natevplas

mmmmm, donut!

Yeah, it's sort of an optical illusion, but I can imagine a real-world 3D shape for it, actually. Pretend that they are 3 pieces of paper with slightly different colors on front and back. One is blue/purple, one yellow/red, and one green/dark green. Each one is rolled over on itself and cut on the edges to produce the outer and inner profile edges. I mocked one of the pieces up for you in my file. I'm just putting a few Bend deformers on a Plane with an Alpha mask. I couldn't get the correct profile shape just with a gradient texture, though. You'll probably have to create that in Illustrator or Photoshop and sort of guess and check. Or maybe you could use the paint tools in Cinema to paint on the 3D geo for a reference, export that to a jpg, and draw over it with clean vector lines in PS or AI. The lighting is going to have to be faked, though. Each shadow is going in a different direction, so you'll have to cheat it with gradients. Or maybe you could have one light for each piece and exclude the other shapes from it. Hexagon Logo Model v1.c4d

I think even the best modelers will be challenged by certain things. For instance, someone who mostly does hard-surface modeling and then has to go model a creature or a piece of clothing (or the other way around). The more things you model, the more confident you'll get that you can overcome these challenges.

Great modeling! I think your car paint material could use some work. Needs more layers to be believable. I don't speak German (don't know if you do) but this seemed helpful:

Here's a great tutorial for helping model circular geometry from flat surfaces:

I wish I had a better answer for you, but I tried a couple things and didn't find a great solution yet. Here's a tip for importing: change your import preferences to match what you need for the scene scale, etc. Then you only have to select your preset and hit 'enter.' I couldn't figure out how to change the Default preset, however. Anybody know how to do that?

I think I get what your problem is, but a screenshot or better yet, a project file would be really helpful here. Are you using XP 3.5 or 4? I only have 3.5. I just quickly set up a scene based on your description and the particles are following the displaced surface just fine, even if I animate the rotation of the sphere. What doesn't stay on the surface is the trails, but that's what you'd expect because they are just tracing where the particles have been. Here's what my setup looks like: And I attached my project file. XP Trails on Displaced Sphere v01.c4d

Also, it shouldn't be necessary to make your cloner editable before applying the Spline Wrap.

Wow, now that I do NOT understand! How are our bodies doing this 24-7 without us even thinking?

That's great! Always fun to see the end result.

What might not be obvious right away is that I had to manually go in and disconnect each face of the Platonic. I did this by first making it editable, then selecting a face and hitting U ~ P. Repeat for each face. If anyone knows of a way to do this quicker, I'd love to know!

Bend Deformers have a sort of invisible "start" and "end" point. You basically had them reversed. I flipped your Bend around, then made a Linear falloff.

Try this! MultiBend _04.c4d

Ok, I wasn't able to keep it parametric. I don't know of a way to disconnect faces parametrically. I made two scenes- one using a Mograph Color Shader in the Alpha of a material, the other just scales the faces in. Is this close to what you were looking for? Matix_Plain_Test_Scale_v03.c4d Matix_Plain_Test_Texture_v02.c4d

So, you want the faces of your Platonic to appear when the matrix objects appear on them? Can you make the Platonic editable or does it need to stay parametric? Can they appear via a texture in their material, or do they need to scale in or something?

Sorry, you'll have to elaborate. First of all, you mean a Plane? Because I'm seeing triangles and Planes are made up of quads. Or did you mean a Plain Effector? Either way, why does it need to be with just a Matrix and a Plane? What is the goal, besides creating this model which it seems you already created...?

@Hrvoje that's pretty interesting!

Thanks for filling in the gaps for me, @Cerbera! I had tried to reply, but must not have hit "submit" or something. I've been a bit out of commission the last couple days. Is this working well enough for you, @bnine? I noticed there is still some subtle bending of the geometry, but maybe it's not noticeable enough in a render to bother fixing? One idea I just had if you did need to fix it is to use three linear splines- one for each row of links. Then you'd just carefully subdivide your spline to only have points between the links of the corresponding chain, so it wouldn't be a smooth curve. Maybe even 2 points for each gap in the chain? Not sure. You'd have to make sure to keep all the other parameters for the Spline Dynamics tags exactly the same though. The only other option I can think of, which would probably be the "proper" solution, would be to link each of these pieces with a Connector object in Hinge mode. You'd get rid of the Spline Wrap all together and have zero deformations of your mesh. Sounds like a pain to set up though... I was messing around with Cerbera's file and did find a way to at least allow for some slight twisting of the band if your collision geometry isn't uniform. Just using a second dynamic spline as a rail (had to adjust some orientation and stuff to get this working). Setup Better V2.c4d

Hmm, no idea! Looks like a bug! Report it to MAXON

I don't have access to Cinema right now, but I know why your geo is getting whacked out. I made my cloner out of planes, then nested the whole thing in a Cloth with thickness. This is because the Spline Wrap was scewing the geo on the Y axis if I used cubes. Try first disabling the Cloth to see how it looks. You'll also need to switch the axis that the SW is using until it looks right. Make sure your spline is also the same length as your strap object. To get it to pin one point, there's a button in the Spline Dynamics tag that says "Set vertex" or something like that. Select the point you want on your spline and click it.

Quick test based on @Cerbera's idea. Some issues to sort out, but a start at least. Just replace my cloner with your customized geometry under the Connect. Watch Band Chain Spline Dynamics.c4d

Exciting news!

Short answer, no. I agree that I've only been burned by XREFs.

Do you have snapping turned on? It's possible your points are snapping to the grid or other points. Check the "U" shaped magnet icon on the left side of your screen.

Double click the tag on the xpresso null. You'll see a "Math: Multiply" node between the "Python" node and "blue" node. Click on that and change the Input to 1.