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Questions about animating boolean wipes with falloff, spline masks with cloner object?
Hello Creative Cow forumgoers,
I had a couple of basic questions that I thought someone might be able to help me out with. I’ve tried searching for these answers and also have been experimenting on my own, but have run into a couple of problems.
I’ve uploaded one zip file (c4d_questions.zip) which contains 3 project files:
01_boole_reveal.c4d
02_question.c4d
03_plates.c4dIn the first project file, “01_boole_reveal.c4d,” I’m attempting to reveal the word “Text” via a venetian blinds wipe pattern. I created the pattern by placing a rectangle spline into a null and adjusting the axis to a corner. I’m animating a linear fall off so that the rectangles scale to 0 existence from -1.
The problem I’m running into is there are faces at all the pattern/Text intersections, regardless of where the linear fall off is. My first thought was to fix it in AE with a mask, but for more extreme angles, this won’t work. Any idea how I might fix this?
In the second project file, “02_question.c4d,” I’m attempting to reveal the letter “Q” via a similar venetian blinds wipe pattern, except the slivers are coming from z-space now. I figured out how to get flat slivers, but I was wondering what the optimal method of creating 3D slivers would be?
My approach was to convert the live type “Q” to an object, use the knife tool on the object, select all faces, disconnect all, which gives me individual, disconnected slices of the “Q.” Then, I selected all those faces and extruded them directly. This got me to “Fracture_02” in the file.
I run into a similar problem here where the leading side of the plain effector causes weird things to happen on the unaffected slivers. That is, the right slivers of the Q are rotated 90 degrees. This can be seen here:
And the last project file, “03_plates.c4d,” I’m wondering what the optimal method would be for creating animation shown but contained within the letter “Q”? I’ve been playing around with spline masks; I tried combining spline A “Q shape vector” with a cloner object that contained square faces, but that didn’t work.
Basically, I’d like to be able to procedurally generate 3d shapes that can be used to “wipe on,” but be contained within another vector shape.
Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if any of my questions need clarification. I apologize if these questions have been answered before, I was unable to find the right search key words.
Thanks,
BH -
8 Replies
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Brian Hwang
Project 1: Even after scaling to -1 in x a single face is there in your file which is causing the problem, try scaling in both x and y or turn on uniform scaling .. it solves the problem.
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Brian Hwang
Project 3:
“Basically, I’d like to be able to procedurally generate 3d shapes that can be used to “wipe on,” but be contained within another vector shape.”
Can u provide some more details for example why do u want to do that .. what is the purpose ..
You can create wipe on using cloners like u created and than use vector shape as track matte in after effects …
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Hello Ashish,
It seems my questions were more basic than even I realized, I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I think it was a fundamental error in how I thought scaling works that I won’t forget in the future.
Regarding my spline mask question, I half figured out how to use it. I’m wondering now how I can use my spline mask to only show fully visible clones? Right now, the behavior is for the spline mask to make an exact silhouette cut out of the cloners.
I’ve attached a JPG to illustrate this and I can also create a project file later tonight to show the problem.
Thanks for your help!
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you can use a Shader effector on the cloner 5578_shadereffectorvisibility.c4d.zip
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Hi Brian,
Thanks for the solution as well as the project file. Is there a method that involves using vectors? Or is there a way to use a live vector within the shader effector?
I did some additional searching and someone asks the exact same question, to which Adam suggests baking the texture and using the baked image as the matte:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/19/872218Some additional related links on the subject (for anyone that searches in the future):
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/19/879992I also did some digging on C4D Cafe. It seems people have tried using the vertex shader but with not much luck. There appears to be a method that works involving TP but seems more complicated than producing the grayscale image. Here are the relevant links:
https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/topic/34931-cloner-shadereffector-vertexmap-fail/
https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/topic/66675-vertex-map-and-cloner/I will go with baking/making my image in Photoshop for now as it seems to be the simplest solution for the time being.
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If I understand what you’re after, I think you can do it using a combination of the spline mask, extrude, and volume effector (visibility parameter checked). I had to put the extrude into a connect object to get the volume effector to work.
Example: 5587_vectorreveal.c4d.zip
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Hi Adam,
This is actually precisely the answer I was searching for. I was beginning to think that maybe it wasn’t even possible! Your help and project file are greatly appreciated.
As far as why I wanted to be able to do this.. I wanted the ability to control the shapes that a MoGraph cloner produces, without having to use the workflow of baking an image or using several steps. Basically, so that I can key and animate the spline/vector within C4D itself.
Thanks again,
Brian
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