Apart from the awesome MoDynamics, PolyFX and MoSpline there are quite a few other enhancements in MoGraph 2. Here are some of the more important and interesting ones.
Camera Shader in Action
The Camera Shader is a special shader that displays in real time and in the Viewport what a nominated camera is currently seeing. Note for real time previewing you must Enable Enhanced OpenGL and Post Effects (This isn't mentioned in the documentation). The only other 3D application that I am aware of that has something similar is Lightwave 9 however with Lightwave you don't get a real time preview so well done MAXON for doing it better. The animation above is a bit of fun using 9 cameras and what those 9 cameras are seeing are applied as materials to the 9 LCD screens.
Note that in the Viewport preview you don't get the repeating into infinity effect. For that you need to do a render and the depth is governed by the Ray Depth option in the render settings.
For advanced users and those with some programming experience there is now a C.O.F.F.E.E. Effector. This is a programmable effector. A request that I have seen a few times in the forums is to make clones that are different sizes touch each other. This was virtually impossible previously. The following image demonstrates a custom C.O.F.F.E.E. Effector in action for the clones on the right hand side (code courtesy of MAXON). You can download a scene with this effector here (7kb) to use in your own scenes.
A C.O.F.F.E.E. Effector is applied to the clones on the right
There is now a Rail Spline option for Cloner Objects. Rail Splines are often used to prevent objects / instances flipping when using the Duplicate tool or an Align To Spline tag. Flipping isn't usually a problem when you have clones arranged on a spline using a MoGraph Cloner object. However there could be times when you need the extra control that a Rail Spline can offer. When you use a Rail Spline the clones are arranged on to a spline. The Y axis of the clone points at the Rail Spline. The following animation is an example if what can be achieved using an animated Rail Spline. Here I have made the rail spline visible by dropping it under a SweepNURBS object. Some bizarre effects can be achieved if you enable the Scale option for the Rail Spline.
Click here or on the image to download and play the animation (QT 1.5mb)
Spline Wrap objects now have a Rail Spline option. This isn't so much for orientating the object being deformed to the spline but for scaling the object along the spline although you can use the Rail spline to make the object or objects deformed along a spline aim at the rail spline. There are 2 options which are easier to explain visually. The image below shows a cylinder deformed to the blue coloured spline using a Spline Wrap object. The cylinder on the left is not using a Rail Spline. The cylinder on the right is using the Rail Spline and with the Target option enabled.
Rail Spline with Target option
See how the ends of the cylinder now orientate to the Rail Spline rather than being at a Tangent to the spline. The other option is Scale. The image below shows how some text is now scaled to match the Rail Spline. In addition the Rail Spline has the 2 end points in different Z axis positions then the letters aim themselves at the Rail Spline. The result as you can see is pretty slick and the sort of thing that you would do in a Vector Drawing program like Adobe Illustrator and then export the spline into CINEMA 4D.
Rail Spline with Scale option
Review by C4D Cafe © 2009