• Maxon Cinema 4D

  Cloner Object Weirdness – Alpha Troubles

  Posted by Dave Swain on July 30, 2008 at 5:20 pm

  Hey

  I’m using C4D R10.0 and a Cloner Object to make a plane repeat and spiral off into space. I just started noticing areas of black that show up in the render but not in my scene window as I’m working. The black clearly shouldn’t be there.

  To demonstrate the problem, I created a new material and changed the color to green. I enabled Alpha and imported a flat PSD that I created (pure white type on a pure black background) as my Alpha Texture. I created a plane with the same dimensions as my PSD alpha image. I applied the material to the plane, dropped the plane into a Cloner Object and tweaked it to my liking (only adjusting the Count and x, y and z Steps).

  In my perspective view everything looks great as expected.
  https://daveswain.tv/help/PerspectiveView.png

  But when I render the active view, areas outside the limits of the alpha show up black…always toward the end of the spiral (this happens even when the layers aren’t spiraled).
  https://daveswain.tv/help/RenderActiveView.png

  I’ve tried checking and unchecking a bunch of options, but nothing fixes it. It happens with and without lights. I have noticed that the larger the plane, the more black I see. I’m at a loss. If anyone has any ideas, please chime in. My deadline isn’t tomorrow or anything, but I need to get this resolved so I can move forward. Here are my hardware specs and links to shots of the material editor.

  Dual 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 (I know, time to upgrade)
  3GB RAM
  Mac OS 10.5.4 Leopard
  Cinema 4D 10.0

  Material Editor Shots and Render Settings
  https://daveswain.tv/help/MatEditorColor.png
  https://daveswain.tv/help/MatEditorAlpha.png
  https://daveswain.tv/help/MatEditorAlphaBasic.png
  https://daveswain.tv/help/MatEditorAlphaShader.png
  https://daveswain.tv/help/RenderSettingsGeneral.png

  Thanks!

  Dave Swain replied 18 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Brian Jones

  July 30, 2008 at 5:39 pm

  Render Settings/Options/Ray Depth make it bigger – it’s the number of layers the renderer will go through before it starts to render black instead
• 

  Dave Swain

  July 30, 2008 at 5:47 pm

  Wow Brian…thank you SOOOO much! You completely rock! I don’t think I would have ever figured that out. I really, really appreciate it!

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