HOW DO I ANIMATE A BALL MOVING THROUGH A BULGING PIPE IN CINEMA 4D?

ARTIST Q & A

- Aaron Botley, Northampton

Mike Griggs replies

While Cinema 4D is one of the most straightforward 3D creation applications to learn, as there are so many options for creating compelling animations, it can be daunting to decide which path to take.

The good thing is that usually, the most convenient method in Cinema 4D can get great results. These animate quickly, and with the speed improvements in Cinema 4D’s viewport, can be rapidly iterated.

To animate a ball moving through a bulging pipe, the standard Cinema 4D deformers are the toolset best suited to solving this problem. In this example, we will use the Displacer Deformer to create a bulge in the pipe that is driven by the animation of a ball ‘squeezing’ through it. While deformers have been a vital part of Cinema 4D’s toolset for years, it was the recent introduction of the ‘Fields’ workflow that has super-powered how deformers can be used.

A deformer object in Cinema 4D is most commonly applied directly to an object as a child. This means that it was not immediately obvious how to move the deformer separately from its parent object, especially if the deformer’s animation needs to be driven by another object.

The addition of separate Field objects that can be parented or animated independently of the deformer object allows potent and logical animation systems to be created quickly.