[Adam Trachtenberg]

LMB = left mouse button. On a Mac I guess it’s just MB. 🙂

Is your geometry in a HN object? If it is then you should see weighting taking effect.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

There’s no adaptive subdivision in Cinema so you can’t dynamically change mesh density. But you can control the smoothing in a couple of ways. With HyperNURBS (now called Subdivision Surface) you can add weighting to polygons, edges, and points. You do that by first selecting the parts you want to adjust and then holding down the period key while holding down the LMB and dragging.

Another approach would be to use the Smoothing Deformer. For this you first need to subdivide your mesh. With the deformer you can use falloff or you can control the smoothing with a vertex map tag.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

I’m sure there are programs that can combine the frames but you’d have to search for them (don’t know off the top of my head). However, you can also render QuickTime VR files directly out of Cinema. Just select QuickTime VR (Object) in in the render settings>save>format options.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You can adjust the size (radius) in the attributes manager when the tool is active.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Another option would be to drive the length parameter in the Hair material.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

I wouldn’t mess with dynamics for this — too many headaches. Instead I’d use separate cloners for the cab and trailer. It takes a little experimentation to get the right axis position for the trailer because they actually rotate from a point between their center and the hinge.

But once you get that about right you can set up two spline effectors to place both pieces of the truck on your path. The trailer will be offset a little more. Once you get them place you can drive the offset of the trailer with the offset of the cab. To do that you right-click on the cab’s offset parameter and select Xpressions>Driver. The right-click on the trailer’s offset parameter and select Xpressions>Driven (Relative).

Example: 7952_trucksalongspline.c4d.zip

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Could be you were following a tutorial from a different version? In any case, you can assign the keys to the commands if you want to. To do that, open the Command Manager (Windows menu, or right-click on any icon and select “edit palettes”). The command names are “increase brush size” and “decrease brush size”. There’s a field at the lower-right of the Command Manager that allows to you assign custom shortcut keys.

Also, I can’t remember if this was there in R13, but in R14+ you can hold down the MMB and drag up/down to resize or drag right/left to adjust strength.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You’ve probably locked one of the axis gizmo handles inadvertently. Check and see if one of handles is yellow instead of the regular red, blue, or green. If so, Ctrl + double-click on the end of the handle to unlock it.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Looks like you may have coplanar faces, i.e., two polygons in exactly the same position? When that happens the render engine has no way of knowing which one should be in front.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Do you have a phong tag on your object? If so I would delete it. It can cause shading errors as neighboring polygons pass through the set phong angle.

If that doesn’t do it I would use a material with the specular channel turned off.