- 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
Linear Clone Tool, Radial Clone Tool & Grid Clone Tool
These 3 tools are used to interactively clone objects in the mode defined by the name of the tool. When you select one of these tools and left click a cloner object is created with either a copy of your object or an instance of it depending on what you select in the tool's options.
By dragging the mouse around and holding combinations of the shift and ctrl keys you define how many clones and the spacing. In linear mode you can define the direction of the clones. After you have finished dragging the mouse around the tool remains active and you can adjust settings for number of clones etc. I had trouble getting the hang of the grid clone tool and think it's probably easier just to do things manually by altering the cloner's object's parameters. The linear and radial tools on the other hand were easier to use and they allow you to position your clones in ways that would take some time to manually set up with the cloner object's parameters, for example the object surface placement option allows you to place the clones centred on an object's surface (flat surfaces work best)
One thing to be careful of, is since these tools are treated as regular tools they remain active so every time you click the mouse button another cloner object is created. You quickly get the idea to select another tool once you've finished creating your structure.
I'll mention it here since we're talking about clone tools. One tool that's missing from the core version of CINEMA 4 and that's a grid array / grid clone tool. Not everyone will buy MoGraph but there are regularly times that users require a grid array in every day modelling and animating. Perhaps a cut down version of the grid array / cloner object could be incorporated? Some other cheaper 3D applications have a grid array / clone tool.