Cinema4D: Create Shape Transitions in 5 Minutes Using PBlurp Tutorial

This tutorial requires you have the Thinking Particles plug-in for Cinema 4D and you are past beginner stage with the software. Start a new scene and bring in a primatives cube. Move the cube along the Z-Axis, with the Model tool selected choose the move tool and drag the blue arrow. Move it to around position 300M on the Z axis. Bring into the scene a sphere. Move this along the Z-axis also but in the negative direction to around -300M. In the properties for the cube set the number of segments for X,Y and Z to 10. Make the cube and the sphere editable (C on the keyboard).



On the menu at the top choose Plugins -> Thinking Particles -> Particle Geometry. Move the sphere and the cube inside this object in the objects palette. Using the toggle buttons make the sphere and the cube invisible. Bring a null into the scene (Objects -> Null object). We are going to apply and Xpresso setup to this null. Select the Null in the object palette then, within the object palette, goto File - > Cinema 4D tags -> Xpresso. In the window that pops up right click in the grid space and choose New Node -> Thinking Particles -> TP Generator -> PBlurp. Click on the newly create node to display its properties in the bottom right. Drag the sphere then the cube into the Objects parameter.



Now, make sure the animation header is on 0 F and right click on the Animation Phase parameter of the PBlurp node. Choose Animation -> Add Keyframe. Move the animation header along to the end (usually 90 F by default), and change Animation Phase to 100% then add another keyframe. Rewind the animation header. We are almost finished now, just tweaking of the Blurp to do. Firstly in the Object parameter of the Blurp (where you dropper the sphere and the cube), hold shift and click on both the sphere and the cube to highlight them both. This ensures the changes you make are identical to both objects. Now, if you followed my instructions, you will have to change the From To parameter to +Y to -Y, I also increased the IN and OUT Tangents to 400 each to get a better arch. Make the count parameter 1000 and change both Thickness parameters to 5%. Press play and enjoy. It also helps if you apply two different colour materials to each object. This method can make a whole bunch of different effects using different parameters and input objects, so EXPERIMENT.



Bellow is a PBlurp animation I made. I sphere explodes and the particles emmited for 'OPIFEX'. This is a really neat and fast effect to do. Due to bandwidth restrictions I cannot offer the animation to download. I can, however, offer an example scene for your pleasure.