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AUGUST 07, 2003 Cinema 4D Quick Tip: Keeping It Simple
Next, we'll move to the tail region. Make sure you still have the Polygon Tool selected. Extrude the tail portion (select poly, "D" and drag). Because we want the tail bit to be smaller than the body, we'll have to employ the scale tool again to make this part smaller. And extrude again for the fin bits at the end of the tail, but just a little.  [an error occurred while processing this directive] A shark's tail has two parts. In order to cut the polygon into two, utilize the Knife tool (K or Structure > Knife). Cut the end polygon into two pieces with a horizontal cut. Now, if we were to simply extrude here, we wouldn't see much difference between this procedure and the last. There is a small check box that needs to be switched off in the Extrusion "Active Tool" window. Along with the self-explanatory inputs, there is a check box for "Preserve Groups." With "Preserve Groups" checked, the extrusion keeps all connected faces together; with it unchecked, new faces are added between the extruded faces, creating new limbs (or fins). Uncheck this box now and extrude our two fin polys.   At first, all seems to be the same, but select the top polygon (live selection/arrow tool) and move it up. AH! Yep, select the end face of the bottom piece and move it lower.  Now this looks a little fishy, but too blocky - well, that's where HyperNURBS come into play. From the Toolbar select the HyperNURBS object and drop it into your Object Manager. Next, drop your cube onto the HyperNURBS. Nicer.  Now, armed with your poly selection tools, extrude tool and knife, you can add polygons to your heart's content. Don't forget that your HyperNURBS is live, so you can turn it off to easily edit the polygons (click the green check to turn it into a red cross to deactivate it).  Now we have half of our fishy shark. To mirror it to the other side, Maxon has provided the handy Symmetry Tool (Objects > Modeling > Symmetry, or the icon under the green array that looks like a symmetrical head). Making it a parent of the HyperNURB reveals that our model contains points that aren't aligned to zero along the X-axis.   Two answers. One: Move the object until they reach the center. Two: Use the "Set Value" option under Structure. First, select the top view (F2), and select the inner points of your model. With the Point Tool on, and the Live Selection tool (arrow), choose the points in the Cube you want to move to x=0. (hint: In Active Tool, deselect "Only Select Visible Items" for this procedure). Now that the inner points are selected, pull down Structure > Edit Surface > Set Value. You get a dialogue box that allows you to subjectively set the position of all of the selected points. We'll just choose, Set X to 0, leaving all other axis positions alone.  There are some new polygons on the inside that we need to clean out. In the camera view (F1), rotate to the inside of the fishy shark. This time, we'll need to check "Only Select Visible Items", because we only want to select the visible faces of unwanted polygons. Simply select the inner polys and delete.  Turn on the HyperNURBS and Symmetry objects and there is our sharky fish. Go ahead and edit the points and polys as you see fit. Once you have a sharky shadow mass ready, continue to Part Two. Prev 1 2 3 4 Next Related sites: • Animation Artist • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Animators • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Film and Video Magazine • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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