[Brian Jones]

there are a couple DOF plugins that support Alpha and transparency as well in the depth map

https://www.blackstar-solutions.de/en_c4dendofin.php
https://www.biomekk.com/index.php?page=1&cat=107&itm=26

there may be more

or as you say use the alpha map and the depth map together in post

[Brian Jones]

maybe the sound format, C4D takes AIFF or WAV uncompressed at 11, 22 or 44khz so you may need to translate your sound to that

[Brian Jones]

Gravity and Friction are fundamentally different forces so the numbers won’t be the same.
The quicker way to move one object to another’s place is to use Functions/Transfer. Select the object you want to move, activate the tool, then either drag the object to Transfer To into that named slot in the AM or more easily, if the scene is not too crowded, just click on the object to transfer to in the editor.

[Brian Jones]

1) Make Editable in the Functions menu or in the contextual menus if you right-click on the object in the editing window or theOM, Make Object Editable in the toolbar on the left or with the object selected hit the ‘C’ key.

2) if you are following his tutorial the spline effector should have Segment Mode (in the Effector tab) be set to Even Spacing or Random because a text spline is a multisegment spline unlike his example circle

3) if you have Scrub Sound in the Sound Effector checked off then you just need to enable Play Sound in the Animation menu

[Brian Jones]

1) don’t know, if I do that it comes back, maybe it’s at the start of the next frame (maybe it’s different in 9)

2) if you Render to Picture Viewer you can always tell where it is since it’s rendering in a separate window

but as Randy said it won’t be faster since it’s really the same thing. To make it faster you’d have to optimize the scene (if that’s possible in this case) or get more processing power.

[Brian Jones]

in spite of the fact it can be keyframed you can’t (to my knowledge) animate Mass, it uses only the value given in the first frame. You can animate Drag though. So add a drag object for each lego make it cubical with no falloff and use Linear or Axial with the strength set to ‘enough’ to stop motion – if you set it too high the lego will just disappear since this is not real drag and if set high enough it will actually move the still object

[Brian Jones]

before you added a light the scene was lit by the Default Light (which you can move but is by default a bit left of where the ‘camera’ is). Once you add any light even a Shadow Caster the default light turns off (unless you check No Illumination in the General tab and let’s not go there since with no illumination it can’t cast a shadow – it’s for making visible lights that don’t mess with the lighting amongst other things).
So, if you want a shadow you are going to have put in another light to replace what the Default light was doing.

[Brian Jones]

your BodyPaint texture needs an alpha channel (same/inverted as the text) so you can see through the non-text parts to the Danel

[Brian Jones]

so each cloned cloner has a different parameter changed? I can’t see any way at the moment without duplication…

[Brian Jones]

1) you could also put on one texture and animate the Material slot in the texture tag