topic Re: Custom particle geometry on Arnold Procedural in Arnold for Cinema 4D Forum

Custom particle geometry on Arnold Procedural

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 00:20:08 GMT

When loading an Alembic particle cache using C4D's native Particle Geometry I can assign an Arnold Tag and give the particles custom geometry, radius, variation, etc. Can't find a way to do the same when loading the same .abc into an Arnold Procedural. Tried an Arnold Scatter and custom settings in an Arnold Tag.

X-Particles doesn't pass rotation data to Thinking Particles so it can't be baked into an alembic file.

Edit : Didn't realize Arnold Scene Export could recognize X-Particle caches directly. Importing that .ass sequence in and applying an Arnold Tag set to Points worked. Was previously using the XP-to-TP-to-ABC route which strips the cache of anything but position. Still can't figure out how to get custom shapes on that using the Procedural / ABC method.

Edit 2: I was mistaken. It was inheriting the shape set in the XP Emitter's Display tab. Still can't assign custom shapes to .ass sequence particle cache.

Re: Custom particle geometry on Arnold Procedural

peter.horvath6V6K3 — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 09:18:52 GMT

It's not possible unfortunately. Instancing with a custom shape is done by the plugin in export time on a particle system which exists in the scene. A procedural is a black box in that sense.

You can use an operator to change the mode on the points node within the procedural to render spheres, but no custom geometry.

Re: Custom particle geometry on Arnold Procedural

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 23:05:10 GMT

Glad I wasn't missing something. XP's lack of Alembic support is frustrating. Turns out XP can run unlicensed through C4D commandline so I worked with the farm admin to get it installed.