Thanks, Dr. Sassi.
Too bad, there isn't a ready solution, but at least it's not because I'm missing something.
I was hoping for a parametric solution, but have figured that I can export plan views out of one of my CAD apps, into illustrator. Then, from there, into C4D and go about my business.

Cheers!

I'm struggling to figure out which tool, if any, can project the outline of a 3D shape, onto another surface?
I understand the "Project Object" tool can do something similar, but in all my tests, it (essentially) just moves every single point / polygon / edge to the other surface. But I ONLY want the spline outline, of that resultant shape.

Any ideas?

Thank you!

Exactly. Thanks, Dr. Sassi.
Such a great tool, which I have never used or thought of using, until now.
Enjoy your time off, and have a great 4th of July.

Never mind! Found the video; it was Chris Schmidt's (always excellent) roundup of new features from C4D 2024.4.
The tool is the "Property Transfer Manager" and it's buried in the "Character" tab. I never thought to look there.
In any event, it seems to do exactly what I need.

I'm positive I had watched a Maxon video, from one of your contributor experts, and they detailed how you can transfer a UV map from one object, to another similar one. But I can't find it now.
I need to do precisely this. I have the same object; one version is very-high poly, the other very low.
I unwrapped the UV's on the low one, because the results are very good. But I need to use that on the high-poly model, for final texturing.

How does one do this?

Thanks!

Yeah, absolutely. I see the inherent complexity in something like that. I'll be able to really test your solution on an actual work project this coming week. So I can report back, depending on what I wind up doing.

Have a great weekend!

Wow, cool. Thanks, Dr. Sassi. I'm studying the key aspects of what you built, so I can understand more of what the operations are. Initially, it does look like the operation is generating individual polygon edges > splines and that's what you used to drive the eventual sweep.
So it's not necessarily one single spline, but many. So I might not be able (for instance) navigate an object / light around those pieces with something like the align to spline function. But overall, this still seems like a very solid option for other effects.

Cheers!

Good morning!

I'm wondering whether there is any method, to generate a parametric spline from a boolean of solid objects?
I've attached the simplest of scenes, for example. In it the figure is being cut away by a cube. I would like to be able to generate a spline outline of that red region. I would then use that spline for other effects; generate particles, sweep with other geometry, etc.

Simple enough as a still...but not if the cube is animated.

Is there a function or series of functions, which can accomplish something like this?

Thanks

Thank you, very much, Dr. Sassi.
I'm studying your invention, and I'll see what I can gain from your generous investment of time.

Being that I still need to find a solution for a current job. Maybe I can pivot this a little. In my example scene, I need to change the shape of the splines & spline mask. One thing I need to do, is soften / chamfer the harder edges; but I need to maintain the parametric nature of the object.
As it stands, the only "chamfer" solution I know for splines, is destructive. I've tried throwing the "smooth" deformer at the splines, as well as the delta mush deformer; but neither seem to have any effect on splines - only polygon objects.

Any thoughts, Dr. Sassi?

Cheers!

Thanks, Dr. Sassi. I'll watch that video, in its entirety. Once I get through the job that required figuring something like this out...

Hey,

I'm dipping my toe (barely) into object node creation. I'm wondering what the steps might be, to recreate the parametric shape in my attached scene, as nodes. Right off the bat, I didn't see any obvious node for MoGraph; so not sure whether that is simply not available in that method of object creation? Is there another node / combination of nodes, which afford similar features as MoGraph?

Thanks, for any initial guidance.

reference shape.c4d

Dr. Sassi, thank you so much, as always, for your efforts.
I worked around the issue, to get through my deadline. But I haven't solved the actual problem; which I believe may be somewhat related to the actual geometry object, which is acting as the surface emitter.
I'm attempting to build a version of that project, with a proxy object serving the same purpose, but I'm finding the results are different enough, to likely not warrant the effort.
Complicating matters (as you certainly know) is that the final banding results don't entirely manifest until the whole particle system is cached, and even then, only at final render.
I'll continue to see whether I can create a scenario which illustrates the issue, then I'll post the example project.

As a side-note: I've come to find an serious issue between the "sphere instances" and "optimized spheres" as they relate to rendered particles.
When I view the optimized sphere particles through the RS viewport, they appear as expected; just like the sphere instances.
However, upon final render, the optimized spheres tend to have an offset from the emission source, by a noticeable amount of pixels.
I'm aware that the Maxon documentation warns that there may be certain limitations for the optimized spheres, but the fact that the issue only manifests in final render, makes it extremely time-consuming to find.
But this is likely more a Redshift issue, being that it directly relates to their render tag, right?

Thanks, Dr. Sassi.
I'm moving ahead with a workaround; on deadline right now. I'll circle back, and build it a representative scene, after I finish this.

Greetings!

I'm encountering some obvious banding, in particles which are emanating from the surface of an object (mesh emitter).
I'm utilizing a Follow Spline modifier, with rather strong settings so that the emitted particles rapidly move away from emitting surface. This, is where I'm getting banding. I've tried the obvious, by radically increasing the simulations / particles / substeps.
But to no avail.
Are there any other critical settings that which I'm unaware, that would affect particle banding?

I'm sorry, this is happening in a client project, and I don't have the time to reduce it down to something I can share; but maybe in a little bit I can.

Thank you!

Good idea. While, it doesn't necessarily present itself as a bug, perhaps it's an efficiency aspect which could be improved, in the future.

Hi, Dr. Sassi.
Thanks for the suggestions / questions.
Unfortunately, I really can't get around the direct use of the "live" vertex maps, on the active objects. There is simply far too much direct control over the RS materials, to do anything else.
Over the weekend, I tested different ways to actually construct those vertex maps; some using freeze objects, others, directly linked to the polygon tags, etc.
Ultimately, no real difference in performance. Interestingly, the performance hit comes when the actual objects (with the vertex tags) are animated. When those are static, and only the camera moves, it's as fast as can be.
So, clearly, there is something "under the hood" with the way Cinema processes vertex maps, when motion is involved.

I already just posted one question, regarding the creation and modification of vertex maps.
However, I'm finding that regardless of that, I'm still encountering extreme viewport performance degradation, directly related to my objects' vertex maps.

So...is there any way to optimize such maps, or more realistically, a way to only have them active at render-time?
I'm only using them for material creations; not for deformations, nor other FX. So, they only need to be active when RS needs to render a frame.

Does this question even make any sense?

Thanks.

Morning!

Note: I posted this identical question, over on the Maxon RedShift General Forum.

This isn't entirely a RS question, however, my RS material specifically relies on using many Vertex Attribute nodes, so there is an important corollary.
I've noticed that if I drag a polygon selection tag, into an existing vertex map field, the resultant "variable tag" absolutely chokes the viewport performance. There must be some horribly inefficient process C4D is using, to generate the vertex map from the polygon selection, in realtime. However, if I simply highlight those same polygons, then generate a new vertex map, there is no more slowdown in performance.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

So, is there a way to add polygon selections to an existing vertex map, without having to just drag the polygon selection tag into the vertex fields?

Thanks!

Great. Thanks, as always, Dr. Sassi. I'll run through your notes, and your new scene, to see whether I can get a handle on the situation. Ultimately, I may just have to forge ahead, and just deal with masking the problem areas in AE, given the deadlines on the work. Then, I can try to learn more about this, after.