[Brian Jones]

the help is in html format. The Context sensitive help is not online it’s on your computer and can be accessed to read without contextual access

Documentation can also be found on Maxon’s site under support/documentation https://www.maxon.net/en/support/documentation.html which has the docs in html format and QuickStart help in .pdf

and the whole docs in html format can be viewed on the support/Online2Help link. https://help.maxon.net/#54784

[Brian Jones]

I looked at your earlier file again and it looks like the clouds move when the camera moves in the initial move, they don’t move as much in the second move but that’s because of parallax (building is near clouds are far in a camera truck move with no rotation) and the clouds don’t move in the time change because the camera doesn’t move. Time changes and the stars move because the planet rotates but clouds don’t have to move when the stars do. I think it’s doing what it’s supposed to. If you want cloud change there you’ll have to animate it.

[Brian Jones]

probably have to see the file

[Brian Jones]

Stiffness/Flexion settings and Pressure (I just tried bringing that down to Pressure 2 with Volume Conservation at 20 and that’s more ‘squishy’) settings should be most responsible for how deformable the spheres are. I’d also try tweaking the settings of the winds which is better to have at what speed, tweak the turbulence values as well to see if a *lot* of turbulence is better and in which wind it’s better to have the most turbulence… I don’t know if that way or yours is better or something else maybe particles is the way to go – a lot depends on whether you want the separate blobs of your second reference ( an older lava lamp) or the more joined blob of a new lava lamp.

[Brian Jones]

it would help a lot to have x-particles (or another capable of fluid sim) but without those, as you say softbodies with turbulence but use a Wind object with turbulence turned on. Also use Areodnamic forces in the soft body and Aerodynamic wind in the Wind object.
Here’s a test with two Wind objects one with infinite falloff to generally ‘push upward’ with another wind with a cylindrical falloff to push up in the centre like the hotspot of a real lava lamp. Very crude but with more sizes and some tweaking in the soft body tags… 9652_lavalampblobtrial.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

we’d probably have to know more about the version you are using and maybe see the scene file to tell. Cloth and belting are made to work with deformers by default. Though they were thinking characters with bones/joints as the deformers when they created it a quick test here (simple test) shows that cloth and cloth with belts is working as expected with other animated deformers.

[Brian Jones]

it might be this one https://greyscalegorilla.com/tutorials/how-to-choose-the-right-lighting-style-for-your-project/

[Brian Jones]

put the splines in a Connect object and Lathe that

[Brian Jones]

GSG has a tutorial about GI and not using GI when it’s appropriate thats pretty good. As to what’s the best renderer it really depends on the look you need then what will do that look the quickest and it’s not likely to be the same look all the time (or your stuff would get predictable for the look – unless that’s what you are going for)

[Brian Jones]

it was created in 14 and saved in 15 and I’m using 17 – the only thing I did for the full render was to turn off AO since it adds extra render time without affecting things (excepting problems with transparent objects occasionally) and I did render some frames (0-60) with AO just now to test and that works too. So I’m guessing they fixed something in-between.