Chester Featherbottom

Sadly, most of the stuff in the manual is pretty old. I feel like I read on the forum that the latest "best practice" is the use of Octane's Gradient Generator. All the same rules of uv offfsets still applies. I tend to do alot of work in C4D materials first to get a proof of concept and then switch later. V Offset animation_Octane.c4d.zip

Or I can save you $10 and tell you to control-drag the parent of your heirarchy to a layer.

I'm following the PluginCafe's import_obj example on GitHub and having some trouble enabling animation. I'm only adding the following setting to the parameters: objImport[c4d.OBJIMPORTOPTIONS_SEQUENCE_ANIMATION] = True But I keep getting this error: TypeError: __setitem__ got unexpected type 'bool' This has to be a boolean value, right? The SDK says it's a bool. What on earth am I missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Before someone says I should just post this over at PluginCafe... 1) OBJ Imports seem to come up a lot around here and 2) there is a benefit to forums where dev/art talk co-mingles... so I'm trying here first. As an example, I write fairly basic scripts/expressions to get the job done and quite honestly skip over good practices like "undos". If it weren't for @EaZyFiveD's cheat sheet post... and @MighT's subsequent corrections... I'm not sure I would have started looking deeper into the SDK and adopting the practice (which I have now started doing). Thanks to both of you!

@MighT The problem I have with the CallCommand() is that new users tend to use it by looking at the Script log and copy paste what they see into new scripts. If the script log represented all the actions that took place and was a complete and comprehensive history stack this wouldn't be a problem. But that's not what it is. The added problem is that the only thing a new user will see is a giant flat list of CallCommands and integers, which subsequently leads them to adopt the same form in their scripts. Ultimately, I feel that workflow sets new users off on the wrong path. By contrast... say someone wants to learn Xpresso, the Set Driver/Driven commands are a great way to introduce them to Xpresso because it's *exactly* the way you should think to use Xpresso.

I would go one step further and suggest you remove it from every script. 😉

I was having some problems with tracks and handles in the timeline improperly refreshing while in f-curves. Almost like it was missing an update event. It was pretty bad. Not sure if that was related, but I was expecting a pretty quick turnaround for the first patch for that reason.

C4D automatically is using the texture of the sphere for the cut out. Maybe just explode your sandwich into 5 objects (one for each of your materials). Then you can boolean each of those sandwich layers with its own "bite object" that would have it's respective cross-section texture applied. You're going to need new materials regardless. The outside of bread does not look like the cross-section of bread.

Another relevant Dilbert from 20 years ago.

Interesting. I never knew the origin. It seldom surprises me when dev branches converge back to the same source. Sorry. I was late to the party and didn't read enough posts backwards. I get it now. This is a "you could already do this with plugins" argument. +1 to don't care. I'd rather good plugins become native. I've been burned by too many developers that abandoned their work. I've been very slow to adopt 3rd party plugin solutions at this point for that very reason. EDIT: I should also mention... the labor involved in supporting a piece of software is a burden I would never wish on a single human being (or even a small team). Its much easier for a large company to bear that weight when it can distribute resources from several departments. I'm not sure everybody can appreciate what it takes to just keep things working year after year.

Z-Brush has been far ahead of the auto-retop game for years. I actually considered buying Z-Brush many years ago just for that feature alone. Are you telling me that Quadremesher and/or C4D's legacy remesher can produce equivalent results? Or are you simply upset that we got a better version of what we already had?

I've had some issues with the Project Inspector when re-linking paths in R25 (mostly alembic file paths and often between macOS/pc). I would relink the paths, it would recognize the proper files, and show the proper replacement path... reporting 0 missing files. I would then save, reopen, and the file paths would be back to the originals. This seems to have been fixed in S26.

As a footnote, if you find the native OSX archiveUtility falling short on your needs... Keka is an absolutely fantastic alternative for macOS that is considerably more powerful and bulletproof.

Perhaps you'd like to speak to the manager of Cinema 4D?

I love hearing teachers stuck in teaching positions echo the nonsense that mac users can't be serious 3D artists. I think about you every time I get paid... for the last... *checks watch*... 20 years. Props to Rick Barrett for rocking the M1. You know he's getting a lot of shit around the Maxon office for that. 😉

The What's new in CINEMA 4D S26 page shows: "The Sun Expression has several new settings" From what I can tell they just changed the name "Interpolate" to "Animate". *slow clap* Definitely the feature I expected the least.

It blows my mind how much money and effort some AE artists will spend on 3D plugins to avoid learning a 3D program. Even if it was as fast and as good looking as it is out of 3D (which it isn't)... dear god, the UI. I think 3D in AE with plugins is at least twice as difficult.

Wow. That "No Graffiti" sign looks like it was pulled from a Cinema 4D R8 Bodypaint Tutorial.

Maybe you're referring to reversing the point order of the spline?

I'm glad this helped, but I would feel bad if anyone leaves with a working answer they don't fully understand. I think the biggest confusion comes from the term MoGraph Color, especially when it comes to MoGraph and materials. If you understand what a bump map is or a displacement map is... you understand that when you look at a greyscale image... in your mind you need to translate luminance values to height in order to properly visualize the output. If I asked you to make 4 plateaus at different heights, hopefully you can visualize those being 4 different grey values. Congratulations... you just made 4 groups. We're using greyscale values to control height ranges in a bump or displacement map We're using greyscale values to control index ranges of cloners with effectors (and it has nothing to do with surface color). It's also important to note that nothing I've done at the conceptual level is any different from pre-Fields. I've made a duplicate spherical falloff solution for R18 (the kids may need to squint their eyes or put on sunglasses). Fields is just taking what MoGraph already did and throwing it into an image layer stack that would be easier to edit (vast over simplification... but you don't need to know more if you don't want to). Just remember: If you can see the grey values in your head when it comes to MoGraph (and you understand blending modes), there's usually several ways to get wherever you're going. MoGraph_Material_Fields_R18.c4d

So the first request was different materials by MoGrapgh Selections... and the principles behind moving to Spherical fields is pretty much identical. Bear with me @HappyPolygon as I'm going do a little extra explaining for any new users searching for this in the future. It's worth noting that OP wasn't able to control MoGraph the way he wanted because he felt restricted to solid colors. Solid colors are actually your friend when it comes to MoGraph... more importantly... Black to White... which is the same as 0-1 (0%-100%). When you put 10 images in a MultiShader, the first one will be used on any clone that is in the range of 0->.1, the second .1->.2, etc (assuming it's in Color Mode). So I have 4 materials I want to switch between in my cloner. So I start thinking in 4 divisions of 100%... 0-25%, 25-50%, etc... That way the cloner will use the first clone 0-25%, the second clone 25-50%, etc. These divisions are ultimately "value divisions" and the reason why I call them that is because mograph takes the final "value" of the clone that can be determined by many factors including the Initial Cloner Color, Effector Weight, Effector Strength, and Field Opacity to name a few. This particular example starts everything at 0 and adds value through the Field Opacity, but there are many ways to get here.. You will notice that one spherical field will always dominate another when they intersect just as one color will dominate another depending on the layer order and blending mode. But now that we understand what we're doing with color it shouldn't be hard to see that we can simply rearrange the layers to change dominance or if we wanted even more specific materials where our spheres intersected we would simply need to divide our MoGraph values into more parts. And if this makes sense in 2D... it holds true when you move to a volume. Cheers. MoGraph_Material_Fields.c4d

You can do it with a plain effector and MoSelections in fields if you duplicate your reference objects. EDIT: Doh... just noticed the Material names may be confusing. I wanted to show a way to do at least 3 and started naming them "A, B, C"... but then realized I would always need a default Material so renamed it "Base, A, B" on the objects, but forgot to rename the materials. MoGraph_Material_Selection.c4d

Wasn't this what Ptex was supposed to be? I feel like there was a lot of hype when it was first released and then nothing. Anybody know the full story or have some insight as to what happened?

I answered your question because: 1) I was avoiding work (that I should be doing) 2) I like your deer 3) It was a fast question to answer I have no idea what the student licensing limitations are. Someone else might have that answer and/or be able to help you UV your deer. Best of luck. 👍

The "unfathomable reason" is called "UV Mapping" and it looks like you skipped that step. 😉 When you uploaded the project it didn't include the materials... but you can tell it's a UV problem just from throwing a checkerboard on your deer.

Keep in mind when you cache something... it doesn't have to update the viewport, which (to me) makes complete sense that it would be faster. Displaying solutions can sometimes cost far more than what it takes to actually solve them and that runs deeply in the computer world. Even print statements to the console can slow you down faster than moving millions of points.