SET THE STRENGTH FOR EACH EFFECTOR
STEP BY STEP CREATE A SIMPLE STEPPED CLONE OBJECT IN C4D
Each rotation axis now has its own independent control. These can be controlled and animated within the Effectors Tab. For example, you can create a cool, stepped animation of the Pitch starting at zero and working up through 25% increments.
01 SET UP THE SCENE
This tutorial is created in Maxon Cinema 4D R25 and starts with a simple three-by-three cloner object, cloning two pyramid primitives as a group, which will quickly show orientation. A Cinema 4D cloner object only clones the top level of things within it, which is the 'Null Group' object – a handy way of controlling objects independently within a cloner.
02 CREATE A PLAIN EFFECTOR
The next step is to create a Plain Effector to control the rotation of each axis of rotation. Make sure only the Rotation parameter is ticked within the Plain Effector Object and set the H (Heading Parameter) to 360º, which ensures that the Effector will draw from the full range of rotation available. Ensure that the Effector is assigned to the cloner object by checking the cloner object’s 'Effectors' tab.
03 ADD A RANDOM FIELD
Now we need to add a Random Field to the 'H' Plain Effector using the Fields tab in the Effector's attributes.
In the Remapping field of the Random Field's attributes, set the Contour mode to 'Quantize'. In the Steps input field, set it to 4. This will give 90º rotation increments as the Rotation parameter of the Effector is set to 360º. If 45º rotation increments were required, input 8 steps instead of 4.
04 THE OTHER ROTATION AXIS
Repeat steps 02 and 03 to create the Pitch and Banking rotation Effectors with their own Random Fields and make sure that these are both applied to the cloner along with the Heading Effector. The cloner may not look random in every direction. To fix this, in each of the Random Fields’ 'Field' tab, set the 'Seed' to a completely different number, giving a genuinely random appearance.