Greebler Tag : Custom Greebles tab

Although the 13 Stock Greebles with 3 grouping types and 5 variable Shapes goes a long way in allowing rich surface details, it would not be a very flexible tool if you could not use custom shapes to meet your goals. With Custom Shapes, you can expand your Greeble choices almost indefinitely (up to 1000 custom shapes per Greebler object or tag).

Generate Greebles

Enable or disable the generation of Custom Greebles on the input object's polygon selection set.

Settings

Combine with Stock Greebles

This option will combine the Custom Greeble mesh with the Stock Greeble mesh to form one Polygon object instead of the two separate ones.

Selections (top/sides/bevels)

Polygon Selection tags will be created for the top, sides, and bevel (if beveling is greater than 0%). This allows you texture these separate areas of the greeble extrusions independently.

Add Bottom Caps

Geometry is created to close the underside of the greeble extrusion so that you won't have hollow extrusions. Bottom caps can be textured independently of other areas as described on the main Greebler Object page.

Form to Polygon Shape

When disabled, greebles are simply placed onto the polygon as is. When enabled, the polygon is mapped into a unit-square and the greebles placed onto that. When the unit-square is mapped back onto the polygon shape, the greebles are misshaped so as to follow the polygon's form.

Relax Positioning

This allows the greebles to be placed less stringently with respect to the polygon's edges, thus creating a less obvious polygon-to-polygon greebling appearance.

Sparsity

Sparsity is a percentage of how many polygons will be excluded from being populated with greebles. At 0% sparsity, all polygons are employed. At 100% sparsity, no polygons are employed (same as not generating greebles at all). Polygons are randomly selected for exclusion.

Max. Greebles Per Polygon

The maximum number of greebles that will populate any polygon. For each polygon, a random number of greebles from 0 to this maximum is created.

Align Globally / Alignment

On more unidirectional surfaces such as a Landscape object, you may want the greebles to point in the up direction despite the change in surface normals. Enabling this setting allows you to achieve just that. The Alignment vector is an HPB rotation vector that lets you change the global pointing direction of the greebles. The first image below shows the nonaligned greeble results (following the polygon normals). The second image shows the result of enabling Align Globally.

Surface Offset

Two values set the minimum and maximum distance greebles will be moved away from the polygon surface, given in real units of distance. The offset range can be positive or negative. Note that the greebles follow the path of the direction they face. If Align Globally is enabled then they will move in the same direction. If disabled, they will move along their polygon's normal direction.

Height

Two values set the minimum and maximum height to which greebles will be extruded away from the input polygon surface, given in real units of distance.

Bevel

In order to soften the extrusion edges, you can add some edge beveling (45° breaks between the top and sides). The percentage is from 0%, where there is no beveling, to 100%, where the top basically becomes a point.

Length

These two values let you specify a range for which the greeble will occupy polygon space along one direction. For instance, 100-100% will cause the greeble to be about as long as the polygon.

Width

Similar to Length, these two values specify a range for occupying space in the other, perpendicular direction.

Add Phong Tag

Adds a Phong tag to the generated Custom Greeble objects so that you can control surface smoothing while Greebler is still procedural (not Made Editable). The next two options are identical to Cinema 4D's Phong tag settings and set the added Phong tag values accordingly.

Angle Limit

Enable the use of the Phong Angle as a determination of whether or not to smooth between two neighboring polygons.

Phong Angle [0..180°]

The angle represents the difference in angle between two neighboring polygons being considered in the Phong smoothing. The greater the value, the greater the polygon-polygon angular difference included in the smoothing process.

Grouping

Shapes can be grouped into any of three types: Bars (linear array), Array (MxN array), or Circular Array. Any of the Shapes available from the linked Library can be grouped.

Bitmap Buttons

The descriptive images for each grouping type are also toggle buttons which, when clicked, change whether or not the type is used.

Colored when enabled. Gray-scale when disabled.

Frequency

This allows you to control how many of the various custom shape and grouping types populate the object surface. At 100%, the particular greeble type has an equal chance as any other at 100%. At 50%, it has half the chance to be chosen as a greeble type for population. 0% is equivalent to disabling the greeble type. Basically, you can control whether or not there are more or less of a particular greeble type. If a greeble type is disabled then its Frequency value takes no part in the random decision process.

Random Surface Rotations

All greebles of this type will be rotated randomly on the surface plane. Note that this overrides Surface Rotation.

Surface Rotation

All greebles of this type will be rotated on the surface plane by the angle given.

Preserve Aspect

When enabled, the array remains square (Bars and Array) or circular (Circular Array). When disabled, it's shape can be rectangular (Bars and Array) or elliptical (Circular Array) as determined randomly by Size.

Size

If Preserve Aspect is disabled, you can alter the aspect (change the width to length ratio) of the grouping between the minimum and maximum percentages given. Size aspects are determined randomly between Min and Max.

Shape

A pull-down list which lists all of the available Custom Greebles, minus the grouping types, that can be used as the grouping element object. The pull-down list is dynamically seeded with the available Shapes.

Bars

Number of Bars

The minimum and maximum number of objects in the linear array (Bars).

Array

Rows / Columns

The minimum and maximum number of row and column objects in the Array.

Circular Array

Shape Scale

A relative scale value applied to each object in the Circular Array that allows you to vary the size of the objects with respect to the Circular Array size.

Count

The minimum and maximum number of objects on the circumference of the Circular Array.

Shapes

You can use up to 1000 custom shapes to extend your greebling possibilities. The custom shapes used for Custom Greebles must exist in the document and the container Null object added to the Library Linkbox to be utilized with the Greebler object or tag.

Library

Opens the Greebler Library Management window so that you can add Custom Shapes from your Library into the document for use with Greebler objects and tags. Custom Shapes must be prepared and added to the Greebler Shape Library before being able to be used with Greebler objects and tags. This only has to be done once but it is a critical step. See the Custom Shapes section for detailed information and a tutorial on how to create and use Custom Shapes with Greebler.

Library Linkbox

Custom Shapes are added to the document and childed to a Null object so as to keep them grouped for easier reference. When you drop the Null object into the Library Linkbox, all of the Custom Shapes are dynamically added to the Shapes list with toggleable images and Name for reference.

Select All

Convenience button which enables all Custom Greeble Shapes and Grouping types.

Deselect All

Convenience button which disables all Custom Greeble Shapes and Grouping types.

Bitmap Buttons

The descriptive images for each shape are also toggle buttons which, when clicked, change whether or not the type is used.

Colored when enabled. Gray-scale when disabled.

Name

The name given the Custom Shape when added to the Shape Library. This name is also given to the C4D document file for the Custom Shape stored on disk.

Frequency

This allows you to control how many of the available custom shape and grouping types populate the object surface. At 100%, the particular greeble type has an equal chance as any other at 100%. At 50%, it has half the chance to be chosen as a greeble type for population. 0% is equivalent to disabling the greeble type. Basically, you can control whether or not there are more or less of a particular greeble type. If a greeble type is disabled then its Frequency value takes no part in the random decision process.

Random Surface Rotations

All greebles of this type will be rotated randomly on the surface plane. Note that this overrides Surface Rotation.

Surface Rotation

All greebles of this type will be rotated on the surface plane by the angle given.