pfistar

@HappyPolygon This is great - many thanks!!!

Hi all, I would like to use a Field (or some other method) to select points in a MoGraph Weighmap based on normal direction. The idea is that I’d like to create clones on only the Y-up facing surfaces of an object, (like snow on a roof, or something like that). I’m wondering if I can achieve this without a custom script, or Python field, or if it’s achievable by the Formula Field, what would the expressions be that would let this happen. Preemptive thanks for any responses, NpF

Greetings all! I'm looking for some quick-fix tips on how to minimize Moire effects in animations where I have a high-res Displacement map with a lot of fine parallel lines, mapped to some simple geometry. What you see here has already been de-Moire-d in AfterEffects using the Median filter. The Moire-patterns were quite a bit more gnarly (see below) before the AE filter was applied: I'm hoping to find a quick solution, preferably involving post-processing (instead of re-rendering) BUT I am open to doing a re-render (c4d/redshift) if that's what it takes - I'd imagine maybe tweaking some settings within the Displacement material node, or the RS Object Tag Displacement Tab, or maybe in render output settings could help? If anyone has any tips, I'd be grateful if you could share! Link to C4D project file here (has some chunky bitmaps so can't upload to Core site): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/iqj7tdsy6wpwdrf1wosbz/displacement-greebles-4-forum.zip?rlkey=f45qgeyx3w873ukpxjr1u55zy&dl=0 Many thanks! NpF

Greetings all, I am interested in building a rig that would let me switch a character from keyframed or clip animation to a ragdoll/physics driven animation. Here’s a great example of someone doing exactly that in a project to great effect: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cwk_DqNNi74/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng== Though I've hunted high and low, unfortunately I haven’t found a single tutorial that shows how to set something like this up, so I would wonder whether one exist at all, despite the heaps of tutorials out there showing the various ways to rig up a mannequin using the Connector object and Ragdoll function. I’ve made my own attempts but have only gotten as far as matching the bone-transform-coordinates of a ragdoll skeleton to a clip-animated one, at a specific keyframe, and then turning on/off visibility from one mesh-object to the other at render-time. Seems like cave-man method, and kinda half useless if I need to render in-scene motion blur. So I’m thinking there must be slicker way to do this. It’s come to my attention that there’s a plug-in for this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmiKN2F8SWk Has anyone subscribed to this? It looks GREAT! Though I would still feel more satisfied if I was able to build the rig I need myself, rather than paying $$ for it. In any event, I’m hoping someone can either point me to the right tutorials, or suggest the proper method, if you’ve done something like this yourself (created a rig that lets you switch between keyframe or clip animation, and ragdoll physics). Preemptive THANKS for any reply! NpF

Greetings all, I’m running a fairly simple soft-bodies test scene with 5 seconds (120 frames) of animation. I’ve got a simple filleted cube object that’s cloned 12 times and cached at the Cloner level before applying a Connect generator and Subd Surface. I assume this is best practice though I wonder if that’s correct. I am trying to avoid obscenely high cache-write times and file-sizes, while holding to the general integrity of the soft body dynamics. I did try a more geometry-dense setup (4x polys on the cubes and 24 clones instead of 12) though cache-write times were prohibitively high. Here’s a link to my project file: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/72askj4i2y0dv84sqvah9/h?rlkey=bpfrbt5cgtbnwp72xwjowzozd&dl=0 All said, I have a number of questions: When working with Soft Body Dynamics within a Cloner, is it generally best to apply the cache at the Cloner level? Are there any known shortcuts and/or workarounds to speeding up cache-write times on geometry that’s being deformed as a soft-body? Can the animation data of a soft-body object be cached to disk, rather than written to file? If I wanted to add more objects to to the sim, for example, an array spheres that’s contained within one of the softbody objects, as if inside a plastic bag, what would be the best (most resource-efficient) way to sample the geometry of the soft-body so that it could act as a membrane or barrier that holds the dynamic rigid-body spheres (effected by mass and gravity) inside itself. For soft body dynamics, is using the Bullet tag generally more recommended for contemporary setups, or is the Soft Body Simulation tag more common these days? I also noticed that adding a Redshift object tag anywhere in the geometry hierarchy makes all the geometry disappear completely from the viewport - why does this happen? Preemptive THANKS for any reply! NpF

C4D: v2024 recently installed | repeated systems crash during Redshift render sequence Greetings all, I’m running a fairly simple soft-bodies test scene, and I’ve run into several total system crashes while trying to render a short (120 frames) sequence. I suspect it may be as simple as my system overheating. I’ve been keeping the front panel of my computer open so air movement is less obstructed and that seems to make things less crash-prone, however, I did experience one single crash with the front panel open. Also, the Windows-blue-screen-of-death error-class that I get repeatedly says: Stop code: CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT Does this pretty much verify that the crash is caused by hardware heat? Or is there still a chance the crash/error could be related to something else like insufficient memory or something bug-related to v2024 update? If so, what are some ways to troubleshoot what might be causing the error? System specs: CPU: i9-11900K @ 3.5GHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 RAM: 64GB File info: C4D version: 2024 Redshift version: 3.5.19 Dynamics Body Tag Cache: 1.10 GB Motion Blur enabled (transform and deformation) Link to scene file: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/72askj4i2y0dv84sqvah9/h?rlkey=bpfrbt5cgtbnwp72xwjowzozd&dl=0 Preemptive THANKS for any reply! NpF

@Hrvoje | @Zerosixtwosix Thank you both for your replies. I did a little more exploring on the topic, though I still have a ways to go. I was initially hoping to get to where I needed to go using the simple Voronoi > Figure setup, with one universal Connector, though I think this solution simplifies things to much and I won't be able to get a convincing looking "human being tossed from a motorbike" using only these components. I've attached a file that takes the advice both of you had: From @Zerosixtwosix "Connector - Display - Always visible" - this was a good tip, it showed where the Connectors appear to be disengaged between the "bones" and this was presumably dependent on the pivot angles from one bone to the next. I adjusted the transform pivots (but only the pivots, not the geo) on certain bones, (for example on the shin bones and the foot bones) where the rotations where profoundly off from the original t-pose. This did the trick, as far as preventing any body parts from detaching upon impact with Collider objects. The end effect though, looks a bit too rubbery - this likely has to do with the "Fixed" Connector type itself. I experimented with some of the other options (Ragdoll, Hinge, for exampel), but those all end up looking too floppy and/or chaotic, as the angle limits don't seem to be controllable per individual joints. BTW, you mentioned you "have a similar tutorial" - does this mean you created a tutorial on the topic of ragdoll/figure dynamics?? Or that you learned your setup from one that's similar to the one I mentioned? I LOVE your procedural tutorials on YouTube, would love to see more! From @Hrvoje" Took a quick look. In ragdooll test scene, you are using bullet. Use expert settings in project setting tab (bullet) and increase iterations" Here I found that adjusting global iteration settings did not really do much for keeping body parts from detaching (I think this had everything to do with Pivot angles between objects connected by the Connector as @Zerosixtwosix suggests), but adjusting the global physics settings made some difference in the how fast and far and at what angle the figure might bounce off of the impact Collider objects, which does effect to overall realism. In any event, I'm going to continue this exploration using a more customizable setup where Connectors can be individuated. These are tutorials I've found on the topic, though if you guys know of others, please let me know! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbosEhJyrI&list=PL_or3CGiooApC0hq4HHik1DQC1agDCTCv&index=2&t=1538s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZOhit1BLO8&list=PL_or3CGiooApC0hq4HHik1DQC1agDCTCv&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raY4qe-aQe8&list=PL_or3CGiooApC0hq4HHik1DQC1agDCTCv&index=6 Thank you again! NpF ragdoll-test-mototbike_v002.c4d ragdoll-tests-v002.c4d

@hrvoje Thanks - I will give that a try!

Greetings all, I’m experimenting with some rag doll basics, following this guy’s tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0HoOxRjg5k&list=PL_or3CGiooApC0hq4HHik1DQC1agDCTCv&index=1 Basic setup is Figure hierarchy-object that’s been made Editable and posed and then placed under a Voronoi Fracture operator, with an Inverse Normal distribution type, approximating a single distribution point per mesh object and Connectors setting set to “Fixed”. I have a basic fast-moving cube knocking the figure off a motorbike. (.c4d file attached) Though the legs and head remain attached when the figure lands, the arms, hands and feet become detached and fly all over the place. I would like to keep all body parts intact no matter what, though cannot find the settings that would allow this using this basic setup. I also notice that with an even more simple setup (Figure object not “made editable”), a simple drop test will yield the knees of the figure breaking away from the body integrity of the Figure. I’d love to know why these things happen. It would appear that if you hit the connectors with enough force, they will break rather than hinge. Without moving to more complex setups (custom Connectors, per body part for example) is there a setting that would let me dial in the “strength” of these Connectors so they never break? Many thanks! NpF ragdoll-tests.c4d ragdoll-test-mototbike.c4d

@Hrvoje@vizn @Mash Thank you all for your responses! I found a solution, though took a little trial & error. The conundrum to me has been that since all the relevant image files were already in my project's /tex folder, it didn't make much sense that c4d should be throwing any errors at render-time, but it happened nonetheless.🤷‍♂️ @Mash - this was good insight - it's always good to know what's happening "under the hood" In any event, It seems the key was wrangling these "missing assets" (or unread paths, or whatever the underlying problem actually was) through the Redshift Asset Manager (vs. the Project Asset Inspector). In the end I simply re-linked assets in Redshift Asset Manager (shift-select all paths in the list, right-click, and choose "Relink Files") by pointing all paths to the /tex folder. The other solution, which was suggested to me by someone on Maxon/Redshift forum was to do hard "Save Project with Assets". This worked just as well, though truthfully I'm not a huge fan of creating a new project folder for every version of a project I save. Once again, thanks to all of you for your helpfulness! NpF

Greetings all, I am continually getting a “missing textures” error when setting up a multi-Take series in the Render Queue window. The Render Queue’s Texture Error field lists all the supposed missing textures, though when I open up the Project Asset Inspector, it indicates that all of my textures are present and all texture paths are A-OK. As an extra precaution to make sure all my texture files are present and linked properly, I did the following: Consolidated all paths using the Project Asset Inspector Switched all paths to “local” using the PAI Switched all paths to “global” using the PAI Quit the project and re-opened it for a new session I did all these things but I am still getting a “Missing Textures” error when I set up my multi-Take rendering. A couple more things to note: I’m using Redshift as the main renderer All materials are RS Node materials I’ve used an offsite rendering service for similar multi-Take setup from the same file, and didn’t have any “Texture Error”s. Has anyone else had this problem?? If so, what was the solution? Preemptive THANKS for any reply! NpF

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@Zerosixtwosix Many thanks for your responsed! These solutions work well! (I only wish Maxon would address the buggy-ness of working with 'Color Layer' node - I have to refresh constantly when using it with Progressive Rendering to see the results that the material parameters are supposed to give me) In any event, I appreciate the quick and concise replies! Cheers NpF

Yes, that's it! Many thank yous!!!

Hi all, There’s a recurring phenomenon that keeps coming up when I switch on the Texture mode button, to scale or move or rotate a texture using a Flat or Cubic projection. Sometimes the aspect ratio stays locked to a square, when I want to Scale the texture along one axis or another. I’m not sure why this is - I can’t seem to find the tab or setting that would turn this off. Jonas Pilz’s QuickTip video from R19 seems to suggest that it has to do with turning ‘Enable Axis’ mode on… … though it appears that once I have switched to Texture mode, the Enable Axis mode goes grey and therefore cannot be turned on or off. If I switch back to Model mode and then turn on Enable Axis mode, and then switch back to Texture mode, I can still scale the Texture gizmo along one axis or the other (it doesn’t stay locked). So what gives? What would cause the Texture mode gizmo to lock to a 1:1 proportion? (my apologies for not including a .c4d file that replicates the issue - it seems to pop up now and then but I don’t have an example saved where the Texture mode gizmo is locked) Preemptive thanks to any responders! NpF