[Brian Jones]

ah that’s the other place, thanks for the reminder

[Brian Jones]

near clipping on the camera (in Details) is what it looks like

[Brian Jones]

anything behind the object or is it just the default black background you are seeing? “Project” the texture? Are you using camera mapping (if so, are you projecting from the camera you are viewing from? then you’d definitely see the black background)
It might be easier if you could post the “Save with Assets” version of the scene file.

[Brian Jones]

in R17 there is the Variation shader but that is I think truly more variation rather than a set of colors to pick from (haven’t used it but like the look of it in the help). What might work if you can group all the objects with the same texture in a Fracture object you could then color them with a Random Effector and use that to control a material on the Fracture object to randomly choose between the textures you put in a MoGraph Multi Shader channel

[Brian Jones]

sure it doesn’t have to be feeding from the keyframed value you can use whatever works. It should be possible to do what you want (as I understand it) fairly easily. You could even have a slider to enter the bpm then use that through a RangeMapper to control relative speed then add a resulting calculation to whatever the position for the camera at the start of this frame to get a new value you feed back into the camera at the end of the frame. The other values for the target and the light are already working so could stay the same.
It sounds like there will be some for you to absorb but the help is easy since it’s contextual (hopefully you already know that)

Like this – 9549_editabletrefoil2.c4d.zip
– as long as the null is selected you should see the BPM slider (because I gave the Null User Data and dragged the user data on the screen as a HUD control) – it’s values can be changed to whatever range you want
– in the xpresso the BPM slider value feeds into a Range Mapper which takes the input BPM values and scales them so the max out is now .001 (or 1% in slider terms) – that value (the Output Upper) can be changed to any value to make the camera and lights slide along at whatever rate you want to see for a given BPM value.
– that range mapped value is then added to wherever the camera is now (incoming from the left)
– add offsets for the target and the purple light
-then run everything through a Math Modulo so the value returns to 0 when it reaches 1 (1 being equal to 100% according to the Align Tags position value)
– and feed the new values into the camera etc to move them that much further along the spline

[Brian Jones]

align to spline can’t be set over 100% even if you do it in the timeline once it hits 100% it stops. (turn off the sweep and camera and watch your camera, camera target and lights move around) One way around this is to use the camera position and some expresso to drive the target and the purple light with a modulo added so when it goes over 100% it drops back where it’s supposed to be. Like this

9547_editabletrefoil.c4d.zip

I also took the ease in and ease out from the camera Align To Spline so it will loop cleanly without slowing down and speeding up at the start/end.

[Brian Jones]

you are rendering 180 frames? What format of output for the full render (image sequence? movie file? if movie file what codec?)

[Brian Jones]

reflection bake is very directional – when testing I was getting black but it was on a cube on a floor with a sphere to reflect to me (the camera) and with default settings the floor is not visible in the cube (not direct line of sight) once I lifted the cube off the floor I got one face (using Optimal Mapping: Cubic) but didn’t get all faces until I checked Use Camera Vector.

[Brian Jones]

depending on construction and alignment of parts etc. that is often necessary

[Brian Jones]

what version of the OS and (probably less important what version of C4D)? Yosemite (or was it Mavericks) has “AppNap” which can be turned off on an app by app basis – supposed to save power with laptops on battery but not good for power hungry apps like C4D. Much earlier versions of C4D used to have a setting in the prefs to “Deny Power Cycle” so the computer couldn’t go to sleep during render but that got more sophisticated a long time ago too… now it just keeps on rendering usually but it’s been awhile since I had an apple display that can’t be turned off. Have to guess app nap without any more info