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Hello people, it's me again, with the first of many Cinema 4D tutorials I am willing to write, thanks to my good-heart and perhaps a bit of alcohol... Well, ok, lets forget the alcohol (its my birthday tomorrow, and I want to end it with a bang).

"It's falling!"

Hmmm... very nice, yeah? Supposing you haven't been living inside a cave for the last x years of your life (where x is the exact number of years you have lived until this very moment), you must be reasonably aware that this is a flaming meteor burning in earth's atmosphere. So, how did I create this astronomical phenomenon?  Well, read on and find out! Just as a pre-amble, though, I would like to remind you that although this tutorial is intermediate in nature and my first tutorial in this section, it is designed so that even total beginners will be able to keep up. With this in mind, there are only two requirements for this tutorial:

• You will need Cinema 4D 8.0 or greater, and the Pyrocluster plug-in, or any other version but with Pyrocluster (I'm not sure versions below 8.0 can run Pyrocluster anyway). I will be using Cinema 4D 8.5, so there might be differences in the layout depending on the version you are running. If you haven't already, check out www.maxon.net and consider an upgrade to a newer version, as its worth every penny spent!

• You must understand the core basics of the Cinema 4D interface.  If you are brand new to Cinema 4D, just fiddle for a while to get the hang of the view ports, menus, etc.

This tutorial focuses mainly in an official plug-in called "Pyrocluster". It's a very complex, complete and highly detailed particles module. I will teach how to use, understand, and optimize it (because you will sure as hell need to!). This is, indeed, more of a walkthrough than a tutorial, but since I will be focusing on one tool, you can classify it as both.

"But Elentor, I'm a purist! I hate using these advanced effects! I hate using shaders! I'm a true artist and I want to do it by hand - using the raw particle system!" - random purist

I can understand. I'm a purist myself and I hate using shaders, downloaded textures, etc. Pyrocluster, though, is an official tool, and is extremely customizable (not as much as the official particle generator, though). It's NOT easy to use (thus the need for a tutorial), and it takes a long time to render. Using it in your creations is definitely not cheating.

What then, will you learn with this tutorial?

Basic:
- Basic Modelling (Modelling a Meteor from a Simple Shape)
- Creating, customizing, and adding a material to an object.

Basic - Intermediate:
- Creating a Particle Emitter and adjusting it
- Basic notions of Particle Emitter Configurations

Intermediate:
- Creating a Pyrocluster Material and editing it's basic options.
- Optimizing the Pyrocluster Effect

I promise it will not take too long. So, grab a wine bottle, go have a number one in the bathroom, and let's get ready!

Section 1 - Modelling the Meteor
Step 1: The first thing we need to do is create the meteor.  Since it is a such basic shape, I will be quick.  So, create a Sphere (Objects > Primitive > Sphere), resize it to 25m in the coordinates box, and zoom in.

Since the object is a primitive, setting only one axis size will re-dimension all others to that same value.
 

Step 2: Like I said, the Meteor is a very basic shape, so we only need to deform the sphere a little. We cannot do this with the existing object, though, as Cinema 4D 'primitives' cannot be directly edited. To get around this limitation, we will need to convert the Sphere into a Raw Polygonal object. To do this, select the sphere and click on the "Make Object Editable" button in the top of the left menu bar.

Step 3: We now have a true polygonal object. The next part is the most important and can become quite tricky. We'll be deforming the sphere until it looks like a meteor. Select the Sphere and click on the "Use Point" Tool.  This will allow us to play with the sphere's vertices until it looks like a suitably rocky object.

The Ball as seem in the "Use Point" mode

Why do we select Vertices instead of Polygons? Well, it doesn't make much difference really - its just a personal preference.  You can use the Use Polygon tool if you really want to, but DO NOT touch the Extrude tool, as it will greatly increase the number of polygons we are using and create an object that is much harder to manipulate.
 

Step 4: With the above points in mind, select the "Live Selection" Tool, and click on the 'Active Tool' tab in the menu on the bottom right of the screen. Set the Radius of the Selection to 20 and unmark "Only Select Visible Elements" (this will allow us to select points around the back of the object that are not directly visible in the view port).

There is no trick to reshaping the sphere - just select the points and move them in the X, Z and Y axis until you have a result that is to your liking. There is no pattern or defined symmetry to your work (Hell, you are making a flying rock!). If you want, you can increase the radius of the Live Selection Tool. You can even use the Resize or Rotation tools on the points, if you see a need for them!

Step 5: We are almost there, but the meteor object looks a little rough. We can correct this by creating a HyperNURBS object from Objects > NURBS > HyperNURBS (a HyperNURBS object serves with the purpose of "smoothing" polygon models) and dragging / dropping the meteor's name over the HyperNURBS in the Object Manager. After you have done this, select the HyperNURBS object and, in the Object tab under the Attributes menu, input 1 in both the Subdivision Editor and Subdivision Renderer boxes. This will not only to reduce the enormous polygon count that could bring your PC to a crawl, but will also prevent the meteor from becoming too "rounded".

With this step complete, perform all necessary final tweaks to your meteor object until it suits your personal tastes, and then progress onto the next section.

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