Collie Variant Generator 2.0

New version 2.0!

• GUI has been split into two tabs to represent the two steps of the process better
• Experimental feature “Frame gap” has been added (to include animations)
• Disallow groups are now internally handled as groups, instead of generating single rules. This allows larger groups to be handled
• All output formats are now accessible separately through a dropdown
• Added Cardano JSON output format
• Allows arbitrary objects as component group parents

(Note: Manual has not yet been completely updated; new version will follow!)

A Cinema 4D plugin.

This plugin generates a series of visibility keys per frame for groups of object variants. From each group, exactly one object will be visible (uniqueness of the combinations can be enforced). This functionality allows you to create a large number of alternative, random-controlled images within one file, ready to be rendered out.

The randomness can be controlled via "likelihood" settings to put an emphasis on selected variants. The results are documented in output files or alternatively the console. The series of variants can be written into JSON files for further processing.

Source file may contain several containers with variant groups which can all be handled separately.

Render hundreds of variants without manual effort: you provide groups of backgrounds, characters, props, lighting alternatives; the plugin will randomize it all and have it ready to render.

Compatibility

This plugin has been developed with C4D R23 under Windows. However, it is a Python 3 plugin, so it should work under MacOS and higher C4D versions as well.

Earlier C4D versions (S22 and below) can run the plugin as well, despite these versions using Python 2. This has been tested with R21. (No unicode support for group and component names though!)

(Notify me of any incompatibilities that you encounter.)

Obviously, you need Cinema 4D to run this plugin (just to be clear).

Restrictions

Due to the way the plugin works, animations are not supported. The result of the randomization is a series of images which are represented through one frame each; rendering out the scene should result in a series of single images. Make sure you do not use any animation-specific render settings (e.g. motion blur).

The plugin creates visibility keys, not new objects or copies of objects. This allows a smaller file size where every variant exists only once. The objects will not be changed in any way - to have them in different places or with different textures, you need to create a copy with these properties and offer it as a new object variant.

There are mathematical and algorithmic restrictions on randomness and likelihood, as described in the manual.