Random number of clones in child cloners?

Random number of clones in child cloners?

by Sasha Zelman

on Oct 14, 2011 at 4:07:29 pm

Random effector is great, but one important aspect that it does not control is number of clones. Is there a setting or XPresso diagram for that?

Re: Random number of clones in child cloners?

by Adam Trachtenberg

on Oct 14, 2011 at 8:10:25 pm

check the visibility box in the random effector's parameter tab. ;-)

Re: Random number of clones in child cloners?

by Sasha Zelman

on Oct 15, 2011 at 10:23:24 pm

Thank you for your reply. Your tip goes a long way toward the solution I was seeking. The one obstacle that remains is the problem of sequence - the setting hides some clones rather than changing the number of cloned objects and the results with any ordered sequence appear as gaps rather than shorter sequences. Any ideas on how to avoid it?

For example, think of 3D music meter with multiple fragmented bars indicating the waveform values at given frequency - so, let's say, we have 10 bars, every bar made of up to 20 blocks. Is it possible by using mograph effectors to control number of sequential blocks in each bar?

Re: Random number of clones in child cloners?

by Adam Trachtenberg

on Oct 16, 2011 at 5:10:43 am

Sure, I think I know what you're driving at. In the following example I have a cloner that has two clones as children. The children are the same except that one produces only one clone and the other produces 20. The parent cloner is set to blend mode. A random effector is then assigned which has "modify clone" set to 100%. That causes the random effector to influence the blend between the two child cloners. Probably clearer if you just check out the file:

3079_vumetermograph.c4d.zip

Of course you can use a sound effector in place of the random effector to make it behave like an actual VU meter.

Re: Random number of clones in child cloners?

by Sasha Zelman

on Oct 16, 2011 at 6:59:08 pm

Thank you again for the help. Just by reading your answer it sounds quite right, I will look at your file in a few moments... The more I work with c4d the more I love it due to its shear number of the ways you can recombined the elements... the problem is to realize the very possibility of such innovative combinations. I wish there were better books on the subject...