What could be more seductive than being able to create reality and then adapt it to your own vision? In our world of media, we see animated characters, fun and animated text in our commercials and banners, but creating your own world can be the most intriguing invitation from your 3D graphics applications. Let’s get to know the landscape.
Cinema4D ‘landscape’ is a great way to get a head start on your landscape modeling scene. When you choose landscape from your primitive menu, you already have a detailed outlined landscape. With fit parameters like ‘irregular grooves’ and ‘sea level’ you have a primitive that is already designed for this type of model. You can focus on appearance with adjustable parameters that describe the land and contour.
Landscape is a primitive that you can choose directly from the primitive dropdown menu. In the attribute manager, create an expansive landscape, perhaps 5000 for X and Z (width and depth), and 500 for Y (height). You can use the magnet tool to carve out a pool of water or a more pronounced curvature in your landscape.
An introduction to some of the adjustable parameters, crossed with a science fiction movie, can be an exercise in animating your landscape. Animate it by becoming, breathing life and new substance. We could really have a bit of fun here with the volcanoes and explosions from inside the Earth, but it might be more useful to focus on the scenery itself and save some of the pyrotechnics for later.
Our creation of the Earth must have the substance of Life, there must be water. Probably the best way to create water is with an emitter. Add an emitter and then create a small sphere or capsule. Make your sphere object a child of the emitter by dragging it on top. Be sure to check the ‘Show Objects’ parameter for your emitter, which will tell you to replace the default particle with the child objects you’ve chosen. This allows you to replace particles with any of your choice. Here we want a simple and fast cartoon look of rushing water. Place your emitter in the mountains. You will have to make some adjustments, align your flow of water coming out of the mountains. At first make the flow away from the mountains, and then add some ‘gravity’ or a ‘baffle’ from the emitter menu to style the water flowing down the side of the mountain.
I had fun animating the height of the landscape. This is my mountain chain being born. You can adjust the ‘plateau’ to create a desert plateau look. You can adjust emitter values, such as birthrate and seed, to develop the look of your waterfall, and you can set a start or stop emitter at any frame in your composition. In our adventure here, you can make your water and waterfall rise as your mountains rise from the sea!