Animation
The OBJ format was not originally designed for animation. However, OBJ sequences can be imported or exported in order to exchange animations (see also Animation).
An OBJ or MTL file will be created for each animation frame and these are processed in Cinema 4D as follows:
- Geometry: The current geometry of each scene file will be loaded as a stand-alone object and hidden. These objects will be interchanged within an Instance object to make them appear to be animated (exception: if you import with PLA Animation enabled, see below)
- Imported material animations will be animated normally using keyframes
Here you can define whether or not a sequence (animation) should be imported.
Here you can define the frame rate with which the animation should be loaded when opened. If the scene is loaded via Merge..., no frame rate modification will take place for the current scene.
This value can be increased from it's default value of 1 for text and preview purposes (the export process will be faster and smaller sequence sizes will result). This value defines the distance between exported animation frames, e.g., a value of 1 will export every frame. If set to 10, every 10th frame will be exported (which will also result in choppy, jerky animations since imported OBJ sequences cannot interpolate between OBJ files).
If disabled, each animation frame (each OBJ object) will be assigned its own material. If enabled, an animated material will be created for all frames (all OBJ objects).
If possible, objects will be imported as objects with an animated PLA track (and not as numerous individual objects as described above). This bears the advantage, for example, that the file is much smaller. However, the animation speed in the Viewport will be somewhat slower.
This only works with objects whose point count is not modified and have not Normal tag (otherwise faulty shading will result).
PLA is not suited for elements such as water, particles or similar items.