[Brian Jones]

judging by the previous threads you are wanting animate the clones (or start the animation) based on the position of something, the more recent thread was correct – one texture feeds all the clones so you can’t try and change it or it changes for all (and if my skim of this was correct same applies to xpresso) but your assumption that you can only use the MultiShader (I assume you meant that) on the Cloner object is wrong, you can use it on objects within a cloner.

11575_animatingcloneswithanimatedtextures.c4d.zip

The problem with this example is I am taking the simple route with your simple example and using Index Ratio to assign the multishader layers, with a copy of the gradient in each layer just offset. To do it based on position I would turn on the Color Mode in the effector setting everything off and make it so the color of the clones change based on the proximity of the effector and then use Color Brightness in the MultiShaders to choose between a still gradient then change to the animated gradient as the color gets bright enough. Color is the color the clone gets with Color Mode on in an effector but it isn’t seen with a material on (I assume I’m just flapping my lips here (metaphorically speaking) since you do a lot of mograph stuff but just in case…) I can do an example of that but I’m out of time and won’t have enough until tomorrow (or maybe Tuesday)

[Brian Jones]

yeah, the help does say Primitives, Metaballs or all Generator objects, I think you’d have to use the Polygon Reduction Deformer on poly objects but they’d have to be turned off for render (Layer or selection object I guess) (and maybe not since it’s a deformer and would be working in real time – maybe R19’s Poly Reduction generator…)
R19 LOD looks interesting and does have decimation etc but no demo’s on clones I notice…

[Brian Jones]

Display tag on the child should not reduce numbers in the cloner only clone complexity but if the object is really simple it doesn’t do much (ie a LOD change (even to 0%) on a cube does nothing since it can’t get visually simpler)
LOD does reduce clones by default when applied system wide (with the project setting or the viewport options) the only way around that is the display tag on the cloner child(ren) that I know of (or replacing the children with simpler proxy objects)

[Brian Jones]

reducing the number of clones in a cloner is the default behaviour and it works well if you have a lot of clones (hundreds) in a cloner – if you have fewer clones it’s pretty abrupt (the math must not be linear because it’s hard to see a difference between 100% of the clones and 80% for example) and the viewport settings of Low, Medium, High are pretty big jumps and with a grid cloner test of a 3x3x3 grid cloner all the clones will disappear when you go from High to Med but if you have a 20x20x20 cloner the levels work pretty well.
If you want fewer clones to appear more reliably use the Project settings Level Of Detail with values from 0 – 100% (though with too few clones that’s still awfully quick but you can get reduction with a 3x3x3 cloner by going to 99%)
Or you can use a Display tag on a cloner where you can get a cloner specific LOD.
You can also put a Display tag on an object within a cloner and reduce it’s LOD (keep the numbers of clones but have simpler clones to display)
Or combine them, display tag on the cloner to reduce numbers and a display tag on the clone source to reduce it’s display complexity

[Brian Jones]

there is light coming from the left so you should be getting some, but if it’s more than you think it should be then are you using textures that use luminance? That always gives more light than there should be in darker areas

[Brian Jones]

easier solution, in the Details tab of the light object enable Near Clip and set the To and From values. ‘From’ defaults to 0 and it fades in over the distance to the To value – in the viewport the light object has a couple of blue indicators that move as you adjust the From and To…

[Brian Jones]

it’s pretty fast, if we could look at it frame by frame I think you have the right idea about the particles being generated just to have few particles moving around during the scrape (but those particles just disappear they don’t bounce etc, they are just for show and fade quickly). I wouldn’t try and make something be scraped away, it looks more like the plaque is either a displacement texture which is animated as the tool goes by or it could be a plaque object that is withdrawn into the tooth as the tool goes by or booled away as the tool goes by. Because it’s pretty quick you can get away with a lot of sins visually and the purpose is to illustrate not be physically perfect.

[Brian Jones]

the discs drifting off can be fixed by checking “Use Uniform Distribution” in the three Spline Operators. The axial spin looks like gimbal lock, yes.
The gimbal lock can be fixed by using a rail spline in the sweep – a rail can be turned off in the sweep setting so it does not affect the direction and scale but it still gives a guide to fix the axis. I’m sure that can be done in xpresso but I would use the built in Align To Spline expression which has a Rail Path modifier built in.

11548_objectsatendofspline2.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

if you save an object with ‘Save Object Preset’ then load it (with Load Object Preset) materials will come in duplicated too

[Brian Jones]

no imgur link, file is interesting…