BodyPaint: UV Mapping and Unwrap for Maxon Cinema 4D

Working with UVs

Working with UVs can be difficult, in my experience. They are often difficult to flatten as you want or they don’t quite fit perfectly. This C4D Spotlight will go through a few tutorials and tools to help make the job easier.

BodyPaint is not just for Cinema 4D users

Maxon explains, “BodyPaint 3D was created for all 3D artists and includes free plugins to connect with 3ds Max, Maya and Softimage. All other applications can exchange files with BodyPaint 3D using one of the numerous available file formats (e.g. OBJ, FBX or COLLADA).”

UV Mapping Tutorials for Cinema 4D

There are many tutorials on this topic. Here are a few that we’ve handpicked or that others have recommended to us.

UV Mapping in Cinema 4D from School of Motion

Intro to UVs in BodyPaint

Chris Schmit of Greyscalegorilla talks about unwrapping UVs and BodyPaint. Chris Schmidt’s tutorials are always top notch. He may be my favorite Cinema 4D tutorial guy on the web.

How To Unwrap Anything In C4D

Brandon Clements of  Glass Hand Films has a tutorial about how to UVing in C4D. This one is very recent and is via Lester Banks, one of the best resources out there for Cinema 4D related content. I love Lester’s writing style, for example, “Whatever their purpose, you need to be skilled in in the dark arts of unwrap, to make even the most rudimentary UV’s.”

Here are a few other tutorials on the same topic that you may want to check out if this didn’t answer all of your questions.

• How To UV Unwrap With Cinema 4D – Body Paint
• Unwrapping UVs in C4D R14 Part1
• Cinema 4D Tutorial: UV Mapping

UV Mapping made easy? Try Spline UV Mapper for Cinema 4D

UV-Mapping arcs or streets has always been a laborious task.  Spline UV Mapper Tool for Cinema 4D from Laublabcomes to the rescue. Just add a spline that follows you object’s geometry, add a Spline Mapping Tag and you’re ready to go. It’s as easy as that.

You get multiple Projection types and scaling settings. For indepth configuration you can even specify up to 10 rotation knots on your spline.

The Key Features of Spline UV Mapping:

• Extremely fast UV-mapping of complex objects
• Restrict your mapping to a Selection-Tag or to a UVW-Tag
• Invert UV coordinates separately
• Automatic Preview of the generated UVW map
• Multiple Projection options for many object types
• get variations in your UVs by setting rotation values
• All c4d spline types and object supported

Learn more about Laublab KG Spline UV Mapper Tool

Learn more at SIGGRAPH 2016 and from the C4D Live Stream!

By the way, Maxon’s SIGGRAPH show 2016 Speaker Lineup Announced. It’s held in Anaheim, California. These presenters are the cream of the crop and they will show you cool work and techniques that will blow your mind, plus you can get your questions answered. Sign up with C4D Live so that you can be alerted as to when the live streaming starts. If you’re at the Siggraph show, visit Booth #421 to see the presentations live, or streaming online (C4DLive.com).

Want to attend Siggraph but don’t have a pass? Register using our Guest Pass Code cinema4d for a free Siggraph Exhibits-only Pass.

Learn more about C4DLive at Siggraph 2016