Here is a quick and practical example of what you can do with ALLIE and bitmap images (or shaders if you like). The ALLIE plug in takes images as input sources and allows you to define channel data which can then be applied as a transformation function to an array structure of geometry.

Well, you can use an texture or channel shader in ALLIE to make the geometry do things - like set the scale to be based on the luminance with a user defined value. This means that if a given pixel shifts from black to white you can have transformations applied to your geometry accordingly using the minimum and maximum values.

In this example we'll take a black and white image of the master technologist, Nickola Tesla and use it to control the scale of an array of spheres to make Nickola show up in our 3D environment so that he looks a little like the dot tone version of his portrait as seen below.

Alright - I want to play too!
The first thing you should do with ALLIE is to set the Distribution so that your geometry is spread over a given region. In this case I defined the region to have the same aspect ratio as the source image. I then set the count so that I would get a nice spread of spheres across the region (you can animate all of these values with a parameter track).

For this sample I loaded an image of Nickola Tesla into the Channels section along with a bhodiNUT 2D shader to use for an offset that will add organic roughness to the placement of the spheres. If the ALLIE dialog is too small for you just grab the lower right corner and resize it to your needs. By setting the Parameters so that the X and Y scale of the spheres is driven by the luminance of Channel 1 I was able to make the spheres recreate the greyscale image inside CINEMA 4D XL. I used the noise shader in Channel 2 to drive the Z offset of the array so that it would not sit perfectly flat on the vertical plane. The 2D noise is animated so that it should shift slowly over time.

Try working with a low count setting to begin with and up it as your processor and graphics card allows for faster working in the editor. As with all of bhodiNUT's products, this profession grade tool is geared towards fast and efficient workflow and ease of use. Experimentation is the best way to learn more about its possible uses. I'll offer other practical solutions in the near future. For the moment please feel free to work with this project as a base for your own experiments.

Ahem, excuse me? I don't have JENNA on my computer so how can I possibly play with this project file?

Fear not! As with all of bhodiNUT's released products, you can download a demo version from their web site. Some features will be disabled, but you will get a good sense of how it works. If you like it you can then buy it direct from the bhodiNUT web site.

Download the JENNAtesla C4DXL version 7.3.0.3 project files (zip)