3D and abstract elements are a staple of modern design, and it’s hard to find a design portfolio that doesn’t incorporate some form of 3d element into it.  3D can help a design naturally have depth, and it can make visual elements stand out significantly more.  Many of the tutorials on Design.CreativeFan use these sorts of elements.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create 3d spheres and other abstract elements to use in your designs, so you can stop relying on stock 3d renders and have complete control over your design workflow.

Let’s get started.

Tools Used:

• Cinema4D

Final Image Preview:

Hi everyone! First of all, thanks for reading this tutorial and I hope you can learn something, not only how to create this kind of abstract, but also to understand how the Displacement works. During this tutorial I will explain some tips and tools that I think will be very helpful!
You will learn how to create some “abstract elements” that fits very well with many styles. You can combine these elements with anything that you prefer: stock images, illustrations, vectors, etc.

First of all, create a new document on Cinema 4D and go to Objects > Primitive > Sphere to create a simple Sphere Object. So, change some values on the Object Properties tab like the following image.

Duplicate this sphere and change some values again.

Delete it and you will get something like this.

Now, I will use this important modeling tool: Boole (Objects > Modeling > Boole). First, select both spheres and place them inside of this Boole object. It has a hierarchical order: 1 – Place the object that you want to remove a piece; 2 – Place the object that will be “the piece”.
(Image 1.3)

Here are the others elements that I will use. They came with the software and are configurable (Objects > Primitive > Platonic/Cone/Torus).

Now, I will create this kind of Helix. First, go to Objects > Spline Primitive > Helix and change some values. End Angle: 500º, Plane: XZ.

So, create a Circle Object (Objects > Spline Primitive > Circle) and change the Radius: 3m.

Create a Sweep NURBS Object (Objects > NURBS > Sweep NURBS) and place the Helix and the Circle inside of it like the following image.

Here is the configuration of the previous image:
Start: Filet Cap
Steps: 5m
Radius: 30m

End: Filet Cap
Steps: 5m
Radius: 5m

Here are some textures that I have created on Photoshop. They are simple patterns. The first is a normal JPG image, and the second is a PNG image with an empty background.

Now, we will create our Green material. On the color tab, load the texture that you prefer. In this case, I used these green stripes.

On the Luminance tab, select a Falloff texture.

And use these colors, like a green gradient.

On the Reflection tab, I used a Fresnel texture, because it gives a more realistic reflection.

And on the Specular tab, just keep the same values.

Duplicate the Green material and rename it to Displacement. After that, go to the Displacement tab, load the PNG texture and change some values.

Here are the elements that we saw before: sphere, Boolean sphere, cone, platonic, torus and helix. And to obtain other views of the same object, just rotate and scale them.

Here are our object layers. For all the objects I used the Green material, and only for the spheres I used the Displacement material. To get its effect, just press C (make editable) on these objects.

Here is what we have now.

And here is our final render. I used the “virtual studio” with an Infinity background, three Area Lights and a HDR image.

This is a comparison between a normal material and a displacement material. In this case, to create this effect I used a PNG image. So, the software understands the red stripes as a relief, and the empty ones as a normal texture.

Here are other materials. The first one I used a Lumas texture on the Luminance tab. And the second is a simple metal material with a Fresnel texture.

Here are two other materials that I created using Photoshop, the first is a pattern that I used two different patterns. And the second is like the green stripes, but with different colors.

I think this tutorial is very useful, because you can use these elements anytime that you want. They fit with any style and you can always change their looking!
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any doubts, just post it on the comments.