Creating animated objects from cloner
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Im a bit confused that this is not a straight forward process in 2026 but i find myself again trying to figure out how to create individual animated (baked) objects from a cloner that had animated properties and effectors.
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Current state to object = fail (makes sense)
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Caching the animation (tag on cloner) + Current state to object = fail (makes less sense)
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Timeline Function "Bake Objects.." = fail (probably because the cloned objects were in hierarchy and there is no checkbox for it.. aka makes no sense at all)
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Baking as a Alembic = If it's gracious enough to work at all, it explodes as soon as you change its hierarchy.
Is there truly no way to simply press a button and have the cloner turn into individual keyframed objects?
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I had the same problem a few days ago. I found a great way to achieve the desired result. See this link with example file https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVRnQutX23A
But I agree... It should be simpler considering it's 2026.
The Mograph system is one of the strongest features in C4D.
Dear Maxon, One-click baking solution is very welcome! -
Is there truly no way to simply press a button and have the cloner turn into individual keyframed objects?
unfortunately not...
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Is there a place where we can submit ideas for future features? I think this feature would be very beneficial, particularly considering the importance of software interoperability today.
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@wing-bend
in the "Help" menu at the bottom -> "Report Bug/idea"- Baking as a Alembic = If it's gracious enough to work at all, it explodes as soon as you change its hierarchy.
Do you have a sample of this?
Alembic should work as long as you put the Cloner under a Connect Object -
I didnt try it with a connect object. If i come across this problem again, i will try it out. I have my doubts though since i have had so many problems with the alembic process over the years that i rarely even try it anymore.
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You shouldn't have any problems that don't have some sort of workaround. Whenever you have a scene that has issues, simplify it and post a link here and I can take a look...
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As a matter of fact i just came across this same problem trying to workaround the inability to give tracer (tracing animated cloned nulls) geometry (RS Object -> Curves -> Capsules) random colors via Random effector + Material (color user data).
My workaround was to just bake the whole thing down and give the traced objects individual materials manually. So i used a sweep instead of the RS Object tag geometry since that wouldnt work, and tried baking it as alembic.
Trying to bake the Sweep = Empty alembic
Trying to bake the cloner = Empty alembic (makes sense)
Trying to put the sweep in a connect and baking as alembic = C4D CrashesHere is the file:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m7v8rpmf3bgbfcu85qhxw/SwirlStrokes.c4d?rlkey=50iul5hkypw99lwkjr27c352a&dl=0 -
Here are a few suggestions.
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To create colorful traces you don't need splines. You can use this technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0LfxbzmYnk -
Use a Fracture Object on the Sweep and colorize each swept spline like you do with any mograph object
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u9n3apgbydfnhc3t3qko8/SwirlStrokes-Noseman-Fracture.c4d?rlkey=n4fyy0f2tc5daiqldvoytgyuc&dl=0 -
The Alembic export has a huge (known) limitation. If the first frame is empty, nothing exports. To trick it, you need to add at least a single point. In this scene I added a polygon primitive with 0 size under the Connect Object. It's a very ugly workaround, but it works.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0fmlgj4fbjdb6yvqsakav/SwirlStrokes-for-Alembic.c4d?rlkey=u7v4vpb560w77mv2ohcpt3v9m&dl=0
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To 1.: Yea i watched that video after i already had the animation done with cloners. If im not mistaken, this only works with particles.
To 2. and 3.: AMAZING! Thats two very valuable things i didnt know!
thanks so much!
