• 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

XPresso for MoGraph

Like most things in CINEMA 4D , MoGraph objects and parameters can be driven by XPresso. In addition to this there are 3 new MoGraph specific nodes:

Data node - You hook up effectors or various other MoGraph objects and you are able to output various information e.g. say you have a cloner object with a grid array of cubes, you can access the position and rotation of each individual clone.

Update 2 November 2006 - Since completing the review, I have been playing around with the data node. Since this node ouputs the position etc of cloned objects or matrix node points, it's possible to use it with a bit of elegant XPresso to attach emitters (or any other object) to each clone. You can't clone emitters but you you can use XPresso with the data node to simulate it. If you use the matrix output from the data node, your emitters and particles can be scaled etc by effectors. Here's an animation where 50 emitters are attached to 50 hidden clones. The result is this cool animation.

Falloff node – Quite a clever little node. The node itself creates a falloff field and outputs values between 0 and 1. This node doesn’t necessarily have to be used with MoGraph. Here’s an example of a whole lot of coloured area lights. A text spline is used to define the shape of the falloff (splines and particles can be used). A vibrate expression is applied to the text spline making it move from side to side over the lights. If a light is within the area of the falloff shape then the intensity increases. This was ever so easy to do and there’s not 1 single keyframe in the entire animation. Can you imagine doing this without MoGraph? It would take an awful lot of work. This node opens up all sorts of possibilities for creativity. Technically I could have achieved the same result with a cloner object and effectors and some XPresso but this method is easier.

Sample Effector node – (The manual calls this an “Effector” node). Similar to the data note, the Sample Effector node allows you to extract information after the effector has been applied to the clones. This differs from the data nodes output as the data node outputs data for each clone before an effector effect whereas the sample effector outputs the data for clones taking into account what the effector has done.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand all this geek stuff. The great thing about MoGraph is you don’t need to be a geek to create some stunning effects. However gaining even a beginner level of knowledge of XPresso would be very beneficial to working with MoGraph and CINEMA 4D in general.

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