Bovellum

3 hours ago, MJV said:

Different renderers have different  prep sequences so that's why it is necessary to know. I think the reason all resources  aren't used in the prep is because the process needed to prepare for the render is single threaded, that is it can only use one core and not all cores at once. This is usually due to the calculations having to be done sequentially and not simultaneously. 

What would be accurate keywords I can search for, to find any lists of these things that fall into the category of being calculated sequentially and not simultaneously?  

Oh, no, I'm just speaking of generally in c4d, but as always, thanks for illuminating things more.  

Ah, makes sense.  Is this also where caching can help speed things or is that more of a render time thing?

Redshift is my renderer now and I'm new to it.  This is a general question about what it is that C4D is doing that it can't use more resources while it is "preparing", no matter what it's preparing?  I'm aware it's going to be slower or faster according to settings and complexity, I've just been unable to find anything online specifically about why it's not tapping into available processing power while it's preparing.

Why is C4D using so little of my rig's resources when it's "preparing"?  It seems to me it would want as much help as it can get but during that phase, I'm only using 4-5 percent CPU and 12 percent of ram.  Is there a way to get those extra resources to be utilized more during that phase? It is taking a long time to "prepare" but then renders pretty fast.  

Oh, I have a question!  As it relates to some of this discussion, why is C4D using so little of my rig's resources when it's "preparing"?  It seems to me it would want as much help as it can get but during that phase, I'm only using 4-5 percent CPU and 12 percent of ram.  Is there a way to get those extra resources to be utilized more during that phase? It is taking a long time to "prepare" but then renders pretty fast.  

I did get this working properly, thank you! And I didn't need that last file but thanks Chester!  I found a great tutorial and I much prefer learning myself over someone taking their valuable time to explain and deal with my ignorance.  It is hugely appreciated what you guys do.

I've been finishing building my new rig and I'm diving back into this today so I can add wood and stone fencing.  I'm going to try an idea I had to see if the multi-cloner in Forester would distribute my fences.  Their multi cloner has several "distribute on" options and if their "distribute on spline" works with my wood and stone fences, it would be nice to use in other situations as well - mostly cuz I'm already familiar with it   If not, I'm going to search for a way to do spline projection within C4D itself.  Any other approaches you might recommend?

This is really really cool and very appreciated BUT, I have no idea what you did, how to replicate it myself or make it work in my actual scene.  Do you have some key words I can search online to do this myself in my scene?  I have no idea.  Obviously I have your scene file but I can't look at this and figure out what you did and how to transfer the concepts over to my scene. Once I get it to work, I then have to trim around the perimeter to get the grid to work in my fields, the way they are laid out on the edges.  So I have to remove a ton of these around the edges, once they are properly placed on the terrain.  I have non symmetrical and curvy borders around my field

God this gets so frustrating.  I'm trying what you said but when I add the constraints and move the plane, the vines stay where they are, instead of moving with the plane.  Same thing happens when I add them to my cloner.  So, I'm wanting to try the shrink wrap approach suggested by featherbottom, but I can't get past this stage now.    

I need to use several vines in the cloner so I can completely avoid obvious patterns in the grid array.  It needs to be as random looking as possible, save for the base layout of each vine and post.  I varied the posts and how they sit, as well as the vines themselves, to maximize this.  So, using JUST ONE vine for the whole scene is just not going to work for me, visually.  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/72xf6sx4x4ga8l9/Constraints.c4d?dl=0

9 hours ago, Chester Featherbottom said:

We've told you several times that you don't need dynamics.

 

The "reason" you don't need dynamics is because you do not require a rigid body collision to determine anything. All you need is an array of axes to stick to the surface of a plane. As a matter of fact, you don't even need to change their x or Z direction. You ONLY need to change their Y position.

 

This should make a word pop into your head and that word is "projection". A projection has a very low calculation overhead compared to a rigid body simulation. So it just requires a little bit of un-thinking your process.

 

1) In the scene you provided, you put several vines in a row (maybe 10). That means the cloner is going to clone groups of 10 which will not conform to the surface. Start by pulling your individual elements out so that each can get cloned to a surface from their own axis.

2) Fix your axes, they all over the place.  (The Axis  Center  tool with the Y slider bottomed out is your friend).

3) Clone on a uniform plane.

4) Project your simple uniform plane on your complex plane with a Shrink Wrap deformer.

5) Profit!

 

Here's an oversimplified example. I just threw one vine and a post in a cloner. You could use fields or a formula effector to change the step patterns on the plane, but it's probably just as easy to use multiple planes (one for random posts, one for random vines, etc) for the easiest, most intuitive alignment.

 

 

I've separated and cleaned up all of the 10 vines and fixed al the axes.  I've been able to get a good randomized grid array that I am happy with, but I can't get the clones to apply to a plane surface as a grid array.  How do I do that?    

This is so helpful, thank you.  I spend 10-15 hours a week just studying/practicing new areas of C4D and all these new plugins I'm using, so this gives me some more things to learn, with immediate "profit" lol.   Problem is that I also need to get my actual hours on the clock in "profit", so I have to be very selective and focused on exactly WHAT I spend time learning next. Projection is my next focus and  I'm Diving in now!  Thank you guys so much!

Thank you.  The problem is that THIS is not a Forester element, so I am having to do this with a model in C4D alone.  If I use the C4D scatter pen, I won't be able to get the accurate alignment in long rows, taking the shape of the terrain like I'm needing to get.  

Here is a drastically reduced version:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwe7ofmd380k9tj/DYNAMICS PROBLEM.c4d?dl=0

2 minutes ago, Chester Featherbottom said:

You didn't mention you were using Forester.

 

It would appear Forester was doing quite a bit of optimization for you in the background. If you remove forester from your plugins briefly and try to load the scene you posted you'll find out pretty quickly what you provided the forum with for review. There must be some kind of mograph  conversion for compatibility, but it's crippling. I mean... not even using render instances or multi-instances.

 

Hopefully there's someone on the forum who has Forester who can help you further. 

 

 

 

<irrelevant rant>

 

 

Everything in the known universe is bound to a scale where it operates comfortably (everything).  And this is why it doesn't matter how many gigs of RAM you have, or if you have the latest RTX card... the best upgrade you could get is the curiosity of how C4D (or any system) operates under the hood. Way more valuable than just throwing CPU/CUDA cores (money) at it.

 

When someone says "it should just work" - I hear "I shouldn't have to learn how it works". Well you don't... you don't have to learn how anything works, but it puts you in a pretty lousy position in life. Soon enough, everything just becomes magic and you have to hire magicians to fix it. 

 

I actually AM learning the more complicated under the hood stuff but more slowly than I would like, due to work load.  I get what you are saying and up until the last year, I have always worked with much simpler mechanical projects, never needing this kind of complexity.  It's a process for sure!  This is teaching me a lot: 

https://www.cgdirector.com/how-to-render-faster/

Here, this is better.  The first version had everything deleted but I didn't cut out much of the terrain that isn't used for the vineyards.  Sorry!  https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwe7ofmd380k9tj/DYNAMICS PROBLEM.c4d?dl=0

I'm in R25 and can't figure out what is wrong here.  I need all of these segments to sit properly across this terrain and they just keep falling through when I hit play.  Any ideas?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwe7ofmd380k9tj/DYNAMICS PROBLEM.c4d?dl=0

I am new to RS so anything could be happening.  I replaced the sun and sky setup and this fixed it, though a few textures are now showing black.  I'll figure that out. Thanks!

I'm using a RS caForest flowers and paths 1_0170.tifmera, sky, sun, materials and renderer and it keeps spitting this orange color out.  What is going on?

I have very hilly terrain that I need to add wooden fence to, a LOT of it.  I want to speed up the process by creating a single post, with 3 horizontal rails, leading to the next post.  I will need to rotate the rails on the zed axis, according to the height of each post next to it.  SO, I want to be able to constrain them all to the first post on the left, and only rotate ONE of the posts, that will then also rotate the other two with it, with all 3 staying constrained to the initial post and lining up to match the holes of the new post, at it's unique altitude on the hill.  I hope this makes sense. 

In this way, I can quickly add new sets of post and rails, with each set containing one post and 3 rails.  I will just need to rotate one of the rails so that all 3 rails line up properly with the new set of post and rails to its right.  If the ground goes up or down, I rotate up or down, place the new set and then repeat.

What is the best way of doing this?

I'm brand new to Redshift (very excited) and I converted a material with a terrain type gradient to RS. Although It is still set to  3D Linear, it's laying horizontally now across my landscape instead of according to height.  What am I missing?

Also, I'm not sure what I did, but for a while everything was rendering in a orange tint.  Very bizarre and I'm not entirely sure how it stopped.  I know part of it was happening when I had the renderer set to physical, but just  my  Forester trees were rendering orange, even when renderer was on RS. Everything else in the scene was rendering normally.

I figured it out.  The entire geometry has to be dragged into the distribute on geometry window on the main tab. The trees show up everywhere.  THEN, under the "filtering" tab at the bottom,  further down the page,  the polygon tag has to be placed in the "filter by polygon selection" window.    Then everything is condensed into the specific geometry selected.  

Great software btw.  Really stunning and I don't think I would ever need another plugin for plants and trees.  

So, the polygon selection is not working in that field either.  I think I'm just going to have to break up the geometry and have the forest on it's own geometry.  For all of the plants, bushed, flowers and grass, the polygon tag works for specific locations.  Not sure why the trees don't share this feature.  

Thanks, I was hoping I wouldn't have to go through and select everything again.  It's a LOT.   

I am trying to use a selection tag instead of geometry, in the distribute on geometry option.  When I drag it into the window  box, nothing happens.  Also, for some reason it is retaining the previous geometry as it's map.  Meaning, the polygons I had it set to previously, are where the trees are displaying, even thought that geometry is no longer in that field.  I have replaced it with the tag and it clearly displays the new tag name, but is rendering the OLD geometry.

I did come to notice that my selection tag was done in edge mode, and I meant for polygon mode.  Could this be the problem and if so, how do I convert an edge selection tag to all polygons?

I figured it out.  I have Cinema set to place objects at center of current view.  The multi-cloner calculates from 0-0-0, so it just needed to be placed back at those coordinates.  As always, thanks for the help!