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Limiting effector influence on clones of clones
Is it possible to limiting effector influence on clones of clones. For example: I use nested MoGraph’s Clone Objects to create array of cubes then as a Child of that object I use another clone object in Object Mode to arrange smaller cubes on faces of arrayed cubes. Now I want to use one of the effectors to change size of the cubes in the array without affecting size of cubes on their faces. Is it possible?
Thank you in advance.
Sasha -
9 Replies
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don’t nest the Cloners. Create your base array and put that in a Connect Object then put the Connect as the object in the second cloner with the smaller cubes. Then when you apply a random effector to the base cloner it doesn’t affect the other cloner.
Connect
Cloner
Cube
Cloner (Object mode pointing to Connect)
Small Cube -
Thank you Brian for the reply. It worked fine but now I have another issue – how to keep smaller cubes aligned to the sides of the larger ones – is there a way to keep objects connected while their position/rotation/scale is affected by effectors?
Thank you again.
Sasha -
when objects and tags don’t have a Priority setting (like an xpresso tag does) C4D uses the order they are in the Object Manager to determine which gets done first. It goes from the top to the bottom. A lot of the time order does not matter but in this case you have one cloner changing the parameters of it’s clones and another cloner attaching clones to the result. If you attach first then change the parameters of the things they are attached to they are always where the clone was not where it is now. It doesn’t matter where the Effectors are they can be anywhere in the order only the Cloners make a difference here.
Connect (affected by Effectors)
—Cloner
—–Cube
Cloner (Object mode pointing to Connect)
—Small Cube
Effectors (somewhere) -
Brian, Thank you again. I will try to find time today to play with different clone and effector order and see what I can learn.
In general I am interested in developing nested structures where changes at the base of the structure ripple through the whole. I will appreciate any suggestion on what aspects of C4D I should study with such goal in mind.
Another aspect that I am interested is a substitution capabilities something akin to a search and replace feature of in a text editor, so one type of object can be easily substituted for another kind. So far I see that MoText would work this way, but I would like to extend the concept to other objects – splines, primitives and polygons. Can you recommend some general approach to achieve such goal?
I am very thankful for your help – it is much quicker way to learn then to sieve through many articles of the help section, yet I am looking for in depth book on the subject to learn things on my own. What I am searching is not necessarily “follow by example” book but rather good theory about core principles, concepts and logic of C4D – don’t mind some formulas, math, code. Do you have any suggestions?
Sasha
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for the first I don’t know, xpresso might be necessary but you can do a lot with the effectors so maybe only those. But I don’t know exactly what you are thinking about
the substitution might be done with using an Instance to clone then keyframing or using xpresso to to change the Instance’s Reference Object assuming you want them all clones of one cloner to change with the substitution but getting clones to change can be done with effectors too. Once again it depends on what you are really after.
You are correct, principles are much better. It’s way too complex to limit yourself to ‘this recipe makes this’. I don’t know of a book (that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist) but there are lots of tutorials out there. There’s good info in the old tutorials (since MoGraph has been around for a while). I watch those but also use the contextual help a lot and practice new stuff in simple setups to get a hold on a principle rather than try something new in an already complex setup but then I don’t have deadline pressure.
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Thank you for all the help, Brian. C4D is very rich program and I will try to cover the ground a bit at a time with contextual help and tutorials. It’s a pity that book selection on the subject is rather limited though.
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I couldn’t cure the priority problem just by moving the cloners around, but I was able to make it work by putting a matrix object into the mix: https://www.3danvil.com/tutorials/dont_affect_nested.c4d
AdamT
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hmmm this looks the same to me
https://web.me.com/bdjones/Downloads/dont_affect_nested2.zip -
Sure does. 🙂
I wonder if it’s something that got fixed between 11.5 and 12 (I was using 11.5 when testing it earlier). Or maybe I just didn’t get the right order….
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