Cineversity

I am going through EJ’s tutorial on triggering animation using fields, and he demonstrates that simulations have to be baked into point level animations before they can be controlled with effectors. Does that also apply to tag-driven animations (i.e. align to spline)?

Here’s my model: https://adobe.ly/2Q4BVcd

I set it up with a plain effector to trigger an Align to Spline animation 132 frames long. It looks like nothing happens, which makes me think that I need to bake it. However, if I bake it then the sequence will become a mass of keyframes with no hope of modifying anything forever after. So before I do that, I just want to be sure that I’m not missing something fundamental that makes it all push-button simple

In a perfect world I would like to rotate the splines with fields also - that is, control the angle that the blocks bounce in so they don’t cross in front of the camera. I have done this on smaller assemblies by making the clones editable and adjusting each spline manually, but with so many clones and splines, it would be super-cool if I could shift the incoming angle of those clones closest to the camera using automation. I imagine a radial field might do it, or or gradient. But maybe I’m fantasizing again…

Cinema always finds a way.

Hi mford610,

Please have a look at these files:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/F3BvOrBiW66vATuki7Vi5AOHgWk52lRornrMnsQKFDK

In the file …01.c4d I showcase the simplified version. File …11.c4d is the scene that you provided.

Please note that the Freeze layer “records” the values of the sphere field, and if that is not wanted, just switch it off or even delete it.

The setup works as Blend between the Align to Spline 0% and in the second child-group set to 100%. So the sphere field is the object to blend those. To make that happen, an extra Cloner needs to produce first only one clone. This Cloner holds the Plain Effector (set to Modify Clones). After that, you can clone as many as you like. One crucial (!) part needs to be clear, the point where the clone would sit if it would be a static object (axis in the center) is the place where the sphere field works on. If all clones had the same “origin”, that would not work. In your scene, each clone has its very own position.

My best wishes for your project

Holy cow! And here I thought I was starting to understand this stuff :(

So if I am following the logic, the Cloner_Blend is somehow controlling the other clones in the project? So far as I can tell the Cloner_Blend is empty. I see it’s set to one copy, but one copy of what?

Is “Cloner_Blend” your creation? Or is it in the Mograph tool set? I didn’t see anything about a blend function in the Help about it. Same for the Plain_Blend_Modify_Clones effector. Is that different from just the plain old Plain Effector?

Sorry to be so dense!

I can’t find anything in any of the attribute tabs that identifies where the Cloner_Blend and Plain_Blend_Modify_Clones Effector are drawing their information from. Moving it up and down the object manager doesn’t affect it - so it’s not getting its information from the hierarchy.  It’s as though simply because this group is in the project that it drives things.

This arrangement seems to be working sort of like a Pose Morph tag - from start state to end state - of the clones. I could see how that could be pretty handy. However, the bounce-in animation is lost. That’s actually the thing I want to control.

I may have backed myself into a corner here thinking I could trigger a complicated clone arrangement using fields. Now that I’ve built the set up, I’m probably stuck with it - unless I want to bake everything. And that’s fine, but I was hoping for another miraculous intervention!

Hi mford610,

The Cloner_Blend was my “source-object”. Please delete it (it is now updated in the download). So sorry if that caused any confusion. Since you had so many groups, and I wanted to set up all for you, I created this and CMD-Dragged it into the group setups.

It is a normal Cloner, and it is set to Blend. Blend means here that it blends among the child objects parameters or shapes. These child objects need to be identical, except for parameters or point positions. The Blend can then find a spot between two or more of those. In the case of one clone, it is identical fist the first child.

This is the point where an effector comes into the game, with the setting Modify Clone. Think of the 0%-100% modify-clone as the range of first to the last child. Any value between will blend those. If there are only two child-objects/groups, and the modify-clone will be 50%, then it is a perfect mix of the two, not the Align to spline, though. If there are more than two, then it might be more than the one in the middle.

Since the 0%-100% slider is a global slider, we need to use fields to specify the locations. This is precisely how I have set up your project.

This single clone is then Cloned in the Cloner on top of it, many times.
As long as this Cloner produces a position for each clone in a different position, the fields can work individually on those. Note that the modify-clone Effector is only in the single clone Cloner-Object, not in the parent of the group.

Let me know if that helped. I tried to provide an alternative, to baking, but perhaps, it is not the way to go.

The bouncy part, please have a look here, I created it for the first group.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/NJQ8v3gzjNPWXK0uZ8rW0tMtykfGKwyDynKhGvKyHk2

Cheers

P.S.: Just for comparison, the “baked” version with the Plain Delay:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/u7SixODNgReG2ydRC8CrGvk53IfYXDJooBw35jVCr9U

I used Cappucino to bake the objects, then dis-abled the Align to Spline.

P.S.S.: … and a one minute clip to set up a procedural Spline animation
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/rZeLZWiEFYzYR2ZdG3A2aKHiK07dLDtVN9u5YpGBKNL

The amount of “steps” needs to be evaluated.