Cineversity

Hi,
I am trying to use the tutorial for ‘Making an Ocean Wave Rig in CINEMA 4D, Part 2 by Bret Bays’
and have run into a snag, he asks you to create a Morph Target within the PoseMorph Tag.
Which no longer is an available function in the new PoseMorph Tag.
Unfortunately I am relatively new at creating such a thing in C4d r14, so do I just drag the “original”
spline into the given “Target” area now in the PoseMorph tag, or what?
It seems like the thing to do, but I really want to make sure before I mess this up.
Also, does anyone know if there are any other snags ahead in these tutorials about the Ocean Wave
that I should look for and what would be the fix for them if there is?
Thanks!
Joseph Wraith

Hi Joseph Wraith,

The procedure is pretty much the same. In Part 2 at around 05:30 (min:sec) he starts with the r11 Morph tag. With newer versions that will be the Pose-Morph tag. This tag needs to be set to Points first.

All the best

Sassi

Thanks Dr. Sassi,
I got that part, what the issue is with the Morph Target that he has created.
Not sure what to do about that part of the lesson.

Obviously Morph Target and Morph Target is not communicating here not well enough, please let me know the time in part two when he talks about your question. Sorry for the confusion. I will take a look into it.

Ok, it starts at 6:57, he discusses the addition of a Morph Target.
Which is no longer available in the PoseMorph Tag, however there is a Target Area.
So I was wondering if the Target area is the place to add the “Original” Spline.
Thanks again,
JW

You mean the Morph Target called “Mover”. (All added items in the list of the Pose Morph are Morph Targets, there is the problem to differentiate.)

The spline that has the Pose Morph is the one that needs to be altered to define the information for the new Morph Target. Let me be precise here, the spline by itself is not really altered, while the new Morph Target “Mover” is active in the list. It is like altering a copy of the spline. In the tutorial part two the “Stage 5” is shortly active while he is doing that, ignore that. Each item in the list is like a complete copy of the spline, filtered by the options you have chosen before, e.g., points. With this data and the amount of the slider the new state is calculated.

The Mover stores the points information that was given to the spline while this was active in the Edit mode. When you go into Animation mode, the slider set to 100% will put these values in the mix as they were when they were created. If you set the slider to, e.g., 200% then the points would go even further away from the initial position of the spline itself. A morph is a single or more complex change of an object, which is connected in the Pose Morph to a slider. While given many changes to several sliders, each Morph-information can be mixed with another one. In that way many combinations can be created, or each is used to be by itself the altering information only coming from the original state of the object. This supports the animation process and accelerates it.

The idea is here to create states of the spline, which will be later connected to the options explained in the next parts. In this way, one object is able to work then like a joy stick with different input options.

I tried to explain it here and hopefully—I was able to address the question now. If not, let me know.

All the best

Sassi

Thank you, I was going by the name on the screen and what he called it, I know he changes the name to “Mover”.
But in essence it was called a Morph Target at that time.
Anyway, so I’m not sure what to do here.
What should I do next?
Just ignore the “Mover” he creates and just create a new morph with the Spline named ‘Original’?
Sorry, this is a bit confusing.

Lets go through it until you feel comfortable with it. No need for saying sorry, but thanks :o) I know how that feels when things wont work as they should. Below the +++ line I give a step by step instruction. I have done it here with the copies of his file. So, it should work in r14.

Yes he create a new Morph Target, but by dragging all, the splines in it, he created as well “new” Morph Targets”. I write that here to make the point clear, that all the things added or dragged to that list are Morph Targets.
I explained above the functions of the tag, not what you need to do for this tutorial.

To clear that point a little bit more with r11 and any version after it:

“In CINEMA4D R12, the old Morph and Posemixer tags have been merged into the new Pose Morph tag. It is now more powerful than ever, giving you the same usability and memory saving features as the old Morph tag, but with a lot of added functionality.”

It is not really a replacement, it is a combination now out of two tools. So it works very similarly.

+++++++

1) The Mover needs to be done as he said. Create a new Morph Target, rename it to Mover.

2) Stay in Edit Mode. Have the Spline called original active. In the List the Mover is active.

3) You need to be in point mode and the Live Selection is selected as well.

4) Now you select all the points of that spline (original) except the points on the ends (the start and end points as well the ones that he had produced with a knife)

5) Press the key E to get into the move tool. Now move the points to the right with the Z axis under the “mouse”. Move it as he did.

6) Click once on the Pose Morph tag, go to the Mover and select it (if the selection is not active anymore).
  Check now if the Slider “Strength” , while moving it from 100% to 0% will move the active points from the right to the left. If so—perfect. (Otherwise send the file in the QA forum.

All the best

Sassi

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=E2xY3IBgRaEkAOOI2PKNiY

Beautiful!
That’s exactly what I wanted to know.
Thank you for the detailed explanation.
Thank you again for your time Dr. Sassi.
Once again you are a great help!

You’re welcome!

Nice that it worked. :o)

It is a pretty cool set up. I hope the nice idea that Bret has shared here will lead to a lot of other solutions for your projects.

Have a good one

Sassi

Hi Dr. Sassi,
One thing that needs to be done when bringing in the all the splines at once is to answer the question should they be Absolute, or Relative.
Something I didn’t know the answer to. Now in the Tut’ the Splines are all “Absolute” (noted with the Large “a” next to them in the Morph Tag edit window), which at that time may have been a default setting.
Now we get a Pop-up box that asks you which setting you want, so the answer now would be YES make the Splines “Absolute”.
The only “Relative” Morphtarget is the Mover.
I had an issue last night with this and didn’t know the answer to the Pop-up’s question.
So I chose relative and nothing worked right.
So I went and did it again making all the splines Absolute and then it all worked.
Thanks again for your help on this.

Hey Joseph Wraith,

Let me first point out that one problem might be created by the interface change. In r11 the question was: “Import the geometry as new relative targets?”.
Since r12 the question is: Add “object name” as an Absolute (Yes) or Relative (No) morph target?

You can easily see that answer both question with Yes will result in the opposite.  There I guess the problem starts. I don’t know why that change was made.

Absolute means to me (please compare that with the Help Content!) that the information is not stored in the Pose Morph, it stays actively connected to the object. Relative means, (and again the help many might express this differently), that the wanted information is stored in the PoseMorph and thats it. If you change now the geometry of the object that you dragged in previously, the absolute will cause an effect on the object with the PoseMorph, but the Relative will have no effect on it. The letter “a” in the list isn’t changing, when you change it later.

To make that point more clear, if you delete (in a test scene please) all splines for example that were dragged into the list, some as relative, some as absolute, the Pose Morph will be left only with the relative data, the absolute is gone.

That the relative wasn’t working at all is not correct.

I hope that puts a little bit more light on it.

All the best

Sassi

The problem I had when I imported them as Relative the splines moved all
over the place with the Sliders and they kept adding to the move of the sliders over and over until the splines were a huge mess.
I even had issues just clicking on the each of the PoseMorph Targets in the Edit window, the splines just kept growing
every time I clicked on the Target itself.
So I deleted the PoseMorph tag and dragged them in again and this time made them all Absolute,
I also created a new Pose, named it Mover and added the movement of the Original Spline, and everything worked.

Sorry that you run in so much trouble. This is certainly a problem with tutorials which doesn’t include the optional mistakes. Which would makes them longer of course and so some instructors chose a straight forward method. Other include possible mistakes (I like to do that, and even if it is the 20th take of a recording, the mistake is repeated. Some people don’t like that, they need it always fast. One-size-fits-all is not a given here. This is in no way a critique here!

So, I did the set up and used this time only relative “targets”. The only way I was able to mess it up, was, when I left all sliders to 100%, before I introduced the MOVER target. All sliders need to be on “0%” before you create the MOVER and its position.

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All the best

Sassi

Yep. Something I didn’t know at the time.
But now I do, I don’t mind taking my time to learn the mistakes as well as the right way to do it.
I have used a lot of mistakes to my benefit, some mistakes can be glorious accidents that turn into wonderful animations.
It’s all part of the learning process as far as I’m concerned.
Thanks again!

Exactly! Thank you Joseph Wraith!

I think mistakes are sometimes the better teacher. Playing with the stuff is certainly a way to provoke “mistakes”, better known there as exploration. I like this attitude a lot.

Yes, I think many great visual effects have found their existence that way.

Enjoy your weekend

Sassi