XFrog Trees in Cinema 4D By:

Requirements: Cinema 4D 8 or higher, XFrog 3.02
also the plugin for Cinema 4D (available at XFrog's site)


Ok XFrog is capable of creating nice plants and trees but the problem is that you cannot render stills
and you really do not get the best idea of how really good the plants look when created.
But we can use it in Cinema, of course many advantages exist by doing this but i will not talk about that now.


Step 1: Ok when you have XFrog launched you will notice in the Hierarchy the camera named "Root"
Click on this so it is active, then go down to the Library and double click the tree icon. You should now
have a tree under the "Root" in the hierarchy. Double click the tree component 2 more times. They should
now be stacked as follows:



Step 2: Now click the first "Tree" component and rename it (in the parameter editor) to Trunk
you can then if you want rename the second "Tree" to branches and the 3rd "Tree" to branches 2


Step 3: Click the branches 2 so it is active and then in the Library double click the "Leaf" component.
It should then be bellow the "branches 2" component. Next hold the CTRL key and drag the Leaf onto the branches component.


Step 4: Now activate the trunk and in the parameter editor in the stem settings lower the "Length"
to around 16. Now next click on the material tab. (still in the parameter editor)

Step 5: Now just click on "set" for the texture. Click on the browse button and locate a trunk texture.
You may find some textures in the XFrog\Models\Trees Flowers and Cacti and any of the trees there.
* I used the bark from the "Autumn - Young Japanese Maple folder

Step 6: Now it has texture. Let's now click on the Leaf component and follow the step from above except
of course use a leaf texture instead of a bark. Also you may want to adjust the "Shift U" slider a bit


Step 7: If satisfied save your tree, exit XFrog and launch Cinema. But make sure you have the XFrog plugin
installed in Cinema before. You can obtain a free plugin for Cinema at XFrog's website.


Step 8: Now in the object manager in Cinema go to file>load object.
Locate your tree that you just created and load it in Cinema.
You will then have to zoom out so the object is in complete view




Step 9: In the material manager you will have textures done for you, however they do not seem
to show up. Simple enough double click the trunk material, for the color portion load your bark texture.

Step 10: Next is the leaves, but this is different however. Depending on what you did you should
have 3 "leaf" materials. Double click on the first one and change its color to something like:
R:53 G:85 B: 55 and Brightness 100. Check the alpha (so it is an active channel) and load a leaf,
experiment here. Now there should be a "Leaf.1" texture, give it a color value of R:95 G:149 B:83 and brightness:100 the next texture does not seem to affect the leaves at all so you may delete it.

Bellow is the final result. Of course now with the new version of XFrog 4 you can create plants
inside of Cinema, but this is an alternative method. And of course you need some lighting.