This video is an introduction to Xpresso, Cinema 4D’s data flow programming system. When you add an Xpresso tag to a scene, you are creating a workspace to design a snippet of code to make animations that would be impossible otherwise. Xpresso can be used to drive motion, color or brightness values. It can even be used to adjust Display preferences globally to make your workflow better when animating complex scenes.

I demonstrate the Math:Add object, one thing I did not show is that you can change the parameters in Math: Add to adjust the Text output. For example, if I convert the Math:Add from Real to String, I can put “X position is: ” in field 1, and the Global X coordinate of the object in field 2. The resulting output would be “X position is: 32.123232” or whatever.

Be sure to explore Thinking Particles and Xpresso, this is what makes the spectacular work that you often see in motion graphics and seems impossible to achieve. Art + Programming = Awesomeness….