Review | Lynda.com CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training

Posted 17th October 2011 by Andrew

For some time I have wanted to learn Maxon’s CINEMA 4D. A lot of top motion graphics artist and professionals in the film and TV industry now use this great software package. CINEMA 4D is a 3D modelling, animation and rendering application developed by MAXON.

It is capable of procedural and polygonal/sub modelling, animating, lighting, texturing, rendering, and common features found in 3d modelling applications.

Back in university I learnt another 3D package, Autodesk 3DS Max although it’s been a while since I have used it, so I know the basics of 3D but I wanted a video tutorial training course in helping me learn CINEMA 4D.

A few weeks back after looking around for a suitable video tutorial training course I came across Lynda.com CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training and I started into it. Here’s the course description:

CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training with Rob Garrott introduces artists to the CINEMA 4D workflow, using CINEMA 4D as an important part of a toolset that includes Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The course explains the key foundational concepts, such as polygons, textures, and rays, that are crucial to understanding exactly how this 3D application functions. It also includes practical techniques for creating, selecting, and transforming objects, working with splines, polygonal modeling, and adding materials, lighting, and camera views for a fully realized 3D image. Exercise files are included with the course.

Topics include:

Exploring the importance of object hierarchy
Modeling with splines
Modeling with the Knife and Extrude tools
Applying materials and texturing
Creating and manipulating light sources
Animating in the timeline with keyframes
Controlling camera movement
Compositing in After Effects
Texturing with BodyPaint
Using XPresso and MoGraph
Creating particle systems
Rendering and adjusting final render settings

Here’s the introduction video to the course:

After going through this course in full I can honestly say I picked the right training course as the whole software package was covered in great depth with bite size chunks of information. Here’s a link to the table of contents and as you can see each chapter covers a certain area (in great detail too) so I can easily go back over an area I am unsure of. Now some chapters like MoGraph only give you an overview of what it can do but that’s fine as it appears to cover MoGraph in full it would require a training course in itself! This course gives you a user a solid foundation into CINEMA 4D.

The last thing to talk about is the about the author, Rob Garrott (bio below). Rob really knows his stuff about CINEMA 4D and covers the package excellently, in a very friendly and easy to listen to way. I would gladly (and look forward to) working through another course authored by him… hint… look out for a post later in the week about this very thing!

Rob Garrott is an art director, animator, and editor with many years of hands-on experience in the print and broadcast industries, working for ad agencies and television networks. He focuses on creative direction, design, editing, and animation using CINEMA 4D, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro. He has designed and produced broadcast projects for many top brands, creating everything from TV Guide ads to on-air network graphics packages, promos, television shows, and sales tapes.

In addition, Rob is an instructor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, where he teaches 3D motion graphics, compositing, and motion design.

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