Cineversity

Hello, I was just setting up a cloner system using a plain effector and I realised I can’t actually get it to output a negative and positive range (e.g. -45 degree to +45 degree rotation using a noise field), there’s no issue doing this with a random effector, or a shader effector. So I’m just wondering, is this a behaviour only existing with the plain effector, or have I simply set it up incorrectly?

I tried setting plain effector output range to -100 to 100%, then used a noise field set to 0 to 100% range, if I set it to -100 to 100, the clone rotation is still clamped at 0.

One workaround would be to set initial rotation at negative range and then set positive value to compensate for that, but then I need to keep that in mind that with fields a value of 0 is actually -100. Anyways, I have alternative solutions but I was very curious about this. Here’s a scene file to demonstrate what I mean:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/heg2il9ierflww4/nn_negativeValues.c4d?dl=0

Best,
Nik

Hi Nik,

Thank you very much for using dropbox!

Please have a look at the file below:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/mVUrsyakbDKy84dSjDu8lBYMTCCf5UAJO5loak6YPeq

I have added an Xpresso Tag to show the degree of one clone. Besides the demo function, it has no influence.

Is this what you liked to have?

My best wishes

yes that’s perfect! I hadn’t unchecked the little clamp button in the effector falloff settings. So that will override clamp min/max in the field itself? ahh thanks for that!

Thanks for the reply, Nik, you’re very welcome.

The falloff is 1.0 if nothing is in it.* The standard is to have a value between 0 and 1 for any value that is set. This means the results of the Effector will be taken times the value, e.g., 0.5. The first clamp (right lower corner of the list) is for the overall results.

Then we have the layer (field) specific data, Min/Max, which relates to the sliders. Since a field (e.g., the formula field) might get a formula that can beyond the sliders, one can clamp the output here as well. Since we have set this in the scene above to -100% and 100%, the checkboxes are not really needed, hence my pointer, but also the optional.

*There is one thing to know as well. If a field (in the falloff) goes to zero, one could argue that it is equal to an empty field list. Sounds right? Well, that would mean that you can lower the value closer and closer to zero, but at the moment it is absolute zero, it would jump to one. As mentioned above, an empty list equals one. Perhaps more info than needed right now, but that is the logic in the set up currently.

My best wishes

Thank you, that’s very interesting.
I think what must have been confusing me a lot is the range slider for the plain effector, by default it is at 0 - 100%, but what is it’s expected input range? I assumed, its expecting 0 - 100%, so if you set it to -100 to 100, it will remap [ 0 - 100 ] to [-100 to 100] but in fact, I think, the field then needs to be set to be -100 to 100. right?! haha

Hi Nick,

Yes, that Min-Slider in the Plain Effector is pretty limited. Since the Plain Effector produces a single value, other than the Random Effector, for example, the Min slider has very little power to change. If you set up an XPresso Tag and place the Data node on a Cloner, the Plain Effector Min value will change none of the optional outputs. Color is obviously the most significant, but the Max slider does already all on needs.

I checked even the manual to find something, but it is very short and goes along with my initial post: use the falloff.
https://help.maxon.net/us/index.html#OEPLAIN-ID_MG_BASEEFFECTOR_GROUPEFFECTOR

All the best

thanks again, great to try and understand these things better!

You’re very welcome, Nick, thanks for the reply.

Have a great day.