Cinema 4D - Modeling a Leather Couch

this tutorial is about creating a leather couch. all methods used in here are only suggestions to get a final model. of course you can do the each part with other techniques if you think they are better. if so, please tell me what different technique you used and i will try to include that. the first step is to create our couch-base - a cube ('objects->primitive->cube'). change the size of the cube to the following: x = 180, y = 10 and z = 75. go to the object properties in the attribute-manager and activate fillet. set the fillet radius to 2 m and a fillet subdivision of 3 work quite good.

to create our couch-legs, create a cylinder ('objects->primitive->cylinder'). change its size in the object properties to the following: radius = 2, height = 10, height segments = 1 and rotation segments = 20. now set it to the following position: x = 80 m, y = -10 m, z = -30 m (assuming that your cube is still in center-position). to avoid creating and positioning each other couch-leg, we need to create a symmetrieobject ('objects->modeling->symmetry'). go to its object properties and change the mirror-plane to zy (if it's not by default) and drag and drop the cylinder onto the symmetry object. this should create another leg with the right position. by now we only have 2 legs, so we need to create another symmetry object. change the mirror plane to xy and drag and drop the old symmetry-object into the new one. this should create the last 2 legs. rename the new symmetry-object into 'legs' to keep everything in order. the scene should look like this from the top view:

lets now create the actual seats, that should be placed onto our couch-base. with this one, we have a little bit more to do, than we did on the couch-base, but again, it starts with a cube. change its size in the object-properties to x = 90 m, y = 10 m and z = 55 m. set its coordinates to x = 45 m, y = 10 m and z = -10 m. now change the number of segments in the object properties to x = 10, y = 3 and z = 7. rename it to 'seat' and make it now editable by hitting 'c'. switch to the 'use polygon tool' ('tools>polygon') and select all of our cube's polygons by hitting 'ctrl-a' (or go to 'edit->select all'). now select the bevel tool ('structure->bevel') and click somewhere in the scene and move your mouse to bevel your cube a little bit. an extrusion of 1 should be ok. this should make some smoother edges but causes also, that the size of our seat has increased. change the size to the original values (x = 90 m, y = 10 m, z = 55 m).

the next step is to add some deformations to the seat. go to 'objects->deformation->ffd' to add a free form deformation. change its position the seat's position (x = 45 m, y = 10 m, z = -10 m) and change its size to x = 100 m, y = 15 m and z = 65 m. drag and drop the ffd-object onto the seat. select the ffdobject and switch to the 'use point tool' ('tools->points'). select the middle point of the upper points and move it a bit down along the negative y-axis to create some sort of a vault. moving it to -5 m would be alright.

i would suggest you change the seat a bit more to make it look like it has been used for quite a little while. select some of the upper front points and move them also a bit down like i did it here:

when you're done, we have to get rid of the ffd-object/cube-combination to work with the seat more easier. right-click on the seat and click on 'current state to object' to create a new seat that already keeps the deformations we did on the original cube. delete the original seat. select the seat and change to the 'use polygon tool' ('tools->polygons'). hopefully our selection from our last polygon operations should be active, which looks like this now:

go to 'structure->set point value' and go to the object properties and select 'crumple [normal]' for all. change the value to 0.3 and hit 'apply'. now create a hypernurbs object ('objects->nurbs->hypernurbs') and drag and drop your seat onto the hypernurbs object. go to the object properties of the hypernurbs object and change the number of subdivision for editor and renderer to 1. right-click again our object (this time the hypernurbs object) and click on 'current state to object'. this will create our new seat, but its in a null-object. move it out of the null object and delete the null object and our old seat. the new seat should look like this with it's brand new crumples:

to create a new instance of our seat, we are going use the symmetry-function again. go to 'objects>modeling-symmetry' and the the mirror plane to zy. drag and drop the seat onto the symmetry object. when you render your scene, it should look in some way like this:

now it's time to create the back. create a new cube object ('objects->primitive->cube') and change its size to the following: x = 90 m, y = 40 m and z = 20 m. move it to x = 45 m, y = 25 m and z = 27.5 m. change the number of x-segments to 10, y-segments to 5 and z-segments to 3. hit 'c' to make it editable.

to add some deformations to the new cube (by the way: rename it to 'back'), create a shear deformation object ('object->deformation->shear'). drag and drop it onto the back and go to its object properties. change the angle to 90 and set the strength-value to 30%. now move the back a little bit along the blue z-axis to z = 17 m to move it back to its old position. old procedure: right-lick on it and select 'current state to object'. now delete the old object.

create a hypernurbs object ('objects->nurbs->hypernurbs') and drag and drop the back onto the hypernurbs object. change its subdivision for editor and renderer to 1 in the object properties. now go to 'objects->deformation->ffd' to create a free form deformation object. move it to x = 45 m, y = 25 m and z = 30 m. change its size to x = 100 m, y = 50 m and z = 40 m. drag and drop it onto the cube:

change to the left view by hitting 'F3', switch to the 'use point tool', go to the rectangle selection tool ('selection->rectangle selection') and deselect 'only visible elements' in the options. choose the 2 upper rows facing back:

now move the selected points along the blue z-axis to z = 9 m.

switch back to the perspective view and add some more deformations to make it look like this:

go to the 'use polygon tool' ('tools->polygons'), go to live selection (take care that 'only select visible elements is activated') and select the front polygons of the back. i mean these guys here:

now go to 'structure->set point value' and select 'crumple [normal]' for all and apply it with a value of 1. now right-click the hypernurbs object and select 'current state to object'. move it out of the null-object and delete the hypernurbs- and null-object. once again, create a symmetry object ('objects->modeling->symmetry'), choose zy as a mirror plane in the object properties and drag and drop the back onto the symmetry object.

if you want you can put also an armrest to the couch, which would make it look not so much like a bed with seats and backrests. maybe i'm gonna add this in the next time but right now, i want to focus on the textures for the couch. in the textures-panel, go to 'file->shader->danel' to load the danel shader. it has already that metalliclook, that we need for our legs. we just have to remove the red color. double-click on the danel-material to open the material editor. in the diffuse-section double-click on that red area next to 'color' to change the color to whatever you want. i chose the white. now you have to adjust the other colors in the 'specular' sections. change their color to create a one-color material. drag and drop the material to your original leg, the cylinder:

let's create the leather-material. in the textures-panel, go to 'file->new material'. double-click on it to move to the material editor. i am going to create a black leather material. go to the color-section and change the color to a deep black. go to the specular-section and change the values to the following:

now go to the specular color-section and change the color to a light grey. now go to the illuminationsection and change the shading model from phong to blinn.

add the material to all other couch-parts except the cylinder:

with the right lighting, it doesn't look that bad, huh?

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