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The Blender YouTube channel has released some really great presentations from the 2022 Blender Conference. If you click on the YouTube link at the bottom of the video below, you'll see a playlist on the right of the screen. They have provided a lot of information on Grease Pencil and the animation tools, as well as many other topics.

César Vonc plugin pack works fine fine selection pattern (especially select n-th). Screenshot is from latest R2023 version, tested right now... (selected loop, applied plugin) https://code.vonc.fr/selections

Very Interesting plugin. Many of the effects can be done using Fields but still very helpful for low-level selections. This should be converted into a Scene Node ASAP. @Jeff H1 I think selecting patterns in C4D is impossible. And it's impossible due to the way different geometries are being created. The polygon IDs numbering is given during the creation method. So even if you used a modulo selection you wouldn't be able to make a checkerboard selection out of every possible object. In order to use a Pattern Selection rule like in the plugin above (and have it always work as intentioned, unlike the plugin above) one would have to re-order the ID numbering of each polygon. And there are many ways a re-ordering could be done like Linearly (from -Y to +Y), Radially (like a clock), Cylindrically (from inside-out and only to X-Z axis), Spherical (from inside-out and to all directions).... This is something I think I have already addressed to MAXON in the past. The closest to a Pattern Selection we have is the Shader Field. Design a pattern in a 3rd party 2D app, save it a jpeg and use it in the Field. The only drawback (and I have also addressed this) is the lack of projection parameterization of the shader as if it were a Material.

I would like to take this opportunity and clarify some things about the integration workflow with C4D and the other host apps for which we offer the plugin. In my experience (and I was not with the company at that time, but still a customer), the xStream plugin in 2016 worked in fact quite well and way, way better than previous versions. The main issue is understanding how to use the plugin properly, because it is not as straightforward as other plugins. The workflow is described in the manual, but then, we are all guilty of not reading the manuals of the programs we use unless it's really necessary, aren't we? 😉 So, I know we need to educate our users better on understanding the possibilites and the limitations of the integrated workflow through proper tutorials. It's on my to-do-list for next year. In a nutshell: When you usually work with plugins, they are completely integrated into the host software, by which I mean that everything looks like native C4D editors and panels and that the objects created by a plugin can be rendered with any render engine, as long as you texture the object with a proper native material. The VUE plugin does not work like this. It runs as a sandboxed software-within-a-software where C4D acts as the "container" and VUE as an app is then launched within C4D with its own dialogues, UI and panels. I believe a good comparison could be Steam ( = C4D) which you have to launch first, and from there, you launch the game ( = VUE) which then runs "within" the Steam launcher. This means that the VUE objects listed in C4D's object manager are low-resolution, procedural proxy objects referencing the "fully" editable object from the VUE scene. You need to use VUE's native tools to edit all native VUE objects. After editing an object, the low-res proxy for the viewports is updated. For example, if you have a terrain object in the VUE scene, the terrain will be listed as a low-res polygon mesh in C4D's object browser. Of course, you could go ahead and start extruding faces and poly-modelling on this object with C4D modelling tools, but this will not be reflected in the VUE scene. And as soon as you open the procedural terrain in VUE's terrain editor, make changes and close the dialogue, the proxy object is refreshed / recomputed in the viewport and your manual polygon edits will be overridden. Look at the screenshot which shows the VUE objects in VUE's native object manager (the World Browser) and the proxy objects in the C4D viewports in the Object manager. Because of this workflow, you need to be aware what you can do and cannot do in the C4D scene with VUE objects. A big no-go is deleting the proxy object from the C4D object manager, to name just one example. If you delete the proxy object, VUE will try to recreate it as soon as you edit the "original" VUE object in VUE's editors, but if you try to launch a render while the proxy object is gone from the C4D object manager, you will encounter problems and instabilities, because the link between VUE and C4D for that object was broken and the VUE object just lost its counterpart in the C4D scene. So, adding and deleting VUE objects to the C4D scene MUST be done through the floating dialogues of the VUE plugin and through VUE's own object manager (the World Browser) which will then sync the changes accordingly to the C4D object manager and add / remove any proxy objects from there. There are more examples like this for which you need to look out, and if you break these rules, you are provoking a crash. This workflow is not obvious when working first with the plugins and we need to ensure that we educate and help our users more on these topics.

FFD is wrong tool for this, and model is not suitable for deformation yet due to uneven segments. You need even, regular segments, and then you can just use soft selection to make a nice easy dip in the chair. I notice also the fabric doesn't have any physical thickness, which it will need in order to look realistic. Here is the sort of segmentation you need in the base mesh. Also don't forget the control loops that stop the corners collapsing under SDS. Once the segments are even, just turn on soft selection, choose Dome mode, adjust the radius as shown and use the move tool to add art directed unevenness to the chair seat. CBR

I do have to wonder why the majority of tutorials on scene nodes cover things you could create much more easily with MoGraph or fields. So maybe the lack of adoption comes from something as simple as this: People watch a tutorial, see a primitive being applied to matrix object and yawn. They walk away thinking "why should I learn a whole new system to do what I can already do with far less effort. Show me something "amazing" I cannot create any other way". Now, "amazing" can also mean "unique". What I see coming out of Blender are some pretty unique tools. While I have watched a few scene node tutorials, I must say that none have ignited a spark of creativity in my brain. I do see more amazing things coming out of Xpresso and that is why I have learned Xpresso. I can also understand why everyone got excited over the prospect of Building Generator being a creation of scene nodes because if it was true, people would be exposed to what scene nodes could do! Interest would have been created as that much needed spark of creativity would have been ignited. The best thing Maxon could do now is to get their best and the brightest together to create something amazing with capsules and splash that all over their news section. I checked---nothing there though Buidling Generator was listed. If that was actually done with scene nodes, then it would have been mentioned. Dave

This one actually left me a little confused. The general takeaway seemed that hes suggesting premultiplied is better because its somehow done more of the work already, and that straight alphas need more internal calculations. But that seems to be missing the biggest downfall of premultiplied, in that the alpha channel is pre-baked against a specific colour. This is ok if its all alpha'd against black or white, but if theres more than one colour in the background then youre screwed. Straight alphas on the other hand are only ever merged with their own colours and will work against any background with no fringing. Premultiplied alphas also fare badly with soft transparent parts such as fire, smoke etc.