Issues cloning a cloner object + using fields to drive it's reveal
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Hi there, I'm trying out an exercise where I take some animated petals that I've created with a cloner, and then clone them across the surface of a tree. It all works well and as expected until I use a plain effector to drive the visibility of the flowers. The plain effector has a scale set to -1 and is driven by either an inverted spherical field moving up the surface of the tree, or a linear field animated upwards. For some odd reason the animation/reveal only pops on mid way instead of gradually like you'd expect from a field.
It seems to work just fine If I clone a sphere instead of cloning a cloner. I've tried exporting the flower animation out as an alembic but it causes c4d to crash every time.
Attached is the file for reference. Thanks for taking a look!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QRA2n1J6idPULwrLxBt0BAhDOMtvMeTX/view?usp=sharing
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Ok, I brought the flower petals cloner into a new scene and exported the the whole scene as an abc. Brought that back in and now it works! I'm not sure why it was causing issues. I guess cloning a cloner causes issues?
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Hi signature-view,
Thanks for the file.
I was exploring it while you already answered. I think the key part is the Multi-Instances.
To quick check that, set the amount to 25 first, then back to Render Instances. It works here, at least how I think it was intended.Yes, Alembic is often a good idea, and I'm glad you got it working so quickly.
Here is quick demo of Render Instances vs Multi Instances.
CV4_2026_drs_26_MGmr_01.c4dMy best wishes for your project.
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Ah, that's so interesting! I thought the render instance vs multi-instance was only about how it handles the processing/rendering. I didn't realize it handles animation differently. Thanks!
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Thank you for the reply, signature-view.
There are a few things that Multi-Instance can't do, like using the "Blend" mode between two or more objects to create a huge variety of different objects.
Example
CV4_2026_drs_26_MGic_01.c4dOne line from the documentation might stand out, while not replacing all other content: "Is it still worth using the Render Instance mode? Yes, this is still to be seen as a kind of reserve parachute. If undesirable behavior occurs with Multi-Instance - e.g., a certain functionality does not run as it should - switch back to Render Instance. "
https://help.maxon.net/c4d/2026/en-us/Default.htm#html/OMOGRAPH_CLONER-ID_OBJECTPROPERTIES.html#multi
Cheer
