Creating a Line Object Render

Today you will learn how to create great looking Line Renders using extruding and deformers.
Line renders are amazing looking renders that are often used on wallpapers or photo manipulations.

Lets get started by opening Cinema 4D, I’m using C4D R10 for this tutorial, but it should also work for older versions.

Start of by adding a cube object, Object > Primitives > Cube.
I used the following settings, you can use a different size if you want but make sure you set the x,y and z segments higher then 1.

Once you are happy with your cube object press C on your keyboard to make the cube editable.
Now select the polygon tool (Tools > Polygon, or the menu on the left) and press CTRL+A to select all of the polygons on your cube.

After that right click on your cube with your mouse and select extrude.
Now click on your object and while holding your mouse button move your towards you so you extrude all surfaces.

After that hit delete, this will create our line render (or what ever you want to call it)

Now you can scale your cube if you want to, I did this because I didn’t really like the look of it at this point.

Now right click on your cube in the object browser and select group objects, this allows you to put deformers onto your object.

Next step is to add deformers to our object to make it more dynamic and vibrant. I normally just use some random deformers like bend, twist and wrap. You can find them in Object > Deformation, or using the deformations shortcut button.

To add a deformer, first select it from the menu so it is added to your scene, than drag it in your null object so it becomes a child of it. Now you can play around with the different settings of your chosen deformer.

Now add a floor to your scene Objects Scene Floor, and a light. Move the light to somewhere you feel happy about it. You can quickly move it around by clicking on the red, blue and green arrows coming from the light. In your light attribute manager click on the Shadow tab, and set shadow to “shadows Maps (Soft)”. This will make your light cast shadows when it hits an object.

Here is how my scene looks right now when I do a quick render, nothing special yet so lets continue by adding other objects.

Repeat your just learned steps by adding different types of primitives and extruding them, always keep in mind that you will need to increase the subdivision settings in your attribute manager!

Here is my result after this step, its looking good but of course we can make it look a lot better using some sexy materials

In your Material browser (you can find it on the bottom of the screen), go to File > New Material. Make sure you select Color, Luminance and Environment.

Here are the settings I used, of course feel free to change these or just use some of your downloaded materials.

Now you can apply this material to any of your object by simply dragging the material onto the object in the object browser or onto the object in the scene.

Now you can copy and paste this material and edit the colors, after which you apply your new material to one off your other objects in your scene. Repeat this step until you have added a material to all of your Line Objects. This is my final result:

And here is another render made using these technique’s:

This tutorial was originally written by pdgfx, more off his work and other tutorials by him can be found in his deviantart gallery, be sure to check it out!