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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/07/2025 in all areas

  1. So in Blender there is this very handy modifier called "Data Transfer" that makes it possible to dynamically transfer normals between different meshes. What would you need this for? Well, for example something like this: Meshes before transfer Meshes after transfer Note that these are EXACTLY the same meshes as before. It is not connected to the main body in any way, it's just the normals that were transferred for the row of points that touches the main body. Now in THEORY this is possible in C4D as well, in multiple ways, but I can't get it quite to work. I also tried exporting the mesh from Blender and importing it again in C4D, but that somehow breaks the shading and it doesn't look nearly as good as in Blender. Technique 1: VAMP Create Normal Tag on source mesh Open VAMP Set up Source and Target mesh, tick "Normals" and set "Space" to "Global" Press "Transfer Maps" This transfers the normals as expected, but I CANNOT decide what is transferred and what isn't. It looks like crap when ALL normals are transferred: And even IF you got that to look right: The Normal Tag breaks completely when you add a subdivision surface, so the only option would be to convert the SDS first, then do the normal transfer. This is significantly harder due to the amount of polygons involved though and kind of defeats the purpose of the parametric workflow in C4D. In Blender I could just put the SDS above the Data Transfer Modifier in the stack. Technique 2: Normal Editor This kind of works, but not really. As far as I can tell I can just adjust the normals of everything I selected in ONE direction. This works for the outer ring that touches the thick part of the model, but not for the part in front that wraps around the cylinder. The thick part just points in one direction, while the cylinder points in different directions. To add to that you have to somehow get the transitions between the normals to look great, which I just could not get to look right. And again, this breaks when SDS is involved, as the normals from the Normal Tag are ignored by the SDS. Technique 3: Transfer Attributes This is I think the best solution. You can transfer the normals between meshes via the attribute transfer function that is relatively new I think. The problem here is that I cannot seem to "mask" the transfer to only some points. It seems like the fields are acting as a value for the normals instead of being a mask for the value transfer. This is what I mean: It works JUST like the VAMP Normals transfer, just that it's "parametric" which is exactly what I want. But I cannot seem to restrict the transfer to only certain parts of the mesh. Also, of course, this breaks again when an SDS is involved, but I could at least have my normal transfer parametric after converting the SDS that way. If somebody could figure out how that works, if it's possible at all, that would be greatly appreciated 🙂 Stripped down Scene File is attached. Transfer.c4d
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  2. Oh, I see, you would need essentially double constraint, that looks quite difficult. Are the nulls always on mesh surface? Essentially transforming any null or mesh itself should transform whole setup, right?
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