Cerbera

I agree, and will suggest this. feel free to do so too ! CBR

The only reason the claws disappear is because they were ALSO set to x-ray like the Aquarium. X-ray does not support multiple levels of itself, so if you have a x-ray mesh inside another x-ray mesh it will indeed disappear and that is expected behaviour. On another note, you have some incorrect settings in the Cloth Surface - you are adding unnecessary subdivision, and not adding any thickness with it, which is why it is there in the tutorial ! CBR

Although the spline pen can edit tangents directly I think it is widely accepted that Move is rather better for editing existing points, and for exactly that reason. The Spline pen needs its modifier keys for other things, so I don't see how we could get that functionality as well unless there was a further tickbox in the spline pen attributes 'maintain equal tangent length', and if you're gonna click that you might as well click the move tool ! CBR

Ok, found the problem, not a bug... You have global x-ray mode turned on in view settings. Disable that and everything returns to working as expected ! CBR

I have looked at your file. I don't think your graphics card is broken. The reason you can't see the claws is because they too are in Xray mode - disable that and they should become visible. However, as I said above that won't be the case in render, because xray doesn't render ! However, regardless of whether it is right to use it here or not, there is something odd going on with xray in that file, which I suspect may be a bug in Cinema. Enabling and disabling xray on various objects seems to be operating either with a delay, or is somehow influenced by zoom factor, which isn't right. I am investigating, and will report it if I find anything conclusive. CBR

Yeah, I've had a dark BG going on ever since they changed the colour scheme back in R18. To add to that, I would venture that when teaching we should hide the workplane (grid) all the time we don't specifically need to see it. Screens cluttered with non-essential UI stuff tend to make things less clear I find... although one reason educators may leave colours and UI elements as default is so that the student's version looks the same out of the box. Here's my typical look for modelling and teaching... I don't think it gets much clearer than that ! CBR

X-ray is a display feature that allows you to see through models as you work - that is the extent of that functionality. It does not render. If you apply a transparent material that will render, but what you see in the viewport will be a representation of that so don't expect it to look amazing. You can turn on transparency in the display options, which will improve its viewport appearance at the cost of higher GPU use. CBR

Respectfully, no no no no ! SDS weighting is a vital and future-looking alternative to edge loops that is our best chance of parity with the increasingly(no pun intended!) first-call crease set options that most other DCCs have added in recent years. If it ever becomes able to fully replace edge loops it will save millions of modelling hours as time goes on. In Max for example it is 90% possible to model exclusively with crease sets and results are excellent. Now, our implementation of it might not be perfect in C4D yet, but it is still perfectly serviceable as a secondary operator to harden edges in places where adding further control loops would be physically impossible, or would break other curves. Not to mention the time it saves, even in that capacity ! Edge weighting, whether we like it or not, IS the future, and we gotta get with it ! CBR

Such a shame we couldn't have got the new symmetry into the last perpetual... But yes, we certainly can't say Maxon isn't delivering on new stuff, which has made me dislike subs fractionally less, though I still worry it is unaffordable for hobbyists and part-timers, and that we might lose those people to Maya Indie and Houdini Indie and the ever-present and equally speedily advancing Blender... CBR

As a general workflow tip, edge weighting is best used in ADDITION to control loops to add tightness under subdivision where putting additional control loops would be time consuming or impossible. It shouldn't be relied upon alone to define the main characteristics of your model. This is both for compatibility / export reasons, and also generally good practice - usually the better the model the less edge weighting it will have. Point weighting, on the other hand is almost universally a terrible idea, except on flat planes, and as a rule you shouldn't ever combine point and edge weighting. CBR

There is no edge or point weighting currently on that mesh, despite the tag. The workflow is to select some edges (points works also) and THEN get the SDS weight tool and drag in viewport, or set a weighting level. As long as the SDS parent is on you will be able to see result directly, but you can also see an indication of the weighting by selecting the weight tag created when you first use the weight tool, which works regardless of SDS activation state. Judging by some of the questions you ask, you may not be aware that there is context sensitive help available for any tool or command in Cinema by right clicking it and choosing 'show help' ! Always check the manual, on the whole, before posting... CBR

Again, still not entirely sure what you want, but note that the order that your effectors appear in the cloner's effector list is very important - you will get different results depending on which of those you calculate first, which might be partially why you are not getting the result you are expecting. CBR

I think if we are auto-numbering stuff with Naming Tool it has to start at 0. And that tool is at its least helpful when the objects you are trying to name all have unique names now. So this will be a 2-stage process: 1. Select all the objects you want to rename, navigate to the Basic tab and give them a name that will apply to all of them. 2. Now get the Naming tool, and suffix $N to number them in the order they appear in the OM. CBR

Oh right... I have no idea how you'd do that 🙂 Somebody better than me with Xpresso will probably know though, possibly @jed?... CBR

I'm of still of the old school build-it-yourself mentality, and it is easier these days than ever before, but I wouldn't object to buying a bare bones system if it had my preferred combo of Motherboard, processor and RAM. A few people let you specify each component in a nice custom sort of way. What I would avoid is a completely pre-built system, so that you only install the software you want and not a load of superfluous fluff that people like Alienware feel the need to install for you, and which may conflict with or cause problems for other things later down the line... CBR

That seems like a good idea except middle mouse roll is primary zoom control on PC, so that wouldn't work without also changing that, and, using that all the time I couldn't possibly vote for that change ! I'm also a bit resistant to adding any shortcut-exclusive content - that is perhaps the first and foremost reason I dislike Blender and the overall way it works, so not keen to see that aspect moved into Cinema. We do have limited shortcuts for Loop Cut (or any other similar tool) in that if you select a value in attributes you can use up / down arrows to quickly change values, which, whilst perhaps not as quick as a mouse wheel roll, can be quicker than typing stuff in... CBR

Sure. just drag the tag into the Xpresso window, then xpose the position property, either by selecting it from the red output port or by dragging the parameter directly from the attributes manager to the Xpresso node. You could also set that up semi-automatically by right-clicking the position parameter, and doing set driver / set driven with the same parameter in the additional spline tags. CBR

Totally yes. Most especially if submitted as an idea in their ticketing system, but also by suggesting it here where lots of Maxonians hang out with varying degrees of regularity ! 🙂 CBR

There doesn't appear to be any red RS material in your scene ? Also there is a question mark in the material slot for that object in the Object Manager which means the material has not been found / loaded. CBR

The Alembic exporter changes with nearly every new version recently. Which version of Cinema is this, and do you have the latest release / service pack for that version ? If we are to have any chance of solving this we'll be needing the C4D file as well ideally... CBR

I was unaware that this was a bug. I will make sure it is reported. That would be easier to do if I had an example of an obj / mat that fails. You can PM me that if you like if you would rather not post publicly... CBR

Well, if, as your post is titled you truly want to do this with displacement, then Cinema is barely involved until the displacement stage, and you need to do all the animation and cell design in 2D ! But I think you can get a very similar result using inflating softbodies constrained within a thin box, which will push into each other and adopt that sort of cellular form. God knows which episode it was but Rocket Lasso spend nearly a whole session playing with that, back in (I wanna say) season 2 maybe ? CBR

We'll be needing to know which version of Cinema this is and what you are rendering with before we can answer this. Both those things should really be in your profile, 53 posts in as we are, please... CBR

Ok, if you want to recreate what is in your file, then we are best off doing this with a cloner, and (optionally) one or more effectors. However that is not what you asked, as it doesn't involve any randomness or any rotation ! First step - make 1 cube and place under cloner, change mode to Linear, tell it how many clones you want, and which direction they should go in. By default they will go up on Y. If you want them stepping up at 45 degrees like that then you would need to enter the same value in one of the other directions as well like below. OR you could use a single value to clone a straight line of them, and then use a Step effector, for example to offset them instead. Many many ways to get that result... If you are wanting those rotated randomly (in place) now then you can select the cloner, and add a random effector, set to just modify rotation. The manual will elaborate on the intricacies of that... CBR

I'd have a go with a formula deformer personally ! That does an excellent ring-wave right out of the box ! CBR