Cerbera

Some processes in Cinema are single core, which can explain low overall CPU usage. I believe that preparation time is for the compilation of RS materials. Whatever it is, I don't think you can change it. CBR

There are 2 excellent additional hair resources I would recommend for anyone new to it. This one, by C4D leviathan Mash for the overview... and this one by Maxon for people using it with Redshift. CBR

No, quite the opposite ! I would have thought when someone seems a bit lost then is the most important time to be using correct terminology, especially when the information you are giving has already been provided by the 2 previous posts, which DID use the correct terms - I would say that only added 'confusion potential'. There was a situation a while back where someone was trying to find help with rigging, and was searching for a helpful post he had seen before but was unable to subsequently find because he searched 'joints' (the correct term in context) and the post only mentioned 'bones'. So it's that sort of thing we are trying to avoid... But no matter - we have clarified 🙂 CBR

Please try and use correct terms - there is no such thing as a 'hair controller', so not a good idea to send someone looking for such a thing. As already mentioned in the thread, the look of hair is controlled by the hair object parameters AND the hair material AND scene lighting. CBR

No, you must be doing stuff wrong - Cinema's hair system is absolutely fantastic, generally speaking, and can produce exceptionally detailed, realistic results once you have some experience in setting it up. It can have some problems with collision, but otherwise it is excellent, even in the modern age, despite being quite an old system. But the question remains, what are you doing wrong ? And you haven't really told us ! I would suspect the main things would be hair thickness and other crucial parameters like length, frizz, curl, etc etc (all set in the hair material) and scene lighting (hair is best lit by 1 or 2 simple omni lights with soft shadows, and always looks a bit rubbish until you get that right. There is also an argument for using STANDARD Render as well, which is the engine with which it was originally designed to work, although it does also work in Physical and RS I find the results there rather harsher and grainier. Best thing is to upload your scene and tell us what you want the hair to look like - find us some photo reference that shows us what you want to achieve, and we can then then tell you what sort of things you need to change to get you there... CBR

Please a) complete your profile so we know which version you are working in, and b) provide either the C4D file in question so we can see what types of mesh you are dealing with or some screenshots of it. 'Vector' is quite vague, and could refer to several different things. The 'selections method' does not work well on VB objects because the poly flow rarely matches the borders you want, so you get jaggy lines at the transitions, which mostly make that whole concept untenable. There is one exceptionally protracted way around this which involves re-topologising the VB mesh, Normal Moving it just outside the original, UV unwrapping it, reversing its normals and baking the reflection from that UV retopo mesh back onto the VB original, as detailed in this spectacularly thorough tutorial here... Otherwise, I think you are limited to what you can achieve with standard projections, and field based colours. CBR

Yes, that's what the HUD is for (view settings). You should have these options ticked in all views. Bevel tool, chamfer mode will do that, but you should do it in edge mode (so you don't bevel individual points), and also make sure you don't only bevel 1 corner, which would give you inconsistent geometry everywhere else. Always flow loops all the way around an object unless you can neatly terminate them before the level of detail changes elsewhere on the mesh. CBR

Wrong collider mode on the landscape, which is currently only acknowledging its bounding box, which the VF intersects, hence explosion. Set that to static mesh, and all is fixed. CBR

In the 'Further notes' department, if you need a tighter curve at the ends of the raised bit, then you can re-triangulate those end loops - SDS is solving to quads of course, so tris in the base mesh for specific sharpening reasons is acceptable. CBR

Ah excellent - was secretly hoping Sir Jed would jump on it 🙂 Someone give that man a banana ! CBR

+1 for Mr Featherbottom's gracefully precise method 🙂 CBR

Yep - working for me too. Snapping is based on the axis, generally speaking (though it doesn't have to be), so if you move the object axis of your cube to edge A (you can hold L and click it to shortcut that), and snap to edges then that should work for you too ! Snapping DOES acknowledge clones. CBR

Very simple. 1 x 1 plane, made editable, then made these perimeter cuts with loop cut (K,L), and the main centre one with Line Cut (K,K). Then you can outline that like so, also with Line Cut, but then we need to dissolve the edges to fix the tris (red crosses) and then slide the points in a little to get kite quads there, giving you a nice transitions to flatness, and restoring all-quads. Last stage is to select all the but the outer 2 edges of the centreline, raise them a little, do M,R for SDS weighting, and set the selection to 100%. You will need at least SDS L4 to show that weighting, and make the line sharp enough. You can optionally 'fade out' the edge weighting at each end by applying it in 10 or 20% steps of reduction as you get near the ends. You could also weight the corner points if you need those razor sharp too. I also used loop cut to add the remaining loops (proportional mode), which evens up polygon sizes and thereby prevents SDS 'stress' / wrenching off to the sides. Then it's just a case of animating that centreline up however you deem most helpful to do it... I still like Pose morph in points mode for that. CBR

Sure. Please make sure you complete your profile so included at minimum which version of Cinema you have, so we know which version to advise about ! This was made in R25, so let's hope it loads if your version is older than that... SDS weight curve CBR.c4d CBR

I would just model that curve directly into the plane, and then use posemorph to push it up from flat. There is a good case for using SDS edge weighting here also. If that is your plan, topology will look something like this... Here I SDS weighted the centreline to 100% and increased SDS level to L5, which is the maximum you would need to get razor sharpness on that edge. CBR

Dammit - I noticed that in your screenshot, and nearly said something about field colors before dismissing it as being too obvious ! Needless to say, had we had the scene file I would have checked, and instantly seen that was the case, and changed my mind... CBR

Oh. there's XP people here that will be all over this 🙂 Not me, but I shall enjoy watching from the side lines ! CBR

Yes you would. Rigid body Dynamics and Dynamic Connectors can handle that sort of thing quite easily if you are used to working with those sort of systems. Accurate alignment of dynamic connectors to geometry, and axis positions need to be rather precise, but other than that it's fairly simple to implement once you are familiar with the different connector types. Here's Core alumni Sam from Digital Meat explaining the first of the dynamic connectors and how to use them. You should watch that, and the several that follow it detailing the other types... Once you've seen those you should have a good idea of the specific components you need to get your oil pump pumping... OR you can go another way entirely, which would be to drive the rotation of everything with Xpresso and various constraint / target tags... CBR

OP is not helping get this solved by not providing the scene file, or showing us what it should look like ! Honestly - it's like trying to paint a hallway through a letterbox ! CBR

Did you link the relevant selection tag(s) to the correct materials ? CBR

Yes, those 3 points specifically, + also it's all too clean and shiny. needs a bit of overall dulling down I would say, even if it's new... CBR

Hi Peter - welcome to the Core 🙂 Please make sure to complete your profile - we usually need to know that version info to be able to offer the correct advice. You can select clones directly if you ctrl-right click the viewport, and select the correct object from the list that appears. Then 'S', while your mouse is over the OM will scroll to that object. CBR

We'll be needing the scene file to be able to help with that... pls upload it. CBR

Worry not, I haven't abandoned you - I am just teaching tonight til late alas... but I will be back on the case with this tomorrow if that's OK... Interesting that reversing your normals fixed things with hair, as they 'seemed' correct in that file ! We can definitely sort the material out. I am guessing you haven't UV unwrapped the model ? If not you can try one of the standard projections (in the material tag; probably cubic is best for now) OR you can unwrap the mesh and use UV mapping mode, but that is probably a bit advanced initially. OR you could use a tri-planar setup (basically Cubic++, without the seams!), which I can't advise you further on until I know which renderer you are using. CBR

Does that file almost bring your computer to its knees as well ?! There are some big issues in that file that will make diagnosing this very difficult - not least the decision to animate an applied SDS mesh ! Why are we doing that instead of animating a low poly base mesh and doing live subdivision ?! Also some fairly grim topology problems there (density / flow etc), but that's not what you're here to discuss. Unfortunately it slows things down to the point where I can't see what is colliding with what, and playback is impossible. A quesiton though - have you styled that hair at all ? Like brushed it and whatnot ? Because I seem to recall that breaks the dynamics unless you put one setting back that I am temporarily struggling to remember. Little help guys ?! 🙂 CBR