[Brian Jones]

you can clone the planes, put a MoGraph MultiShader in Color (or luminance) and don’t try and set up the layer in the multishader, just hit the Add From Folder button and select the folder the pngs are in (make sure they are all in a folder with no other images). Then set the MultiShader’s Mode to Index Ratio.

[Brian Jones]

a long time ago now but clone length (scale, really) can be changed with effectors. Which isn’t starting at an object and stopping at an object just a scaling to match the curve. There are probably many more ways to do this.

12977_clonelength1.c4d.zip
12978_clonelength2.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

to clean up the grain you have to go down to Layer Sampling in the reflectance controls and increase the Sampling Subdivisions to whatever it takes to clean it up. This will slow your renders by a lot. Color in reflectance is not faster it’s slower but it is a form of GI so this can be a good trade off. It depends on what you need for your final look. And whether normal GI with standard materials is faster than a reflectance workflow (that can depend on the scene). If you don’t need a GI look then use standard materials.

[Brian Jones]

you should be able to use the same mov in the Alpha channel of a material on the object. Play with the Black Point/White Point values to get 0% alpha in the areas you want to be seen.

[Brian Jones]

it’s not the python going into the Random Integer XGroup that’s a problem, I replaced the python with a Math/Modulo 10 and a Compare (doing the same thing) but the same results. I don’t know why the random integer doesn’t pass values through, it sure looks simple when it’s unpacked.

12974_randomtest.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

they don’t get saved anywhere I’m aware of, I think they are just held in memory then flushed

[Brian Jones]

ah, not enough info initially (for me anyway). You can use a Time Track, check it out in the Help but you add a Time Track to the object and then drag that Time Track into the parameters you want the time track to affect (would be Pos X,Y,Z it sounds like) Time Track slot

then adjust the Time Track to look like an Ease In/Out (or whatever). The first and last point of the time track don’t seem to be able to be anything but linear so you have to add new points in with a Ctrl-Click on the curve.

[Brian Jones]

I’ve never seen (or heard of) a plugin that does that (which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist). But for what it’s worth the usual wisdom is to practice until it is intuitive because the F-Curves offer so much control. As long as you understand what the f-curve is doing (what it’s representing) it should be just a matter of practice. At the risk of being redundant-
left to right is Time and the up and down is whatever parameter the curve controls. I’ll assume movement for now to make it easy (and that sounds like what you are doing) but the parameter could be color (or anything keyframed) and the changes would be how fast a color changes….
If the curve is Linear

the parameter change is constant from start to end (keyframe to keyframe) and (if it’s movement) an object would move at a constant speed.
A curve that is nearly flat indicates very little parameter change over time so the object would be slow. The steeper the curve is the faster the change over time, the object is faster.
A default ease in ease out looks like this

it starts out kind of flat (slow movement) curves upward (faster) and then flattens out as it gets to the next keyframe (slowing down). Ease in Ease out.
To get a change that’s predictable (like I assume the AE setting is like) just make sure both keyframe points are selected (that’s the default – but select them both if not) – if both keyframes have the handle they will both be edited – and you only have to grab one of the handles and the other will move in reverse symmetry and you can just drag straight left-right and the curve will have more (or less) flatness at the beginning and end and be steeper/flatter in the middle.
So this would be more ease in ease out

and this would be less

they don’t have to be symmetrical it can ease in and then come to an abrupt stop

[Brian Jones]

Far left renders a kind of quick render and it renders in the viewport. The middle button renders to the Picture Viewer and is the actual final render.
The viewport render (left) is a full render for most things except those that have a Editor/Render setting (like Subdivision Surface) if you make a large difference between those settings (editor/renderer) i.e. Editor – 0 and Render – 3 with a SubD then do one of each render (viewport and final/picture viewer) you will see the difference. It also will be different for things like Dynamics. The viewport render just renders whatever you have in the viewport when you hit the button but dynamics (unless cached) may or may not be correct. They will only be right if you go frame by frame to get to a point in the timeline, you can’t scrub fast or just jump to point in the timeline and expect the dynamics to be correct, each frame depends on the last. With viewport rendering it doesn’t care, it just renders what’s there. That’s quicker than the final render which will go step-by-step through the frames letting dynamics calculate everything so that the final render is accurate, you will see Preparing… in the lower-left corner of the picture viewer while it does this. This is why you will see the occasional thread on various boards asking “Why don’t my dynamics look like I set them up when I render?” It’s because they were set up scrubbing through the editor and rendering in the editor and they didn’t do a final render until the end.
It should also be noted the middle button isn’t just a button, if you click and hold it’s a drop down which contains a bunch of other render types (that you can also find in the Render Menu just above it).

[Brian Jones]

using the Distance modifier in the Thickness of the S&T will reduce/increase line thickness with distance, try the Object/Camera/Custom Range settings there. And it may help (or be necessary) to set Pixel Units to Relative Pixels in the Render tab of the sketch mat.