Kent Oberheu 'Covers' Peachpit with CINEMA 4D

Over the past 2 years, Peachpit Press has relied on the creativeservices of Kent Oberheu to craft a new line of book covers. Kent wasencouraged to "think different" as these covers were destined to encasehow-to titles for Apple software applications. Kent chose to realizethis vision using CINEMA 4D. What resulted is a family of book coversthat evoke the hip, up-to-the-minute vibe of Apple products.


Challenged with creating a strong brand for the Peachpit series, Kentcleverly established a solid identity for Apple's Professional andProductivity product lines: Final Cut Studio, Aperture, Logic, iLife,and iWork. Each cover took from 15 to 55 hours to complete, with oneframe rendering in about two hours. Actual concept designs were themost time-consuming part of the project. The illustrations were createdwith the CINEMA 4D Studio Bundle and Advanced Render module, startingwith Release 9 and completing with Release 10.1.

Kent elaborates on his creative process, "InCINEMA, I start working with splines that I intend to form into nurbsmeshes. I rely heavily on navigation in 3D space. I've found thatCINEMA 4D's navigation tools are intuitive so I can work my way aroundrelatively complex splines and surfaces quickly. It's almost like I'mworking on an actual wire model with my hands. I quickly form severalsplines and turn them into surfaces by dropping them into a Loft orSweep object. I like working this way because I can turn the surfaceson or off to see the results. I also typically work at one subdivisionlevel in my viewport and set my 3D canvas to render at full level ofsubdivision. In some cases, I even nest my NURBS objects and useHyperNURBS to give me a further degree of subdivision when I need itfor creating smooth surfaces at high resolution".

Kentrelies heavily on rendering in the current viewport. As he beginsrefining and setting materials on objects, he regularly hoversback-and-forth between navigation and rendering in the current viewportto check camera angle, materials, lighting and surface continuity.

"Theflexibility to change and save CINEMA 4D's interface and toolconfigurations is really incredibly handy. I rely heavily on my ownconfiguration of the viewports and attribute editors in order tostreamline my workflow", says Kent.

The final illustrationson the book covers were 7.5 x 5.125 inches, but Kent worked at threetimes that size for the illustrations, roughly 7000 x 5000 pixels at16-bit. This was done to achieve a high level of detail in the images.Says Kent of this choice, "At that resolution, I needed the higherbit depth to be able to achieve the subtle gradations of color in theimages. The result is that the images can be printed at sizes closer tothose of my fine art prints".

Using the CINEMA 4D StudioBundle since 2001, Kent's toolkit also consists of Adobe Photoshop andIllustrator on a PowerMac dual G5.

Kent considers CINEMA 4D tobe the real time saver in his work, and when asked what the 3D projectfile size was in megabytes he knowingly replies, "The nice thing isthat, as an artist, I don't have to worry about it. CINEMA 4D handlesthe subdivision beautifully, without polygonal overhead".

Artist's notes on the book covers can be found on Kent's Website.


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