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To tighten it you need to put more thickness to the sweep. Ideally if the Sweep and the thickness of the rope have exactly the same value there shouldn't be any gaps between the knots. And the Field Force would also tighten the shape.

Been playing around with it a bit, it's not perfect, and not super fast to calculate, but getting somewhere I think. Slightly different approach. Still playing but thought I would share and see if anyone else was interested in playing around! As a side note, the dynamics for this is cached. All you have to do it swap out the dynamics tags for your own geometry shape, and create a spline with "Bezier - Uniform distribution" that fits inside the geometry. Up the point count to whatever you need, for this one I used 200, but it could be larger or smaller depending on the tightness of coils you want. Then drop the spline into the tracer and let it sim out. TEST COIL_Differential Growth.c4d

Thank you for these 2 solutions you have provided @HappyPolygon !!! I tried both of the solutions you provided, however, I wasn't sure how to have the matrix object control the flattened tracer spline? So I tried the Rope dynamics, which works better and seems ok for less dense filled objects, and is interesting, but feels a bit different in the way the spline curves look and coil. Ideally I would want it packed more tightly like the image above. I am going to try and give the solution that @Hrvoje kindly provided as well and see if I can get something....If I do I'll let you know what I come up with! Thanks again everyone!

Yeah, it's somewhat quiet around here. Personally, my Multi-year-magnum-opus-project has entered postproduction, so all my time and learning goes into AfterEffects and other 2D-tools. Also, C4D as a product has very much stabilized; there was a time of great bitching and whining around the dreaded 'rewrite', but things have gotten much calmer, releases come steady, predictable and - a little boring? It's good the drama is gone, but it also was somewhat lively 🙂 Lastly, Maxon really opened a lot of channels and formats, where users go and take their discussions with them. Also good! Let users prosper in their natural habitats, be it youtube, insta or whatever. Me, though, I am a forums guy, I like it orderly and I like posts made from real sentences 🙂 So, what to do about the calm waters we're in now? A weekly discussion topic? Little contests? Feature wishes?

While not solved for Cryptomattes, my solution was to use a Puzzle Matte instead - which I’d totally forgotten about. Fortunately, the Puzzle Matte also ignored the atmospherics and honored my sprites, so I was able to get the alpha restored by just lobbing a Redshift render tag at the root, everything getting an Object ID of 1 (red) which I then used over in After Effects. Saved me from having to laboriously select each and every object as a matte in the Cryptomatte plugin. Posting in case someone else has a similar issue in the future. Chep

You can easily create what you need but it won't be procedural and definitely not animatable. But since you need a static one this might work for you. So far I've been trying to do this procedurally that's why I've been failing. Just create a Mesh Particle Emitter, set it to a mesh volume and assign your object. Set the speed to 0. Make it create a single shot of particles. Put the Particle Group in a Tracer. Connect all Elements. Set it to Bezier with Uniform distribution. Make a Matrix Object. Use it to create enough Matrices on the Traced Spline. So far the set up isn't that far from what you've already seen with previous projects. This is where everything will be non-procedural. Create an editable version of the Tracer (Set Current State to Object). You can either Create a Push Apart Effector and Put it on the Matrix Object and use it to loosen the spline using matrices as control points (the more the better as it makes sure the spline doesn't intersect with it self). or Create a Rope, in Dynamics set Mix Animation to With Force. This will untangle the spline. Create a Field Force and put the desired shape in to it, set to Absolut Velocity and adjust the strength to something desirable. This will conform the spline to your shape. In both ways don't forget to set Radius of Rope an Effector to match the radius of the circle you set in the Sweep to give it thickness. I think the Rope option is better.

@bez The setup used in video can be changed to fake volumes, it could also possibly work with some volume distribution magic. Use a spline derived from object (use edge to line node) and see if that leads you results which work for you. Other than that, it is an interesting challenge 🙂

The capsule node that I purchased is really fun. Even though you can't fill a specific volume, you can create a 3D cylindrical type diffusion then spline wrap it and get some interesting results. Just a FYI...I still would LOVE a version that can pack it tight like this image but filling a specified volume. That would be AMAZING!!!!

Thanks!!! I will try and install 2023 and see what I can get. The node/capsule video that @Hrvoje shared was great to watch, and makes me think a solution like this could be created with a node based setup for filling a volume that doesn't depend on creating cyclical dependency loop. I really need to start learning mode about nodes, seems super powerful if you can understand what the nodes ...lol

Someone, once upon a time left this here Growth Diffusion.c4d and I kept it. I think it will help you. It has a different workaround and works in 2025.... but not as it should be 😒. It works fine in 2023. 2025 has some serious allergy to cyclic references...

like these. Is this possible to do with the capsules?

oh cool !! Yeah I need a setup to fill a specific volume so that the growth fills it and is contained within any give mesh.

@bez The setup you have is causing cyclical dependency which is undesired and will lead to issues in animation/rendering. There is a differential spline growth tutorial here It looks like the capsule you purchased is based on that tutorial? Anyway, when you say "volume" you basically want growth contained within closed mesh, correct?

what version of c4d does it actually work in? I tried it in an older version of R18 that I keep on hand for opening older file formats and it didn't work in that either unfortunately. I don't have any other older versions currently installed, but I could install a version where it works possibly so that I can do what I need to do while we work on figuring out a new solution that works in 2025...it would be amazing to create a capsule that can do this...I am looking into trying to build one, but I sadly don't have much experience with programing and capsules/nodes building...so could be a while...lol

I'm trying to create something using particles but my computer freezes... Also that "fix" blocks my attempts to intervene during animation playback...

I found this: (see video below) I purchased the Capsule file from his Patreon. It's very fast and fun to play with, unfortunately it doesn't currently work to fill volumes. I reached out to him to see if it might be possible to implement, and he was quick to respond that it doesn't currently support volumes but is an interesting idea. I wish I new how to create these capsules etc and had the knowledge to go in and expand the capabilities myself....but maybe there is someone out there that can ....

Thanks for your reply. My mistake... At some point in the project I unchecked unnecessary data types for the particle cache to save sim times. But Actually Pyro needed more that color & velocity... It's now all in order. Sorry for the trouble, & thanks for trying to help !

Yes I just need to create a static mesh with it's volume filled with a non intersecting entanglement.

Hi there, i'm currently working on very big projects, requiring a lot of cpu & gpu capacity. With a lot of The thing is I can't do online rendering if needed, because the simulation caches are too big to upload. So i have to do it all. but I have no security in case of problems / hardware issue when tough deadlines are there. So i would like to meet someone who could help in case of emergency. I live in Berlin - Kreuzberg. Any colleague would be greatly welcome ! Cheers, Julien

Seems like there's a change in C4D 2025 concerning updates during animation which prevent this effect from happening. There was another incident like this which I addressed to a beta tester. I don't know if this "fix" was intentional or not. I'm working on a solution for this... Do you need it for the Reaction Diffusion effect or for the static entangled mess ?

Slightly mystified how we can help if we don't even have your scene file, but nonetheless I shall try.... Have you done everything in this video, specially relating to cache output settings ? CBR

I must render a dragon firing up everything as video background for a live theater show, All my works went fine with Live RS Renderview. Then I want to cache the Pyro, it doesn't work. Its computing but creates empty cache files. Then I wan to render and I get parts of the fire cut in squares (not aligned with the buckets at all). My deadline for preview is tomorrow... please help 😞

Hi I downloaded the files and was trying to adapt this to a new volume but can't figure out where you change the volume object that you want to fill. Also in 2025 it doesn't seem to fill the volumes at all...it just kind of wiggles. Anyone have any solution/fix for using this in 2025? I would love to get this working!!!!! Thanks

Is there some specific reason this needs to be done in code or nodes ? For example "I want to hide the mechanics because I want to make a plugin" or "I like coding". Would you be interested in a scaleable, procedural solution that is not Python nor Node-oriented ?

Ah, I understand now. Still, nodes could be easier and way faster solution (than Xpresso or Python) for what you need. Can you, just for sake providing insight into your work, and I am pretty sure there are quite a few people interested in particular work you do, provide some requirements? Even generic ones would work. Nodes can really provide you with fully parametric, customizable, user oriented rigs. If anything, we can identify weak points for particular task and improve the nodes themselves 🙂