Sascha, "I´m trying to export a set of clothes animated in marvelous designer over an animated avatar back to the host application Cinema4D R19 with FBX. I have tried all possible constellations of FBX versions and settings. I even tried to open the FBX files in 3Dsmax 2017 and Maya 2018. The materials never get opened correctly (always grey standard) and only in Maya I managed to see the animation of the clothes (not the avatar animation). 3DSMax crashes while trying to open the FBX."

Is there any Export and Import Settings Preset that makes sure that animations and materials are imported correctly into CINEMA4D R19. Or at least into 3DSMAX 2017 or MAYA 2018 ? Or a tutorial showing how that actually works?"

In what format and avatar do you have the animation in Cinema 4D?

It´s a imported DAZ figure with a bvh applied exported from c4d to marvelous and there clothes attached simulated and then tried to export...

Ok, good. You could import that into MD with FBX/Collada but it is not the best way. A joint animated motion depend on interpolation and there will always be small discrepancies between the motion in MD vs in Cinema(resulting in Poke Through). Therefore it is better to rely on Point cache. The MDD in Riptide Pro plugin is rock solid and work both to and from MD-C4D. If you do not have Riptide you use Alembic. But Riptide is better IMO. In R19 Alembic shall be much improved but I do not have it. The reason that the old Alembic did not work so well was that you could not edit the mesh. So the workflow is,

1. Export the Avatar with MDD/Alembic to MD
2. Make the animation
3. Export the simulated cloth back to C4D with MDD/Alembic.

When you export to MD do not send the whole avatar, (with teeth nails, eyes etc). Only one continuous mesh. It might be better to cut off the hands too, depending on the animation! (The hands frequently interfere with the cloth negatively).

Hi!

Thanks for the input. Here´s what we tried:

Use Alembic for in and out of MD. Problem: MD-Cloth Mesh-Animation is working fine in C4D but the MD cloth-materials are gone completely.

Use Alembic for in and obj with MDD (With Riptide Pro) for out of MD. Problem: No animation and materials all black.

The only way we could get the MD Cloth materials properly into C4D was using fbx. BUT ONLY when there is no animation done within MD before. As soon as we put animation into the fbx file, the materials are gone.

So obviously we are doing something wrong in the settings. Could you describe the process incl. presets ?

Thanks!

SaschaK!

I will make a video for you tomorrow evening!

Here is the video,

Animation export/import between Cinema 4D and MD using MDD with Riptide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=506Xdcz3H4w

As you can see there are some interference from the hands in the end of the simulation. It would have been better without hands but I let it be to show.

Hi Vintorix!

thanks for the effort to build the tutorial video! Wow. And it brings us at least one step further as in this way we at least get the material tags in (Animations have been working in alembic for us already). But the core problem still is unresolved: How to get the materials into c4d. The coat you are using has 3 materials, but only the "transparent" one looks like to have properly imported. The two other ones are just black. No textures no shader colors etc. imported. Do you have an idea how to fix that?

Thanks

Sascha

SaschaK,

Yes, the material tags are one of the advantages over Alembic. Another is that you can split the mesh and the animation still works.

About the materials I did not knew that it was an issue otherwise I would have included them. The thing is, MDD follow the same rules as OBJ.

For that C4D shall respect the .mtl file (the companion file to OBJ) it must:

1. Either reside in the same folder as the .c4d file, or
2. Be in a tex subfolder to the .c4d file

Then use relative file paths and put all the material files in the same folder too. (In practice, Save project with Assets and put the OBJ and the MDD file in the tex folder)

If you do that the materials will be imported. (Tone down the specularity)

Fantastic! It works! Thanks so much. That really helped!