Material problem

[Brian Jones]

quickest is to put a pure white texture underneath (material tag to the left of your eye material tag in the OM)

[Jim Scott]

Using a flat projection you are essentially applying a decal to the eyeball (a sphere).

When you then rotate the sphere to make the eye look up you are exposing the bottom of the decal. As Brian said, by adding a white texture underneath your decal you will hide that. You could also turn on tiling which would repeat the decal, and as long as you don’t rotate the eye far enough to reveal another pupil the effect will be the same.

Another option would be to right click on your texture tag and select “Fit to Object.” This will stretch your decal to fit around the eyeball but will result in enlarging the iris and pupil.

[Scott Gaskin]

Thanks Brian, I got round it by tiling the material in the end, but this is very handy to know.
Appreciated.
Scott

[Scott Gaskin]

Thanks for this Jim, very helpful. I got round it by tiling the material in the end just after I sent out the post!

I was wondering if you could help me with another question. I’m very new to Cinema so please excuse me but I’m trying to create some eyebrows for my character, I have experimented by trying to draw inside Cinema and importing a vector from Illustrator. Either way when I add a colour to the spline, it doesn’t work. I have added a black material but when I preview it looks grey. I also noticed there is a ‘display colour’ option which I have turned on and chosen my black colour but still doesn’t work. Are you able to shed any light on this?

Thanks in advance

Scott

[Jim Scott]

Glad to help Scott.

The “Display Color” option allows you to change the color of the object in the View window only – useful as a way of differentiating objects. It doesn’t affect the render, but only the “display.” When you render, C4D will use the texture that you have applied to the object in the Object Menu.

When using splines, add your texture to the Sweep Object, not the spline. There needs to be geometry to apply the material to for it to do anything.

If you are still having trouble post a sample project and I can help further.

(By your spelling of “colour” I’m guessing you’re a real Englishman… or from one of its colonies. 😉

[Jim Scott]

Just in case I assumed too much, in order to render a spline you need to create geometry by making it a child of a Sweep object and designating another spline to be swept along it. In this example I swept a circle along an arc.

And to edit my last post, the “Display Color” option will affect the render if there is no material applied to the object.

[Scott Gaskin]

Hi Jim,

Thanks again for your time on this, it is very much appreciated and yes I am from the very cold and damp England! ☺

I added the extrude nurb previously to give the spline some geometry but was surprised that it didn’t seem to take to a colour.

I have now used the sweep nurb which you suggested by creating a simple curved spline and sweeped with a circle.

I have attached screen shot below. I can’t work out how to have the ends rounded off though. I have used the fillet cap in the sweep properties. Do you know how I can round the ends off? Ideally as this is meant to be an eyebrow it would be good to be able to give it a flatter mesh if that makes sense?

One final question, Is there a way of snapping the axis to the centre of the spline? I tried google and it showed me how to go into the mesh menu, choose ‘axis centre’ but this only seems to work for objects that are not splines?

Sorry for all the questions, I really do appreciate your time with this

Scott

[Jim Scott]

Changing the color of an Extrude should work just like a Sweep. As discussed previously, enabling the “Display Color” option in the Basic properties of the Extrude Object will allow you to change the color in the display, and for the render if there is no material applied. If you have applied a material to it, the material’s controls will take precedence when you render.

To round the cap of your Sweep just increase the “Steps” in its Caps and Rounding parameters.

Just as for a polygonal object, to move the axis of a spline you must first make it editable (keyboard shortcut – C). You can then enable axis modification (L), move it with the move tool, disable axis modification (L again), and then move, scale or rotate it in reference to the new axis. Make sure that you are in model mode when doing so. As far as centering the axis of a spline is concerned, Nitro4D, a great source for plugins, has a free one – MagicCenter – that will center the axis of an object or a spline.

https://nitro4d.com/product/magic-center/

In a quick Google search I also found this discussion concerning centering the axis of a spline which you might find useful:

https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/82449-center-axis-on-helix-spline/

I hope this helps.

Edit: the Axis center commands that you referenced in the Mesh menu will work for a spline as long as you first make it editable. That Nitro4D plugin may have come out before C4D integrated that function into its own menu, so take your pick.