CINEMA 4D RENDERS, FILTERS, SMUDGING, AND LIGHTING

INTRODUCTION:
More often than not, these days you'll hear alot about the use of Cinema 4D renders, filters, smuding effects, and lighting effects in photoshop. Although they are primarily used in forum signatures and "large art" peices, they can also be used to enhance your art greatly and acheive some excellent effects that you might want to add to your work of art, whatever it may be.

Now alot of times you'll read through someones new thread about their newest peice of art, and you'll see some aweseome effects and techniques used in it. You like it so much you decide to ask them and all they tell you is:


Now if your anything like me your just about ready to punch your monitor. Which is why I have written this tutorial, for people who are absolutly sick of hearing the same responses and pretty much no help in learning how to do these awesome effects. Read on, and get ready to learn some new tricks

CINEMA 4D RENDERS:

Well before we start learning how to use cinema 4D renders in our art, we need to first understand what Cinema 4D is. Cinema 4D is a 3D modelling program, used to create anything from architechtural concept art, game design, animated movies and almost any other multimedia you can think about.

But these things usually aren't used in sigs, wallpapers, or large peices. Usually you'll use abstact renders. You can find them on alot of GFX forums, where members will create Cinema 4D renders and put them up for the use of other members in their art. Now once you have your cinema 4D render(s), your probably wondering how to get effects like:












Basically you have to under stand which way your signature is flowing for example in the 2nd sig (from the top) you can sense a 'motion' going diagonally across the sig. This can be created by lines and repititions. Once you know which way the signature flows you can find a suitale C4D render and use it, remember, not everypartof the C4D render will flow it is important for you to use YOUR VISUAL JUDGEMENT, and erase parts that do not flow.

There are different types of C4D renders too:

-Distorted perspective renders
-Abstract extrusion renders
-Effect renders

distorted perspective renders are created by zooming the perspective out so far that the edges/corners of the object being modelled are 'stretched' towards the corners of the screen, for example:



Abstract extrusion renders are created by extruding parts of a polygon to create some excellent abstract models. for example you can look at these threads:

http://ddgfx.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9126
http://ddgfx.com/forums/index.php?showtopi...&hl=render+pack

to learn more about that

Effect renders are simply abstact models made any way in C4D that can add speciall effects to signatures, and really make your design interesting, an example of an effect render can be found HERE

Cinema 4D renders may be weird at first but after a while and just mucking about with C4D effects, you should be able to make some excellent enhancements to your art!

FILTERS:

You can also create some excellent effects by using filters. Filters are 'plug-ins' that come with photoshop, and can be used to create just about anything. In signatures distortion filters are often used most for example like in this sig:



Here in this sig, the background is mostly made up of filters, specifially, artistic and distortion filters. Usually when you use distortion filters, the best blending modes to use for those layers are often lighten, screen, colour dodge, or linear dodge. But remember to try diffrent blending modes, sometimes you can get much better effects than expected





However, don't limit yourself to these, using a large variety of filters you can make some stunning work, so always keep the use of filters in mind:







Also, a particularly usefull filter is the Liquify filter, which allows you to take your image and smudge, it twirl parts, bulgle parts, pucker parts, as if your image was made of some type of liquid, and much more.



Its hard to explain what exactly to do when using filters because the effects are usually generated quite randomly. Just remember that when your are stuck and think your work needs something extra then try using some filters, you may be surprised how much of a difference they can make

SMUDGING:

The smudge tool is a very powerfull tool. It can be used to simply smudge, or it can be used to create some excellent abstract or even grungy effect to add to your art

Using smuding you can create effects like:





The smudging system works similarly to the brush system, but there are some vast differences as well. Generally you would want to use different brushes, maybe some of the wet media brushes, or special effects brushes that come with photoshop and change some of their dynamics and maybe add some scatter effects as well. Most smudge effects are usally set up like this in the brushes tab:









Changing around some settings and brushes dosen't hurt, adding some extra effects is also a good idea. You can create some very nice effects when you combine smudging and filters alone

LIGHTING:

Here's the tough one . Don't worry though, I'll try my best to explain this as best as I can. Lighting in your art is very significant. If your working with a stock photo, your in luck because all of the lighting is already set up by, well, real-life light physics dynamics . If you're like me, then you aren't very interested in reading physics textbooks to get your lighting right in your art.

Photoshop can help you alot when trying to set up lighting by using the Filter>>Render>>Lighting effects filter. But sometimes you want more lighting effects, or want to use lighting to make your art dynamic


Well when working with a cut render, you need to think, (OMG, I QUIT!) where is the lighting coming from in this picture? Are there multiple light sources? and finally, how strong are the light sources.

Lets look at this render:




By looking at this render, you already notice that there are alot of shadows. Now think, how can alot of shadows be created at the front of an object, when looking at it from the front. If there are intense shadows in the front then, there must be a strong light source directly behind the object/character you are focusing on.

Now in your sig or whatever you are making with this render or a simillar render, you now must try to create the lighting from behind the render, maybe add a few light rays from the parts where light can pass through.

Ex:


(quickly made this sig to show you, of course you should spend more time on yours)

Some examples with excellent lighting are:







Just remember, try to make the shadows, and highlights as realistic as possible, lighting is something you should spend some time on and it never looks good when rushed

IN CONCLUSION:

I hope this tutorial helped you out and you learned how to enhance your sigs and art and take them to the next level. The most important thing here is to remember that you need to always try new things, never follow something exactly, and always experiment. Keeping these things in mind will get you some excellent artwork, and alot to be proud of

Enjoy

Thats cool, but its not really a tutorial. Your not teaching us anything, your just telling us what the things are. When i read the title i was looking forward to learning some lighting effects lol.

Exactly

It's still pretty helpful though So thanks for it. I realize it probably took a while to write, but thanks for taking the time I learned a thing or two

Now if I can figure out how to +rep I will...

Simple enough. I learned nothing, sadly....

good read... thanks for the tut.. well written

agreed, its a good read. well written

you dont have enough posts to rep. i forget how many you need. anywasy, tut. nice. I just skimed in the interest of time, but i think it looks helpful enough. ill read in a bit.

Nice tutorial. Me likes.

just a tip, you should make those giant images the srew up the forum skin thumbnails. im viewing this in safari and the text dosent wrap normally. just a thought.

Hey, it got acceapted!

I wondered how the thread got so many views so quickly. So is it Pixel2Life or Good-Tutorials or what?

G-T.

nice FX, is there anyway you can tell how you got some of those effects instead of just recommending filters? i know my way around filters and still don't get those effects