“Essential” modules for wanna-be

[Chris Smith]

I recently got the Studio Bundle, but I have to say that for doing motion graphics type things (like you may be doing) I could get away with the base program and Thinking Particles.

To me TP is essential for graphics because instancing objects or layers to particles can make extremely powerful graphics quickly. You can use them to populate a world with procederal systems that are easy to program with Xpresso.

Speaking of which, you MUST get Jenna from corearsenal. It has been one of the most productive things I have used with C4D.

I recently switched over to C4D from Maya for mograph use and it blows my mind how awesome the app is especially the integration with AE.

my .02

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Sean Maloney]

Just the advice I was looking for- thank you. I would be doing mostly mograph stuff, so your recommendation is spot-on. Looks like the Core Arsenal site is no longer up though. What is (was) Jenna used for? Was it free/shareware? Know where to find a copy now that the site is down (and will it work with the latest release of C4D?)

Thanks again,

Sean

[Chris Smith]

I’m in shock. I just read the monster thread at CGtalk about David “Darf” leaving C4D. He was the developer for Jenna and a few other tools. It looks like everyone in the thread is going through the stages of loss. So that being said, Is Jenna public domain now? He acts like he could care less what happens with it. I’d like to put it up for people to download, but if it is still protected obviously I can’t.

For me the Jenna plug-ins make C4D twice as strong in the mograph area. This is killing me.

Here’s the thread:
https://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=228989

It seems strange to me because I left Maya for C4D because it seemed a hundred times better for mograph stuff. The first time I went through the C4D manual, I learned how to use more of C4D then I did in the 3 years of using Maya. I even knew MEL scripting enough to do what I wanted.

I weep.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Chris Smith]

Sorry, to answer your other question, Jenna was a suite of plug-ins:

Iterator: This was an object that you dropped another object into then had many controls in how it created realtime copies of the object. You can animate the offsets so it created organic shapes or what ever. If you everwanted to create a bunch of instancies of something and have real time control over how it grew, offset, etc, then you could use iterator.

Allie: Man is ALlie powerful. So many uses to explain here. But basically you input a texture map and based on the maps luminance, color, or other properties you could change the parameters of instances of objects. For example if you wanted to make one of those pushpin things where you can press your face against it and all the pins stay in place and retain that shape. You could take a movie of your face and use allie to convert the brightness with the offset of the pin copies. Once again, so many uses it’s hard to begin to explain.

Mesharray: Easiliy assigns object instances along the mesh of an object.

Gridarray. Easily create grids of objects in all 3 dimensions

and many more. In addition, there are common parameters on each that randomize things so that objects will do their own animations based on your settings.

Basically with the Jenna plugs, you couls just think artictically and have quick, simple tools to do complex animations without a huge amount of time animating and instancing.

It also had other cool tools like the ability to see material displacements in real time in your view port without rendering out. Saves a pound of time when tweaking.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com