort of clicking on that selection with the left mouse button. Been dragging it to the left of the screen for this mountain. I'm going to want a little bit more segments than just one segment. You can have 11 segment if you want. If you want a really sort of low party look really sharp looking mountain, this is the way to do it. Bomb Go to create more segments. So I'm going to create the base here like this. And then I'm going to use the same tool again, the bevel tool. And I'm going to click on that selection and make the middle part of the mountain release. And now I'm going to make the top part of my mountain here like so Excellent. Now what you can do is I want to join the top off the mountain hits. I'm going to zoom in and I'm going Teoh. You can see that the selection here is I want this to be a appointed to So let's left click on that selection and I'm going to see. And what's what tools we have here? Teoh! Submerge these polygons together. Now I'm going, Teoh. There's one tool that want to find. Okay, let's try. Let's try stitch and sew. Get selected. That that selection. I'm going. Teoh, go to the edges. Tools here. In fact, that's right. Sick. Andi, Uh, go back to Bevel. I'm going to click out of that and I'm going to select these edges. Three edges that wants to sew together, right click, stitch and sew. I'm going to see what edges I can sew together that like that. This it's just a matter of selecting the edges. You want to sew together to create a nice point for your mountain bet against? Put these two together, these two together And there you go. Now I have a nice point. Got something here, ego. And now I've got nice points for the mountain. Another thing that you may want to do. Oops! Just go back to selection tool again is you may want to select the edges here just by holding shift and clicking on the edges that you want Select. Oops. So holding shift and clicking the the edges that you want to select. So I just want to select the edges around here. And what you can do by doing that is you can now move the mountain a little bit, so it's not so not so straight. So I wanted to be a little bit a little bit randomized, a little bit deformed. So the same thing again. Hold shift around the mountain and then selecting the edges that wants to manipulate. And then using the move tool, you can now move the mountain just a little bit like that. Great. So now that's one mountain done. I'm going to go ahead and create a few more mountains just to make a little bit more interesting. Before I do that, I want to a little bit too wonky for my liking. So you can also do the same with the Polygon tool. So I'm going to go ahead and select these polygons. Whoops. I've got the move talk selected, so I'm going to undo that. Make sure that I've got the life selection tool and select the polic ones that I want to manipulate. No, let's go ahead and move it a little bit like that. Great. Now that I've got the tools that wants to use anyway. Let's go ahead on select some more mountains. So I'm going Teoh, make a mountain here I want let's have a couple more mountains. So I want one mountain here on another mountain on this side off the off the main mountains . So let's go ahead and select the mountains exactly the same way that we did before. Um, that. See, I'm gonna go ahead and select them here like that. Now I'm going. Teoh, right Click on Choose Bevel again on exactly the same way that we created the previous mountain. I'm going to see you do the same for this one. Assuming in now, I'm going to use the stitch in so it'll. But before I do that, let's go ahead and select the edges. Make sure that the edge selection tool is is selected. Now I'm going to go to stitch and sew seeming in here. I'm going Teoh. So the just that once stick together. Let's go ahead and do these. He's that these and these I need this one. That's no one when I want to do. Ah, fun with this tool is a little bit of a trial and error so once to that's no, that's bringing. These are just together like that. Excellent. And now I'm going Teoh, go ahead and do the same thing. I'm going to select these edges, which to randomize the mounts in a little bit, getting around this mountain, selecting the edges that I want to manipulate the state, that one. Because I don't want that. And then just sort of using the move tool to move it around. So I want actually want this mountain to be a little bit smaller. And the other one I didn't do that. Actually, no, that's no. I want this like that. Okay, hoops. Right. So that's one mountain. Actually, I want to move that selection up. Let's move that selection up a little bit. Number, scale, tool to scale it down just like that. Okay, so that's one mountain done. Now I'm going to create another mountain over here, so this mountain is going to be a small one. So let's go ahead and select that ongoing Teoh except the same thing. Bevel the out on going to announce used the edge tool on the Where is it the stitching? So it'll I'm going to Oops. Let's make sure that's I've got no edges. Suspected first. So if stitching So now I want to So certain edges together. Said that one on that one. Now we have three No Polly Mountains. Excellent. So now that we've got our low Polly mountains in the next video, we're going to go through how Teoh do a little bit of selective coloring. See you guys there. 6. 06 Selective Colour: Hey, guys. And welcome back to the low Polly three D mini planet tutorial. So, in the last lesson, we learned how to create these low polly mountains on in this. Listen, we're going to learn how to color them in. So the way that we color these in is exactly the same way is how we colored in the green and the blue for the earth on the water spheres. But this time we're going, Teoh actually selected the polygons that we want to color and then at the materials that we want. So the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going Teoh color in the edges off, off the off the water here. So I'm going to create a new material for this double click on the material click reflecting Sof, and I'm going to select a nice sorts of bright yellow color for this one. Once you've got your your material selected, or once you've created your material, all we need to do now is go zoom in and I'm going to try and select the polygons that wants to color. And there you can see that my selection tool is too big to select these small polygons here . Now the way that I can remedy this is by clicking and holding onto the mouse button of the middle mouse button and then just sort of moving the mouse up and down like like this, so you can make the selection bigger or smaller like that. So I've made my selection really small now, so it's easy to select the polygons that I want. So I'm just going to go around my globe like this, selecting the sides of the river loops like that, just going around, selecting along the sides on. Then, once you've completed that, all we need to do now is to drag that material onto your selection exactly the same way as what we did before. And now you can do the same with the bottom side. So again, just selecting holding shift on going around the entire planet, just going to quickly try and do this. You can see how I've done the selection, so I'm just sort of clicking the polar gon's to select them, like so on. Then click drag the material onto your selection, and now you can see that it's been colored in. So now I've got a nice yellow color for the inside off the earth. Now we're going to do the same with our mountains, So I'm going to duplicate this yellow material, and I'm going to create a new color for the mountains. So it's something like this. And then all I'm going to do here is I'm going to select exactly same way is what we did before. I'm going to make a a biggest selection now, So I'm going to select the mountains, like so such them going to de select the tip off the mountain here because I'm going toe make a different color for that. But for the rest of the mountain, we went to select it. So being careful not toe select any unwanted polygons Now we're going to do is drag that material onto the selection like that. And there you go. Now, I've got the selected part of my mountain in this sort of red color here. Now, for the tip of the mountain, I'm going to want to make that white so duplicate that material. I'm going to make a nice white material here like that. Select holding shift clicking to select that tip now dragging that white material onto the tip off the mountains like that. Awesome. So now you know how Teoh do a selection for us to select the colors. I'm going to go ahead and start coloring in the parts off the the earth here, just just the floor to make it a little bit more interesting. So let's select these parts here slitting that going around the back of the sphere just in case you want to showcase the back of the sphere is Well, uh okay, let this my as well select this one as well. And now I'm going to color that in like that. In fact, let's that's two yellow color hopes. Unfortunately, I still had the tips of the mountains selected when I was selecting the floor. But I can easily get rid of that by holding control on the keyboard on de selecting the tips like that. So I'm going to drag my yellow material in. So now I just colored the floor here like So now I'm going to do the same with the bottom part off my my sphere. So I'm just going to select why once colored in just like that, Andi. I'm going to drag the white material onto this fear here. Like so? So there you go. That's how you do Selective coloring for your mini sphere. In the next lesson, I'm going to go through how to create many trees for our three D split for our three D planet. See you guys there. 7. 07 Trees: Hey, guys on Welcome back to the Low Polly three D. Many planets tutorial. So in the last lesson, we learned how to do a little bit of selective coloring, so had to select on color in our selections so that we could create our mountains and enough floor. I've gone ahead and created a another mountain at the bottom here just to make it a little bit more interesting because I thought the just the white floor wasn't interesting enough on DNA. Now in this listen, we're going to go ahead and create these small little details for a planet such as some many trees. Now, to do that, what will have to do is we'll have to go over to the this cube button again on we're going to select a pyramid. So that was spawning pyramid for us. Now we can't see the pyramid at the moment because it spawned right in the center off a planet here. So I'm just going to drag it out like that. And here it is. Eso this is up pyramids. I'm going to want to make it green. But before we do this, let's let's go ahead and scale it down a little bit. Just so it's closer to the size that we want. And now I'm going to make it creditable. Just exactly same way is what we did with our our our spheres. So making sure that the pyramids selected click on the vegetable button. I'm going to go and click on the points busing here on. Just scale this down. Move this down a bit. Just like that, we have a less even looking pyramid. Like what we had before. And now Well, I'm going to do is I'm going to color it in. So making sure that you've got your pyramid selected, like so just going to move the green material onto that. And here there we go, a green pyramids. Well, I'm going to do from here is I'm going, Teoh, hold the control button and you can see straight away. My mouse cursor has changed into this sort of duplicates cursor. I'm going to hold, click and hold the top arrow here and then drag a second pyramid down like so and that will create the leaves of our tree. Next thing that I want to do is I want to create the tree trunk. So that's all that. All that's going to be is a cube. So I'm just going to click on the Cube here and that spawned in the center of the earth again. So I'm going toe, move over to where our Trias scale that down on going to move it So it goes underneath the tree like so rights. So now that you've got the tree trunk underneath, I'm going to make that edit herbal as well. So by clicking on the make edge Izabal button scared it down a little bit more. I'm going. Teoh, put this reading tool on that to make our tree trunk case. And now we have our tree. All we need to do now is to put that onto our our planet. Now, before we do that first thing I want to do is I want to group or these objects together. And to do that, you need to select or the object. So the cube on the two pyramids and you're going to press Alz and G on your keyboard to create a group. Now you can see they're all grouped together on You can also rename that group. I'm going to rename that tree and now what's left is placing it on to our planet. Now this is the tricky part, so you're going to have to use a mixture of all the tools here. Teoh ensure that the tree is placed correctly on top senate, just going to rotate a little bit like that. Let's try and move it into into position first, so just move it down. The bits cross. So this is the tricky part. It's trying again down. Move that here. Now I need to rotate it Ongoing t scale it down a little bit more because it looks a little bit too big for a tree and you can see here, or that I need to do is use a mixture of all of these tools. Try and plant it onto our planet like so great. So that's one tree plants it Next. Four you need to do is you've guessed it duplicates the tree like that and do the same thing again. So just sort of move the tree around, using a mixture of the Rotates tour and the move tool, and then planting it onto our planet like so, do this a few more times until your planet is covered with trees. Aan den will go through how to render Although Polic Planet See you guys in the next lesson . 8. 08 Lighting Render: Hey, guys on Welcome back to the Low Polly Mini Planet tutorial. So in the last lesson, we learned how to create these many trees that you see here on. I've gone ahead and created a few more militaries just to make it a little bit more interesting. We've got a fume or green trees here and a few white snowy trees at the bottom. Once you're happy with your locally many planet, what we're going to do, first of all before we render, is create some quick lighting for are seen on The way we do that is we go over to this button here, so it's called ad floor object, but we're not going to add a floor were going toe hold left, click on the mouse button on. We're going to select physical sky, and what that will do is it will add some quick lighting for our scene on. We can easily manipulate this lighting here by going to time and location and then just sort of clicking the left on mouse buttons here to figure out a nice lighting set up for for low poli planet. Another way that we can manipulate the the actual lighting here is by going to the rotates tool, making sure physical sky selected and then just sort of rotating the physical sky like so. So I can sort of make it so the light is coming from the top rights of the scene on now, once you've got the physical sky all ready and done with, you're now ready, Teoh. Set up your you'll render to do that. Let's go over to edit. Render settings. Click on that on here. We've got a bunch of settings that you're wants to change depending on what you want the image created for so you can change the width and the height of your image and the resolution going over to save we can change the destination, the far name off our image. So let's name this many planets. You can save it. Teoh. Whatever you prefer here, I'm just going to select PNG. I'm going to select the Alfa Channel here so that I can use it for my illustration projects . And then the next thing you want to do is you want to go over to effect on you want to select ambient occlusion and global illumination from this menu here. Now, I've actually got these selected already. Eso there appearing here. But for you guys, you'll need to select it from this menu and then just make sure that they're selected over here. Once you've done that, close that window on, then hits on the render to picture view a button on what that will do is that will create Orender for your mini planet like so? So with that, we've come to the end off the low Polly Planet course. I hope you've learned a lot from the demos, some new tips and tricks that we've used along the way in completing this particular piece . Once you get familiar with the process, I really encourage you to experiment using the different tools in cinema four D. I had a lot of fun creating this planet, So thanks for watching good luck creating your own low Polly planets and R C next time