• Introduction
• Cloner object
• Effectors - Overview
• Group effector
• Delay effector
• Formula effector
• Inheritance effector
• Random effector
• Shader effector
• Sound effector
• Spline effector
• Step effector
• Target effector
• Time effector
• Linear Clone Tool, Radial Clone Tool & Grid Clone Tool
• Matrix object
• Fracture object
• Instance object
• Text object
• Tracer
• Spline mask
• Displace Deformer
• Extrude deformer
• Spline wrap
• Cache tag / Baking animations
• MoGraph shaders
• Manual and Tutorials
• Goodies / Samples Scenes Etc
• XPresso for MoGraph
• Release 10 and MoGraph
• Conclusion

Cloner object

The Cloner object is one the key objects in MoGraph. It allows objects that are placed as child objects of it to be duplicated / cloned in one of 4 modes:

Linear - Arranged in a straight line. The clones can be progressively rotated or scaled in a similar manner to using the duplicate tool. The difference being that the settings can be animated so you could for example start with one cube and end up with a line of say 100 cubes.

Radial - Arranged in a radial array. Again similar to how the radial array object works.

Grid array - Arranged in a grid array. The grid can be cubic, spherical or cylindrical. Care needs to be used with the grid array as it's easy to overload your CPU. For example there must be some built in maximum size that prevents anything much over a 36x36x36 grid array. If you attempt to use higher counts than this then you end up with no objects at all. There's a clever percentage fill option that makes the grid hollow as often you won't see the clones on the inside. What I would suggest to Maxon is that as the grid array is made hollower then the array dimensions can be increased but the overall count remaining no more than around the approximate 145,000 maximum clones. e.g. a grid array of 100x100x100 but with a 3 % fill

Here's a cut away of a grid array of cubes. A Random effector is used to generate the random colours. The cut away is made by a Step effector with sphere falloff and a large Y axis fall off to remove the clones. The grid array has a 10% fill. I’ve found that Booleans and MoGraph don’t mix too well and apart from bogging down your computer it’s almost impossible to use any shading or colour effects like here.

While we're talking about grid arrays, another suggestion I would have for MAXON is that a simplified grid array object be part of the core version of CINEMA 4D as currently there isn't one. We've got a radial array and the linear option for the duplicate tool but no grid array. The alternative, apart from MoGraph is if the user has Jenna with its Grid Array object but as mentioned this is no longer available.

Lastly there's the object mode. This is very powerful. You can arrange your clones on to splines and objects. When arranged on to objects this is similar to using the Place on Points plugin. What's clever is the object being arranged on to doesn't have to be made editable, so for example you can arrange your clones on to a sphere with 10 segments and animate the number of segments increasing. As the segments increase so does the quantity of clones. There are a number of options for how clones are arranged on to objects. They are vertex (points), polygon centre, edge or a surface option. The surface option is a random option and you can specify the number of clones scattered on the surface. Naturally, the number of clones can be animated.

But hang on, I don't want my clones duplicated across the entire object. No problem, just create a polygon selection and drag and drop the selection tag into the selection field on the Cloner object.

Did I mention that you can arrange your clones on to Thinking Particles groups or even standard particles? Well you can by using a TP group or a standard particle emitter in the object field of the cloner tag.  This then allows you to use particle effects on your clones.  And even more cool is you can use effectors as well. Slick!!. Make sure you have a look at our Matrix Object tutorial as MoGraph and Thinking Particles work really well together. The Matrix object can also be placed in the object field of a cloner object and this is an alternative method of arranging your clones on Thinking Partciles or working with deformers. We'll cover this later. Those intimidated by Thinking Particles complexity will find using MoGraph in conjunction with it, simplifies the XPresso code required.  MoGraph won't do away with having to use XPresso for more advanced Thinking Particles effects but it will open the door to begin using it and may encourage the user to delve more into Thinking Particles and XPresso.

Now all of what we've been talking about with regard to the Cloner object may sound a bit boring. The fun starts when you begin animating and or using effectors. We'll cover effectors later. Let's say you want to animate a simple conveyor belt animation. This is an absolute doddle with MoGraph. It's as easy as this:

1. Create cube or object for belt
2. Make the cube a child of the cloner object
3. Create a spline and use the spline in the object field of the cloner object
4. Increase the count option on the cloner object to get enough clones
5. Increase the "Rate" option on the cloner object above 0%
6. Press play

Here’s a short video of 3DKiwi doing the above. Click here to watch. 1min 16sec 1.1mb

http://www.c4dcafe.com/reviews/Mograph/Tanktracks/Tanktracks.html

Check out this bicycle chain animation that I made using the above technique. I just modelled one complete link. Absolutely no keyframes. Not 100% perfect accuracy but pretty good. Those familiar with Path Deformer or the Iterator object in Jenna, using MoGraph is a lot easier.

The cloner object has an "Effector" tab where you can drag and drop effectors to create various effects. When you have a cloner object selected and create an effector object, the effector is automatically added to the effector field of the cloner object. You can have more than one effector in this field and the order is important. Cloner objects can be nested i.e. you can make clones of clones for some incredibly complex animations or stills.

I should mention that you’re not just limited to having one object as a child object of a cloner. You can have a whole lot of assorted objects. Here’s an example where 5 primitives are a child of a cloner object. By changing the “Clone” mode we change how the clones are arranged. A MoGraph multishader material has been applied to the cloner object.

There's still more options for the Cloner object but we’ve covered the main ones and we hadn’t planned on writing a book!!

Previous    Next