Make a tire in Cinema 4d xl

If you drop the Segment in a Symmetry Object and hit render you should have something like the image on the right. It has some resemblance with a tire but we're not there yet. Switch to Points mode and Top viewport.

Select the Live Selection tool and make sure that Only Select Visible Elements is unchecked. Then select a any group of 4 points and start moving the on the X- and Z-axes. If you have some reference material of real tire patterns, use them, otherwise just move and rotate the points (around Y-axis only!) until you get something that could pass as a believable pattern.

Frequently check with the Symmetry Object active and dropped in a HyperNURB to see how you're doing. When you're satisfied it's time to Duplicate and then Bend.

Deactivate the HyperNURBS and select the Symmetry Object. Then select Function>Duplicate. The number of Copies determines the size of your tire -- 5 copies will make it pretty small and 200 will make it pretty huge (although rather thin...). Anyway, enter 50 to start with and work from there. Alse check Generate Instances so you wont bog down your system with too much geometry. Also, if you change the geometry of your Segment, all instances will update immeadiately.Now, the tricky part here is to know how much every instance should move. Select Top view and start experimenting with different values for the Z-channel. You might wanna zoom in real close in order to get the instances to line up properly. I found that something around 2500 was an appropriate number. Click OK.

Add a Bend deformer (Objects>Deformations>Bend). Group the Symmetry Object (containing your Segment), the Instances and the Bend deformer under a Null Object (Objects>Null Object). Name the null Wheel. Select Right viewport and rotate the Bend deformer -90° around the X-axis/Pitch. Now double-click the Bend object to bring up its dialog box. Change the Y size so that it encompasses the whole group of instances and is placed reasonably in the middle of the group. Check Keep Y Axis Length and set the Mode to Limited.

ADVERTISE

Your hierarchy should be as the image above illustrates. Now we will bend all those instances into a circle and forming the actual tire.

Grab hold of the yellow handle on the Bend deformer and start dragging it in the Z-direction. You will see the instances starting to bend. You will probably have to drag the handle as well as zoom out quite a bit before the circle will be almost closed. Now zoom in and double-click the Bend deformer once again. You'll see that the Angle will be very high and this is the value you should play with now -- add 10-20 degrees, click OK and see what happens. Zoom in extremely close on the gap between the two ends and make sure that they meet as neatly as you can. For my wheel the angle of 412Ú proved to be OK.

Now drop the Wheel-group in a HyperNURBS and render -- Congratulations, you have a tire! Just add a hubcap and you're ready to roll!

Here I've added some additional cuts (the line along the center of the tire) to break up the pattern a bit plus a rim modeled by following this tutorial by Holger Schömann at Digital Worlds.

Note: the tire can get very heavy on the polycountside when you drop it in a HyperNURBS so if you're not planning any close-up shots of it, deactivate the HN. Usually you can get away with simple polygons. Or set the HyperNURBS Subdivision Renderer to 1 to keep some smoothness.