[Brian Jones]

I just rendered 0-250 and the sky shows in all frames

[Brian Jones]

R14, last time it was called HyperNurbs before being called Subdivision Surface. Also you don’t have the much improved Bevel tool which comes in a later version.
Read the Help (in case you don’t remember the Help is contextual, no need to search – just add a HyperNurb and with the cursor over the attributes of the HyperNurb in the attributes manager press cmd-F1). Good stuff there but in your case the last picture(s), the horse and pop-can, are probably the most instructive – edges in the cage (the original object) that are far apart give smooth results edges that are close together give sharper results (weighting (covered earlier on that page) can modify that.

So for your object you want to start with as few edges as possible for smoothness but only add geometry a you need sharp edges.

With the better bevels (and maybe with the old bevel tool) you can also try to do it without HNurbs at all depending on the kind of ‘smoothness’ you want.

It might help to have your test file to illustrate with examples. Also what do you mean by smooth? Roundness or smooth joins of otherwise flat surfaces (or something else)?

[Brian Jones]

sounds like you want two materials, a normal material on the Back faces and a transparent (or Alpha) material on the Front faces

[Brian Jones]

[Kiro Chie] “Firstly, how do i get model mode to display vertices.”

pretty sure you mean edges, go to Viewport prefs (Shift-V) and in the Display tab are Sel: Wireframe which shows the wireframe in model mode for selected objects and Outlines which controls that outside border (if you want to).

hmmm, R17’s grid stays the same size (looks the same initially) but scales… I usually just turn it off when I don’t need it (also in the Viewport prefs)

Z as up axis – only on export I think – there hasn’t been (that I know of) a switch for Z/Y since pre R10 – or maybe it’s there and I just use the z/y switch when exporting the few times I need it.

[Brian Jones]

yes, the chunks will react to the robot if you put a collider body tag on to the part(s) of the robot you want to affect the chunks – it’s just like the floor, without the collider tag the parts would just go right through. Yes, it can be an animated object like the robot (or a broom) because the collider tag, unlike the Dynamic tag, isn’t trying to add motion to a system, it’s just a recognition that an object is there for dynamic calculation.

[Brian Jones]

ah, good look with the S&T

[Brian Jones]

Fracture of disconnected polys in your letter would give only polys after collision – if that’s what you want then make the ‘O’ editable connect all the parts, then select all the polys and use Disconnect, put that into a Fracture… Otherwise if you want solid chunks from the collision you will have to use Thrausi.NitroBlast to pre-break the O. Here’s a test of that 9626_2015outlawpenguinrobotarmwithfalling2.c4d.zip

the extra xpresso on the Thrausi’d O is to turn off Self Collisions in the Dynamics Body tag until it collides with something, otherwise the way Thrausi works stuff starts to break up as it falls

[Brian Jones]

ClothNurb is adding thickness but that is not included in the dynamics calculation so it can go right through the floor until the poly that *is* included finally contacts.
Some of the jitter I think is caused by the construction, it would be better if you made the pieces and didn’t use a Fracture object to separate them (and then add thickness…) – it might help to cut the screen shape from the TV box as well rather than leaving it there, maybe not

9619_retrotvset2.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

you have to break it into the parts you want. If you want fractured type parts Thrausi https://nitro4d.com/blog/freebie/thrausi/ (or something like it) helps a lot

[Brian Jones]

which renderer? – if you are using Standard it’s in the Shadow tab of the light with the area shadows, Min/Max/Accuracy – if it’s Physical then it’s in Render Settings/Physical/Basic/Shadow Subdivision (Max)