[Jim Scott]

Hi Lorin,

I would be glad to try your project if you want to post a project file. Have you tried contacting Jawset support? Whenever I have contacted them in the past they have been fairly quick to respond.

[Jim Scott]

Here’s a reference to the Fold It plugin and some folding tutorials:

https://lesterbanks.com/2014/01/unfold-animate-polygonal-objects-easily-fold-plugin-cinema-4d/

[Jim Scott]

In a light’s Project settings you can choose which objects you wish to exclude (or include, whichever is easier) from its illumination and shadows (if they’re enabled). If I understand your situation correctly you will need to have two lights (co-located if you like) – one illuminating the cube and casting a shadow on plane 1 (you can exclude plane 2 from its illumination if you want, but you didn’t specify that), and the second illuminating plane 2 and casting a shadow onto the cube but with plane 1 excluded in its Project settings. In any case, work out which objects you wish to include or exclude from each lights illumination and shadow casting.

(My old brain almost melted trying to work this out, as simple as it first seems. I hope I got it right.)

[Jim Scott]

What Brian has suggested will definitely work, but only for excluding the omni light’s illumination on another object like the floor. If you’re trying to maintain internal shadows (inside the ear muffs of the headphones, for example) after adding the omni light to bring out more details on the headphones themselves, you could try increasing the shadow density settings on the lights that are casting those shadows to bring them back to the look you had before the omni was added.

[Jim Scott]

You could try trashing (or temporarily removing) the C4D preferences folder. To find it go to Edit > Preferences (or CMD + E) and click on “Open Preferences Folder” at the bottom of the window. Also trash your new.c4d file in the Cinema 4D RXX application folder. This should reset everything to factory defaults. Or reinstall C4D. Or give Maxon support a call, which may be the wisest and easiest.

Best of luck.

[Jim Scott]

Very interesting. I have never seen that before. In Window > Customization, all I see is Customize Commands, Menus, and Palettes. How did you get to the Customization window in the first place? I would think that quitting and restarting C4D would get you back to your Startup (User) layout.

Good luck.

[Jim Scott]

Here’s a sample project file:

10601_pconnectorexample.c4d.zip

[Jim Scott]

pCONNECTOR is a spline generator, so set it up in a Sweep nurb:

In the pCONNECTOR’s attributes add your cloner in Sources, and choose “Points/Clones” in the Source Settings:

Play around with the Point settings to modify the connections to your cloned spheres. See the pCONNECTOR “Read Me” file for settings info.

Hope this helps.

[Jim Scott]

X-Particles with xpTrails:

pCONNECTOR with a cloner:

[Jim Scott]

Glad to help. Don’t forget C4D’s excellent help files whenever you need more info about a particular feature.