Smolak

Version 2 without the need of temporary polygon but it needs two matrix objects - one for projection, another to create matrixes on first matrix but after that unnecessary ones can be removed : Matrix_Cut_by_temporary_projection_plane_0001.c4d

Maybe this would help :

This my copy-paste mail to friend from some days ago : "..... I'm very surprised how this engine was grown during this period especially compared to Octane development from last two years which is slow. They didn't implemented most of their advertised roadmap features. 1. As for quality I did many test using different scenes and I must say that I don't see differences. Even Redshift looks better for my taste. It looks more like Vray, Corona in the terms of light transporting to darker areas. I reported this 2 years ago on Octane forum with rendering examples of the same scene rendered in Octane and Corona. Octane needs much higher material brightness to achieve the same results but it create overexposure on areas directly lighting by Sun which needs tonemapping to avoid this. But pure bright material in Octane will always be much darker in indirect light areas than in Vray, Corona and Redshift too. Without denoiser Octane is much noiser than Redshift using rendering clamped to the same time for example 25seconds rendering Octane : Redshift : As you see Redshift is brighter in shadowed part and color transportation is more pronounced but you can lower this by using Redshift diffuse clamping by little : Such thing and many others are not possible in Octane because it is biased renderer. In unbiased like Redshift you have full control about many render engine aspect like light transportation, which object can be visible in reflection in others or even every material can have its own environment map. 2. It is great integrated with Cinema. Materials are correctly represented in OGL preview, fully suport for C4D modern node editor with all features. 3. It has three rendering modes fast progressive just like Octane but for preview because it always be little noise final bucket rendering - clear, insane fast especially if scene grows with many vegetation objects RT on beta stage but this is truly real time, noise free engine just like game. It is only for realtime previews but looks very close to final. 4. It has special sprite node that greatly improve speed of rendering planes with opacity masks like leaves, even better shading : RS ( zoomed ) : Octane ( zoomed ) : 5. Node system. Octane has maybe 3-4x more nodes but to be clear - most of them you never use because there is no need or they produce strange results. Redshift nodes are very well thought out, versatile. Even simple gradient node is more powerful. Mixing materials works like old Octane mix material where you can mix existing materials using material reference node and you can mix many of them. 6. Redshift doesn't have texture displacement which is Octane strongest feature. But it have very good optimized geometry displacement which works like Unreal nanite virtualized geometry system where intensity of geometry subdivision level depends on distance from camera and it can be cut-off on areas which camera don't see. You can freely mix displacements so for displaced asphalt you can add displaced crack decal without problem. Thanks to stacked materials, this decal can be easily put in object just after main material. In Octane truly geometry displacement is terrible slow because it subdivide all large surface with insane amount of polygons. I forgot about one important feature like Redshift Proxy. As you know proxies are insane fast to render especially in animation because they doesn't need preprocessing time and they are very light to interface. 100 hi res trees as proxies are still much better than 100 multi-instances even if their visibility is set to off. In Octane if you want to change proxy material like color, brightness, or texture you must open Octane Standalone and edit them here by "eye" because you use default Octane scene, lighting. In Redshift you can apply different materials to proxy and edit them inside main scene without the need to use external software and scene !

Hi, I tried to create matrix grid but not as rectangle but as custom shape - on displaced ground for example. After many trials I found only one trick using temporary subdivided plane, projected to main ground object and after that matrix with polygon center distribution works like grid mode but only on projected polygon. All other unnecessary matrixes was removed by plain effector with field ( white is temporary polygon ) : I tried to project grid matrixes only but there is no way to remove not needed parts of matrix without removing all of them. No way to select not projected matrixes with mograph selection. Do you have maybe experience with creating such custom grid matrixes ? It will be use with RS Matrix so Cloner is not the way... Matrix_Cut_by_temporary_projection_plane.c4d

Meanwhile I reported this to Maxon and they filled it as bug. Edge to Line ignore selections. random edge to spline.c4d

Right, but this new mesh shouldn't be used in renderer - only in viewport representation. I tried to use visibility tag but it looks like it doesn't work for capsules. EDIT : It can be easily done by using LOD generator. It works fine with capsules as parent. Here is option to define their looks in viewport.

It looks like selections completely doesn't wok for spline outputs like for polygonal node outputs :

Hi, I can't find way to change viewport visibility representation of objects generating by Object Group node works as Multi-Instance generator. Cloner has option to change multi-instances visibility to points, box but nothing similar I can found using nodes.

I noticed that most of the time it cannot be stopped even using built-in task manager.

As for render stamps I found that in Render Effects tab there is Watermark :

Some thoughts that I have after my yearly Cinema 4D subscription was over 11 days ago. When I have some free time from 3D works I get Maxon One 14-day trial subscription to check it. And I was very positive surprised ! I used Redshift 4-5 years ago when it was at early stage and went to Octane. But I see that after years they did insane work to make it one of the best renderer which I used and tested. I get some of my raw scenes included product viz, interior and exterior with insane amount of plants with simple materials but included the same bump, normal and displacement maps. After tests I can say that Redshift have the same quality in the terms of light distribution and shadowing detail that unbiased Octane. It is little noisy in dark areas by default but it can be easy improved by changing settings. Octane is much faster to create the same image quality without noise using small scene like product visualization but Redshift is 2-4 times faster if scene is growing especially using many of vegetation with alpha masks. Octane is dying here compared to RS. I know how to speeds up Octane very well but Redshift as biased renderer has many settings to avoid it without loosing quality. Redshift is very well integrated with Cinema 4D. Octane has ( or had because month of absence ) great C4D developer like Ahmet who did great improvements but RS has no problem with using the new scene nodes like distribution which works as multi-instances. I think that RS material nodes are much easier to use and I can get better results within less time than in Octane. For example in Octane everybody use gradient node to manipulate images - in RS Ramp node is way better constructed without the way to manipulate gradient because it has included ranges, exposure and even noise. Many of nodes here are very well thought out even if Octane has it much more. Additional nodes reserved only for One users are great too like Ivy generator but it is like joke that they are priced... Anyway I'm going to stay with Maxon and going to Redshift from Octane. Many materials to rebuild from scratch. I don't have free time like year to learn Blender 😝

Works fine : solo_button.avi

The best because I had in mind that overpriced 3ds max doesn't have built-in real production ready renderer. Autodesk knows that 90% of users use Vray or Corona. They don't even want to be offensive and change that. Maxon marketing strategy is like that - "Ok, we bought Redshift, Red Giant, Universe, Forger, and ZBrush and you must use them. Because you are very happy that we bought them you must pay for that. We also paid for Rocket Lasso, Laubwerk and you must use them and pay for that too. We don't have persons who can create such scene nodes internally. We are so poor to hire them so you must pay for their products" Anyway Cinema 4D is still the best software in the terms that we can create everything without external plugins despite of fact that elementary tools like Line Cut or no-coplanar extrude still are buggy from years which I reported many times : C4D_LineCut_CoplanarOff.avi 3ds Max users pays for additional very costly plugins because Autodesk get price for certification them. But Blender has very cheap plugins which can dramatically decrease time for creating very time consuming things also their node system is very powerful, easy to work and improvements are quite fast. We still have many experimental nodes from year...

If you want such feature only for fast layer switching you can always drag "solo mode" from chosen layer properties to viewport HUD and use this as layer solo button.

Marketing managers from Maxon going totally different way than Quixel, Adobe and Blender. They going to increase prices and closing to make open-sources like additional nodes, assets created by other persons. Just like Cinema 4D Asset Browser incorporated years ago which is not export friendly. They want to pay 100% more license for scene nodes created by Rocket Lasso for example. These nodes are great but most of them you can get from here Legacy Bundle (gumroad.com) from person which Maxon should hire and many others who can make them much cheaper. Maxon pays for models created by Laubwerk and from others - this increasing price. They want to use Redshift. Price increase again. They don't understand that Laubwerk plants are not the best in the world and Redshift is not the best renderer too. Artists want freedom which models, nodes, plugins, renderer they use and they don't want to pay for things which they will never use ! This is why Autodesk 3D Max is still on the 1st place from years, without real built-in renderer. I'm very happy with my Adobe yearly subscription that I have from 8 years because they NEVER increase price - even when they introduce AI and neural filters to PS.

Thank you for great video tutorials, they are very helpful and well designed for learn many aspects and explain how things works from technical side ! Personally I would like to see node based setup for things like simple fence generator from spline and compare creation process to standard generator, xpresso techniques - like this Brick shape tiles generator based on nodes would be interesting too. I mean something more complicated with irregular shape sizes like this : Stacking cloned objects using custom path or grid would be great too :

As for deformers - anyone noticed that position parameter doesn't work like for standard effectors ?

use it inside nodes modifier : But Blur parameter is going to faded after a while.

There is special script for that in the Aturtur's Cinema 4D Scripts pack : aturtur/cinema4d-scripts: My collection of Cinema 4D scripts (github.com)

If you will ask on Octane forum you will get answer from Aoktar that there are real compatibility issues with older Cinema 4D versions this is why support is over. There is not possible to implement some new features.

Some time ago I did fence generator with auto scalling feature using a bunch of cloners driven by Xpresso : fence_xpress (1).avi

Exactly, thank you for pointing me how to extract geometry data from whole children's array ! One thing that I noticed is that Object Group node object doesn't have viewport mode settings for Multi-Instance mode like standard Cloner which works near as slowly as Render Instance mode for more complex setup.

Unfortunately to make it works with distribution driven by noise there is need to use switch node which needs geometry inputs but there is no way to connect all children to Switch node input. If I use individual geometry inputs ( brown ones ) it works until children is not disconnected from parent object in object manager. Atom Array node works little different - it just create matrixes for all mixed children objects. Here I need geometry output from all used children.

I tried to setup scene nodes to work the same way as Cloner using child objects and noise as distribution for individual clones. It works fine but I noticed that there is no way to create auto connect feature inside nodes for newly created child objects. Connection is loses while removing child objects. Is that limitation or there is other way for using child objects connected to scene node parent ? Cloner.zip

One bad thing is that there is hard to use scene nodes for cloning multiple object at once like standard Cloner using the same noise without overlapping.