Introduction  General Tab  Alignment Tab  Distribution Tab  Effects Tab  SplineSPREAD Shader  Documentation & Conclusion

Introduction

SplineSPREAD 1.1 is a plugin for CINEMA 4D. It is developed by plugin developer Frank Willeke going under the on-line name of C4D Jack. You can find C4D Jack's site here. The plugin costs 79.90 EUR which is about $103 US. As the name suggests the plugin is used with splines. In a way the plugin is similar to using MoGraph and arranging clones of a source object around a spline. However SplineSPREAD goes a lot further with what it can do using splines than what MoGraph can do. This review will look into what the plugin can do and give you an overview on how to use it.

The plugin comes as several modest downloads consisting of the plugin with some example files and a pdf manual available in English or German. A separate licence text file is emailed to you. The licence file is based upon your C4D serial number which you have to provide when you order the plugin on-line. Like most plugins it's just a matter of placing the files in your plugin folder and starting C4D. The licence text file has to placed in with the plugin as well to make it work.

Getting started

The SplineSPREAD plugin can be found in the plugin menu and consists of the SplineSPREAD object and also an Attractor object that we will come to later. Clicking on either will create and place them in the Object Manager. In addition to these 2 objects there is also a SplineSPREAD shader found on the material shader menu and also a SplineSPREAD XPresso Data node used to access data that the SplineSPREAD object generates. More on these later as well.

The SplineSPREAD object is in the Plugin menu.

Simple usage of SplineSPREAD consists of creating a SplineSPREAD object then placing one or more objects as child objects of it. A spline must be dragged into the Spline field so that the plugin knows which splines to align the clones to. You then adjust parameters to achieve the desired outcome and I will go through most of these and the various tabs in the following paragraphs. Here's how the Object Manager looks with basic usage. Things get a wee bit more complex once you start to do clever stuff.

Basic setup of Object Manager using SplineSPREAD.

Basic Tab

The Basic Tab is typical of the Basic Tab on most objects and the settings are self explanatory so there really isn't any need to cover them.

Basic Tab.

Introduction  General Tab  Alignment Tab  Distribution Tab  Effects Tab  SplineSPREAD Shader  Documentation & Conclusion