1. Create a new document in Cinema 4D. Create a primitive cylinder object (Objects > Primitive > Cylinder)

and set it up as follows:

2. In your objects palette, right click the cylinder, and click Make Editable. This will make your object editable (duh!) which is required when making one object into a different looking shape by modeling:

3. Now lets start modeling! First we should picture in our mind what we want the can to look like. We can make this easier by using a reference object or image. A reference object is a real life object that we can look at as an example of what we want our virtual object to look like. Many artists use references when designing to make their design as realistic as possible. By using a reference can of sprite, I can see that it is cylindrical and shrinks in at the top and the bottom. I also notice that there is a indentation at the top and bottom that pulls inwards.

There are a few ways we can go about duplicating this look in Cinema 4D. First we need to understand how our object is made. If you have taken a geometry course, or even some simple algebra courses, you know that a point is anyplace in space, two connected points form a line, and by using multiple points in space, we can create 2D and 3D Shapes. This is exactly like that. Our cylinder object is made of many points. Using the tools in Cinema 4D, we can change the location of our points when we make our object editable to take the form of a new object. For creating the top of our can, we will pull the points around the top of the cylinder inwards to make it smaller than the mid section.

Select your Point Tool from the Tool bar:

4. As you can see, all of your points have been highlighted in brown once you click this tool. If this did not happen, you most likely did not make your shape editable. Now we are going to highlight the top points so we only edit them. Click on your Rectangle Selection Tool:

5. This tool will let you drag a box around what you want to edit. Using this tool, drag a box around the top 3 rows of points, and the very top of the can. When selecting multiple times, hold shift to keep your current selection and add onto it. You may need to use your navigation buttons to move around the object:

6. Once your finished selecting these points, press F5 to switch to your 4 port view. Now select your Scale Tool:

7. Click anywhere in one of your ports, and start dragging to the left to make the selection of points shrink in size. You can experiment with this, but I would recomend just pulling it in a little:

8. Now, using your rectangle selection tool again, hold control, and drag boxes around your bottom row of points to unselect them.

9. Using your scale tool again, drag in these points a little further to give your can the bump near the top:

10. Your can so far:

11. Later in this tutorial, we will be assigning a material to the selection at the top to make it look metallic. Now we need to make the indentation at the top of the can that goes downwards. This is the lid of the can. Do do this, lets first deselect everything (Selection > Deselect all), and then select your live selection tool:

12. This tool lets you manually select all the points you want to select by scrolling over them. It works the same as your rectangle selection tool, but this will help you learn the different kind of selections you can make in Cinema 4D. While holding down the left mouse button, drag your cursor over The 2 Middle rings and the center point on your can

13. Now that we have just these points selected, we can drag them inwards and outwards with our scale tool. Drag them a bit outwards so that we can make a thin rim at the top of the can:

14. To move these points downwards, select the move tool:

15. In your Side View ports, place your cursor over the green arrow (representing the y-axis), and drag downwards:

16. Now, repeat all of these steps until you have a familiar look at the bottom of your can:

17. Now we need to apply the materials to our object to give it texture, color, and other attributes we see in our reference object. I made my material in Photoshop. You can use any picture you want as your material. If you would like to follow the tutorial, use the following image as your material (save it to your computer):

If you use this image, credits must be given to GreyCobra.com

18. Now create a new material (in the materials palette, select File > New Material). Set it up as follows:

Replace the path to the material with where your image is located

18. Now drag this material from your materials palette to your object:

19. Go back to the Model Tool:

20. Make another material, and set it up like so:

21. Now select your polygon tool:

22. Using the techniques used earlier, select the polygons at the top and bottom of your can:

23. Now we need to set the selection, in other words, assign a name or title to the selection. To do this, go to selection > Set selection:

24. Now in the attributes palette, click on the Basic Tab, and for the name, enter topbottom:

25. Apply your reflection material (the second one you made) to the soft drink can. Click the Tag tab in the Attributes Palette, and set the selection to topbottom:

26. Add hyper nurbs to your cylinder object (Object > Nurbs > HyperNURBS > Drag the cylinder under hyper nurbs in the objects palette) for a smoother look:

And thats it! If you think that your can does not look very real, it is because it is in the middle of blank space! After adding a floor and light to my scene, this is what I created:

If your having problems with light and shadows, be sure to browse through our many tutorials on how to improve your skills in Cinema 4D!