Known as the Xpresso Mechanic, Julian Field has dedicated his time to teaching others on the finer intricacies of using Xpresso in Cinema 4D. With his latest post, he shows off what can be done in Xpresso using the range mapper node, which allows you to directly convert one type of input into another.

…delve a little deeper into the power of the Range Mapper node, in order to create a basic, funicular railway

The range mapper also lets you control how those values are interpolated, allowing for spline and linear transitions. Here, Julian uses a funicular railway as an example, where the railcars need to slide up and down the hill in opposition, making use of the range mapper node in the Xpresso network.

This tutorial can be seen as an extension to Julian’s previous, showing the basics for using the range Mapper node in Xpresso networks. Diving further into the concepts, Maxon’s UX designer, Orestes Konstantinidis showed off the power of using Range Mapper and iterations in Cinema 4D’s Xpresso.

In a more complex example, Ed Brown, offered a practical guide for rigging gears and pistons, much of which, relied on the range mapper to set the rotational values and ratios of gears correctly.