Hi Gabeartist,
Thanks for the fast update :o)
The Shader Effector has one major misunderstood. It doesn’t bring “shaders” or “textures” onto the clones. With that out of the way, the idea of the Effector is simply to use a texture or a shader space to pick up values from it.
Effectors have mostly the Paramaeter field in common. Position, scale and Rotation can be set up here in general. But how much each clone will receive from this setting is then a question of each Effector and how it works.
The Plain Effector uses the values as given, just 100%, if not limited by the fall-off for example.
To change for each clone the Parameter can be done in most Effectors differently. Lets have a look how the Shader Effector does this.
Think of a texture that would be normally on a larger object, go to a specific point and you get R,G,B, values. Values from 0-100% for the shader (if the texture is in 8 or 16 bit/c.) Values between black and white. If white or 100% the parameters will be set to the clone with no change. If the texture is black (where the clone is) then no change for this clone. Any value between (or above) will then multiplied with the parameter. If there is 25% gray, then the parameter will get only a quarter of influence to the specific clone.
This allows for animations and many other options, such as painting with BodyPaint 3D the values on a texture (If applied to a “canvas”—will say a plane-object for example)
All the best
Sassi
