kweso

You are completely right about RAD vs DEG. I still like to use DEG and convert my numbers with PI. Just because imagination 😉 Anyways, that does not help the op with going in different dimentions... BTW: @DoedelDave If you begin using more complex splines, it is important you set the intermediate points to "uniform".

Yeah, splines can be tricky in that regard. Maybe you need to use a rail path. Just copy your circle and move it to the side a few units. And put that one into "Rail Path" in your align tag. You may have to adjust your cylinder again...

Do you have "Tangential" turned on in your Align To Spline? If not, do it. You may have to realign your cylinder after that. And maybe switch up the rotation in your xpresso.

I'm not sure I understand. But in doubt, put it in a null object. Or rather: put your align to spline ALWAYS on a null and put your object(s) inside that null.

This is a xpresso node called "spline" (xpresso -> general -> spline") which is empty initially. Then you'd feed it the "object" output from the actual spline node you just drag in. If that makes sense...

Well, I would animate the car along a spline (Align To Spline) and then use a setup like this: Where mainAlign is my Align to Spline tag. path is my spline along which the vehicle is going. Spline is a xpresso node to access more properties of the spline (like in this instance "length". fWdia and rWdia are my wheel diameters (in my case I have differently sized wheels front and rear). You can read those with the bounding box node (I think that is in your video example). Those diameters get multiplied with PI to get the circumference. This way your car movement is restricted to a spline, but independent from a single plane. Maybe this helps... Cheers, kws

Sounds powerful. Might have to take a look. Professionally I will have to stick with Adobe, though. My graphic design colleagues will definitely not switch from their Mac-Adobe-Keynote combo they know from their beginnings But privately I might mix things up a bit... Thx

Just alluding to "copy to where?" Because I thought it was obvious to use the clipboard. And since you mentioned that one would need to compile a plugin for data transfer, I was afraid, a simple script could not use the clipboard. And serialisation is another topic of course. But not that complicated... Anyway, thx for your reply. Kws

@CairynWhat about c4d.CopyStringToClipboard(keyframedata) ?

one of the things I miss in PS is the ability to have a smart-object-like mask. Yes you can stack masks via groups but that can get messy really quick. In AE you can use a precomp as a mask. And then choose between lumina and alpha. What I miss in both apps is the ability to use one mask for multiple layers that are in separate layers in the layerstack. A node-based system would solve this... Never looked at blender for compositing. Does this utilize nodes? Anyways...

Hey. how do you initially choose your selection? Maybe you have to use the "Store Selection" node after selecting your polys? Laters...

And "note to self" and everybody who my be concerned: UV mapping BEFORE scuplting! You may realize you have bad polygons and have to repair your mesh. And then have to do the entire sculpting again... 😉

Thx. That's what I thought. And yes, I learned from exactly those videos. My problem is, that I will have around 50 of those parts. Right now they all use the same textures. "Textures" in plural, because there are three to five possible colors / types of fabric. Having to make one material per object (for the displacment texture), I'll end up with roughly 200 materials including all fabric variations. Maybe I'll try with a displacement deformer. This way the displacment stays with the object, regardless of the material. What I just tired was to create a poly-mesh from my l4 and use a mesh deformer to pin that to the animation of my base mesh. Not very clean... cheers!

Hey all. So apparently you can't manipulate a scuplted mesh with joints. At least my skinned mesh does no longer react to joint / bone movement, after I subdivided and sclupted it. So all I can do is either bake my level 4 subdivided mesh or generate a displacement map? Or did I miss anything and I should in fact be able to animate the scuplted mesh? Thank you very much, kws

Is it possible, you have overlapping poly-faces? Unlikely, judging from your screenshot. But maybe...

Are those plain polygons? Or Sweeps / Splinewraps? If the latter, maybe try reversing the profile splines direction. But it is indeed strange that the polys appear orange while the normal direction shows otherwise...

Can you post the scene? Or a simplified one (cubes for the tapes and standard materials with no textures)? Has been some time since I did something like this. And then it was physical render...

No, Illustrator doesn't care about path direction. You can change the direction of special strokes on a path. But that does not affect point order. What you can do is to set the start point. But there's no point in it, to do that 😉 Easiest way I'm afraid is to select manually and reverse point order in c4d. Or, if you end up making the object editable anyway, to marquee select the points on -Y and move them up... Just conform/reverse the normals afterwards...

Not at all. 😉

Very awesome offer. Thing is that I signed an NDA for the CAD files, so I can't give them away (500-800gb per stroller anyway 😉 ). And I have to keep my deadline by the end of May (spending too much time on core4d as it is already 😉 ). But as soon as I have a bit of spare time, I will take one of my rigs and replace the content with primitives. Will get back to you then... Cheers...

Is this one extrude with all the splines in it? Or do you have a extrude for each spline?

@srekI see. My problem is, as I said, the example is very simplified. The original consists of a couple of hundred parts imported from a CAD file. And they have several material categories applied to them (metal, fabric, plastic etc) which have to be interchangable according to model variety. For this years deadline I'll stick with my xpresso rig. But will keep a close look on scene nodes in the meantime. Thx again for your input.

Wow, at first glance it looks a bit more complicated. But I'll give it a closer look later. Thank you very much!

Select all the splines that extrude in the wrong direction and go Spline -> Point Order -> Reverse Spline Direction. Maybe that helps... Cheers, kws

I can't say anything about legacy or not or whether something makes sense from a developer pov. And frankly I don't care. I just need to control and automate my rigs. And as I said, I like the UI of the scene node editor. So all I was asking was: Can I do the controlling and automation in the new node editor? And if not, can I someday have the look and feel of the new node editor in xpresso? As I see it, there are four possible answers: 1. Yes, you can achieve all your goals in (scene) nodes (maybe just in a different way). 2. You still have to xpresso and we expect to see an overhaul in UI some day. 3. You still have to use xpresso and have to live with the current UI. 4. We expect to see some third option for rig controlling and automation some day. And I read @sreks answer more like nr 3. Which is totally fine for me. But to put aside the car metaphor, I attached a VERY simplified example of what I've been doing for the last 2 years. Do you expect something like this to be done in "the new core" as you call it? Since xPresso is "legacy", apparently. I've always been a somewhat early adopter and (despite my old age) always eager to learn new stuff (there's just not as much time as I had 16 years ago 😉 ). So I am not afraid to shift my workflow. If it would make sense. Thank you both for your insights... kws xRigSimple.c4d