Tinkertoy

I finally decided to sit down an tinker with bodypaint, but I'm trying to use the text tool to apply a nice centered bit of text on an object and to do so I need to use the top view. The paintbrush works in other views, but the text tool only seems to work in the perspective view. I tried all of the different views including parallel and not one of them will actually apply the text to the object except for the perspective view, but then it's nowhere near straight. Any help?

Another odd snag. After you bevel you switch back to face mod and it has the faces around the circles selected, but whether I do it while holding CTRL or not absolutely nothing is selected when I switch to face mode.

I did not know that. Thanks.

One issue though is that when I go from faces to points nothing is selected.

Absolutely perfect technique and tutorial. Thanks so much!

I know that I could use Booleans to do this individually but I'm sure someone knows a much faster way to do it. I'm wanting to cut small circular indentations where each of the selected face is. Is there a method I'm not aware of for doing this all at once?

this is what I ended up with. it's not the best, but I'm open to suggestions as to how I can make it more dynamic looking.

Here is what I ended up with. It animates nicely up close, but you really can't see the animation at any distance. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the animation to appear more noticeable from a distance.

I found this information here on the forums. I'm playing with that and also doing several different lights with several different noise patterns and animation speeds.

In fact I'm having trouble making the noise look animated. Not really sure which setting under the noise tab I should be animating.

Got it myself just a short while ago. Now tinkering with making it look the way I want. Noise is tricky to get right.

Got it, except the shape is all wrong (closest I could get was a spot). How did you shape your light that way?

I will definitely try that. Thank you.

That looks right. Can it be animated so that it looks like it flickers a bit, so it's not just static? What settings would you personally animate if trying to get it to look like a real flame?

I was thinking about having an item in an animation emit a nice blue or purple flame like that of a blowtorch. Does anyone have a link to a tutorial to create something like that in Cinema 4D? I am sure that it could be added in post, but if I can I'd rather have it rendered directly into the scene.

Okay. I kind of figured that might be the case, but thought I'd ask just in case there was some setting that could help speed it up.

I am trying to render a short animation with the sketch & toon effect active in the render settings. It looks good, but it taking much longer than regular renderings. I was expecting it to actually take less time, not more. Does anyone have some tips for speeding up the render time for sketch & toon style renderings?

my first thought, and attempt, was trying to use a cone that I applied an alpha mask to with some noise. it kinda worked, but looked bad. I did not, however, try actually making the object or material emit light other than simply ticking the illumination channel. I know it's possible to use an object as a light, but before I start digging into it more is it even possible to use a material as a light? If that were possible and I could apply some visible light to a texture that has an animated noise map as alpha to make it look like moving plasma. my issue with doing it in after effects is that I want it to look genuinely 3 dimensional, instead of just a flat looking ball of light. i do have an older version of after effects, but I just don't recall being able to make anything that looked 3 dimensional.

kinda neat looking, but I'll have to figure something else out. looks like Turbulence FD is way too pricey for the time being.

The first image that I attached is what I've come up with in cinema using a bunch of lights set to visible, but it's not really what I want. What I'd like is sort of a mixture between image 3 and image 4. I want the nice bulbous glowing part of image 3 but with some of the "flare" of image 4. I'd like to do this in cinema and not in post production if at all possible since I'd like to have it flying around in 3 dimensions and passing near the camera at one point. I'd like to hear any and all ideas you might have for creating this, I'll play around with all of the ideas I get and see what I can get.

well yeah, but I mean in the cloner HAHA. It just didn't dawn on me that you'd have to use the cylinder's orientation to direct how the clones went. now that I see it it's obvious, but I kept looking in the cloner settings for it. thanks for the help guys.

That's what was wrong. My cylinders were oriented in the default Y+ axis. I wonder why they don't give you the option to check which orientation you'd like to use. Such a simple problem, but if you don't think of it because that's just how c4d defaults to making cylinders you'd never know.

But here's the problem. How do I get them facing out, so they'll make nice neat holes in each polygon? I tried adjust [up vector] and it just gives them other alignments that aren't helpful either.

I meant to ask this last night. I'm away from my computer at the moment, but I got stumped last night trying to figure out how to clone one of these cylinders into the middle of each polygon on the surface. I think the reason I'm having extra trouble is because I don't want them right on the surface, but instead sticking through into the octahedron shape a short ways because I want to boole a bunch of divots out of it. I'm sure someone knows how to achieve this with very little headache.

will give it a try. thanks!