Did you know that it is possible to loop noise in Cinema4D?

This can open up many possibilities for you, not just with the use of materials, but also when working with objects such as the shader effector. You may want random motion, but need it to loop. So instead of using the random effector, you could use the shader effector with loopable noise.

The loop option works for nearly all types of noise with the exception of Electric, Gaseous, Random and Wavy Turbulence.  The different noise types will give you quite varied results. So experiment with noise type, size, octaves and also try adjusting the brightness and contrast.

Here’s how it works..

Firstly, you need to set an animation speed for the noise.

Then you set the loop period.  The loop period value refers to the number of seconds for the loop, so if you set this to 3, then the noise will loop after 3 seconds.

To make sure the noise does loop, the animation speed may be adjust slightly internally. The reason for this is that the speed will need to be a specific value for the loop to be possible. So if you use a value that is not loopable within the loop period (i.e. the speed is too fast or too slow), Cinema4D will internally adjust the animation speed so it becomes possible.

So the obvious use for this with MoGraph is with the Shader Effector.

Here’s a few examples using a Cloner set to Grid Array with varying noise types.

This uses regular noise

This uses cell noise

This uses dents

You can also use this method on non-MoGraph objects.  Using the sample effector node, you can sample the Shader Effector and then use the Range Mapper to apply the values to other objects parameters.

Here is an example where I have used it to control the colour and heading of a spotlight, and also the Z movement of an ExtrudeNURBS.

So there you have it . . . loopable noise.  Lot’s more you could do besides.  I hope you found this useful.

You can grab the files here.