How to create and animate a Rubik’s Cube in Cinema 4D using a setting you’ve probably never used before!
It seems like it would be really easy to do, but it’s a bit tricky..
First we tried using mograph effectors, but that didn’t work.
Then we got it kinda working with some over complex Parent Constraints, but that just wasn’t practical.
But then we stumbled onto a setting we’d never used before which was the key to the effect!
We built the tutorial and project file for her to use, and she was thankfully able to get the job out on time!
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Rubiks Cube - Free C4D Project File
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Responses
An awesome tutorial packed with cool tricks & tips. Always wondered what that ‘Quaternion Rotation’ was all about. Nice to see that being used. ‘Polygon Islands to Objects’ is a good trick as well.
Cheers Joanna, glad you found it useful!
Hello…love the new Ultimate Cinema 4D Guide approach…but I’m stuck at around 1:37 into the “Animating a Rubiks Cube” tutorial…where you undo make editable at the Cloner null level…since Ctrl Z doesn’t work since it was made editable early on? After replaying a few times, it doesn’t look like you’re clicking on anything, so must be a key shortcut other than Ctrl Z??? Thanks
Cheers Scott, all I did was hit CTRL+Z a few times till we get back to the Cloner again
I cannot render the tracker tag. Everything renders fine, but the spring motion is missing. So, I baked the tracker tag, and now my animation is broken, with cubes rotating separately.
I’ve noticed the Track Modifier can randomly stop working sometimes, just try reapplying it or make a new scene, or make sure you have your objects listed top to bottom in the order they need to be calculated. Take a look at the project file to see exactly how I did it
Hi Dave, Thanks for the help. I tried all those methods did not work. But, I figured it out in a different way for it to appear in the renderer. I baked the expression into a keyframe in the timeline so it appeared in render. So I was learning about expressions and tags, and got to know that they are not always read by the external render, and I am using CentiLeo for rendering. So I created a copy of the main object group and baked the animation. Don’t know how efficient it is, but if it works for now, it works. until I figure out a better way.
Baking as Alembic is usually a good option too, I cant say I’ve ever used that renderer though. Redshift is usually a good bet for production projects because it’s developed by Maxon as well so you can be sure it has maximum compatibility with all features.