woodstar

I'm not sure if this will help you but I've done this before and have animated just some square comps to the music in After effects then export them as sequences. There's a few plugins to automate this process or you can do it manually. Once you have the sequence you can load it into the lights texture or brightness/opacity as animated texture then you can remap strength if needed of the lowest and highest point (B&W)

Understood thanks alot for you help!

There any chance that this move to subscription model could see an increase in feature releases rather than LOOOONG annual ones...I'm not sure why yearly updates make sense in this day and age (See Substance software and how frequent their updates are) It's like you wait over a year to hear what they've been working on and then if they haven't touched what you hoped they would it leaves you frustrated knowing you have another year to hope they focus on it (Usually same again happens) Xpresso is so powerful and was a genius feature but it's just been left.

Thanks! That works a treat in the console! Thanks a lot for your help so far! If I want to then pass these values to the camera control setting how would I go about that? I've tried to modify your code to change the user data focal length box within the CAMERA CONTROLLER tab...Doesn't seem to work so I'm clearly doing something wrong... Once I crack this I'll be able to use the same code to pass values around with button presses, which is kinda all I want ATM :/ import c4d #Welcome to the world of Python def main(): return c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Onull) def message(msgId, msgData): if msgId == c4d.MSG_DESCRIPTION_COMMAND: desc_id = event_data['msg_data']['id'] if msgData['id'] == c4d.DescID(c4d.DescLevel(c4d.ID_USERDATA), c4d.DescLevel(9)): op.GetObject()[c4d.ID_USERDATA,8] = 36 #PASS VALUES GO UD CAMERA CONTROLLER WHICH IS LINKED TO CAMERA OBJECT? elif msgData['id'] == c4d.DescID(c4d.DescLevel(c4d.ID_USERDATA), c4d.DescLevel(13)): op.GetObject()[c4d.ID_USERDATA,8] = 50 elif msgData['id'] == c4d.DescID(c4d.DescLevel(c4d.ID_USERDATA), c4d.DescLevel(15)): op.GetObject()[c4d.ID_USERDATA,8] = 80 return True

Yeah I think I'm just trying to see how python can integrate into an xpresso workflow and how far I can go with it without going full on development...I do really enjoy creating these rigs so it's something I'd like to get into.. What are your tips on starting out with python plugin development...How would I go about creating an object plugin like this that has the interface...I think I struggle with the fact it's not just about learning Python (As I have experience in PHP) but the fact it's how C4D works with Python that I struggle with. Appreciate the help so far, would love love some tips on getting started.

Thanks foe the reply! How would I insert the ID? I know it's a lot to ask but I don't suppose you could look at this file and see if you can get the buttons to work by putting in the focal length to the camera...At least then I could look at your working code and learn from it...At the moment as soon as I change it to what I think I get syntax error :/ I feel like this stuff is the hardest stuff to learn as there seems to be such a lack of resource :( In the file you'll see a Python node where I've tried to get it working, I'd really appreciate it if you could take a look? Many thanks, CameraRig_002.c4d

Hi, I've had to post here as the xpresso/python forum seems to be broken...Anyway... I'm in between projects and trying to improve my rigs to work better and more intuitive but having issues getting what I want with xpresso. I'm trying to make it so that I have a list of buttons to select focal length of the camera which just passed the data to the camera tag...I'm assuming from my research that this can't be done in xpresso alone and I've been meaning to get into Python...How would I sense when a user data button has been pressed and then feed the variable say '36mm' to the camera....I have previous experience in programming so understanding the logic should be fairly easy I'm just struggling to get anything to work with the very limited amount of support for python within C4D. As you can see in the screenshot I have the focal length presets and the 'flush keyframes' button, this is the functionality I'd like to achieve in the python node. I did find some examples online of code to do this but my node always turns yellow with an error, not sure if this is to do with R20 core changes :/ Anyway, would be awesome to get an answer to this as I can think of so many use cases of creating buttons which fire parameters to multiple places in a single button press. Help would be appreciated! Many thanks, Mike.

Hi I have a simple xpresso setup on a null which simply just controls the grid size of the document (I know it's simple) BUT in order to use it you have to open up the document I made it in, otherwise xpresso unlinks the parameters. I just wondered if there was a way of turning this into a plugin like function where I could hit a button and it creates the object with the relevant xpresso linked to the current document. I would like to learn how to do things like this because I'm always trying to improve my workflow by creating 'rigs' or templates, but would love to take this to the next level. Would I have to go down the Python route or is there a simpler way? I did find this (http://www.mattrittman.com/how-to-create-macros-actions-in-cinema-4d) Which seems perfect but didn't work as it doesn't record the Xpresso part of the setup and is very limited in other areas. Would love some advice on how to achieve things like this, if there's any techniques or training you can point me to?

Hi, I've always struggled with high poly modeling with sub-d, seems like a puzzle which is super time consuming and often times end up getting in a mess with support edges and having to go back on myself. Anyway I was watching this vid (Hes using blender) I know it's a pretty fast timelapse, but he seems to be getting away with alot in terms of mesh topology and he doesn't appear to be adding support edges, and the sub-d seems to be acting very nicely. Is this a Blender thing or am I missing something? Are there similar techniques/workflows for C4D?

We've been using Octane for our animations and although its faster than most CPU renders, it's not much faster for interiors. It buckles when doing indoor scenes, I've got it down to a minute per frame but it's super grainy..We have 2x Pascal Titan X so I'm just not too happy with the render times, there's only so much you can do in post. Don't really get how a game engine can render at like 150fps at 4k but 1 awfull looking 720p frame takes a whole minute. Does Redshift offer decent render times for animation/interiors? Would love to get hold of a sample file to see what speeds I get before jumping into learning it.

I have been playing around with alembic actually and learnt alot from this project that I will be stressing to the team in future...Can I just ask what are the difference between Alembic and xrefs? I feel like they are similar but what are the pros and cons of using one over the other? I wouldn't mind being able to offset the start of an animation within an alembic file, and currently can't see a way of doing that with either of the formats. I've just read up on this again, I believe I enabled this a while back after reading about AE integration with Cinema, thought nothing of it at the time but after reading it makes complete sense! It seems it embeds a polygonal version of the scene which could explain it. I will check this first thing in the morning when I get to work.

Materials are minimal, infact I use mostly the same material across the room as it's quite a minimal room. Mograph caches are pretty non-existent as i've baked most of the stuff to keyframes...Even so 8gb is the size when I remove alot of the scenes so I'm not sure whats going on. What would generally be larger in file size the dynamic cache or baking to keyframes? Like I said I had this problem with r17 files previously, but thought they'd fixed a bug because when I opened a 10gb project file in r18 and saved it ended up saving out at around 20mb...No word a lie. I can't see how any agency would be able to work like this so there must be something abit abnormal going on.

Hi guys, We are creating an animation as part of a team at our agency and I'm taking the elements and placing them in a final scene. There are 5 scenarios in a room some using dynamics. mograph and abit of keyframe animation...Although I've ended up baking most of the dynamic sims to keyframes to allow me to scrub the timeline. The project has been fine up to now but now I'm struggling to work as the files are getting ridiculously large in filesize, and it's not even a complex animation..One of them is around 18gb and takes about 20 minutes to save, so I've lost work a few times due to avoiding to save. I've gone through everyone's stuff and everything is fairly optimised, nothing screams out that it would cause large filesize and to be honest this animation is super simple mostly using primitive shapes. I've deleted everyone's models apart from the one the camera is currently on and we've actually had to render like this with no background elements due to the filesize. (See screenshot) So that scene in the screenshot is 9gb! Quarter of a million polygons for a 2 minute animation shouldn't be creating filesizes this big surely? Thought they'd fixed this with R18 but apparently not. I just wondered if I'm doing something wrong or if there's a way of avoiding being in this situation. Any help would be appreciated!

Sorry for the vague title. I've been modelling for quite some time and fascinated with the Nike campaigns. My question is in relation to Chris Labroys work. I know he's not provided models from Nike, or at least I don't think he is. Either way he would still have to start from scratch for the abstract stuff I would imagine. the Nike presto emojis are just incredible. What do you think his process is exactly for modeling and materials? http://www.chrislabrooy.com/nikepresto/ Where would you even start in creating something so presice, I mean sculpting comes to mind but it's sort of organic/hard surface so I'm not too sure. Any advice on modeling and materials would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.