pfistar

@Teknow Thanks for the response! Cool solution, though my aim was ultimately to Break and Delete Nth points, rather than transform them. I guess I should have mentioned this in the first place 😳. I do wonder though if there's an Xpresso-based solution that would allow your node-network to select the actual points (or rather, see the actual points selected / yellow-highlighted in your viewport - not sure what the difference is, technically). I would have thought a 'Point Selection' tag could be dragged into the Xpresso window and would have some Input port that would allow you to feed the activated point id numbers into it so you could get a visual of it in your viewport, though this doesn't seem to be the case. In any event, I ended up finding a very simple but workable solution using the Point Selection tag in conjunction with Formula Field ( mod(id;x)=0 ). File attached. Thanks again! -NpF select-nth-point-on-spline.c4d

Hi all, I'm looking for a way to select every Nth point along a spline. Same would go for a static mesh. It's something that there seems to be a wealth of tutorials on, if we're talking about using the Formula Effector on Mograph objects, but where are the tutorials for this for addressing simple static objects? Guessing there might be an Xpresso solution somewhere - but I haven't figured it out yet. Any help would be massively appreciated! -NpF

@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

Hi all, Noob-ish Redshift question here, but is the option available to have my RS Dome Light's image visible in a camera viewport? The 'Enable Background' under the Light's 'Environment' tab will obviously turn it on or off in an RS render window, though that doesn't seem to correspond to a normal camera viewport. I tried loading the Dome Light's image into the RS Camera's 'Environment' slot, to no avail. Also looked for options under Viewport Settings (Shift+v) but couldn't find what I was looking for. Is there a work-around anyone knows of? (I specifically need to show hardware/gpu renders (versus draft-setting RS renders) to client but want to show the environment image in viewport background). Preemptive thanks to all responders! NpF

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

Hi All - My ultimate goal is to transfer joint weights from the fully-clothed and fully-rigged human male sample character that's packaged with current versions of c4d (r21, 22, 23, etc) to the 'unclothed' version that's also packaged with c4d but comes with no rig. I'm not sure why the unclothed version doesn't come fully-rigged but it is what it is. In any event, rather than doing a full reskin, it seems the most direct way to re-purpose the rig would be to use the VAMP tool. However, since the clothed model is broken up into components (shirt, trousers, boots, etc.) it appears I can only transfer weights piecemeal, so for example, if I transfer the weights from the 'Shirt' object, all points on the unclothed body that are not in close proximity to the shirt will be assigned a value of "0 "(or is it "1"?). This might work well if I could transfer the weight values cumulatively, in other words, ideally if I transfer weights from a second object, they wouldn't totally overwrite the values I've already transferred from the first object. Am I missing something here? Perhaps there is some way to consolidate all the weight values from a few different Weight tags into a single Weight tag and then perform the transfer? File can be downloaded here - please note that whatever weights you're seeing in the file are NOT the product of the VAMP tool. Instead I just ran the 'Auto Weight' tool to get a basic functional weight map, without getting into the finer points. Preemptive thanks to any responders! NpF

My recent general use is confined to C4D versions r21 to r23. I work commonly on both Mac and Windows10 platforms, though at the moment I am using a Mac environment so any Mac-specific response would be more welcome. In any event, if there's a purpose to understanding this it's that ideally it could be advantageous to have all my C4D (r21 / 22 / 23) versions accessing the 'Content Browser Library' assets from the same master directory (or is this something that MAXON does not want us to do). Also, it would be nice to be able to add assets from libraries of older versions (r20 and older) to the current library. So the way I understand it is that when Cinema4D is newly installed on in a Mac environment, it by default installs the scenes and peripheral content (textures, etc.) in a folder that lives within the master install folder for the program. So on a Mac, that file path looks like this: Macintosh_HD⁩/⁨Applications⁩/Maxon_Cinema_4D_R23⁩/⁨library⁩/browser And then within this folder, a set of files can be found with the file extension of .lib4d (so for example, one of the installed files is named 'examples - disciplines.lib4d'). The way I understand this is that a .lib4d file is an encoded and packaged-up folder structure containing various c4d projects, and is made to be accessible only through c4d's Content Browser application (which is an app within an app, I'd guess?). If this is correct, is there any easy way to unpack / repack the contents of .lib4d file? Or should I generally assume that contents can only be accessed through c4d's Content Browser? The other dimension to this that I'd like to understand is what the function of the Content Browser Library folder structure is that's installed in my User directory. To clarify, the folder who's path looks like this (on a Mac): Macintosh_HD/⁨Users/⁨xxxxxxxxxxx/⁩Library⁩/⁨Preferences⁩/MAXON⁩/Maxon_Cinema_4D_R23_2FE1299C⁩/⁨library Digging around in here I notice only folder structures, but empty of .lib4d files. Is this because they are hidden by default? Or is this alternative folder structure installed expressly for the purpose of being able to share the .lib4d assets across a user network? I also noticed when accessing the 'Preferences' panel from with C4D, when I pull up the 'Content Browser' tab, aside from showing icon size preferences, there's a path field at the bottom of the screen that points to: Macintosh_HD/⁨Users/⁨xxxxxxxxxxx/⁩Library⁩/⁨Preferences⁩/MAXON⁩/Maxon_Cinema_4D_R23_2FE1299C⁩/⁨library Why does it point here, and not to: Macintosh_HD⁩/⁨Applications⁩/Maxon_Cinema_4D_R23⁩/⁨library⁩/browser ? Once again, primary purposes of asking for this demystification is to: inquire if there's a way to consolidate 'factory' library assets from different c4d versions into a single location get an understanding of what the .lib4d file format is about get a general understanding what exactly gets installed to Content Libraries and where get an understanding of why there's a peripheral install of (empty folder) content libraries in user folder Hoping someone out there can provide some insights! Many thanks, NpF

Hi bezo (and anyone else following) I got up on the Redshift forums with this inquiry and it turned out to be simply an issue with a preferences setting. From responder on the RS forum: "What happens is that you have the Use Global Editor for Shader Node Attributes enabled so that will use the global edtior for attributes instead of the Node Editor, simply disable it and restart C4D"

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 bezo Many thanks for the quick response! The answer is 'yes' - all the boxes are already checked when I pull up the Configure Modes panel. A few more clues: - for any other UI Layout I pull up (whether custom, or factory set), the default Attribute Panel mode is 'Object' - but for my custom redshift layout, the default mode is 'Node' - this leads me to think that the issue must be within the custom Layout's file (attached) I have noticed the following when I'm using this custom Redshift UI Layout: If I happen to have a Redshift Node material type selected in the Material Manager > any object I select in the the Object Manager will show its attributes in the Attribute Panel like it ought to > this coincides with the Attribute Panel's 'mode' changing according to the type of thing I have selected (selecting an object automatically switches to 'Object' mode, selecting a tag switched to 'Tag' mode, etc.) If I happen to NOT have a Redshift Node material type selected in the Material Manager (either a Standard, or regular Redshift material selected, or no material selected at all) > the Attribute Panel mode stays in 'Node' mode, no matter what I select > this means that I can't see my selection's attributes unless I switch the mode manually in the dropdown menu I've tried manually setting the Attribute Panel mode to 'Object' and then re-saving the custom UI Layout file, then reloading the layout file, but this doesn't seem to do the trick. redshift_base_2.l4d redshift_base_2.prf

Hi bezo I'd meant to get back to this a long while ago, as it's still an issue which I haven't yet figured out the cause of. To revisit the problem: There are times when my Attribute Panel is simply unresponsive, and I have to resort to putting it in lock-mode just to be able to switch between objects and see their attributes. This seems to happen only when I'm using a custom UI layout that's been created for my Redshift workflow. Here's a screengrab link that shows what's happening (I recommend playing this at .5 speed): Here's a point by point description: > I load the file into c4d > the UI mode is set already set to my custom Redshift layout > I select an object in the Object Manager - the Attribute Panel remains blank (does not update to show the selected object's attributes) > (It appears the Mode is set to 'Node' by default - perhaps this is the key to the issue?) > I switch the Attribute Panel's Mode to 'Object' and can now see the selected object's attributes, but I get a another blank Attribute Panel when I select a different object > I then turn on 'Lock' in the Attribute Panel's Mode menu and now the visibility sticks when I switch between objects > I create a new Redshift Node-based material > When I select newly created individual nodes in the Node Editor, the nodes' attributes do not show up in the Attributes Panel > When I turn the 'Lock' mode off in Attributes Panel, I can now see each material-node's attributes in the Attributes Panel I'm still not sure what I'm missing here - I'm feeling pretty dense about it. 🥴 Please help if you can! Many thanks! Nik

Thanks for the reply KEPPN I have actually tried this and it works until it doesn't - i.e. sometime it breaks when I have to close and re-open the master scene file. By "breaks" I mean that the instances will also show in the viewport and in the render without the applied RS materials. For what it's worth, I went ahead and replaced the 2 faulty xrefs with instances and their shaders are appearing and rendering as intended, however I expect that if/when I have to re-open the file, it may break again. I haven't had a chance to test it, but I do wonder whether it's even specific to Redshift or if the problem is more global - perhaps some kind of memory limitation issue somewhere. In any event, I appreciate your response! Cheers and thanks again 🙏

Greetings all, I am unsure how anomalous this problem is since I haven’t used Xrefs all that often over the years I’ve been using C4D, and furthermore, this is my first project using Xrefs and Redshift at the same time. I’m not actually entirely sure the issue is specific to Redshift but here are the details: - In my master scene, I am Xref-ing 5 other scenes. - Both the master scene and all of the Xref’d scene are Redshift-based (the materials are predominantly RS Node-based materials) - One of the Xref’d scenes is used THREE times in my master scene. These are not Instances internal to my master scene, but rather each one is its own Xref object, but references the same external scene. - While 1 of these 3 Xrefs shows as it should in my viewport and in my final render, the other 2 do not seem to be bringing in their Redshift shaders, all I’m seeing is their default shaders in both viewport and final render. {see attachements} While the work-arounds might be fairly simple (use Redshift Proxies instead of Xrefs, OR simply convert the Xref to a native scene object-hierarchy), it would be cool to know what’s going on here. Has anyone else seen this issue?? Many thanks! NpF

I had a chance to investigate this a little more, and the stone I left unturned was indeed the total Brute Force GI Samples setting. With the default at 16, it was hard to see much difference in my Redshift render until this parameter was cranked up to 1024! I still get a little bit of subtle vibration at the outer threshold of where the incandescent photons hit, but it’s much, much improved. All this for an actual slight improvement in render time. GI = 16 / US = 256-512 / Denoiser = Altus / Time per frame = 20 sec https://www.dropbox.com/s/ewulxhexn5kbhuo/GI(128-256)Altus.mov?dl=0 GI = 1024 / US = 8-64 / Denoiser = AltusDual / Time per frame = 15-18 sec https://www.dropbox.com/s/mwd9yxpz289n4z9/(GI_1024) (US_8-64) (Altus2).mov?dl=0 Still, if anyone has additional tips for working with 'incandescent material' lighting while keeping to reasonable render-times, I'd love to hear about. !!!

Greetings all, I’ve come across a little rendering problem that essentially requires me to use Redshift’s Incandescent shader (along with GI, of course) as a geometry-based lightsource. (I’m not using a mesh-based Area Light because the lightsource geometry needs to have a UV’d texture on it that won’t work the way I need it to with the Area Light.) In any event, in the particular area where my Incandescent material is illuminating my scene objects, I’m getting a lot of noise. The rest of the frame renders with an acceptable noise level, and takes an acceptable amount of time to process: Unified Samples: min = 8 / max = 64 AE threshold = 0.003 Denoiser = Altus (renderfarm won’t support Optix, but I was getting noisey results with Optix as well when rendering locally) There are 2 animated components: The camera (with motion blur) The incandescent material (whose intensity parameter is animated) I’ve done a handful of tests where I’ve either increased unified samples or changed denoisers, or both. Here are the results: US = 8-64 / Denoiser = None / Time per frame = 3 sec US = 8-64 / Denoiser = Altus / Time per frame = 11 sec US = 8-64 / Denoiser = AltusDual / Time per frame = 16 sec US = 128-256 / Denoiser = None / Time per frame = 11-12 sec US = 128-256 / Denoiser = Altus / Time per frame = 20 sec US = 128-256 / Denoiser = AltusDual / Time per frame = 33 sec A couple of other parameters I investigated, though neither appear to make any difference: Number of (Brute Force) GI rays Number of Reflection samples on the material receiving illumination from the ‘incandescent’ light source. So far, only the most acceptable results in terms of quality are: US = 128-256 / Denoiser = Altus / Time per frame = 20 sec US = 128-256 / Denoiser = AltusDual / Time per frame = 33 sec Because the render times in both cases are a bit prohibitive, I’m wondering if there’s some stone I left unturned in terms of parameters, or if someone knows any shortcuts for exactly this type of situation. Also, regarding ‘Unified Samples’ and ‘Sampling Overrides’, can I assume that the ‘Unified Samples’ parameters sets an absolute floor and ceiling for all sampling in the scene? And that ‘Sampling Overrides’ values get clamped to the maximum ‘Unified Sampling’ value? A link to c4d scene (r21) and test renders can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ztjsiqilcfkygnb/AADWUmtLNeX0jI_oYEG8u7F2a?dl=0 Thanks ahead of time for any insights! NpF noise-from-incandescent-material.c4d

@bezo @MikeA Many thanks for all the helpful replies!

Hi bezo Thanks for the reply. I just jumped back into my scene and the Attribute panel is now behaving as it should. Can't explain it - perhaps a bug, or perhaps I had something selected that I shouldn't have? In any event, if I come across the phenomenon again, I will do a screencapture and post it to this thread. Thank you again! Nik

hi bezo This makes sense - will do going forward. Many thanks for the reply! Nik

Hi all! I finally broke down and purchased Redshift recently. It is absolutely a game changer on so many levels, though I’ve come across a handful of very irksome gotchas. Hopefully I’m not offending forum protocol by including them all in one thread, but here they are. Any insights or tips would be hugely appreciated: Material Sample Updates - What’s up with material samples not updating in Nodes panel and Material Manager? I understand that Redshift has to work behind the scenes to render the material samples, but is there any workaround outside of adjusting a setting in Material Editor just to see the damn sample? Also, are there any known things that trigger the RS Node material samples to go ‘black’? Perhaps there’s something I can adjust in Preferences that allocates more resource to this? Is RS Node Material really necessary? - On that topic, is there any actual advantage to converting RS materials to Nodes materials? It seems like regular RS materials (which use the Shader Graph) have more node options available? Ryan McCauley’s tutorial series on Lynda.com implies that eventually the Material Node interface will totally supplant the regular node graph, but since that may be in the future, does it make sense to convert all my materials to Node Materials if certain features or functions are not yet available? ‘Ramp’ map will not tile - What’s up with not being able to tile RS Ramp maps? It seems I can scale and offset UV coordinates via the Material Tag, but I can’t seem to get the image to repeat / tile. Is there an intermediary node I need to add? My workaround will be to use a Texture node with a hand-made bitmap that approximates the procedural ramp gradient, but it seems crazy to me that I would have to do this. Attaching a file that shows what I’m trying to do, which is mapping a gradient to repeat along a Sweep, like the pattern on a snake. RS Material Nodes and Linear Workflow - Finally, following Ryan McCauley’s tutorial again, I’m trying to parse the truth about setting up materials properly for material workflow. He implies that a Color Correction node with Gamma set to 2.2 should be attached after any Texture nodes using bitmaps. Would this apply to bitmap textures being ported into ANY material channel, or just those that are NOT the Diffuse Color channel (Reflection Roughness, for example)? Adjusting HDRIs - When using an HDR (.hdr) image in a Dome Light, it seems like there ought to be some way to adjust the exposure on the image itself within C4D but I’m not seeing any such option anywhere. My work around has been to adjust image in Photoshop and reload, but is there a way to accomplish this in program with either a Redshift tool or a native C4D tool? Many thanks! Again, any insights or tips would be hugely appreciated. NpF redshiftgotchas.zip

Hi all, I can’t figure out what the heck I did to fudge up my Attribute panel. While following Ryan McCauley’s tutorial Redshift Basics series on Lynda.com, I set up a custom UI which puts the RS Material Node where the Coordinates panel usual is. I set the RS Material Editor to show up in my Attributes panel (lower right, where it normally lives) whenever I click on a Node in the RS Material Node panel. I don’t know whether this required any of my intervention or if it’s default behavior, but what is problematic is that it won’t go away automatically when I click on a different item, so for example, if I select an Object or a Tag in the Object Manager, I have to manually update the Attribute Panel in order to see the attributes. This is hella annoying and I’m not sure how to remedy this, other than resetting to defaults. What about the setting of UI preferences am I not getting here? Link to .c4d File below, along with .prf file (I think this is what's needed, but correct me if I'm wrong) Many thanks! NpF https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pdjlzaa47m186qy/AADZqsENtzCjIw4grLro36rTa?dl=0 attributespanelonthefritz.zip

Thanks very much Srek - I may have to build a shrine to your name at some point 😃 🙏 These examples are all proving useful - I'm on a deadline until after the weekend but will likely follow up next week with an additional question or two after I've played around with the nodes that are new to me in spare time. Thanks again and cheers! Nik

Hi all, I'm trying to accomplish something which seems like it might be fairly simple, though I'm at a little bit of a loss for how to approach the Xpresso set up for it. There are 3 basic elements: 1. a TP emitter, in this case a PMatterWaves node with a sphere piped into it 2. A target object which basically looks like a randomized point cloud (it has vertices, but no polygons or other geometry info) 3. Some sort of force, could be wind or gravity that would push or pull the particles from the emitter to the target What I'd like to see happen is for the particles to 'land' on the point-cloud object based on index and/or particle id, so something similar to what the MoGraph Inheritance effector does. I would imagine that unless it's piped into randomizer, each particle emitted is assigned a number based on its birth order and this value is its particle id for its lifespan (though if I have this wrong, please correct me). What would an Xpresso set up look like that allows each particle to travel directly toward the point on its target object whose index number is the same as the particle's id number (and then hold its position once it lands on its target point)? Preemptive thanks to any responders! 🙏