Mograph colors not working?

[angelo_isenia]

Hi,

I am currently testing Vray5 in R23 but I cant seem to get the mograph colors into the diffuse channel when making a material.
When I don't use any material I see the random colors but as soon as I make a vray material > add a mograph color shader into the diffuse > apply material on cloner, they all turn black.
Am I doing something wrong?

I attached my simple setup, hope this helps : https://www.dropbox.com/t/WyUroMInV7nrork2

[aleksandar.kasabov]

Hello angelo_isenia,

This has already been discussed here. Currently, the MoGraph color shader is not supported by V-Ray 5 for Cinema4D. We have already added a feature request for this and I will update this thread once we have more info on the matter. Thanks.

[angelo_isenia]

Thanks Aleksander, I read a lot of threads but skipped this one because I thought it was about transparency. Even a forum search didn't really work for me.

I heavily use color/weight (mograph) data for abstract motion graphics and was hoping to drop Redshift for V-Ray so I will put my further experimentation on hold until this is supported.

[imdb]

Thanks Aleksander, I read a lot of threads but skipped this one because I thought it was about transparency. Even a forum search didn't really work for me.

I heavily use color/weight (mograph) data for abstract motion graphics and was hoping to drop Redshift for V-Ray so I will put my further experimentation on hold until this is supported.

I found a workaround. Use Bake Material tag from C4D. It's painful so do this when you're ready for production render.

Simply create basic material which read mograph color, using Bake Material tag, bake out Color channel to a sequence of files.

Then in V-Ray material, use sequence file (Animation) feature, it'll essentially read all the sequenced baked out color files during the render.

[akos_kiss]

Hi!
Sorry for the nagging but is there any update on the mograph color shader? This would be extremely useful shader to have as there is no real alternative, just compelx workarounds, some of them mentioned here in the forum( like baking materials as image sequence, or editing vertex maps. I just would like to emphasize the importance of the mograph shaders for cinema 4d and motion design.

[aleksandar.kasabov]

Hello akos_kiss,

Unfortunately, we don't have any updates on the MoGraph color shader yet. I will bump the priority of the request and I will let you know as soon as we have more information.

Your patience and understanding are highly appreciated!

[chris_phillips]

I noticed that when I do not have a vray material applied to geometry that has a display color of Red (for example)... or if i have clones with random colors applied with a random effector... vray will see those colors in the vfb. But the moment I apply a vray material, it's not possible to access those colors through the material?

What's goin on there?

This maybe the one really major headache from Vray so far. Getting is getting very close to being a pretty solid implemented render engine - this feature is definitely a must have!

Accessing mograph weights, mograph color, mograph weight tags even - all incredibly useful!

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hi chris_phillips, you are seeing the object color when there is no material applied, because V-Ray is using an implicit diffuse material in case the object has no material applied. Once you assign a real material, it overrides this implicit one.

As aleksandar.kasabov mentioned above - the MoGraph shader has been prioritized and is already planned for implementation, although I can not give exact timeframe for this yet.

In the meantime it would really be helpful if we can gather a list of the most used and necessary MoGraph properties that would be useful for materials.

[chris_phillips]

Hi deyan.hadzhiev That makes sense - and thanks for explaining!

For most commonly used mograph properties:
I thought about writing them out - and I hate to point to another render engine and say "just do what they do" - but there's actually a page in Cinema4D's help manual page that does an extensive explanation on how Redshift handles this with gifs and all. These cover all the bases really and show some pretty key ways to tap into the real power of why people use Cinema.

https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s26/en-us...CommonUserData

If I personally were to pick out the most commonly used from this Help Doc:
- MGColor (mograph color)
- MGWeight (mograph weight)
- ObjectColor (simply a display color of an object)
- GeomID (but i think this is covered by the multisubtex)

Off topic a little bit but I think important to the discussion - one of the other most handy things I think C4D users have grown most accustom to is taking these values, and colorizing them through a ramp node. As it stands right now, the vrayRamp in the node editor is pretty amazing that you can pipe textures through each knot. But it would be great to have an option to pipe values to re-colorize a texture, mograph color, etc. -- Essentially what I'm referring to is the native Colorizer shader that you support for the non-node based shaders - but for node graphs.

For example: A common thing I will do is use a random effector to generate random black to white values - then use a ramp / colorizer within my node graph to have more instant feedback in the IPR or to test out multiple colors options. Of course could just make the colors all within mograph itself, but it can be easier to branch into other potential needs this way.

I've other thoughts at this point I could continue sharing but it may require a new post

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Thanks for the provided list, we already considered adding some of those, but we will definitely check out the help page you pointed for more usecases and examples.

... Essentially what I'm referring to is the native Colorizer shader that you support for the non-node based shaders - but for node graphs.

We actually added support for such setups in the node graph in 5.20.05, and you can achieve the colorizer effect with this node setup:



Once we add support for the MoGraph shader, the effect you described would be achievable with similar setup. Generally I suggest making use of the newly introduced material converter, which would convert a material with Colorizer shader to the setup I showed above. It should also work fine with other shaders that we added native support for (e.g. the native Fresnel shader in non-physical mode - with gradient).

[chris_phillips]

ah! fantastic. I wasn't even sure what to use the Color to UVW node was for. Very nice.

thanks for that!