Inputs
Here several inputs are available for different geometries, each of which must be splines. For the basic function it is sufficient to define the first two geometry inputs. The first geometry is for the profile of the sweep, the second geometry is for the path along which the profile will move.
Additional geometry inputs are only needed if you want to control the rotation or scaling of the profile spline using additional splines.
Accordingly, the third geometry input is for the scaling curve and the fourth geometry input is for the rotation curve.
However, you can achieve the same effect by using the Scale and Rotation curves in the Node's dialog.
Matrix
In addition to the Geometry inputs, you will also find inputs for the matrices in order to be able to move, rotate or scale the spline geometries, if necessary.
The Profile spline reaches this size at the end of the path. Linear interpolation is used in-between.
This is the value for the rotation around the Z axis that the Profile spline will reach at the end of the path.
Works like Growth End, except that the sweep shape can be adjusted in length from the opposite side of the spline, the spline start.
Lets you grow the sweep shape along the path. 100% growth means that the Profile spline will be moved along the entire path. If you use a closed path, then Caps surfaces (but not curves) can be set for the intermediate steps.
If this option is enabled, the profile spline will be moved parallel to its original direction and will not automatically be rotated when the path makes a turn.
This option is active by default. It is applied only when no Rail path is used, and causes the Profile spline to be automatically scaled on hard edges to maintain a constant sweep thickness.
If banking is enabled, the Profile spline will automatically curve when the path makes a turn. You can think of it like the rails of a roller coaster. Cinema 4D determines the degree to which the Profile spline will be banked based on the curvature of the curve. At the beginning of the path, the contour will be aligned with the middle plane of the Path spline and will be banked from there. The middle plane ll wiautomatically be ascertained from the position of the spline points of the path.
Since a straight line has no plane, the orientation of the contour can only be determined randomly. Here you should disable banking. The contour will be aligned with the XZ plane of the Path spline.
This setting is only significant if you have changed the value for Growth. It's only noticeable in animated growth. If the option is enabled, the Profile spline will only jump to the (interpolated) points of the Path spline. If these points lie far apart, there will be clearly visible jumps in the animation. If, on the other hand, this option is disabled, interpolation will be performed between the spline points and soft growth results. The first method provides more control over the appearance of the sweep shape (more precisely, it can prevent overlapping contours), but the growth is softer and more constant with the option disabled.
When you use a rail spline, it will affect the rotation of the profile spline around its Z-axis. If you disable the Use Rail Direction option, this behavior will be disabled.
This determines whether the Profile spline should be positioned between the Path spline and the Rail spline (option enabled) or whether it should run along the Path spline and align itself with the Rail spline (option disabled). For the arrangement between path and rail spline, minimum and maximum are ascertained in the X direction of the profile. These points on the X-axis of the profile are then fixed to Path or Rail splines.
With this option you can define whether or not the Rail spline should influence the scaling of the profile. You can use the Rail spline, among other things, to control the exact rotation of the Profile and thus prevent overlapping, for example.
Here you can flip the Normals of the sweep shape, if needed. The hull is normally automatically aligned correctly by Cinema 4D. However, this is not possible with open profiles. In this case, you can control the Normal direction via the direction of rotation of the spline or with the option Flip Normals. This option does not affect the Caps surfaces, because here the Normals are always automatically aligned correctly.
The U-coordinate of a sweep shape usually runs from 0 to 1 over the entire spline length. If you now reduce the length of the shape using the Growth Start or Growth End parameters, the Adjust UVs option wil define whether U still runs over the entire spline length or will be adjusted according to the reduced sweep length. In the latter case, an applied texture will be scaled when the growth parameters are varied.
With this curve, the Profile can be individually scaled along the path.
With this curve, the Profile can be rotated individually along the path. You can define the minima and maxima of the rotation values using the From and To values.
With these values you can define the range of rotation angles for the profile spline, which you can control using the Rotation curve.