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Make a tire in Cinema 4d xl

OK, this is a technique I picked up in a thread at CGTalk.com so I can't take any credit for devolping it, and if you're more than average in Cinema you probably know about it anyway. What we're gonna do is make a segment of a tire, make duplicates of this segment, add a Bend deformer and drop the whole package in a HyperNURBS. I'm not gonna guide you throgh every single step but rather focus on the technique itself. You should be somewhat familiar with the functions of adding and bridging points.

Load the reference image in the Luminosity-channel and take a note on the size of the image. Then create a cube and give it corresponding values in the X- and Y-fields. Set Z to 1. Assign the cube the material with the default mapping type, UVW -- you want the reference image displayed on the front of the cube so that you can work from the Front viewport and with UVW the image will place itself properly.

Then move the cube 1 or 2 units backwards on the Z-axis. Why? In the next step you're gonna create a Polygon Object and start adding points and if you keep the cube at 0 on the Z-axis you points will be placed visually "inside" the cube. The points will be created at Z=0 and you don't want that space occupied by the cube. So change the cube's Z-position from 0 to 2.

Create a Polygon Object (Objects>Polygon Object). Nothing in your viewport will change but in the Object Manager a new Polygon Object is visible so double-click it and name it "Segment". Switch to Front view, zoom in on the profile, make sure you're in Points mode and that you have Segment as the active object. Now start adding points by selecting Structure>Add Points and then CTRL-click the outline of the profile. Just focus on getting the points down for one side of the profile since we will later mirror the Segment to get the complete element.

Place the points at the "crucial curves" of the profile -- identify what features are giving the profile its shape and place the points accordingly.

When you have all points in place you select them all and clone them once -- Structure>Edit Surface>Clone. Set Clones to 1 and change Rotation from 180Ú to 0Ú. Click OK.

OK, now you've cloned your points so don't let go of that selection! Move the new points on the Z-axis only to -50 (or just type -50 in the Coordinates Manager). All points are at the same Z-value so moving them all att the same time will be OK at this stage. Note: the cloned points are the unselected ones in the image above.

Time to bridge the points. Select the Bridge tool (Structure>Bridge) or just hit B on your keyboard. The cursor will now look like an arrow with a small, black bridge. Click on the first point and start bridging. Check out this gif if you're not sure on where to start, or read up on the Bridge tool in the manual.

This is roughly what you should have by now. Here I've dropped the Segment in a Symmetry Object just to see how it works. Now it's time to start slicing using the Knife.

Select the Knife (Structure>Knife) or hit the letter K on your keyboard. Make sure that the option Restrict to Selection is unchecked in the Active Tools Manager -- we want our cuts to slice throgh the whole mesh. From the Top or Right viewport add 4 cuts like in the image: 2 cuts to form a thin band of polygons and 2 cuts to form a slightly wider band. If you hold down Shift while cutting you will restrict the knife to 45Ú angles and will make it easier to keep the cuts straight.

Now switch to Polygon mode, select the polygons shown above and delete them.

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