Fritz

Hi, Volumes (or rather their voxels) are created sparsely around the surface of an object. If you use "objects below" it actually means "voxels below". Because there is by default just 2 voxels thickness around the surface you only get this small indent. There is a tiny black triangle next to the voxels size that lets you control the inside and outside voxels. Increasing these should let you instantly see the effect. Note that this is a count and voxelsize is an absolute value, so lowering the voxelsize later will reduce the absolute distance that the voxels will span if you don't also increase the inner voxels count. Also important is to use intersect mode, otherwise it will just add a noise pattern on top of the sphere and not cut it out. If you are using a noise in the shader field, I would also recommend using a random field set so noise. Much faster. Attached an example with two approaches to the same effect. Using Fog is faster and since it's a volumetric effect it makes more sense to use. That approach is closer to a "3d image" and easier to follow what is actually happening. SDFs are a bit easier on first glance, but much much harder to use in more complex effects. https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/new_in_cinema_4d_r20_volumetric_workflow/volumetric_workflow_what_are_volumes_and_voxel_grids this playlist explains a lot about the basics of the datastructure and algorithms. Regards Fritz noisevolume.c4d

Just in case you wanted to know how to setup the geometry glue, here is a scene. Note that glued pieces cannot be shrunk as easily, which deactivates the offset feature for all these pieces. Regards Fritz concentric_fracture.c4d

I highly recommend reading the documentation on voronoi fracture. The input does not project a cutting shape. The points of the input will be used as voronoi sites, which will be intersected with the object. Checking out voronoi diagrams on wikipedia will also help. If you want concentric cylinders with different sizes, I don't think this is the best route to take. Using xpresso to rig the sizes on tubes just right sounds easier. If you really need to use voronoi fracture, the only way would be to use the "geometry glue" feature and set up fields to glue the pieces of each ring only. Very hard to set up. Regards Fritz

import c4d from c4d import gui from c4d import utils def main(): doc = c4d.documents.GetActiveDocument() doc.StartUndo() #Don't know if this works like this at all selected = doc.GetActiveObjects(1) while len(selected) > 1: newBool = c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Oboole) doc.InsertObject(newBool) newBool[c4d.BOOLEOBJECT_SINGLE_OBJECT] = True newBool[c4d.BOOLEOBJECT_TYPE] = 0 doc.AddUndo(c4d.UNDOTYPE_NEW, newBool) tmpA = selected.pop(0) doc.AddUndo(c4d.UNDOTYPE_CHANGE, tmpA) tmpA.InsertUnder(newBool) tmpB = selected.pop(0) doc.AddUndo(c4d.UNDOTYPE_CHANGE, tmpB) tmpB.InsertUnder(newBool) settings = c4d.BaseContainer() res = utils.SendModelingCommand(command=c4d.MCOMMAND_MAKEEDITABLE, list=[newBool], mode=c4d.MODELINGCOMMANDMODE_ALL, bc=settings, doc=doc, flags=c4d.MODELINGCOMMANDFLAGS_NONE) if res and len(res) > 0: insertObject = None if res[0].IsInstanceOf(c4d.Onull) and res[0].GetDown() is not None: insertObject = res[0].GetDown() insertObject.Remove() doc.AddUndo(c4d.UNDOTYPE_NEW, insertObject) else: insertObject = res[0] doc.InsertObject(insertObject) doc.SetActiveObject(insertObject) insertObject.SetName(insertObject.GetName() + " Yay") selected.insert(0, insertObject) doc.EndUndo(); c4d.EventAdd() if __name__=='__main__': main() UNDOTYPE_CHANGE needs to be called before the change and the CallCommand started it's own undo. So I replaced it with a ModelingCommand that does the same. Also resolved the null node that happens (but not always), which requires an "undo new" for the child of the null if you take it out of the hierarchy. The modelingcommand adds an "undo new" for the null node it created, going nowhere because the null will not be added to the scene. The big difference is, the modeling command adds the undo step to the current undo scope that you started (all packed in one undo), but the CallCommand starts a new Undo scope. Cool script 😉 Regards Fritz p.s. plugincafe.maxon.net is a great place for getting help with the programming APIs. 🙂

"Devs only fixes what they are told to fix and nothing more." This sounds very much like resistance from developers to fix anything and they need to be "told" to do so. That is not true. It is always a question of priorities and these are created by evaluating many factors and inputs.

Hi KMLS, There is a known issue with having the picture viewer docked in custom layouts. If you close it it should work as expected. Regards Fritz

Why would MAXON make Redshift free for Maya?

Not possible to get 100% the same results, but this is a way to get pretty close. You just have to write a command like shown 😉.

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Hi bwhitz, The knife tool was completely rewritten for S22 and it being a very complicated tool it unfortunately can happen that new issues are introduced. We are aware of this and are looking into it. Regards Fritz

Hi Flonoel, the setting that is preventing this from working is the "deactivation" that kicks in, because your objects are stationary for so long. Go to the dynamics tag on the Voronoi Fracture : Dynamics > Deactivation > Linear/Angular Velocity Threshold. Set both to 0 to deactivate the deactivation :D. Regards Fritz

Haven't tried it as I don't own fume fx, but this sounds like a job for "connect object". Try putting the voronoi in a connect generator and place that as source.

Hi GaryAbrehart, The Volume Builder is converting your mesh into a volume data structure that is cubic in memory consumption and complexity. So lowering the voxel size by half will slow it down by a factor of 2^3 = 8. You should find the correct use cases for it because this condition can limit it for some things that it seems to be useful for, but practically isn't. If you feel like you need a very low voxel size, then it might not be the correct tool for your task. As soon as the objects were converted to a volume, it doesn't matter for the rest of the operations how complex the input object was. The conversion is most of the time a smaller part of the complete computation time. Most parts of the Volume workflow are parallelized so a high core count CPU with enough memory help a lot. This is without question a tool that needs the right hardware to work productively with. Regards Fritz

Hallo DasFrodo, You can just drag the volumebuilder into the fiel list in the field force. It helps to either add a normalize layer in the volumebuilder or to normalize in the field list in the direction tab if you activate remapping. The default volume vectors are quite short. Regards Fritz

I wouldn't either. Except you really really need the extra memory.

Hi TreeW, I assume you exported the meshed volume to an alembic (so a polygon mesh), so backwards compatibility based on volumes not being in R19 should not be an issue. The alembic version might be newer in R20 and causes problems in R19. Is your memory really filled up or does he just claim you are out of memory ? Regards Fritz

Hi ToDo, I am afraid you will need to write a proper python plugin to be able to do that. As far as I know neither python tag nor python generator can implement the draw function. https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/a-few-python-generator-spline-primitives-wip/1551988/7 Here somebody explains how to write a python plugin. Regards Fritz

If you are on R19 SP2, try upgrading to SP3. There was a bug introduced with SP2 that had wrong results on the illustrator import if you had a "join spline" option on. Not sure what the exact name of the option was.

Hi asiejenski, put a material on the first version and decrease voxelsize and I would say you are pretty close. You won't get the same, because Arnold is volume rendering the data, which none of the inbuild renderers support. You could try to add an SSS material which will come closer to the soft look of volume rendering. Regards Fritz

That is R19 SP2. Do you use the same version on your work computer? Can you post a simplified scene? I could then have a look on Monday if I can reproduce it.

As soon as you render it, the displacer in emulation mode is turned off and what you see is just the material displacement. Are you maybe on 2 different versions? Material layering for the emulation mode was broken and I fixed it for R19 SP2.

Hi smoresahoy, you can have the cloner set to "Blend" in the "Clones" setting and clone one light with 0% intensity and one with 100% intensity. With the shader effector you can load a texturetag (don't think octane textures work, so a dummy cinema texture would work) or a shader directly to control the blending. For that you need to increase the "Modify Clone" setting in the "Parameter" tab of the shader effector. This lets you control the blending of the clones between the one with 0% intensity and 100% intensity. Regards Fritz

I am pretty sure I didn't understand what you mean, but maybe this helps. xpressodrivingrotations.c4d

Hi FloatinPoint, Normalizing a vector is the following formula: length = sqrt(x² + y² + z²) <--- this is the length of the current vector normalizedVector = vector / length <--- dividing by the length will give you a vector with length 1.0 always. This gives you the same direction of the vector, but with the length of 1.0. This means, if you only have a rotation in only one direction, the result can only be 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 or -1.0, 0.0, 0.0. Normalizing a rotation is something that I would argue makes very little sense. You usually do this to remove the length of a spacial vector and get a directional vector out of it. Regards Fritz

you can deactivate all "source" points in fracturing and just use the connector feature to connect objects. They however need to be close together to be connected. https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/new_in_cinema_4d_r19/new_in_cinema_4d_r19_voronoi_fracturing_improvements In this video at the beginning you can see unfractured objects from a cloner being connected.