Cerbera

If we do it with modelling, and we do want it to bend and deform nicely, then this is the sort of topology we might use, which will work under subdivision... Here I have also used SDS weighting to get the corners razor sharp... The key here is not to build anything out of splines, but rather with even, controlled polygons which can deform nicely. CBR

No, rely on the Structure Manager, in Polygons Mode, where tris only have 3 points in the list. You can also click directly on the polygon number here to select it in the viewport. Tris are not an error state unless used with SDS, so are not a flaggable thing in Mesh Checker. CBR

With any questions like this you need to upload the scene file, including any images used so that people can see enough of your setup to be able to properly advise. And also fix the broken link reference so we can see what it's meant to look like ! CBR

I think it's on a (slight) curve, HP, which might seriously derail your modelling plans. That sort of thing is fine on planar surfaces, but less so otherwise... CBR

Awful situation. I haven't found anything like an official statement on the subject, but if we can believe such things, Twitter is reporting that Insydium are taking a rather direct approach, and punishing individual Russians... There were subsequently other screenshots posted where the message had changed to explain that they were acting under UK government instructions, being, as they are, based there. CBR

No, he mentioned that, it doesn't work. What will work though (to an extent) is re-thinking the setup somewhat. If we use a spline, and animate the length of and bend that, we can use Xpresso Point node to make the sphere stick to the end, like so... But we can't jiggle that unfortunately. stem CBR.c4d We could also possibly use dynamic connectors but I haven't investigated that yet.. CBR

Yes, me too, and I model EVERYTHING 🙂 But that has got material displacement written all over it ! CBR

OK, some progress on the investigations there. Might be down to naughty priorities after all... CBR

Excellent, heading into A grade territory there. 🙂 Still need to dissolve the tris at the start of the indents in the nose section but other than that very little left to do here. The tension you highlight is fine in all 3 places because it is what I would call 'helpful tension'. This one particularly is helpful because of the pleasing organic way it transitions from the tight rim of the lower part to the more open topology above. Even the 5 point pole resolves nicely, so I would vote to leave it. But of course we could tighten it up with 2 additional loops, either side of the rim, kept in close proximity to the centreline edge lower down, but then slid proportionally to be more even the higher the loop goes, until it is 100% so at the top. But no need.... CBR

You can indeed control the length or density via Vertex map - you just need a Vertex Map Shader in whichever channel you want to control. This has the advantage of being more controllable via fields for grow-on type FX as demoed by the almighty Chris Schmidt below... CBR

No. We need that Xpresso, and a lot of it has been carefully formulated to achieve the sort of results that would be fabulously difficult to get with keyframes alone. I really think you should keep that. I am away on client work for a lot of today, but will look at it again, and the possible solutions tomorrow. However I have established that this is actually a 105 frame loop, and I am conducting all my experiments from frame 0 to 105, and currently seeing if I can get you what you want by keyframing the range mappers in the Xpresso (not quite on a frame by frame basis yet, but it may come to that !), with 'some success'. When I resume tomorrow I will be able to give it some more time, and find out if this will work here or not. CBR

Has been a while since I knocked out a chess set, and, in the same way that it's good to watch Lord of the Rings again every so often, did one over the weekend... Here's the most interesting 3 models.... bishop was retopo job, which produced much nicer topology and lump-free SDS surfacing than merely trying to clear up after a boolean... Still don't like the mane on the little horsey guy, but haven't done any sculpting on this yet, which may yet tie it all together nicely... ...and if we want nice sharp corners on our Rook crennellations and must maintain perfect rounding radially we need many more segments than we'd first think so that we can achieve this with poly density rather than control loops ! I feel I should render them 200 ft tall in some ancient roman coliseum or somthing 🙂 Anyway, great fun to model, as these things always are ! CBR

Oh, and forgot to say - when you open that file, add a phong tag to the unsubdivided spring to fix that faceting on it - it got removed during the unsubdivide, because it is a sculpt process, which doesn't use / need them. If that isn't smooth enough for closeups you can put it under SDS, but you won't need more than Level 1, and should set that in the Render SDS level, but ZERO in the editor level, because we don't want to be adding back all the polys we just removed that were slowing it down ! CBR

Not really your fault here I think. It could have grown beyond the complexity of what is possible / reliable in the program ! And even if that is not the case it is perhaps not reasonable to expect someone with under 3 years in the program to be able to deal with situations quite this epic ! I would be happy to help solve this, but am hesitant to offer some paid exploration until I KNOW I can get to the answer - the last thing I want is to spend 4 chargeable hours trying to get there, and then we still don't... However, some good news while I consider the issue... If we Unsubdivide that main spring, and then dissolve every other one of the radial loops we fix the scene speed thing in a single move, and now we can get 75 fps, which is much more reasonable in seeing what is where, when. This also reduces scene size from 125 MB to 11, which zips down to 4, thusly... GOVERNOR 00 PREP R25 V18 C4DCAFE V7 CBR.rar So that's problem one of several solved. I am thinking about the other ones ! CBR

Yes. Instead of doing a full extrude, do a ZERO extrude, and then manually move the copied polys out (or just ctrl drag them). If you arranged things so that your initial segment was pointing in one of the main axis directions, this is easy to keep straight obviously... less so if you didn't ! You can also scale 'Along Normals' to fix that if you did the full regular extrude. CBR

OK, that is the Normal Tag breaking that, which I am going to call a bug, because that should not be affected by Object Axis position / rotation at the point level, which is what is mysteriously going on here... and there doesn't appear to be any non-destructive way around it. You gotta either lose the normal tag (not ideal given the topology), and possibly rebuild the vanes nicely if they display shading artefacts no matter what your phong / edge breaks are doing, OR you can put that part in a null that IS aligned correctly, and then animate that instead. But it's so much nicer if you just remodel it, which can be painfully simple with a disc, and array, and a twist deformer 🙂 CBR

It is unusual that axis movement would affect this, even when the topology is as grim as that. Please upload the file so investigations can commence... CBR

Make sure you are scaling in Object mode, not Model mode. CBR

I remain uncertain, though I keep shooting dirty looks at that FFD. CBR

Yes that's a good point Bezo. At the point I last dealt with / rigged this part the spring was still an editable spline in a sweep and had nothing LIKE that level of poly density. It's almost like the sweep has been placed under additional SDS and then made editable. And yes indeed, that will be a very large part of what makes this painfully slow. CBR

No I only mean that if you stop the animation at some point in it, then rewind to frame 420, you get one result, rewind again to Frame 420, or press A for frame update, and it changes, and AGAIN on the 3rd refresh. Trying to do precise animation under these nebulous update conditions is very frustrating. CBR

Cinema's internal chess game is only accessible via Shift+C and the Command CHESS. That opens a new layout without an object manager, but if you close the actual chess window the board and all its components remain, so yes, you could theoretically get, edit, or replace any of the pieces. Not sure where exactly you would save them to, or if the code for the actual gameplay was accessible ! CBR

I feel a certain responsibility to help with this because I think I came up with the original rig a while back, which has since been made more complex and had other elements and parts added to it. It's certainly very complex now, and not helped, as you note, by a) viewport performance (xp calculations mainly) and b) looping an area not at the start, meaning the program takes a frame or 2 to catch up with where it is meant to be in the animation. And all this makes diagnosing the issue / suggesting a workaround / alternative method most challenging. I haven't found an answer yet. I would agree with previous posts recommending faking it if I thought that was going to be possible, which I don't. This is not a fixed camera as I understand it, and there is simply nowhere to hide any transition points in any of the objects concerned that won't be seen from some angle or other. And whilst attaching nulls to the holes in the Governer Arm seems initially promising, the question remains as to how those nulls would be also attached to the various parts of connected models in a way that could move a group of points at the end of each spring or armature without affecting the natural look of the overall deformation imparted by the keyframed FFD controlling the spring length and shape, which is very specific, curves with the central arm, and must maintain that during animation as it stretches and contracts. Very very difficult. CBR

Yeah, always the trickiest one, hey, the horsey guy ? 🙂 Unless you do something suitably abstract which means you can get away without actually modelling a horse head ! CBR

Welcome to the Core 🙂 Nice to have you on board - enjoy your 3D learnings ! CBR