southpaw

Would sculpting the skull on the flat surface work? Maybe the sculpt detail/height could be animated with a pose morph. The documentation says you can use sculpt brushes with the pose morph tag, but I haven't tried it. EDIT: In the documentation, under Sculpt Layer Manager/ Tools Menu It mentions the Sculpt to Pose Morph command. My understanding is that you can store different sculpt states as individual Pose Morphs states and animate between them. So this may be an approach worth trying, as it should give you the level detail you're looking for.

Volumes where introduced in R20, so it may be a backwards compatibility issue, even though it's an alembic file, R19 may not be able to import the data correctly. Just a guess, someone may have a better suggestion.

Not sure if you've found the answer to this already. You need to render in 32Bit, I usually use TIFF. Then your render will look the same as your preivew window.

@jed Thanks again. I've plugged the variables you set into the width and hieght of a plane, which all works fine. Now i'm trying to set the X & Y global positions of a plane to those of whatever object is input into the python node (the text) but I've got the snytax wrong and nothing is happening. The Consol doesn't throw an error messafge so not sure where I've gone wrong. The sscene file is atteched, I won;t be able to check any repleis until tomorrow now, but thnks for you assistance so far. I know I can just do this part with Xpresso, this is just a learning excercise. utils_0001.c4d

@jed Works great, and with just a few lines of code, I did search the Python SDK, but was searching for things like "Text", "Type", and "Font". Thanks again :)

Many thnkas @jed, I'll take a look.

Is there a way in xpresso to find the height and width parameters of a text or MoText Spline? I'm trying to set the width and height of a plane object to the width/height of a text spline object with some additional padding, keeping the text parametric if possible. I tried the bounding box node but it just gave 0,0,0 to the result node, even when I make the text object editable, although that defeats the purpose. Seems strange that these parameters are available for things such a basic cubes etc, and not the text objects.

For anyone who is thinking about purchasing XParticles, Insydium are having a half price sale for NAB. Here's the link to the page on the Insyduim website: https://insydium.ltd/news/nab-2019/

Are you talking about a mask as a black/white render to use in the compositing phase? If so, and the object buffer doesn't give you the result you want, you could always add a white luminance material to the hair, and a black luminance ti the rest of the creature and background. That would give you a clean matte to use in post-production.

Not sure, but the documentation on linear mode show a diagram with clones numbered from 1, 2.3 etc So maybe index starts from 1 and not 0? Try displaying the clones index number by electing the cloners Transform tab in the Attribute Manager, and enabling Index in the display options. This should show the cloners index numbers in the viewport next to each clone.

Here is a scene file, I made two muti-shaders, one for images on odd pages of the book, the other, for images on the book's even numbered pages. The texture tag has one texture on the front face, the other material on the the back face of the polygon. The image naming starts with 001.jpg, and ends on 012.jpg The within the Multi-shader, be sure the Mode is set to Index Ratio. I've found that depending on the typoe of cloner, the results are differeent due to the index number of each clone. The clone index of a Linear cloner looks completely different to a Grid cloner for instance. Multishader Book.zip

@jed Thanks for the break down, it was the inclusion of 'num' in the line ' join(str(num) ' that really through me. Now I understand it a little better. The 'for in' loop, I understannd, but I'm only familiar with the ' += ' way of doing things, zfill() is new to me, but then, I know next to no python, My only programming experience in the past has been with Javascript and ActionScript back in the days when Flash was popular. Thanks again.

result = ' '.join(str(num).zfill(2) I understand that the result variable is assigned the genrerated numbers which are converted to a string, but where did 'num' variable or prooprty come from ? Also, I didn't understand why .zfill(2) only adds one zero for padding rather than two zeros as specified in the parameter?

@jed, I'd definitely follow that thread, but I couldn't add anything to it at this time, as I simply don't know enough. Hopefully in the futre i'll be able to make a contribution to a thread, but yes, a good idea no ne the less. Many thanks for for sharing the lottery file, these level is much easier to start out with. A few commands I wasn't familialr with, but nothing a search in th Python SDK won't explain. Thanks again. @teknow Thanks for the hair video, and sharing the spline ponts scne file. Glad you found it of some use.

@teknow, & @jed & anyone else interested, Just seen this post from Tim Clapham of Helloluxx, https://helloluxx.com/tutorials/spline-points-to-clones/ He explains how to iterate through spline points and attach them to mograph objects using expresso and a small amount of Python. Pretty much the same thing I was trying to do a few months back but could only get so far.

@Teknow, Many thanks, I've seen the Entagma video previously, I didn't understand it at time, but found it much easier to follow this time around. @jed, Again many thanks, for the advice and the cheat sheets, i'll be sure to take a look. My main issue with learning C4D Python SDK is where in the dicumentation to look. For instance in the Entagma video that Teknow shared, at around 17 minutes, they mention the "insertUnder" function to insert the newly created splines under the Geo Null, which makes perfect sense when watchng the video, but I'd struggle to work out that I even needed that function in the first place, and wouldn't really know where to search for it without knowing the name. I would find it easier if the Python SDK was layed out in a simlar fashion to a book on programing languages, a little more chronological so to speak. I understand that proir knowledge of Python is a big help, but just think the SDK would benefit from a few simple'ish tutorials explaining importing a classes, geometry creation, event updates etc. Just enough to get you going. Will keep trying though, I've always throught that things like loops and arrays in Python are much simpler and to create than they are in xpresso. That's not a dig at xpresso, just a preference of mine.

Love this stuff, thnaks for sharing. Trying to learn Python which isn't too bad. It's the Python/C4D intergration that I have trouble understanding.

I think they meant take a screen grab of your current screen, or post a still image. I think it's Command/SHIFT/3 on a mac. That will save a jpg image of you current screen onto your desktop. This would give the viewer an indication of what your talking about without the needing to click on the link (which they may think is just click bate) to see your video/scene file.

See the last post on this page, I uploaded an explanation & scene file which seemed to fix similar problems, with lag and connectiions not holding up. You'll need to move the contol nulls around to see the effect.

Thanks for sharing the Netcreator link. I'll check it out.

MoSplines and L-Systems might be worth a look. Under the Simple tab in MoSpline settings (Attribute Manager) There's a Curve parameter that you can enter formula into to get various curve types.

@teknow I'm guessing it would be some kind of integration system, whereby a group of splines are iterated through, and their first point (0) would have it's xyz position attached to a single null or other object representing the initial connection, and then each splines second point (1) attached to another null (also part of an iteration loop), these would be the blue circles in the diagram you posted the link to. For the spline's curvature, I'm guessing you would need python to access the tangents, or maybe use the formula effector. I tried something similar a while ago after watching the Assassins Creed movie, but I couldn't get the loops to work. I'm guessing someone like @jed would be able to create the python needed, I don't think you'll pull it all of using only Xpresso. I've also have seen similar effects created using the Mograph Inheritance Object, whereby a set of clones or Matrices are morphed from one point/shape to another, and their path traced with the Tracer Object. You could again use something like a formular effector to drive the curvature of the path for point A to point B. Hope these suggestions help.

@Cerbera I know this topic is marked as solved, but you could also look into explanations of the Unit Circle, I've seen used to used to calculate a position along the circumference of a circle using divisions of Pi * Radians. Tim Clapham from HelloLuxx gave an interesting talk using this technique to contract a honeycomb with some Xpresso and Math nodes a few years back. https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/Siggraph_2015_rewind/siggraph_2015_rewind_tim_clapham_unleashing_creative_possibilities_with_c4d

Only the Null was baked. My initial thought was to place the Null as a child of then bake the position and rotation. But it didn't work. I think it was because relative to the containing Card object, the Null isn't actually moving. I used some expresso to lock the position/rotation of the Null to the card. From there, you need to load the animation layout, select your null object in the Object Manager, and from the "Functions" Menu, select "Bake", you'll get a dialogue box appear, tick "All Paramerters" and click OK, depending on your scene, you should see the keyframes in the timeline. Place an external compositing tag on the Null and you should be good to go. Check the scene file provided.

If you're using the Physical Render, you may need to increase the Sampling Subdivisions and the Blurriness Subdivisions in the Render Settings. Increase the numbers in small increments, such as 0.5each time, as render times increase with each subdivision added. These usually help fix noise issues.