Mac Tutorial: 3D Logos In Cinema 4D

WHAT’S UP GUYS?!  This post should be a good one, i’m going to show you guys how to create a 3D logo on your Mac that you can use in your photo and video programs from a vector image.  You’re going to need a few things though:

1.  An Adobe Illustrator vectored image (.eps file)

2.  Adobe Illustrator and Maxon Cinema 4D (obviously)

3. Adobe Photoshop

So you’ve got all of those things?  Good!  Let’s get started!

First, you need to open your logo in Illustrator.  It doesn’t need to be gigantic, because we can resize it simply by selecting all of the paths and Edit > Transform > Scale them to the appropriate size.  It should be centered on your canvas, like so:

We’ve got it open, now we need to break this up.  It needs to be separated in order to be able to independently edit individual shapes once the EPS is dropped into C4D.  To do this, simply click on groups of paths that go together (by color or location) and drag them away from then center of your canvas.  The end result should look a little something like this:

Now that we’ve gotten our logo “exploded’, let’s save it and prepare it for importing.  This step is important:  save your logo as an Illustrator 8 file and NOT your current version.  If you don’t, it won’t import correctly into C4D.  I’d rename it to something like “yourlogoname_forC4D”, so it’s easily recognizable.

After that’s done, open up Cinema 4D and Photoshop.  Open your c4d EPS in both, and get into your Photoshop window.  Grab a pen and a sticky note, then hit your eye dropper tool in color selection.  We’re going to color match to ensure the likeness of your 3D logo, so click on the different colors of your logo and write down their RGB values.  Hold on to them, we’ll be using them in a bit!  You can close PS now, and switch over to C4D.

Your logo should be spread out and in spline form.  Let’s fix that.  First, name your separate splines!  It makes it SO much easier when you’re adding textures and colors to have them all labeled.  Anywho, after you get them labeled, you need to grab your Extrude Nurb tool, activate it, then select all of your splines and drop them into the EN tool.  I tend to do my modeling from Perspective view so I can more easily gauge depth and attachment.

An important step in your extruding:  be sure to “Fillet Cap” your new polygons to give them that smooth look and remove the jittery and jagged edges.  For this logo, i’m going with a depth of about 3m with a threshold of 3, but toy around with your settings to get your logo to the desired thickness.  Once you get things looking how you want, go ahead and your your different views to move them into their respectful locations to “build” your logo.  Once completed, it should look something like this:

Our logo is built!  Let’s get her solidified and colored, then we’ll be ready to animate!  This part is easy, just select all of your nurbs and File> Save All To Object in your object window.  You can now delete your splines, they’re pretty useless now that we have polygons! Can you feel the excitement?!

Go ahead and expand your polygon bin now, and grab that sticky note with your RGB values.  We’ve got to Material> New Material, then after labeling our material, use the RGB values to color our new materials.  Once you’ve got all the necessary materials in your materials bin, click and drag the individual colors to your expanded polygon bin.  Drop your material onto the polygon you want to color and viola’!  Here’s what our Spartan logo looks like halfway through:

Lastly, finish up your coloring, add a scene light, and do a quick sweep to check for any hiccups or unfinished polygons.  When you add your scene light, make sure you turn on Soft Shadows to make the logo as lifelike as possible.  You’re ready to animate!  Render your animation out and you can then drop it in your photo or video editing programs to create some really cool visual effects!