[Becco_UK]

Just installed the 'new' plugin to try. Fired up ok but I notice that some scene objects where Cinema visiblity 'red dots' are used is not being taken into account. In particular this problem occurs when an object is used in a nested Cinema Mirror object. Is this an oversight on my part or a problem with the plugin.

I typically use Cinemas' visibilty dots to hide from rendering dummy objects that are only in the scene for layout purposes. Now everything renders!

[JDHill]

Thanks, I can also create some hierarchies which cause the render dots to be read incorrectly. Shouldn't be much of a problem to fix this.

[Becco_UK]

Ok, Thank you. I've gone back to using an older plugin until the 'new' one is sorted out.

[Mr. Gog]

Is this an only C4d 9.6 problem?

[JDHill]

No, it should apply to all versions; it is dependent on certain combinations of object hierarchies where the object is being read from a generator's cache instead of directly, and thereby giving a false indication for the render dot status.

[JorisMX]

Triangles are okay here with 10.5 so far. No holes or weird stuff.

However it DOES triangulate my Meshes
Luckily I didn't jump the train and updated the plugin at work.
I am in the midst of a big job and had some kind of feeling there might be something that would need fixing first.

No offense JDHill, I think it is great what you are doing for the c4d-maxwell comunity.
I was just unsure, turns out I was for a good reason

Other than that I tested Instancing - fun, fun, fun
And I really like the new preferences additions with templates for jobs.
I have not experienced any of the wonderfull viewport display for MR materials, transparent objects are still opaque here.
Turned on Advanced OpenGL and other things to see it it was that, but nope.

Still looking around and Oh one other thing is, I don't get the new Scaling system at all.

What I used to do was Model with a factor of 100 i.e. 5cm thick candle would be 5 meters and then convert the scale using 0.01. This worked great.
Now when I use 1.0 it looks all wrong and when I start using 0.1 or 0.01 its also not right. I am not going to model in cm since c4d does not behave properly at this scale, Zooming the cam and everything is oversensitive.

Probably there's some mistake in my train of thought, so please be free to explain the new system to me!

Hope the Bugs will be fixed soon, since this is a really nice looking update, JDHill!

Keep on going man

[JDHill]

Yes, I really don't know how the triangulation issue wasn't noticed, but I believe I've already got it fixed. On viewport materials: Cinema caches the appearance in the file, so you'll need to force a refresh, i.e. select the material in the material manager and double-click its preview image in the Attribute Manager - that should update it in the viewport. Since I locked down the code for this version, I found that emitters are not shown correctly; they'll just be black. About scale, as in the release notes, the plugin starts with the Basic Units setting in Cinema preferences, then multiplies that by whatever you have set in the Scene object. So if you leave the Scene's multiplier at 1.0, things will be exported at the size that the Cinema UI says they are.

Let me know if you find anything funny with instancing - that's the most complex addition in this version, and it should be working universally - you should be able to group some objects under a null and instance the whole group with a single instance object...then you could array that, or instance an array of those instances...or instance a particle emitter of those instances...and so on.

[jc4d]

Hi JDHill, I don´t want to hijack this topic but I´m taking the chance since you are talking about instances...
It works great so far, the only thing I find is how it show in the viewport, as you can see in the picture the "guide" is not representative of the original object, it would be great if in some way the Instace object show as a cube or whatever of the envelopment of the original object with the null in the correct place in order to have more control at the moment to place many instances in a file (eg. cars in a parking lot).
I hope all this makes sence


Cheers
JC

[JDHill]

There are a few things going on there. Firstly, there are some cases where the instance object is drawing the bounding box in the wrong place - that will happen when the object's local center has been modified. I've fixed this in the code already and that will be available in an update as soon as possible. Secondly, the plugin relies on Cinema to tell it about the object being instanced - in some cases, this information is not correct, and there's nothing that can be done about it. However, when this happens, you can switch off the instance object's 'Auto-size' feature, and control the box (or point, or circle) it draws yourself using the size x/y/z sliders in the object. This mode should also be used when ultimate performance is desired, since it does not require the instance to traverse the object sub-tree that it is instancing - that means much less processing, and much greater performance.

[Mr. Gog]

Can be exported and emitter object linked to one or more instances?... It doesn't work here... any suggestions?
What's the difference between instance object (plug in) and the cinema instance?

[JDHill]

No, it is a limitation of the render engine: instances or the meshes they reference cannot have emitter materials. The plugin detects this and switches out the material with a default one to prevent the render engine from choking on the scene.

The difference between the plugin instance and the Cinema instance is that the Cinema one takes up lots of memory; the plugin just takes some processor power to draw itself, but it doesn't take any extra memory. When the Scene's 'Auto-generate instances' option is disabled, Cinema instances will be exported as regular meshes, since that's what they are; if it is enabled, the plugin will attempt to identify geometry which has already been written as a mesh and export subsequent copies of that geometry as Maxwell instances in the MXS file.

[Mr. Gog]

Ok... Thank you.

[Becco_UK]

The recent updates to the new plugin have resolved the visibility problem - thank you.