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Thank you so much, CBR! This is super helpful and instructive. Thank you for figuring this out.

Ok, so 2 things contributing to that. 1. Your phong tag has Use Edge Breaks active. 2. In the text object your caps / bevels have the phong break rounding box enabled, which it is by default. Disabling either of those should remove the dividing line between beveled cap and rest of mesh. However, does tend to lead to messy results on the corners of the bevels, as we see below, so mostly it is preferable to leave that on. A messy, non phong-breaked corner, earlier. You'll notice on that particular text object that adjacent topology changes as it goes round the corner, and this is only cleaned up (ie cut / truncated) by the solve intersections checkbox, which we also need here for beveled caps to work in most circumstances. I would agree it is perhaps not the most elegant of solutions, but it is what it is in order to give easy access functionality all within 1 single object, which is rather what the Text Object is all about ! We should be able to circumvent some of these problems by using a bevel deformer instead, where we get more control, but again I fear that geo mismatch at the corners may lead to rounding artefacts anyway, despite the better control / ability to only apply it to certain edges / and manual phong break advantages. OR at any point you can make the mesh editable, and then manually select the edges you don't want phong broken and then use / unbreak phong shading command (I get it from down the very bottom of the right click menu) to remove that hard edge specifically without affecting the corner ones... It probably is worth noting that if we use the 3rd option in the text object rounding department - bevel outside - that actually solves the corner phong beak scrappiness because no geo is intersecting badly like it was before, at the expense of slighty 'fatter' text ! And then, if you set your phong tag angle to something low like 18 degrees, you can get the best of both words, thusly... But then of course we have this massive discrepancy between rounded bevel phong shading and the razor sharp edge running back away from the caps, and a fairly grim transition between the 2 on that corner... So lastly, the phong tag itself can help us there. By setting the angle in there waaay high instead, and changing the phong type to something like Angle and Area weighted we can improve it again, and gain consistency of shading in the bevel AND back across the mesh, so I guess this is the ideal solution in your case. We can see this better if we zoom out a bit and look at the 'B'... very nice consistent shading everywhere. CBR

Thank you. Here is the file. Bevel_Issue.c4d

Always share the scene ! For example we can't see what your phong break settings are, either in the bevel properties or in your phong tag. And that's where I'd be lookin' first... CBR

Hi everyone, I'm not quite understanding why there is a hard transition to the bevels. I admittedly haven't done much text animation for several versions of the program, but I remember this being really easy to achieve in the past. Thank you.

I'll give it a try later today ...

Mmm the problem with the with Matrix object + tracer is that when I put rope dynamics on the tracer, it just glitches out and breaks. I tried attaching the clip with the cloner again, but the problem there is that the rope belt won't connect to the clip it generates. I tried putting the cloner into a Connect object, but the rope belt still won't recognise the geometry.

Thanks for your reply HappyPolygon! I did try stitching with the Cloner initally but that caused other issues. Nice idea with the Matrix object & tracer though, I'll give that a go!

I don't think this is a priority issue, I would check the Scene Simulation Properties upping Substeps and/or Iterations but I run out of memory and crash C4D ... The Expresso setup is a smart way to attach things but we encounter very frequently this type of missbehavior. Try using Cloners with Polygon Selections on Object Mode to stitch objects in place... There was a way to connect any two points to create a spline in Xpresso but I can't remember how it's done... You could do it easier with two matricres from the Matrix object and connect them with the Tracer. Then use the Tracer as your rope. No need to pin the rope.

Hi all, I'm having an issue with the rope belt which I'm struggling to solve and I believe is down to a priorities issue. I have this tent model which I am inflating with dynamics. I have four clips which are attached to the tent via Xpresso (it was easier and more stable to attach them that way rather than making them rigid bodies) and then the guy ropes are attached to the clips with the rope belt. When I run the sim there is always a small gap (see screenshot). If I cache the rope simulation and offset the resulting animation by 1 frame, the end of the rope lines up perfectly, hence why I think it's a priorities thing. I've tried changing the priority numbers in the dynamics & rope tags, I tried the Shift Priorities tag and I've tried reording the object manager evey which way but nothing seems to correct it. Does anyone know if I'm doing something wrong? TentSim.c4d

I think this video will should help you a lot...

Hey Mash, thanks for the idea. I was eventually able to solve this issue by manually arranging all the pivots of the single elements and animating a radial cloner. Anyway, how was your fracture object idea? Like putting all elements in a fracture and animate it with a plain effector or something? Thanks WhatsApp Video 2025-05-29 at 15.15.59.mp4

This is what the fracture object (not voronoi) is for. it allows you to custom make each mograph element

Hello everyone! I'm trying to animate the jewel you see attached to make it expand and contract back to its original shape. I'm attaching another sample to make you understand better what I need to do. That one was easy to setup since the entire jewel is made by one single module cloned with a radial cloner whose radius is animated. The one I need to animate is tricky tho because it is made by all different pieces and the radial cloner is not working properly. Any idea or tip to make it work? Thank you in advance

I took just a part of the mesh due to scene being so heavy and used volume as emission type. This helped a lot in resolving the "streaks'. I would still go with proxies for this

Youre creating a volumetric system which is only a single voxel thick. This means when your diagonal curve ceiling leaves one voxel and enters another, youre going to have a gap as some polys are too far away from both voxels to be considered as belonging to them. Its the 3D version of having an aliasing diagonal line Honestly, you're asking a lot from the system trying to burn down an entire intricate interior. You either need to bump up the thickness/emission of the burning areas so the lines get filled in; use a higher res voxel mesh or just find another way of doing this. My instinct here would be to start off with a base of simple animated burning elements with alphas, then comp in extra smoke or more detailed areas as needed.

Hi Hrvoje, i'm sorry, the scene is already reduced as much as I could... the working scene has a long timeline full of stuff... I suggest you just cut the mesh & keep the ceiling part to see if you can have better outcome. I though maybe if the smoke would go downward to mask the banding, but couldn't figure out how to do that O_o

@Julien Scene is very heavy, can you possibly reduce it and reupload? I can barely navigate and see the issue, however, it looks like you are not happy with emission type? Either that or use a proxy object for emission

Oooh, I have all Vue packages downloaded since it went free (I posted question here about tree animations back then and someone pointed me on that) but it is on my to do list since then. I am on C4D 2024 because with 2025 + Vray 7 I experienced many crashes so that´s fine with me 🙂

I'm strongly recommending taking a look at Vue now that it's free. Sunning vegetation and gorgeous skies. It has it's own render engine (you can still switch to Standard/Physical but have to tweak some ISO/Gamma settings I think) and since you're specialized in Archviz it might suit you for outdoor renders. The downside is that you have to use C4D 2024 or older. I've asked Maxon to consider collaborating for a supported bridge for the newest versions.

Thanks! I am more or less OK with V-ray, even though sometimes I do feel like I am torturing myslef and should switch to 3ds max and corona for archviz. I couldn´t get myself to do that yet. I´ve been using C4D standard material for some minor scene work, which made me think that maybe I am overlooking some features and potential in the C4D renderer. I mean, I do vaguely remember working with C4D GI etc.. But back then I really didn´t know what am I doing.

It depends what you're looking for. Standard and physical can give you absolutely lightning fast renders, on a modern machine you can be doing 2-3 seconds per frame. On condition that you don't care about GI, AO, motion blur, DOF, frosted glass or mirrors etc. For simple illustrative work they are rock solid and fast. They're also pretty good with the sketch and toon system, though it is showing its age and they did ruin it a while back with the AA overhaul. Similarly the hair can look really nice, so long as you're not fussed about accurate GI etc. If you want real world modern lighting though, forget about it, theyre slow and have way too many drawbacks once you start flipping on all the switches. Personally I use octane for my daily work. Its absurdly fast, gives great lighting control and I can have all the bells and whistles enabled, I know the dof will be beautiful every time, the motion blur will be fine. The key thing is that its very quick to develop a look with its realtime feedback. That said, its terrible for NPR and it crashes like a dick multiple times a day. I feel like the 3ds max users we used to mock back in the day. Regarding architectural work, it isn't terrible, many of us used it fine for years on end, but I'd never pick t for that these days. The GI is slow, grainy and flicker ridden. Half our work was trying to fake GI so we could avoid using it.

OK, thanks for pointing those out! Many years ago when I was trying to render my first projects, I used Physical, but then, V-ray gave better results in terms of realism. So I kind of never looked back. So comparing to other renderers (Redshift, Corona, Vray) C4D physical renderer can offer same results in terms of realism? But I do archviz only.. so I don´t know does that plays a role.

Anyone still on R20, or without proper GPU, is confined to using standard or physical. I am in that boat.

Anyone who doesn't know how to use Redshift. (like me) Anyone who doesn't want (have money) to use an other renderer. It's easier (and technically better) to learn about renderer capabilities and how they work starting from Standard and then Physical Renderer. The documentation has some very interesting information. Compatibility Many plugins were offering shaders for those systems still useful. Redshift doesn't provide the full extend of features the Sketch & Toon does. You can render volumes with RS but what if you need a sky full of clouds ? Physical Sky is faster and more suitable for exterior renders. There's a chance Pyroclusters might be faster than Pyro in some cases. For some users it might be easier to corelate color and other particle properties easier with Pyroclusters rather particle modifiers. There are many nuances with RedShift nodal workflow as it might require a certain level of knowledge to achieve some effects with nodes that might be just a click with Physical. Watch this channel for examples. Physical has many post effects not available in Redshift (although not of high quality). RedShift doesn't seem to support Stereoscopic renders (Red-Blue/Red Green)