Table of Contents
DiTools
DiTools 1.42 Review on active-rendering.de
DiTools is a large set of tools developed by Remotion. It consists of different types of tools that add functionality to Maxon’s Cinema 4D, which are otherwise unavailable. Among DiTools there are deformers, modifiers, shaders, Xnodes, post effects and even a surface painter tool.
One of its most used features is dicloner, a C4D object that allows for the procedural cloning of one or more objects across the surface of another. But dicloner is only part of the story; explore below to get a sense of Ditools true depth.
Purchase
DiTools Demo/Update
DiTools 1.55 for C4D 11 and 11.5 . (Win32, Win64 and MacUB,some plugins are still not UB ready but most are)
Older PDF Documentation
Tutorials
Ditools Components
Ditools workflow and common elements
Many Ditools objects and tags allow you to use texture information to modify their effects; for instance, you can choose to have cloned objects only appear on the target object where it is light in color. Ditools accomplishes this by allowing the user to drag texture tags into special link fields, which are available under the texture tab of Ditools objects which support this feature.
Objects
- Di Cloner++ - Clone objects on the surface of other objects
- Di Shaper+ - Deforms objects with textures; can be animated
- Di Tessa - Modifies primitives and Polyobjects in various ways, including numerous procedural tesselation and extrusion options
- Di Joiner+ - Connects objects, enables painting on different objects simultaneously
- Di SimplySpline - Simplifies splines (fewer points, while maintaining the shape)
- Di Iso Surface - Generates objects with formulae (implicit)
- Di Iso Cloner - Clone objects by formulae (implicit)
- Di NURBS Deformer - Align objects on Beziér-NURBS and deform
- Di Spline Deformer - Deform objects with a Spline
- Di Projector - Project splines on polygonal objects via PL-Tag
- Di Xspline - Xpresso spline generator
- Di ParserSpline+ - Generate spline by formula
- Di VMDeformer - Deform by vertexmap
- Di ParserDeformer+ - Deform objects with formulae
- Di Contour - Generate splines by texture, vertices or thinking particles
- Di SplineGen - Generates splines on polygonal objects with textures
- Di PolyGen - Generates polygons from spline; one way make splines visible at render time
- Di Parametric+ - Generates parametric objects with formulae; much more flexible than C4D’s built-in formula object
- Di Painter - Paint objects on surfaces via DiPlacement expression
- Di Tag List - List all Tags)
- Di Scene List1 - List all Objects, Materials, Render Settings or TP Groups
- Di Scene List2 - List all Objects, Materials, Render Settings or TP Groups
Xpresso Nodes
REX contains the following nodes:
- Ch Sampler - Samples inputs material (animated), position, UVW, time and calculates a real value
- Ch View - Enables visualizing of texture animation in realtime
- Color - Preview of calculated color
- Editor Draw - Shows object informations, any text or picture number during animation in editor window
- Placer Data - Enables reading the content of a PL tag for every single point. Inputs: Placement Tag: Link to Placement Tag in Object Manager. Index: PL point number ( from 0 to Count ) Outputs: Position: PL point position in 3D space. Count: Amount of points. Normale: PL point normal on the object. Tangente: Direction to next PL point in the chain. UVW: PL point position in UVW texture space. Value (Pressure): Stick pressure of PL point
- Placement Mover - Same as Placer Data. Uses interpolated positions in the chain, instead of index as input
- RRP - Real parser
- String Filter - Displays any text depending on animation time in editor window
- String Editor - Stringmanipulations in REX node. Stringfunctions: Add (S1+S2 ... +S4), Remove (S1-S2 ... -S4), Delete (S1,pos,count), Insert (S1,pos,count), Cut (S1,pos,count), Big letters (S1), Small letters (S1), Replace (S2 per S3 in S1)
- RVP - Vector parser
- XsplineOP - Adds one point at every frame to Xspline object
3D→UVW [not sure what this refers to]
DiTools Tags (Expressions)
- Di VertexMap Modifier - Mixing of vertexmaps. Generates soft vertexmap edges without increasing density of mesh.
- Di TextureToVertexMap - Texture creates vertex map
- Di TextureToSelection - Texture creates point selection on whole object or on selected points of an object
- Di Placement or PL tag - Holds information, that has been created by DiPainter ( point chains ). This information is shown in editor and used by DiCloner, Dishaper, PL Tag Shader and others as source
- Di Info - Shows vertices, edges and normals of arbitrary objects and distance to any selectable object in editor window. Selected elements can be marked with other color. Polygon and vertex number can also be shown.
- Di Color Holds color of the object used by DiColorTag Shader for rendering
DiTools Ext Tags
Standalone Materials
- DiX Volume Tracer - can accept volumetric data sources (MRI and CT data, for example) and raymarch render volumetric images. Apply to a cube, and the image will be rendered withi n the cube’s volume. Note: this kind of rendering can be very slow.
- Di FractalTracer - performs volumetric rendering of procedurally generated fractal sets. Apply to a cube, and the image will be rendered withi n the cube’s volume. Note: this kind of rendering can be very slow.
Channel Shaders
- Di SynTex Shader - Fits the color information of source texture to the color distribution of a template texture and creates a new texture. Example: Top small pic = Source, white and green pic = Template, bottom = result
- Di COFFEE Shader - Shader programming with all functions of Parser Shader in COFFEE environment
- Di Color-Tag Shader - Color gradient shader with selection of HSV colormodel, arbitrary color and basic color
- Di Fractal Shader - Fractals as texture with many pre-defined functions and animated preview under REX Node ChView
- Di Number Shader - Texture, that shows numbers as integer, real or time (seconds with hundredth of a second, animatable
- Di Parser Shader - Creating textures by vector parser with extensive set of functions and presets
- Di PL-Tag Shader - Visualizing of splines, created by DiPainter or DiProjector on objects with PL-Tag attached
- Di RGB Mix Shader - Mixing of up to 3 textures with adjustable blur
- Di Text Shader - Colored, scalable text with arbitrary position
- Di Thermo Shader - Color gradient shader, controllable by lightsource in specular and diffuse mode
- Di Vertex Blender Shader - Overlay of textures defined by weightings of a vertex map: painting by painting weighting
- Di Vertex Map Shader - Creating vertex map by texture
Post FX
- Re GPU Renderer (part of hardware renderer) -
- Di SpDraw FX - Enables post effect “rendering” of splines with adjustable color gradient, transparency gradient, thickness start/end and blur
- Di Parser Post FX - Post effect parser with presets and effect preview. All functions of Parser Shader are available to create own effects
