Welcome to this course, Animate a Marble Run in Cinema 4D. This is a beginner to intermediate course and a basic understanding of Cinema 4D’s user interface is recommended. 

In this series of lessons we will cover the fundamentals of 3D Simulation, dynamics and 3D modeling to help you gain an understanding of the tools and techniques used in the industry. Students will apply that knowledge to develop a motion graphics project consisting of a marble run. This course will also cover using garage Band for sound design and Adobe After Effects for Post-Production.

The topics this course will cover include the following:

01_Inspiration

• An introductory overview of project, inspiration images, planning and sketching a design.

02_Start Options

• Use of the MoGraph cloner to start the marble run
• Animating the count of the MoGraph cloner
• Creating a push start mechanism
• Adjusting the F-Curves and creating a looping animation
• Duplicating the push start and offsetting the animation in the dope sheet 
• Create a conveyor to start the simulation
• 3D model the conveyor using splines, the mograph cloner, and collider body tags
• Create a looping conveyor animation
• Add side wall geometry to prevent the spheres from falling off the sides of the conveyor

03_Modeling

• Walkthrough of the instructor’s project, components to be included and creating a seamless loop 
• 3D model the straight slides and a corner component using parametric primitives
• Assign collider body tags to all components
• Adjust project settings for realistic simulation
• Model the curved slides using splines in conjunction with the sweep nurbs object
• Adjust the profile spline for accuracy
• Create corner turns
• Overview of structural components to add realism to the scene
• Create an obstacles for the marbles to interact with using the mograph cloner and random effector 

04_Cameras and Rendering

• Use cameras in conjunction with the stage object to set up composition and transitions
• Animate cameras to follow the movement of the marbles and highlight the main animation
• Learn to optimize your scene for faster render times
• Set-up render settings for final output; output, save path, anti-aliasing, frame range

05_Sound Design

• Use royalty free sound files to create the sound design for your animation
• Use Garage Band to accurately place the sound effects to sync with the animation
• Automate each tracks volume to adjust the fade out of each sound
• Export sound design as a .wav file

06_Post-Production

• Composite sound and animation together
• Use Adobe After Effects to enhance the final appearance of the animation
• Add blurs, tints, glows, vignettes and curves adjustments for added visual interest
• Export the final animation as a .mov file through Adobe After Effects