srek

This should work for every engine that can use the new node system and it’s asset mechanism. The first step is to create a node material. Within this you create a node group that you use to define your actual material setup. Only provide those values as UI elements on the outer interface of the node that you do NOT want to change if the asset is updated at a later point. Those values that you want to update when the asset is changed keep as value nodes within the group. Once the group is working as you like it turn it into a node asset. Now you can put the material itself into the asset browser as well. Every copy of this material will now use the nodal asset within it. If that asset is later updated the copies of the material will use the new version, but the exposed parameter values will remain.

A material can be an asset based on nodes, but f you use it a copy will be created in the Material Manager. This copy will not change if you update the material in the asset system. If however you use a nodal asset within that material and update this asset the node version of it used within the material will update. The key thing to take away here is that the Material Manager can only ever hold copies, not instances, but the material itself can use instances of node assets.

The trick is to use actual nodal assets. Any node asset that is used within a setup will be updated within the setup if the original is updated. Since you can not use nodal assets as materials directly you need to encapsulate them in a material, like the material assets i referred to. If you do this the material itself will not update, but the definition of the nodal asset used within it will. That is the key difference betwen @JohnDos and my advice. He is absolutely right that the material itself will not update, but it seems he didn't know about the nature of the nodal assets that allow to work around this.

In short, yes. You can see this being used in the older nodal material assets for physical and standard render. It only applies to the definition of materials though, the parameters will stay. However, if you make the parameters part of the setup, instead of the UI, you can do this. The trick is that the material is just a shell for the node that holds the actual definition.

Doing it the MD way would mean that the final cloth mesh needs to be generated based on a user provided mesh. You would not have full control over it. while that might be acceptable for a dedicated clothing tool like MD, Cinema aims to be a generalists tool with a maximum of flexibility. Maybe we can think of a mesh generator based addition to cloth in the future, but right now a universal tool is the better option.

Scene Nodes and Xpresso have very different goals and applications. In the context of the object manager Xpresso is the more versatile, since it defines dependencies between objects. Inside a capsule or in the main scene nodes context though scene nodes rule supreme, they cover everything Xpresso can do and much much more. Where Xpresso can only marginally modify existing geometry scene nodes have full control.

Those presets would require the mesh to be of a specific scale, topology and polygon density. It is the combination of settings and actual geometry that defines the look and behavior of cloth.

If you follow the news about u-Render you can find that they did try to find a buyer, but nothing came out of it. This means it is really the end of the line for the company. I don't know if the technology will sell seperately, but i would guess that anyone really interested into that would have bought the whole comapny.

No idea why that comes up for you, it works for me. Maybe a short lived problem.

On the outside of the Loop Carried Value node you iterate over the single elements of the vector array to transform each individual position, then on the inside you expect that data to be an array again. You need to do an Assemble Collection to deliver an array into the LCV node. Edit: On a second look, the Inner Scope of the LCV you are using is not an index, you can't use it as such inside of the LCV. To be honest, i have no idea what you are trying to achieve with the Children Op nodes. Keep in mind that you can access the Distirbution data directly. Just plug a Decompose Container into the Distribution Output of the Polygon Center Distribution to get all matrices in an array.

Maybe use TP Move on Spline with Use Offset enabled instead

TP Follow Spline has two main parameters to adjust how the particles follow. Tangent Velocity defines how quickly they adjust their direction of movement to the direction of the spline, this works fine for you. The second is Point Velocity, this defines how close to the spline the particles try to stay. You need to increase this value. To high values can lead to the particles getting stuck, so you have to tune this a bit. I tried and a value of 30 should be ok for you. If you want to use much higher values you need to increase the Precision (Sample count) so the particles do not get stuck. You will always get a bit of overshoot though.

There was nothing sneaky about the credits given 😉

If you have the scene open the node should be in the asset browser. There you can copy it to your default database in the prefs or any other. if you have an instance of the asset in the node editor you can choose from the menu to edit it in place or in an own editor. If you use it in the Object Manager you can find Edit in the context menu

Try the attached scene and the Asset stored in it. Select by Edge Length 02.c4d

Thanks for that @3D-Pangel. Many people see buying software as an investment, it isn't. The investment is in your ability to create value by using it. Software is way to volatile to be seen as an investment, it needs constant development and change to be of value. That is one of the reasons why the larger the business the more they want and use SaaS. It fits their needs and wants from a technical and fiscal pov. Smaller shops and especially private users often think in terms of owning things, which is just plain wrong when it comes to software since, except if you wrote the software yourself, you can only ever own a license to use. Only my personal €0.02 of course.

If the comment was about saas and cloud services in general please ignore my comment, i expected his post to be related to Cinema 4D.

I did not miss his point, i only quoted and answered the part that wasn’t a personal opinion but an incorrect assumption. I can’t and won’t address any personal issues with the licensing offered by Maxon, so please do not expect me to go there.

Cinema 4D and Maxon doesn’t offer any kind of cloud services though. Apart from initial installation and optional assets it is only the licensing that really needs an internet connection. The licensing only needs very small bandwidth and only occasionally.

The closest thing in Cinema 4D would be the Data Inspector or the Structure Manager.

Scene nodes are more of a bottom up approach than top down. First come technical necessities and further on the higher level access. Something you can start to see in capsules, which can deliver Cinema typical ease of use functionality with the power of nodes behind them. Xpresso is just an expression system, f we were to enable it to do what scene nodes can do it would become no less complex than scene nodes, just much slower.

I don't have any hopes for R27

Cinema 4D is neither a compositing app nor a media player. The Picture Viewer is simply not optimized for fast playback, it has other roles in Cinema 4D.

A point cloud does not hold any topology. This means there is no information at all to differentiate which point to remove and which not. My guess is that the OP wants to thin out th cloud by removing points where there are many, that is an operation that classic modeling functions like Optimize can not deliver.

I only have the version left where i also changed the base Block 01.c4d