S.C.
Hey welcome to Makin’. You know those space
documentaries where they show nebulas in 3D?
Yeah, that’s what we’re doing here…
[preview]
You know the sort of documentaries I’m talking
about. They’re the ones shown at your local
science museum, or filler on Discovery. You’ll
get some talking heads going on about the
Big Bang or size of the universe and the editor
will be adding B-Roll zooming in on photos
and then all of a sudden, there’ll be this
one cool, really expensive-looking shot where
we rotate around a nebula in 3D. And you’ll
not be paying any attention anymore to what
the science person is saying, instead you’re
looking for the next cool shot. And after
about 10 minutes, they reuse the same shot.
Maybe in reverse this time.
So… let’s do that. I’m going to get
a photo from the ESO gallery. Bring it into
Photoshop to remove the stars then create
a fake depth map by turning into a greyscale
image and blurring it loads.
Then we’ll open up Cinema4D Lite and use
a Relief Generator to give it depth, then
in after effects, we’ll make it look wispy
and add a bunch of 3D stars.
I’m also going to use some lights with visible
noise to make it feel like we’re flying
through gas.
Sounds like a lot of work. Let’s get started.
So, first things first, I chose the Orion
Nebula and downloaded the JPG version. It’s
4K, so more than enough for our purposes.
I’ve brought it into Photoshop to remove
the stars. Now I covered this step in the
earlier Photoshop Nebula tutorial.
Go to Select > Color Range. Ignore the atrocious
US spelling - what’s wrong with U?
The letter U that is.
Change the dropdown to Highlights and see
how all the bright points are picked out?
Great. Now adjust the slider to get a balance
between stars and the nebula bright points.
And click OK.
Let’s use the Lasso tool and hold the ALT
key to deselect the brightest points of the
nebula.
And go to select > modify and expand the select
and then do the same to add some feathering
And then go to Edit > Content-Aware Fill
Then go to edit content to where Phil and
click okay
And click OK.
So that gets rid of loads of the tiny points,
and then we’ll have to use the Spot Removal
Tool to get rid of the bigger ones.
Takes a little bit of patience. But don’t
worry if you miss any.
The reason we’re doing this is that we’ll
be adding this image as a texture in C4D and
any flat stars will really show up.
At this point, YouTube suggests I ask you
to subscribe. Because you’ll forget at the
end. So… umm… subscribe?
So, once we have it ready, save your image,
then go to Image > Mode > Greyscale.
Discard the colour information and then go
to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the
value to about 15. As much as we want to retain
the shape of the nebula, we need to dump any
rough edges.
And then export this version as a PNG and
you can quit Photoshop.
Assuming you’re using Cinema4D Lite and
not full fat C4D, let’s start in After Effects
and go to File > New > Maxon Cinema 4D File.
You’ll be prompted for somewhere to save
it, and then C4D Lite will open.
Now it’s pretty cool that a 3D package is
bundled with AE, but it is a stripped back
version of C4D. There are some critical bits
missing. But there’s enough for our purposes.
So what we’re going to do is create a Relief
object and use the greyscale image we just
created to give us our nebula shape.
So go to Create > Primitive… wait… ummm…
where’s the Relief?… god damn it, they
remove the knife tool and support for a 3D
mouse and now they’ve taken the mother…
oh wait here it is.
Yeah - go to Create > Generate > Relief
Over in the Attributes panel, we now need
to load in our greyscale image. Quick aside,
if you make changes to the images, i cannot
get the object to update. I have to make a
new Relief object and re-add the image.
It’s not a big problem, but if you don’t
know about it, you’ll drive yourself nuts
trying smoother and smoother images.
Leave the Sizes at 600 for the first or X
box. Set Y all the down to 50 - that’s our
height of displacement and leave Z at 600
Cool.
Now let’s create a new material. In the
bottom Create, go to New Default Material
Double-click on the new material.
Turn off Color and instead go to the Luminance
Channel.
Now load in our edited, starless Nebula.
In Transparency, choose Ethanol from the presets
dropdown and uncheck the reflection checkboxes.
And drop the brightness to 70%.
So, we’ve made our nebula slightly transparent.
Which helps make it look less solid.
Continuing that theme. Right-click on the
Sphere preview and choose Plane - helps us
see what we’re creating.
Now, there is a sharp line at the edges. So
uncheck Transparency temporarily.
And check to Add Alpha.
Click on the Texture down arrow and choose
Gradient.
And then click on this preview to enter the
gradient settings.
Set the type to 2D Circular.
And then grab the swatch pointers and switch
them around.
Keep the black from being too close to the
edge, otherwise we re-introduce the edge lines.
But it is a bit too perfect. So up the Turbulence
to 35%.
Cool.
Now we’re going to add this material to
a solid object, so we need to do a lot of
work to make it look like a gas.
Check the Glow checkbox.
And set the Inner Strength to 0%. The Outer
to 200% and the radius to 20 cm
And make sure Use Material Color is checked.
Now, drag the material onto our Relief object.
And a quick Render Preview shows we’re getting
there.
Hold the 1, 2 or 3 keys on your keyboard while
left-clicking your mouse to move the camera
around the scene.
Let’s create a light - not to light our
scene, but to add fake some 3D clouds above
the Nebula.
Go to Create > Light > Light.
And in the Light Attributes, let’s start
by using the eye dropper to set a colour.
Pick part of the Nebula image.
And in Visible Light, choose Visible.
Position it above the brightest part of the
nebula - doesn’t really matter. And then
in Coords, drop the Y scale to 0.1
A quick preview shows what I’m aiming for.
A nice soft halo
But it’s a bit too perfect. So click on
the Noise setting.
Set Noise to Visibility
And Type to Soft Turbulence.
Drop Velocity to 0%.
Brightness to -40%
And contrast to 120%
And in the Visibility Scale section, set X
to 25, Y to 250 and Z to 25
The noise Y is ten times the size, to counteract
the light’s scale, where we made Y one-tenth
the size.
OK - getting there.
Next, go to Render > Edit Render settings.
Click on Effect > Object Glow and go back
and add Soft Filter too
We want to use every trick to make this look
cloudy.
And on that point, I wanted to show you how
to make stars in C4D Lite, but I’ll be adding
some blurs to the C4D layer when we’re back
in AE. So I don’t want to have stars only
to make them blurry.
But, let me show you what is possible anyway.
Create > Light > Light
In General, make it a visible light again
and in Visibility, set the Inner Distance
to 0.4 and the outer to 0.5.
Making sure the Light is selected in the Object
Manager
Oh.. by the way, you can double-click on the
name and rename any object here.
Making sure it’s selected, go to Tools > Duplicate.
If you have full C4D, I’d totally use the
Mograph Cloner here with the Randomiser, but
we can’t.
Now one of the modes for the Duplicate tool
is along Spline and what we’re trying to
do is distribute a bunch of stars are randomly
as possible. So, hit F2 to switch to the top
view.
And using the Sketch tool in the Spline menu,
go nuts. Draw as random a shape as possible.
F1 to switch back to normal view and select
our star again, go to Tools > Duplicate
Switch Mode to Along Spline and drag in our
spline object into the space.
Set copies to 150
Scroll to the bottom of the panel and click
Apply.
C4D will now make 150 copies of our star distributed
along our sketched spline. All well and good,
but a bit flat.
So, now go click on the tiny plus next to
the Star_copies group and select all the stars
underneath, you can use SHIFT here to help.
I miss Mograph Cloner.
Once they are all selected, go to Tools > Randomise.
In the Second Move box - set a suitable Y
position. I initially went with 40 but changed
it to 100 later.
And that’s how to make stars in 3D space
in C4d Lite.
Delete them.
And we’re done in C4D Lite. Except for the
project settings.
Go to Edit > Project Settings
Set your framerate and Maximum time. By default,
C4D is 30 frames per second and 90 frames
long - so 3 seconds.
You’ll want to up that.
Easiest way, set your frame rate the in Maximum
time, type that, hit star and type the number
of seconds.
Click Save, close C4D and return to After
Effects.
Drag your files onto the Create New Composition
button to match settings.
Create a new camera, by going to Layer > New
> Camera.
In the Cineware Effects settings, set the
camera dropdown to Centred Comp Camera.
And fly your camera around as best you can.
I find it easiest is to set Cineware to OpenGL
and I can fly my camera and see this pre-rendered
nebula.
And then switch this to software final when
it’s time to render.
Now - even in Software Final - it’s got
that 3D object look. We want to diffuse any
edges, but keep our details.
I went through all the combinations of blurs
and referenced AE’s own help pages and this
is what I came up with.
Duplicate your C4D layer. Hit Enter and rename
this to “blur reference”.
You can turn off the other C4D layer for the
moment.
And then go to Effect > Blur and Sharpen > Bilateral
Blur
Bilateral Blur blurs an image so the edges
are preserved. Which is sort of the opposite
of what we want.
Uncheck the colourise box.
And we have the greyscale image. Let’s up
the contrast by going to Effect > Color Correction
> Levels.
And drag the black point to about halfway
and the mid point to be about three quarters
of the way over to the black point.
OK, now turn this visibility of this layer
off and on the original C4D layer, go to Effect
> Blur and Sharpen > Compound Blur
Set the Blur layer to our Blur Reference and
set the dropdown to Effects and Masks
Set the amount to 10, we don’t need the
stretch and check the Invert Blur checkbox.
So Compound Blur - which uses luminance values
of a reference layer - blurs the brightest
parts of our nebula. Which we’ve made the
edges.
Now I tried various combinations of effects,
Smart BLur, Find Edges and this method got
me the closest to an object with fluffy edges.
There is one slight issue though. Compound
Blur isn’t some clever 3D blur, so if I
pull the camera right back, i can’t see
the nebula clearly.
We’re going to need an expression. Fortunately
it’s a simple one.
Ish
Expand Compound Blur on the timeline 
and hold ALT to click on the Maximum Blur
stopwatch.
And then use the Expressions library and go
to Interpolation > Linear(t,tmin etc..
This is a range mapper.
Let’s replace t with another expression.
Highlight t and go back to the Expressions
library and this time go to Vector Math > Length
point1, point2
We’ll now use the pickwhip to select our
camera’s position to replace point 1.
And point 2, we’ll use the camera’s point
of interest. You could use a 3D null instead,
but that’s up to you.
So now we have the input number. Let’s set
our behaviours.
From my initial animation, I start at about
700 pixels up and I want 0 blur. So, replace
tMin with 700 and value2 with 0.
And then I want the blur to be at maximum
when I’m 200 pixels from the point of interest.
Point of interest is roughly at the centre
of the nebula here.
So tMax becomes 200 and value1 becomes 10.
Compound blur does leave me with a feathered
edge of the frame. There’s a different ways
to deal with that - Probably easiest is to
take this comp, drop it into another and scale
it up a little.
But if you can’t do that for whatever reason,
if you expand the transform options, you’ll
see scale is already in use.
And you can’t parent the layer to a null
and scale that up.
What you can do is go to Effect > Distort
> Transform and use that effect’s scaling
property to scale up the nebula.
Almost done. But We still need stars. Fortunately
for my dedicated subscribers, we covered stars
a few tutorials ago. For everyone else, take
a look at my Starfields tutorial.
In that, we made a preset for a 3D starfield
using CC Particle World.
So I’m going to add a new solid, then go
to user presets and apply it.
And we’re done!
This isn’t my favourite method of making
a nebula - but it gives you more depth than
just a flat image and allows you to fly around
a real nebula.
I tried using both Video Copilot’s Element
3D and also Trapcode Particular to achieve
similar and couldn’t get anywhere close.
Cinema4D Lite has removed the option to save
as an OBJ file, so I was left with the Layer
emitter in Particular - which got me nowhere.
You can make your nebula in C4D, and then
use the Current State to Object to get the
model into Element - but the result wasn’t
worth it.
Thanks as always for watching. If you get
stuck, ask in the comments below. There’s
more tutorials to come in this series, subscribe,
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