Tutorial 6 | Diamonds
Tutorial 6 is one of those interesting tutorials. I’ve always wanted to build a diamond, and though I don’t feel it’s completely realistic, it’s a great lesson in how to model something from scratch. As like the other tutorials, you can download the source files at the bottom of this page. Have fun making this diamond and let me know how sexy you though my voice was in the comments section below!
You’re going to start off with a cylinder, turn it into a polygon, and start modeling it from there. I know a lot of 3D gurus dislike Cinema 4D’s modeling tools, but being naive of other modeling programs like modo, I find what Cinema has works pretty well. And what isn’t there can be accomplished with a little creativity. A lot of the modeling techniques will occur using the knife tool, node selections and rotations.
Materials for diamonds are pretty easy. Primarily, you want to have some nice specularity and put your refractive index up to about 2.4, which is way more than water. Also, in your render settings under options, your default is 5. This is good so you can build quick renders, but for the diamond, we are going to need to increase this. I would put it up to at least 10 so you can get as much detail in the diamond as possible.
The final trick with diamonds is caustics, and more importantly, prism caustics. It’s easy to get light reflecting within a diamond, but diamonds don’t merely reflect light, they bend it and show you the color spectrum. While I haven’t found a way to do that natively in Cinema, you can fake it by using more than one light, and making each one a different color, primarily red, blue and green.
All you have to do after that is render it out and do a little post work in after effects. If you want your diamond to look even more real, you can add an HDRI sky background for added reflection, increase the blur in your reflection, and increase your anti-aliasing settings. Keep in mind though, this will DRASTICALLY increase you render times. To get a copy of my source files, click HERE. Enjoy and keep it sexy you 3D brainiacs out there!
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NICE TUTORIAL, Very Very good.
incredible *.*
i thank you so much!!!
i <3 you
=))
wow, all your tutorial are great !!!
i learn a lot !!!!
many thanks from France !!!
nice tut 🙂 but 1comment:
you should use ‘copy data interface’ and paste it in ‘user data’ with the xpresso part so that beginners don’t have to worry about the types (interger, float, …)
I’m new to C4D and this was very helpful, thank you.
My diamond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIUXrz55VKo
Awesome tut. been on with it for hours no and i cant get the quality of refractions your getting mine are far too sharp while yours seem to be raped in areas and look much softer. any ideas?
I believe you can blur your reflections. Careful though. It drastically increased the time of render. You can also blur your HDR to help speed up rendering.
Big Thanks from France, Very good tuts ;).
Thx Al for sharing your great tutorials.
Greets from munich
I might be out of theme 😛
But I would like to ask what is the song in RenderReady intro…
I think I heard it somewhere else too but I can’t find it.
It’s in the final cut suite stock music library. If you open Soundtrack, you should be able to find it.
Render time Please? ; | I think is Too short?!
Truly too long. But really, are there such a thing as fast 3d renders?
It’s amazing how you do that.
What a great resource!
Nice site, nice and easy on the eyes and great content too.
Thank you sir!
HHIS I should have toghuht of that!
Hey, that’s the graeetst! So with ll this brain power AWHFY?
Nice tutorial. I am not able to open the source file in my cinema4d R11.5
Hey, youÂ’re the goto expert. Tahkns for hanging out here.
Walking in the presence of giants here. Cool tikhning all around!
Just use the phong tag to get rid of the smooth blending between faces…
delete it or adjust it.
beside that good tut. thanks
You have shed a ray of sunshine into the forum. Takhns!
I’m impressed! You’ve maanegd the almost impossible.
wooow realistic diamonds… tnx Al Heck very nice tutZ
I bow down hmulby in the presence of such greatness.
thank you ! gam sa ^^_
Kewl you should come up with that. Eclxelnet!
Got it! Thnkas a lot again for helping me out!
NICE TUTORIAL.. !!!
finally i found great diamond tutorial..!!!
THX..!!!
You’ve hit the ball out the park! Incredilbe!
Cool! That’s a cveler way of looking at it!