Cineversity

Hi everyone, I was playing with some ideas to appear a bunch of clones gradually and randomly but I can’t achieve it. The first part of the process was simple, I just used a cloner and plain effector, this appear each object gradually but looks really linear and awkward, so I think to appear objects randomly across time to give some variety in animation but I couldn’t. Any ideas to achieve this? I tried with random effector and time offset but doesn’t work and then I tried with shader effector but I can get it. I would appreciate your help to solve this.

I bring a link with a example scene file: https://app.box.com/s/76idnif588yx3k3y6wwu

Hope you can help me.

Thanks!

Hi Iaec,

You were pretty close. Just check the file that I have attached. I animated the Noise Shader for the Shader Effector. I like to use a material/texture-tag for this, so I can control it as I like. I have placed an “X” into the texture Tag >Selection field. As there is no selection named “X” the texture tag will not transmit the material data to the Cloner Object/Clones. It can be any letter/number in this field to shut it off for shading. But for the Shader Effector it stays active. I use an “X” as a standard, so I know always what I have.

Change the contrast, size, or other parameter of the Noise Shader to achieve different results.

To let clones grow you can use inside of the Falloff of an Effector (e.g., Plain) a Standard Particle Emitter. If the particles move on, the clones go back to the original state, but you can stop, slow down the particles of course. Just a thought.

In a nut-shell, it is the information flow that makes it happen. There are many options in C4D to establish such effects, e.g., a crumpled plane as “Object (Source)” in the falloff, which is animated and invisible, etc.

All the best

Sassi

P.S.:

Example _02 with more adjustments in the contrast etc

Example _03 with a Plane and a Pose-Morph for the Fall-Off.

Both files are here (can’t upload directly—currently, so a link only)

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=cydlskD4RJkmEznIMidBmk

Hi Dr. Sassi, thanks so much. I followed your advice and it works. I think this act like a matte in AE or something like that. I attach 2 scene files in a zip to show the result. I would like get a mix of 2 versions (build up level by level and preserve randomness, is that possible?). Thanks again for your help! Regards! 

Scene files: https://app.box.com/s/am5v1y83i5kurnpg7q9d

* I’m going to play with your last suggestion to see what I get and then show the result. Thanks a lot!

Hey Iaec,

Thanks for your feedback, very nice of you.

Yes the Shader Effector works like that (if we have the same in mind). The Shader Effector takes from textures (even animations) or shaders for each clone one value. This value is then multiplied with the parameter of the effector. In a nut shell, if white is 1.0 (or 100%) then the parameter is used fully. If less or more, then accordingly.

There is another option, which is called Weight. Weight is given by, e.g., most Effectors, and if nothing else is done by the Effectors, then the Weight value can be used to adjust the influence of an Effector with preferably not weight influence. In that way you split how much with what at all. Works most of the time, but sometimes not really well, e.g., with the Time Effector (Rotation goes back etc…)

Speaking of splitting, you might use Random Effectors in a row, one for position, one for rotation and anther one for scale, or several for the same purpose, but different seed values and falloffs to change the randomness of the scene even more. Playing with the options is certainly a good idea. There is no failure, only feedback. What isn’t working now—might be the needed knowledge later on.

Just one more thing ;o) If you use an Object as “matrix”, this object might be useful to “randomize” as well. So the initial work is already done with, e.g., deformer/explode etc.

I will set up a little scene to give more ideas to explore.

All the best

Sassi

The amount of randomness >Random Effector > Strength for example. You certainly like to adjust the values of the parts in the scene, it is a lot…., just for the sake of demonstration.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=JvinB67WTMkkmsMFSvq_Rw

The red dots (or yellow if weight is heigh) are there when selected to be visible (Display) in the Cloner Object. They do not need to be visible to work.