pfistar

Greetings everyone - I'm wondering if this is a common problem: In this video, between 00:09 and 00:14, and to a lesser degree, between 00:21 and 00:29, there is what appears to be some jitter or staggered movement as the camera pans across the subject. As far as I can tell, all the motion blur settings are turned on, but perhaps I forgot something? I've also been told it might be a frame-rate issue. In any event, I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and if so, how did you resolve it. Many thanks, NpF

@cerbera though this looks pretty awesome, it's not quite what I had in mind. Per the image I attached, I'm shooting for something more simple: - a single thin cylinder of "light" (maybe a .5 cm in diameter) that looks like a 'volume effect' a la older CG rendering techniques - mostly semi-transparent, but more opaque toward the center-line of the beam, with an even falloff - some control over the falloff opacity along the length of the beam I'll look around further to see what I can find - thanks for the feedback thnx npf

Hi all, There's an attached image from an old project using the C4D's standard renderer. The vertical light-beam effect here was achieved with a volumetric directional light. I'd like to replicate the look using Redshift. Since the volume rendering system works differently in Redshift, unfortunately it doesn't appear I can simply set up an RS directional light, limit its x,y boundaries and apply a volume (the way you can using a C4D standard light). So I'm wondering what some common workarounds might be. I did try an RS spotlight with a tiny-angle for the cone, though I'm not satisfied with the effect since it still looks conic. I suppose using geometry is the other way to go - I'd presume I can use a volumetric shader, as one might use to render clouds or murky liquid, though it would be nice to make the volume actually cast light too. I haven't found any great tutorials on this - does anyone out there have a suggestion?? Preemptive thanks to all responders! NpF

@HappyPolygon Thanks for the response. I played around with Delay Effector, though not sure it was relevant to what I was trying to accomplish. However, I just had a "Duh" moment: It didn't occur to me that I could animate the Effector multiplier in the L1 Cloner, and that that would be a parameter like any other in the L1 Cloner, which could be effected by the L2 Effector. 🤦‍♂️ So this is exactly what I needed - a way to offset or layer the animation of one effector applied to a lower cloner, with another effector applied to a higher cloner. In any event, I do appreciate all your input - not sure I would have figured it out without having someone to bounce things off of 🙏🙏🙏

Hi @HappyPolygon Thanks for the reply, and for the technical breakdown of the different object classes. You might have seen this post before under a different category - I moved it here to "Miscellaneous" because I didn't get any responders under the other category. In any event, what I'm trying to accomplish that is not visible in my example C... ...Is a similar effect to my example B... where a Plain Effector with a Linear field offsets the animation for each set of cloned clones, employing the Time parameter in the Effector. (so, only similar insofar as the top level clones get offset in time, but obviously the animation of the bottom-level clones is different, I hope this makes sense to you) Now, it's obvious enough that I'm not getting the time offsets I want in example C because the cubes we see whose positions are being randomized, is being animated by an Effector, and that animation cannot be effected by another Effector. So I'm wondering what the work-arounds for something like this might be. I did give a couple of alternative methods a try - there's a file attached that has 2 example techniques. A - here I'm distorting a few grid objects collected under a Connect generator - There's a Displacer deformer applied under the Connect generator that gives me the spatial randomization on the points - The sphere clones are created using 'Object / Vertex' mode in the L2 Cloner, using the L1 cloner as its template - As in earlier examples, the L2 Cloner has a Plain Effector applied, with an offset in the Time parameter and that gives us the ramp-up of animation from one clone to the next B - here I'm using an identical Displacer as in A for the randomization - instead of geo primitives, I'm apply the Displacer to a Matrix grid, which is the cloned using Cloner.L1 - As in A, the L2 Cloner has a Plain Effector applied, with an offset in the Time parameter, which gives me the ramp up I want - I would love to be able to use the L2 cloner to assign spheres to each individual node in this area of cloned Matrices in order to get a similar visual result as seen in example A, but it appears C4D won't allow it. i'm not sure why this is. but I'd have to guess that the transform data of the nodes in the Matrix gets lost somehow when you run it through a Cloner, and then try to run that though a second cloner. If this is the case, I'd wonder if you'd happen to know a way to convert that Matrix node data so that the node points in that cloned array of Matrices can be read as geometry points by the L2 cloner? Aside from the above, I'd still wonder if there's a way to effect the transform-based numeric values of one Effector with the time-based numeric values of another Effector that's been applied to a clone array, in order to achieve similar results to my new examples A & B. Do you imagine an Xpresso setup could even make that happen? Thanks again for your response! NpF cloner-trigger-animation-test-alt_v00.c4d

Greetings all I am trying to create a setup which would allow me to use the Time offset parameter in a Plain Effector (Plain (L2)) to trigger the animation of a Field/Effector (L1) that’s driving the animation of a clone array(L1) that’s a child of an above clone array (L2). To clarify further (see screenshots): A - the Cube being cloned has its size and fillet parameters animated - no animation on Cloner.L1’s parameters - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, so the Cube’s parameters ramp up according to Plain Effector’s Field B - no animation on the Cube being cloned but - Cloner.L1’s Count parameter is animated - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, so Cloner.1’s count parameters ramp up according to Plain Effector’s Field C - no animation on the Cube being cloned but - Cloner.L1 has a RandomEffector applied, and Linear Field’s Position value is animated to randomize the clones over the course of few seconds - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, but the Cloner.L1’s Effector does not respond to Cloner.L2’s Effector, so I’ll conclude that those animation values in Cloner.L1’s Effector are not being applied to Cloner.L2’s value. Is there a work-around to this? Perhaps I haven’t “turned over every stone” of the available parameters? Perhaps there’s an Xpresso setup which would make it possible to use the Time offset values in the L2 Effector on the Position value of the L1 Effector’s field Pre-emptive thanks to any responders! NpF cloner-trigger-animation.c4d

I suppose that does indeed work - thanks

@HappyPolygon I appreciate the reply - I guess we're asking for too much 😆😆 I had come up earlier with a more brute-force solution (using Random mode in the top Cloner with multiple Null objects included in the objects being cloned - see attachment). Though drawback here is that the only parametric control is the seed value in Cloner object's parameter. The idea, as is with a Point Selection as template, is to keep the overhead low by avoiding using an Effector with randomness applied to Scale value, where C4D has to calculate even invisible geometry. Ah well - here's to hoping someone else can chime in. Thanks again, NpF procedural-random-gridpoints-v05.c4d

@HappyPolygon Many thanks for the response! - I gave your solution a try. It does work insofar as the point count increases with the use of the Correction Deformer, and points now are distributed across the whole array of grids. However, it doesn't appear that the Field that's driving the randomness does anything when I adjust its parameters. It's as if the point info in the Selection Tag is pretty much frozen. I tried making adjustments to the Random Field and then hitting 'Update' in the tag, but that doesn't seem to do anything. I would imagine that Field's parameters would be the determinant of the Selection Tag's number of points, though that doesn't seem to be the case, once the Correction Deformer's been put to use. Does the deformer 'bake' the point index? (I have no idea what's going on under the hood here. 😳) Thanks again for the suggestion! NpF

Greetings all, I’m looking for a way to access a Point Selection on an array of Cloned objects. The idea is to get a random selection of those points to use as the template in another Cloner object. My setup here shows an array of cloned grids which are (presumably) bound together under a Connect object. I set the ‘hero’ cloner to Object mode, and use the Connect object as its vertex template I then use a Point Selection tag, driven by a Random Field, which was copy-pasted from another object The result is not quite what I’m expecting: I’m only getting clone distribution on the 1st of 25 of the grids in the Connect object, where I’d like to see the clones randomly distributed across all 25 of the grids, using the parameters of the Random Field Is there any way to access ALL the points in that 25 grid array using something like the Point Selection tag? Ideally I’d like to keep this setup procedural all the way through, which is why I haven’t collapsed the cloned grids into editable mesh objects. procedural-random-gridpoints-v02.c4d

Greetings all I am trying to create a setup which would allow me to use the Time offset parameter in a Plain Effector (Plain (L2)) to trigger the animation of a Field/Effector (L1) that’s driving the animation of a clone array(L1) that’s a child of an above clone array (L2). To clarify further (see screenshots): A - the Cube being cloned has its size and fillet parameters animated - no animation on Cloner.L1’s parameters - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, so the Cube’s parameters ramp up according to Plain Effector’s Field B - no animation on the Cube being cloned but - Cloner.L1’s Count parameter is animated - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, so Cloner.1’s count parameters ramp up according to Plain Effector’s Field C - no animation on the Cube being cloned but - Cloner.L1 has a RandomEffector applied, and Linear Field’s Position value is animated to randomize the clones over the course of few seconds - Cloner.L2’s effector has it’s Time Offset parameter in use, but the Cloner.L1’s Effector does not respond to Cloner.L2’s Effector, so I’ll conclude that those animation values in Cloner.L1’s Effector are not being applied to Cloner.L2’s value. Is there a work-around to this? Perhaps I haven’t “turned over every stone” of the available parameters? Perhaps there’s an Xpresso setup which would make it possible to use the Time offset values in the L2 Effector on the Position value of the L1 Effector’s field Pre-emptive thanks to any responders! NpF cloner-trigger-animation.c4d

@Cerbera My thoughts exactly! I'm certain I would have never arrived at that solution by myself - in fact I was unaware that you could affect the Matrix's falloff so definitively using a mesh object. When replicating the setup for myself, it also occured to me how much the 'meandering' effect of the Matrix's points are dependent on not one, but really four factors, (and these factors are somewhat interdependent): 1. the Tracer object's spline interpolation settings (Matrix object creates a point for wherever you'd have one along a spline so if you're not careful you can blow up your scene) 2. the Matrix object's Step setting, or how far apart you set your initial points are from each other 3. the Push Apart effector's Radius and Iterations settings (if radius is set too low for your initial point distance, the Matrix eats itself, meaning the points will decrease until there's one left) 4. Shape/size of Falloff geometry object is critical too, because its perimeter redirects the points inward so increases the density of spaghetti on frames that come after the perimeter is hit. Overall, a very cool effect/technique that requires no physics sim.

Thanks @NWoolridgefor making those amendments. Color-coding is definitely called for in this case, and yours is a useful tip. I appreciate your feedback! NpF

@MODODO 1000 thank yous for this!!! 🙏🙏🙏 👑👑👑 May be the best solution anyone could have come up with! -NpF

@MODODO This looks very promising, and so I've been trying to replicate your setups, but not really succeeding: 😳 Let's take the bottom image first as it appears to be work only in 2 dimensions. My first guess is that the basic idea is that the SplineMask object is used as the Object template to redistribute the Matrix's nodes, while you are using the Matrix's parameters to animate the nodes, and the Push Apart effector keeps the nodes away from each other in a random direction, and and also keeps them from overlapping. On second glance, I notice that the green linework looks to be a single continuous line AND a closed loop. Does this mean the Matrix is only generating a single node, which wiggles around and finds its way back to its birthplace, while the Tracer 'records' its path? I also noticed that in the first example, you had a keyframe on the Matrix's 'Object' picker. Does this mean there's some kind of feedback loop going on between the initial point generated by the Matrix object, and the points created by the Tracer?? If you could drop another clue or two, I'd be ever so grateful! 🙏 NpF matrix-spaghetti_01.c4d

Greetings all, I'm looking for the least complicated way to fill a volume up with spline-based "spaghetti" for some scientific illustrations. One key requirement is that the strand (or multiple strands) avoid intersecting themselves. Attached are a couple of ideas of what it might look like: This tutorial by EJ is the best thing I've found so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owIjKJU-jsw&t=97s The basic process here is that he's using Cloned spheres with an Emitter and Dynamics Tags, along with Tracer, to create splines, and then applies Sweep for thickness. This works well enough to fill a simple volumetric shape like a sphere or a cube, though maybe not quite as well for more complex shapes like 3d letterforms, which I may need to do. So, I'm wondering if anyone out there knows of a simpler approach, or perhaps just a different one that's maybe less dependent on physics-based collisions and/or gravity. (One other approach I did try was to put a couple of Vibrate tags on a Null and then used Tracer to generate splines from that randomized movement. I got some decent looking shapes but I haven't figured out how to bound the movement so that it doesn't exceed a specified volume. Am I correct to assume that I would need to animate the Null using some kind of dynamics force (Wind, Turbulence, etc.) instead of Vibrate tag, in order to get something like this to work with a boundary collision mesh?) Preemptive thank yous to any responders! NpF

Another piece of freeware for Windows: https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/ I use GarageFarm all the time (great service!) and often opt to rename my frame sequences - the above tool is as good as any, I think. NpF

Hi Hrvoje - Thanks for the suggestion. I just gave it a look though I don't see how that would work since the gizmos in the viewport represent nodes that only seem to exist as objects within Xpresso. Unless there's some secret I don't know, I'm not certain there is a way to access those Xpresso nodes as "objects" via the Object Manager, other than by clicking on the Xpresso tag to open the Xpresso window.

Hi all, An esoteric but simple question: Anybody know of way to make all Xpresso gizmos invisible in the viewport? In my specific case, I have a few XParticles Wind nodes in the scene, and each has its large plane-&-arrow gizmo to represent the wind's direction. This is all well and good, though I like sending clients hardware playblasts and it would be nice to not have those extra distractions. I tried all options in the Display panel and pined through Preferences as well but couldn't find the right check-box. Many thanks NpF