[Xavier Bonet]

Hi! I realise I’m a couple of years late… ???? but, for what it’s worth to anyone having similar issues, I was able to fix a similar situation by using the same spline as a rail.

Initially, I was using a Sweep and had a bumpy texture on my final object that would rotate unnaturally with every movement. I pinned the issue down to exactly what the OP has: the thing was banking like crazy, instead of acting as a “solid object”. That’s because it’s the spline that’s being affected by dynamics, and the spline is just that: a spline! a single string with no volume. I think there should be an option included into the Spline Dynamics tag that allows one to specify what the diameter or width, the volume, in any case, of the actual object to be rendered will be, because a spline by itself makes no sense. So the object “surrounding” the spline is just a shell that does what the spline does.

In my case, the splines generated hanging moss-like things, and these had to sway with the wind and movement; instead, they turned as if on a swivel. So what I did was change the Sweep for a Spline Wrap (because Sweep doesn’t have to option for a rail), changed the circle spline for a capsule, duplicated the spline in question, and set it as a rail in for the Spline Wrap! And although the result isn’t 100% what I needed, it’s about 95%, and that’s fine for this particular instance.

In conclusion, it does work, at lest for me, and it does stop the object from rotating on its axis. Still, I repeat I think would be better solved by including a specific command in Spline Dynamics.

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Brian and Steve!

Both your suggestions sound great! I haven’t yet played around much in depth with XPresso, so I’m not sure I would know where to start with either randomising the seed specific to one shader (which I’m assuming can only be done through XPresso) or making the list of objects all with one texture and then feeding in the a random noise (though this one seems like I could find out on my own through trial and error, but still the how to feed a number into a specific shader I don’t know). If you guys could recommend a resource I could read or a tutorial I could watch that would guide me better toward something like this, I would really appreciate it!

In the meantime, I have a sort-of-solution, as I continued researching into solving this issue. I found this tutorial: https://vimeo.com/51232088. Basically, the solution offered there was similar to the only solution I could think of in the beginning (that of manually changing the U and V offsets of each texture in each individual object) but to do it mechanically, through XPresso, and therefore have it be painless! Basically it’s similar to your ideas, but the random number being created is used to change the U and V offset values. Which is why it’s a sort-of-solution, because the texture is the same, it’s only offset. So in certain cases it’ll work as “different textures”, and the objects won’t look like clones; but in more detailed cases, one will see that there’s an offset rather than the true random generation that occurs in natural objects. It works for me in this particular case, however. Still, I’d like to learn other ways of solving this for the future.

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[Xavier Bonet]

Another fix that might help someone else who’s having the same issue:

Hi, Brian! Thanks for the update. I too explored the matter a bit further to understand what was going on and found as well that it had to do with the displacement and bump. While in this particular case setting all space values to Object fixed the issue (well, it didn’t fix it 100%, as I had to simply get rid of some shaders that don’t have the space option and where still slipping) I found in another project that I was having the same issue but couldn’t fix it switching everything to object: the texture still slipped! So I researched a bit more and found another possible fix that I think might help someone else who’s having the same issue.

In this second case, I had a sculpted object with a rather complex bumpy texture with loads of noise shaders, and the object has a Spline Wrap deformer in order to make it wave across the timeline. When I was almost finished, I found that the texture slipped as the object travelled through the spline. And, as I said, no matter what I did, I couldn’t solve it. Finally, I found the answer: the Stick Texture Tag!

I applied it, and Recorder the moment where I liked my texture the most, and that did exactly what it advertised: it stuck my entire texture to the object, no further tinkering needed!

I haven’t had time to test this with the previous project that I mentioned in this thread, but I imagine it’ll work just the same, as the conditions are fairly similar. In any case, unless I post back saying it didn’t work, you can assume it was also a success in that case.

Hope it might help someone else!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Brian, and thanks for your response! Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any results be it through using the Collision Deformer or using Dynamics.

Currently I’m animating a couple of hands that fumble and drop a hard object they were carrying. So there’s a moment where theres the potential for a lot of meshes to cross, what with both hands and the object moving around in close proximity and actually “bouncing” one off the other.

When using the Collision Deformer, it doesn’t really avoid intersection as I would expect. And, then, when it sort of does, it basically turns the rigid object into a sort of jello that becomes really deformed with the collision… imagine a deflated balloon being deformed by the hands I was talking about. Only that at certain points the fingers just intersect and break into the object as if it were jello. So I can’t imagine setting a CD on all 2 objects: it’d be chaos!

And when trying dynamics, the solid object just goes through the collider… No matter what setting I try, it doesn’t actually collide. I’m assuming it has to do with the fact that when binding the IK skeleton to the character mesh, the mesh never actually moves, but is rather “virtually” replicated. (If I go in and edit the mesh, it appears in its initial state and not where its positioned by the IK.) So I’m guessing the collider is actually where the original mesh is, and not where it’s being positioned right now, which defeats the purpose I’m after, and I’m not sure how to get around that.

Right now, I’m animating the whole manually, which wouldn’t be a problem, except I’m not t all getting the results I’m after. First, I’m having loads of trouble getting C4D’s keyframe’s bezier controls to do what I want. Things get out of whack really fast. I don’t feel one has that much control of keyframes… perhaps it’s practice, but I come from AE, where I feel one has absolute control. Anyway, I also feel like the interaction between al objects I’m achieving isn’t at all fluid or natural, which is why I started trying with dynamics, but had no luck…

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Steve, thanks for your answer!
But won’t that also mean that the speed ramps down as it gets to that intermediate keyframe?

[Xavier Bonet]

This is a great fix, Steve! Thanks for the info. I do believe it’ll solve my problems!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Jim, I’m having the same thing happen to me in C4D R19 on my Mac, and, as far as I can tell, only when using MoText, as you mention. I haven’t seen a similar behaviour with other objects. I was wondering what I was doing wrong, but I guess this time it’s not on me! 🙂

[Xavier Bonet]

Thanks a million, Brian! That worked like a charm. I’ve had to deactivate the bump, though, because the surface shaders don’t have a Space, and therefore continue “slipping”, but I’m going to see if a noise shader can give me a similar result.

So what was happening was that the shaders were set to Texture, so they stayed “glued” to the texture itself, which wasn’t “glued” to each object because there were no UVW Coordinates, is that right? Therefore, setting them to Object “glued” them to each object. What I still don’t understand is why Cubic and Flat didn’t work. Is it because the Dynamics Take makes the group of objects into one whole object and even if you give each sub-object its own texture it is still playing ontop of big object created by the Dynamics Tag? (I don’t know if I’m making myself clear…)

[Xavier Bonet]

Thanks for your answer, Brian! Clearly I tried all settings except the one you mention … (very-annoyed-at-myself-face) … because you’re right, that would’ve worked fine with the MoText! I guess I missed it. Anyway, now that I’ve gone this far, I’de like to know what’s going on with the texture in my case and how to solve it for future similar issues. I’ve stripped the project to the elements that’s causing the issue, and hopefully you can give me some insight on it:

12358_mytextureissue.c4d.zip

Thanks a lot!

[Xavier Bonet]

I’m rounding the corners with the the Fillet Cap radius and then dropping the MoText Object into a Subdivision Surface set to Catmull-Clark, with a Subdiv Renderer value of 3, and Subdivide UVs (which up to know I don’t understand what they’re for… as I can never see any change) set to Standard.

I’ve tried putting the Subdiv Renderer value up to 6, and down to 1, and the result is always the same. The weird thing (or perhaps it’s not weird at all) is that in the editor I can’t see any of these weird bulges.

The problem with raising up the cap segments is that it really doesn’t solve the issue, it only perhaps softens it a bit, but then it also really takes away from the puffy marshmallow-y feel, and rather makes it more like a bevelled edge…

I’m thinking of changing the font… I’m currently using Arial Rounded, but I’ve found a Google Font called Nunito, which is basically a spin on Arial Rounded but it has more weight options (whereas AR only has the regular, boldish type). Nunito has Bold and Black options, so I can get more of that puffy feel from the font itself and lower the cap radius to 3. It still freaks out a little in some letters, but at least that T, which is the most noticeably horrible one, isn’t much affected.

I feel like what’s negatively affecting me here is the size of my text. Because I have another, bigger text, which also has a couple of weird angle bulges, but they’re much less noticeable, and can easily pass of as marshmallow-y imperfections. I could make the text much bigger, give it that feel, and then bake it into an object, but as I’m also using a Random effect to make each letter “float” a little, I think in the end I’ll be over-complicating everything. So maybe I’d be better off with the other font, and allowing for a little bit of angle weirdness.