Texturing with UVs in Cinema 4D - Gain Total Control Over Your Materials

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Cinema 4D is the software of choice for 3D motion designers, but it has always presented a challenge in one area: texturing with UVs. However, with the recent S22 update, texturing with UVs has never been easier. In fact, this can be your new superpower!
In this tutorial, Creative Director EJ Hassenfratz walks you through the basics of UVs, unwrapping, and the tips you need to be able to successfully texture your own models! Once you understand the process, you'll be amazed at how this improved workflow opens up your creative capabilities.
Cinema 4D S22 New Features • Top New Features in Ci...
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Auto-Generated Transcript Below 👇
EJ Hassenfratz (00:00): UV unwrapping and cinema 4D used to be the bane to everyone's existence. But with the new UV workflow updates in cinema four D S 22, it's never been easier to learn this extremely useful skill. When you wrap your head around what a UV is and the whole process of UV and rapping, it's like you have this super power where you can finally accurately texture your models with ease, and I'm going to be walking you through the whole process of UVN wrapping, cover the basics of UVS and how you can apply it to your own models. Now, if you want to follow along with me, be sure to download the free project files in the video description below
EJ Hassenfratz (00:52): Now you've these are the names of the horizontal and vertical axes of a plane since XYZ is already used for coordinates in 3d space. Now, UV unwrapping is the process of flattening out a 3d model into 2d representation for texturing. Now things have a stuffed animal it's made by sewing together, separated pieces of flat fabric based on a sewing pattern. Two great one sewn together, stuffed animal, basically UV ING is that process of defining seams and then unsiloing or unwrapping a model added seems to flatten it out too easily. Texture UV mapping is then when you apply a texture and map it to your model, utilizing those UVS.
EJ Hassenfratz (01:39): So why the need for U visa and unwrapping it all? Well to demonstrate the why let's just start with a very simple case of a cube. And if we went and double clicked in the material manager down here and opened up the material editor and just loaded up, say a tile texture, or checkerboard texture even, and apply this to our cube, you'll see that this is mapped perfectly, no stretch squares, nothing like that. Now what happens if I make this a little longer, where you're going to see that the texture stretched out on these polygons that we actually made longer. And the reason for that can be made more apparent if we actually go and check out the UVS of our object. And I remember the UVS are just the 2d representation of a 3d object now to be able to generate a UV tag.
EJ Hassenfratz (02:34): What we need to do is make this object editable because we can't edit UVS on a primitive object. Okay? So I'm going to hit C to make that cube editable, and you'll see that that generated this UVW tag, this holds all of the UV information for this piece of geometry. So to view the UVS, we're going to go to our body pain, UV edit layout, and you'll see the 2d representation of our object here. Now, if I go into my polygon mode here and select this polygon here, you'll see that even though this is a pretty long stretched out polygon, it's actually mapped to this UV texture view as a perfect square. And this is why we have this stretched out texture. Okay. So if I select this polygon here and move this around, you'll see that all the UV editor is, is showing how a texture is mapped to a single polygon.
For the full transcript visit: som.bz/2W3o206

[@lucyfaire1980]

24:51 hehe "this actually maps pretty ffffu, pretty well". Excellent tutorial man!

[@neerajchandaver113]

Such awesome information! finally understanding UV while working along with the project files. Just a tip for older version users: In case cutting the seam is not unwrapping like shown in the video, use a shrink projection and use the relax UVs to fix the distortion. Cheers SOM!

[@effortmax]

That was a fantastic amount of work, EJ! Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. That's gold

[@imrsvhk]

Awesome explanation! Thx E.J - love how you explain things so clearly. We need more UV Tuts :)

[@MrAtownDown1]

I’ve been watching you for years EJ. You’re the best teacher in the biz.

[@bookworm8815]

Wow, that was just brilliant explanation! Thank you very much!

[@shavfx3574]

New to learning uv mapping. Always love the explanation in your videos and well-explained thanks.

[@kmanboard]

the texture squares on the face are stretched, while the 1s on the back of the head are smaller. that means the face will have less resolution than the rest of the model. its good practice to give the face more resolution to work with.

[@philippeheritier9364]

Wow ! Thx so much to spend so much time for this tut. It was perfectly explained

[@mvp4168]

great tutorial EJ, thanks for this

[@SpencerEvans]

Been trying to "wrap" my head around UV mapping and unwrapping for a while. This is the first tutorial I've seen that explains it in such a way that my brain can finally comprehend. Thank you!

[@glitchdilemma4200]

it's crazy that cinema4d is just starting to take its first steps towards a more profitable tool to use. Although I still prefer a thousand times Maya to manipulate the UVs.. Maya with the uvTools coming with the bonus tools, the king of uvwrapping production in my opinion..

[@bellyelmasry27]

The introduction was very helpful, thanks!

[@nuseratabdi901]

I was so frustrated with the new setup in BP UV! Thanks so much EJ!

[@diegowikander]

This tutorial has saved me hours of my life

[@Snappy27893]

The new intro made by the ordinary folk is an awesome on I come here just to see that eye pleasing experience

[@enprods]

This is what I look for! Very helpful Thank you

[@bussket]

Great thanks for such a big amount of useful information! I'm making a mask with my mascot for exam and you literally saved my day, A is guaranteed!

[@filmkaar-nitin]

Excellent tutorial. Thank you for making it so simple.

[@peped6607]

its not simple, its still hard

[@filmkaar-nitin]

@@peped6607 Don't give up. It gets easier with a little practice.

[@ExpressoMechanicTV]

Fab - thanks so much for sharing.

[@EnterMyDreams]

GREAT TUTORIAL!!

[@dmellis]

This was great, EJ. I'm on R23 now but this has been the most helpful tutorial on this subject yet. It really helped me understand when you said to think about this like how clothes are sewn. Also, I was trying to get it perfect which seems impossible. The point of hiding the seams where you won't be looking was also key.

[@slowpoke7785]

agree

[@creativekamhako6179]

Awesome tutorial

[@user-hw4mz1ou3p]

Excellent Tuto , one of the clearest on UV's. It would be a good idea to update this tuto with C4D 2023 Regards Jacques

[@Hermandad00]

Very very helpfull video thanks!!!!!!

[@Wolfpelt24]

This is a great tutorial & explanation of how UV mapping works for beginners but if you're familiar with the concept and only wanna know how to use it in C4D you'll probably wanna look for a quicker tutorial

[@sajjadabouei6721]

EJ perfect as always.

[@SusanYT2023]

so cute motion graphics

[@jjt6450]

Same here I've been trying to figure it out for years and gave up many times! Awesome tutorial!!

[@kalootmultimedia7989]

thank u bro...help me alot

[@laetitiabach2938]

very helpfull, thanks

[@ramixkhan4685]

Thanx as always

[@ROXunreal]

I can't wrap my head around why a 21st century program can't just visually paint on a model without UV mapping. Like, when that circle on the mushroom isn't circular. Can't it just see that the brush is circular, and apply the paint over the same area on the mushroom? How is it then that when you sculpt and use a brush to for example, raise a circular area on the scultped mesh, no UV mapping is needed there and yet it's a perfect circle exactly like the brush, even though it's the same principle of 2D on 3D.

[@bloodbros8878]

So helpful thank you! I'm having an issue with jaggy pixels. I guess it's caused by my artwork being flat, and then using a parallel camera on the object? Anyone have any ideas on how to work around this?

[@user-ls5qw2fo1i]

Спасибо большое! Thankyou very match :)

[@kaikafonso1759]

Awesome!! Thank you so much!

[@eyedesyn]

Thanks so much for watching!

[@mizansarkar1855]

nice tutorial boss

[@alexiscopeland2301]

aw lil yoda is in the background 🥰

[@mixtus]

I am surprised that you still have to make layers and choose a brush to simply output the UV's to Photoshop. I was looking forward to a menu item that would say export UVs. I'll have to see if they added that in S23. Great video as always.

[@ismailae4tv1]

nice video good lesson

[@BulletWhizza]

Thanks for a great video! And yeah that's not a parallelogram at 8:45, it's just a quadrilateral

[@nellomaxim]

hi there I can't seem to select the outline ppolgon option in order to see the unwrapped mesh for a photoshop import despite selectting the object, material and UV tags in the objects manager

[@hasanmahdihasan]

you are really amazing

[@georgeluna6217]

Is there any specific workflow to bake octane materials to object and then export a final object? What should be correct preparation (scene, light, unwrap, materials, export the final object)?

[@thehomme]

At 13:37 how do you get the small icons for new layer etc. I have a menu which I can pull out but docking it in place the icons have labels and so many of the buttons get clipped off the panel and can't be accessed

[@hernanlatorre1115]

Does this work with RS materials as well? Or is 3D Paint used only for standard materias?

[@NyoraiFidesTV]

Does anyone know why at around minute 41:00 EJ decides to maximise the space for the UVs? Does that matter so much? Isn't the main point to have your polygon geometry nice evenly distributed onto the UVs and that's it? Thanks

[@slowpoke7785]

you are the best

[@nelsondesousa3952]

I would love to know how you get around the distortion you are getting on the head

[@eyedesyn]

you can slice the head on the sides, like i did with the torso so you divide it by the front and the back but this assumes that having those seams on the sides are OK if you're just adding texture to the front of the face

[@onuruysal111]

hello.I have a question.Can we render with redshift after these operations, or is it only rendered with cinema 4d's own rendering engine? Is Redshift's mapping process different from this?

[@rebelleaf]

Thanks for the instructions, EJ. Curious, can UVs done in this new version be opened and rendered in earlier versions of C4D?

[@tobinv4309]

The information stored in the uvw tag will be the same. Weather you open it in an older version or export it to any other fileformat. You only got new tools in S22 to unwrap your UV's. So the answer is yes.

[@eyedesyn]

@@tobinv4309 What Tobi said! UVs are UVs but the editing will be different.

[@rebelleaf]

@@tobinv4309 Thanks for the detailed answer, Tobi!

[@rebelleaf]

@@eyedesyn Thanks as always, EJ man!

[@aaa-mt3tz]

Hi EJ, is it possible to remove seams? Like if I don't like how it unwraps and want to re-try, instead of undoing everything I want to just CTRL-click part of a seam and re-unwrap without that piece. But that doesn't work, the edge just turns white.

[@lollipop6482]

If I want to draw with the brush directly on the object in cinema it won't let me sometimes, but I always can draw on the uv mesh, I just don't get what I'm doing wrong here, pls help :D

[@ichispaceRomantic]

Hi, thanks for the tutorial. It was truly helpful :) I just have a questin, my Cinema 4D crashed a lot when I started to use the Path Selection tool x) like is that normal? 🤨

[@roymiller4332]

No

[@bbrachman]

I usually pick a color and use the 'Add Mesh Layer' to the Material/PSD file. Easier.

[@aakashgupta753]

where are the resource file to download? i clicked on the link but that opened EJ website but didnt find the file.

[@rakhimzhanovd1060]

cool

[@ignaciosagrario]

Does anybody know how to work with sculpted meshes? I usually make UVs in Rizom. If I have a mesh in lvl 1 and lvl 5 or 6, and I make UV's to level one, how do I transfer those UVs to high mesh? Thank you

[@user-ts4mn2br5k]

EJNB!!!

[@taviux511]

I dont see the unwrapp tool in my screen sorry for this noob question, where can it show up? thank you.

[@ismailae4tv1]

i want to know if i have many object how can make all texture in one uv image

[@designstudie]

coming from 3ds max, this still looks a bit complicated and exporting a simple texture map should be just 1 button ... hopefully they will keep working on that.

[@axe_fx]

can you highlight the difference between both? how is 3ds easier?

[@Vmshipe]

Great info....I can't be the only one who sang 'The Wizard and I' at 12:17

[@user-jf8js8zf5r]

why cant see in uv map when i select edges?

[@nellomaxim]

ahh figured it ouut...i neeeded to be in the polgpon tool not the point or edge tool

[@bodobanali]

I am in C4D R21. Anyway … maybe its the sames as in R22 and above? problem is: I have a Redshift Material un my object. When i go to my UV Edit Viewport i can't see the texture under/behind my unwrapped polygons (for example diffuse picture). Anyone know how i could make that visible so i could manipulate my texture or know whats happening when manipulating the uv-poligons?

[@cesarpiette6448]

Did you solve this? I have an Arnold material and I don’t know really how to deal with it and the unwrapped mesh?

[@dinamicasvisuales]

C4D Tiene que mejorar mucho en éste aspecto... es complicado crear un buen uv.

[@motiondesignermx2847]

is so complicated, any program to do this easy?

[@drewjackson3858]

8:55 I believe it's a rhombus.

[@asici2]

hello! I have r20 cinema, but I can't find command uvunwrap. is it a version problem?

[@fewzebrank]

yes

[@asici2]

Thank u for the reply

[@jorgefernando9518]

I can't find the way to export this to photoshop.

[@tanmaraja5119]

Yeah sure, Help us plese lol.

[@RoN43wwq]

Now they must upgrade OLD UNCOMFORTABLE Body paint mode.

[@eyedesyn]

Yeah Bodypaint is still an odd process and wish there were more paint tools available...take a run at Substance!

[@zachhunter7897]

They just need to get rid of body paint and the paint layers all together and focus on making the UV tools as intuitive as they are in Maya. And exporting a UV snapshot for editing in photoshop should be a one button process, it should not be as convoluted as it is in C4D.

[@xSk3lx]

It bothered me at 23:55 because he didn't unchecked "pin border points" otherwise it would have been good

[@mestrecelso78]

very nice legend portuguese!

[@mofogamingttv9835]

"I'm an island polygon, and I'm just trying to make it"

[@markarthurescoto5165]

How’s it going?

[@cadavericmaggot]

too bad you totally ignored distorted spots, on which fixing i counted on..

[@aykutcelebi_art]

Thanks for tutorial. But your layout very different from standart layout and difficult following...

[@jastrick100]

SOM = to SOM

[@sergey041963]

New Cinema has just come out, but such a plug-in was before FD UVToolkit kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZrIeZJsqph-mqM and they are identical. Coincidence? I don’t think. I’m using the viewport as a carbon copy.

[@marcelonunes6967]

48:00

[@oprust]

44:01 Emo sloth or Slow Hitler?

[@shaffar100]

Im not too sure C4D have made THAT many improvements on this. It looks pretty much the same and I've had a lot of experience in unwrapping in Maya. Little things like you still cant just export your UV map at the click of a button.... Instead you need to create a painting layer and outline your polys.... but it doesnt work if you dont highlight them all.... too much effort!!! Even Softimage had better UV unwrap capabilities than this.

[@zachhunter7897]

C4D's convoluted UV snapshot export process annoyed the shit out of me, coming from Maya.🙄

[@glitchdilemma4200]

yeah, maya beat cinema in every way when you talk about UV wrapping.

[@chichouroro]

If your trying to uv unwrap your models for game engines you will have a hard time doing so, non of these tutorials talk about texel density & many other things needed, I recommend switching to Blender or any other 3D application if you are working with games engines.

[@MrMythorst]

still worst UV Tools ever made in my opinion. Still taking ages for simple objects. There are way better option out there. But thanks for the Video

[@namtong577]

37 years old?

[@eyedesyn]

Im an old fart!!!

[@cemgulpunk]

Dang! It still takes 52 minutes to unwrap a simple model. Good job though. Thanks EJ.

[@eyedesyn]

I unwrap 3 models showing different workflows - so not entirely accurate! :) Thanks for watching!

[@cemgulpunk]

eyedesyn right thanks. Please do more👍

[@eyedesyn]

@@cemgulpunk cheers!

[@dynamicvoltage9765]

The fact that this is almost an hour long video tells me all i need to know about trying to texture in cinema 4d: use something else.

[@NimalTaz]

@EJ You are getting old mate

[@eyedesyn]

All the candles on my birthday cake are now fire hazards!

[@NimalTaz]

@@eyedesyn no worries mate. Keep doing what you are doing. Keep us motivated.

[@LIDI_TR]

c4d uv unwrap function looks weak...Maya better than it.

[@bsways]

This is the part where C4D starts to bore me to tears. It makes zero sense to me. Just does my head in. I actually fell asleep watching. The C4D paint system is not good either. The brushes all look really bad with lots of aliasing.

[@Ricardo-de9ju]

Body Painting is another abandoned tool. This is shameful, the potential it has was to function like the SP

[@peped6607]

"simple".....NOT!

[@gravitasdiverbium]

Cut down word count a bit and it would be a perfect tutorial. Too much filler need to be more concise. People can pause and rewind, no need to repeat yourself so much. This is a 15 minute tutorial max!