Cloner object

The cloner object is THE object when it comes to duplicating other objects in space and placing them on the surface of a different geometry, for example. Numerous Effectors are also available to parametrically influence the placement, orientation, animation or coloring of the object copies.

The objects to be duplicated must always be grouped under the cloner object (see figure above). Several objects can also be assigned at the same time, which are then processed in sequence or randomly, for example.

Cloner objects can be nested into each other as desired, whereby the most interesting scenes can result from the simplest basic elements:

Here, for example, a simple sweep object was combined with 3 nested cloner objects to create a detailed scene. This is how the cloner objects work:

1. Cloner object: Clones the sweep object three times linearly (Linear mode)
2. Clone object: Clones the result multiple times radially ( Radial mode), resulting in a single wire column.
3. Cloner object: Clones the wire column in grid form (Grid mode): several wire columns are created.

If you use parameter animations of clone objects and effectors to grow such constructs, you can certainly imagine the spectacular effects you can achieve with them.

Clone objects can be made editable at any time (each clone is converted into a real object) by activating the clone object and selecting the Make Editable command from the Object menu in the Object Manager (or simply press the C key). You will then receive a single object for each clone.

Note:Use this type of nesting sparingly, as it is easy to lose track and animations can lead to restrictions when baking (see The Cache tag). What's more, you will have created hundreds of thousands of clones in no time at all, bringing Cinema 4D to its knees.

2. Note:Please note that cloning animated objects can lead to a drop in performance. The reasons for this are: animating changes the state of the objects, which means that the clone object must constantly update its internal structure. It has to do this to a much lesser extent if the cloner object is supplied with constant, unchanging objects. This would be the case, for example, if you animate the cloner object parameters yourself.
It is therefore better - if possible - to animate cloner object parameters than object parameters.

There are a number of other clone-generating objects in MoGraph, such as the Matrix object, the Fracture object, etc., which share parts of the clone object settings, such as the Transformation and Effectors tabs. These are only described here for the clone object, but work in exactly the same way there.