My article on MoGraph

[Damsel]

Very nice job Mylenium. :)

[JoelOtron]

Very good work Mylenium!
http://forums.cgsociety.org/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif

[ChrisCousins]

Well, I have been rather pesky those last weeks and if anyone ever wondered why, now is your chance to find out:
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/mylenium/MoGraph_Overview/index.html
Mylenium


Oh dear, the credit card's started twitching again...

[AdamT]

Good article. The only major thing I disagree with is your criticism of the use of object link boxes instead of a pure heirarchy system. It does add an extra step, but IMHO it's a lot more flexible, cleaner, and solves problems you can run into with nested heirarchies.

[flingster]

its an interesting read..i'm glad you brought up comparisons with jenna/ditools. imo development on ditools has been sporadic since intro of phystools, mograph and remo working for other companies, ditools documentation is lacking big time. however there are over 60 objects plugins, xpresso tags, shaders, postfx, expressions...its not a one trick pony by any stretch of the imagination...cloning and the like were major parts in its user usage and its still one of the fastest at handling large amounts of geometry cloned...its not really a motion tool like mograph which is a ground up build of a motion tool...what it is a set of ditools. mograph still misses large amounts of ditools functionality as does c4d...ditools misses some of mograph functionality as well. were remo will take us next is anyones guess. I think you shed some interesting light on mograph with this article and represented ditools/jenna in a pretty fair way really which i'm glad about but just wanted to point out some of ditools pov. that said i'd rather this thread didn't turn into a ditools/jenna/mograph head to head so hopefully i've covered some of the ditools state of play as background.

[Per-Anders]

On the object linkboxes... you don't have to use them if you don't want. You can just use a pure hierarchy if you wish (I'm surprised no-one has tried this, I'm pretty sure it's covered in the manual, though I would have thought it would be hte first thing people tried if theyr'e used to the ditools/jenna method). It allows you to also use things like thinking particles and potentially tags for input into the cloner which wouldn't be possible otherwise.

As for the effector and tracer and their inputs. well an effector is applied to whatever objects are currently selected when you create it, and the tracer tracers whatever objects are currently selected too.

[JDP]

On the object linkboxes... you don't have to use them if you don't want. You can just use a pure hierarchy if you wish (I'm surprised no-one has tried this, I'm pretty sure it's covered in the manual, though I would have thought it would be hte first thing people tried if theyr'e used to the ditools/jenna method).

I've tried it, and yes it's in the manual.:)

Cheers,
JDP.

[Mylenium]

On the object linkboxes... you don't have to use them if you don't want. You can just use a pure hierarchy if you wish (I'm surprised no-one has tried this, I'm pretty sure it's covered in the manual, though I would have thought it would be hte first thing people tried if theyr'e used to the ditools/jenna method). It allows you to also use things like thinking particles and potentially tags for input into the cloner which wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Yes, it is. However, the manual also clearly states that hierarchical structures cannot achieve certain effects and hence the link boxes. The problem with that is that it becomes awkward once you need to change something. In a hierarchy you wouldn't bother as it would be a normal step in making the entire setup work but who remembers every single link box buried within a hierarchy? I simply feel that in many cases it's unnecessary e.g. with spline effectors. Since a spline effector only handles one spline at a time why go thru such lengths as to provide a link box if you could just have dragged the spline below the effector? It just adds extra work where it needn't be.



As for the effector and tracer and their inputs. well an effector is applied to whatever objects are currently selected when you create it, and the tracer tracers whatever objects are currently selected too.

Yes, but there is no reason for the Tracer to not work with any effectors, is there? Try this: Use a cloner, throw in some circle splines, throw this hierarchy into a tracer. It will trace the pivot points of the circles. So far, so good. However, would it not be much cooler if it respected all transforms made to the circles and used them as a cross section for the Sweep NURBS? Or what with falloffs for "light trails" based on effector distances? Nada. Alas, a great chance for some extra coolness has been missed and it feels incoherent.

Mylenium

[Per-Anders]

Hi,

The spline effector though acts as a deformer too. However there is nothing in Jenna or Ditools that does what it does (at lesat using any hierarchy) so that's not really a fair comparison. Also the things that the linkboxes allow are things like using TP or tags, which you just can't have hierarchically, TP has no "object" to put your object under for instance. It's much less flexible, and there's nothign to stop you just using the normal hierarchy system otherwise, and keeping the same workflow as before, put the cloner as a child of the spline/polygon etc object and away you go, same as in Jenna/Ditools.

As for the tracer, it does work with effectors just fine if you trace objects in a cloner that has effectors on it (or even a matrix object, but there you wont be able to trace the obejcts verteces obviously like you can with a cloner), the traced paths include the effects of effectors on what's being traced, however it may be that i'm not following what you're attempting to do there, what do you mean "respected transformations made to the circles and used them for a sweepnurbs"? Perhaps show a scene because it sounds like youw ant to do something that's not quite in line with how cinema handles it's sweepnurbs.

The tracer creates splines, that's all. You can apply effectors to them (as deformers using the points mode) if you wish and how you texture/render them is up to you. Making them change color along length is just a matter of using a gradient in the texture for your sweepnurbs (if that's what you're using), or using the sketch & toon module to render (or I've even seen renders using hair for this). You can make falloffs form the effectors in shaders using the proximal shader (specially designed for creating falloffs from objects in shader terms) and the gradients. Beyond that I really don't know what an effector would do to a spline object, the deformation is just about all there is really as color data is the only other data you could apply to a spline from an effector (and there's no mechanism in cinema for passing color data down to a sweepnurbs for instance), though you could put the whole sweepnurbs result in a fracture object if you wish and effect it that way.

[Sneaker]

Try this: Use a cloner, throw in some circle splines, throw this hierarchy into a tracer. It will trace the pivot points of the circles. So far, so good. However, would it not be much cooler if it respected all transforms made to the circles and used them as a cross section for the Sweep NURBS? Or what with falloffs for "light trails" based on effector distances? Nada. Alas, a great chance for some extra coolness has been missed and it feels incoherent.

Mylenium

That does work.
Just set the "Handle Cloners" dropdown to "Clones of Clones" in the Tracer attributes.

Edit:
here is a sample, hope I understood what you ment
http://www.sneaker3.de/c4dscenes/mjr_mg_cl_sweep_01.c4d


-Michael

[Mylenium]

As for the tracer, it does work with effectors just fine if you trace objects in a cloner that has effectors on it (or even a matrix object, but there you wont be able to trace the obejcts verteces obviously like you can with a cloner), the traced paths include the effects of effectors on what's being traced, however it may be that i'm not following what you're attempting to do there, what do you mean "respected transformations made to the circles and used them for a sweepnurbs"? Perhaps show a scene because it sounds like youw ant to do something that's not quite in line with how cinema handles it's sweepnurbs.

Nope, you are misunderstanding me. It does e.g. not create a tapering effect because it does not use the cloned circles but rather uses an extra shape at a higher hierarchy level and only the traced paths/ splines which in this case should be redundant anyway. In a proper scenario it would use the shapes contained within the cloner (respecting their scale as the diameter and their rotation as the tangent vector). Of course in that case I'd have to use a loftnurbs, but let's not argue about such minutia as it's pointless with the Tracer's current implementation.


The tracer creates splines, that's all. You can apply effectors to them (as deformers using the points mode) if you wish and how you texture/render them is up to you. Making them change color along length is just a matter of using a gradient in the texture for your sweepnurbs (if that's what you're using),

No, it is no simple matter. Since the texture always spreads across the entire UV direction, the trail gets longer the longer the spline gets. This is not acceptable in many situations. I'd expect to be able to control the falloff based on any effectors or an relative distance. It's a simple case of the lack of a proper shader or texture tag for this purpose.


or using the sketch & toon module to render (or I've even seen renders using hair for this).

Yeah, and what of us mere mortals who don't have it? Sorry, if it was this way, I'd have to blame Maxon for making MoGraph a marketing ploy to buy even more modules. The proper thing in ways of customer friendliness would have been to include the hair strand gradient in MoGraph or implement a similar solution.


You can make falloffs form the effectors in shaders using the proximal shader (specially designed for creating falloffs from objects in shader terms) and the gradients.

Nope, useless. It measures in world coordinates, not in relative distances in UV space. If aplicable at all, only when your tracer moves in rather straight lines, otherwise it's uncontrollable. Imagine e.g. a knot shape where too much area is affected as soon as the proximity effect becomes too strong.


Beyond that I really don't know what an effector would do to a spline object, the deformation is just about all there is really as color data is the only other data you could apply to a spline from an effector (and there's no mechanism in cinema for passing color data down to a sweepnurbs for instance), though you could put the whole sweepnurbs result in a fracture object if you wish and effect it that way.

Yeah, developers call it SDK limitation but as a user I simply calls it a missing feature. So Maxon should get to working on it, don't you think? I know that as a programmer you have more insights into those matters, but as a user, quite frankly, I have to say I don't care how they pull it off. I only know that I want this feature and if they have to grow a third hand for it, then so be it ;o). As for ideas what they could do:

- dynamic point/ vertex weighting based on effectors
- adaptive SPD (since as per the manual it also works on splines)
- tangent weigthing for dynamic wrinkling
- any kind of shader effect
- particle emmission rate control (TP)
- illumination emission control (splines can be used as custom light shapes in AR, can't they ;-) )

And so on. You see, sometimes it's an advantage to be fresh to a program and simply think of the most crazy things.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

That does work.
Just set the "Handle Cloners" dropdown to "Clones of Clones" in the Tracer attributes.

Edit:
here is a sample, hope I understood what you ment
http://www.sneaker3.de/c4dscenes/mjr_mg_cl_sweep_01.c4d


-Michael

Thanks for the example, but see my comment to Per-Anders. It's still not what I want.

Mylenium

[Sneaker]

Thanks for the example, but see my comment to Per-Anders. It's still not what I want.

Mylenium

Then I have to say sorry, I still don't understand fully what you want.
Is there an example or any software that can do that?

Nope, you are misunderstanding me. It does e.g. not create a tapering effect because it does not use the cloned circles but rather uses an extra shape at a higher hierarchy level and only the traced paths/ splines which in this case should be redundant anyway. In a proper scenario it would use the shapes contained within the cloner (respecting their scale as the diameter and their rotation as the tangent vector). Of course in that case I'd have to use a loftnurbs, but let's not argue about such minutia as it's pointless with the Tracer's current implementation.


The sweep itself has now the option to change the spline thickness over the length,
even if it limited over the complete spline length.

For the Loft Nurbs I agree, a hierachical option like in extrude nurbs would be
would be much appreciated.



-Michael

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