How do you change text randomly without Mograph?

[Randy Johnson]

Yes you can do this.
If you want an easy but very boring way is to just keyframe the text between 1 and 0. You could set up loops in the timeline… and so on. (To key frame the text just control click the small circle next to the word TEXT where you write in)

If you would like a less manual way of this you could set up an expression.
First you will need a free plug in from C4D Jack called Oscillator. You can find it here:
https://www.c4d-jack.de/site/en/downloads/cat_view/43-plugins.html

After you install it you can get started. In order to have more than one object in a Extrude nurbs be sure to enable Hiararical option.
Here is the Xpresso.https://skitch.com/randy-johnson/rpefh/xpresso-editor

/Randy

[Scott Thomas]

Hi Randy.

Thanks for your reply and the skitch upload. Will give a go and report back.

Scott

[Scott Thomas]

Hi Randy.

Just working through your example (got the oscillator plug-in). In the Xpresso XGroup how do you add ports to the final nodes “0” and “1”. I have discovered that you can drag them from the objects manager into the Xpresso editor, but they don’t come with ports attached so they do not show the “enabled” word. So I cannot complete the group.

Bear with me, I am more used to using After Effects.

Thanks in advance.

Scott

[Scott Thomas]

Here is the skitch link to my Xpresso effort:

https://skitch.com/pukkascott/rpqs6/xpresso-editor

[Randy Johnson]

Thats looking good,
All you need to do now is click the Blue corner of the “0” and the “1” and in the drop down menu under “Basic Properties” you will find “enable”

In xpresso you can drag in anything and control almost anything. Blue corner is always input and red corner is always export. If you get a yellow node it means there is a problem.

/Randy

[Scott Thomas]

Thanks Randy.

Done all that. Now what I have I done wrong? There is no switching occuring as I move through the timeline. Here is a set of image to confirm I have done what you asked.

https://skitch.com/Pukkascott/sets/btm/expression-set

Feel I am close but missing something obvious.

Here is the project file if you want to look at it:

1614_numberschangingproject.c4d.zip

Thanks again for your time.

Scott

[Randy Johnson]

That looked right to me.
I just did a screen capture of how I did it and posted it here.
https://www.randyarchy.com/Screen_Recording.mov

If you want to use more numbers you can duplicate this on a few numbers and offset the time. then group them and duplicate the whole group and so on.
/Randy

[Scott Thomas]

Thanks for the video Randy. I got it working, but…

Two things to note. The reason the switching wasn’t working in my example was the <= function node in the compare operator. If I set this to == then the switching works fine. <= stops it working.

Also I discovered that if I just leave out the compare operator and connect the oscillator direct to the range mapper and the other node the expression works just the same.

A million thanks for getting me this far, it has really given me the confidence to use Xpresso and open up the software.

Scott

[Randy Johnson]

Glad to hear you got it working.
I looked at my set up and my oscillator node was set to -1 to +1 so I had to have my compare node set to greater than…. but your right the range mapper inverts what the original number was so the two numbers would never collide but I originally did the set up with out a oscillator node and it got a little too in depth.

/Randy