Inspiration for this tutorial came from this post on Instagram, by Mikhail Sedov who co-runs Subframe Studio and YouTube Channel focused on Cinema 4D and Redshift. He was kind enough to allow me to use his idea as a basis for this tutorial and I’m super happy for it. I learned quite a lot from him, just by following his YouTube channel. I highly recommend his videos for sure.

Rectangle Pattern is one of my favourite tools in Cavalry. It’s super versatile. You can easily make various data viz designs with it. Things like donut charts, stacked bars, even bar codes. Using it as a “scaffolding” mesh is a great way to generate responsive and intricate designs, easily.

I feel that the most complex part of the tutorial was adding Color Array to Rectangle Pattern. In essence, we have 2x Color Arrays working together to create more intricate design. It looks like this:

Main Color:

• Dark Color
  • Accent Color
    • Color 1
    • Color 2
    • Color 3
    • Color 4

In our design, Rectangle Pattern has 2 shapes. With the above setup, we assign Dark Color to Shape ID 0. Then assign second Color Array to Shape ID 1.

With extra Color Index randomisation on top with Sequence layer, this setup allows us to create quite complex designs, super easily and fast. They are responsive, render quickly and can be modified as needed.

Above image helps illustrate the Image Context – Upstream Depth 3. We are “telling” Index Context layer to fetch Index data from “3rd level” up. Essentially, it goes:

• Sub-Mesh – Level 1 (first connection)
• Rectangle Pattern – Level 2
• Duplicator – Level 3

Duplicator provides individual ID data (Index per generated copy) to Index Context. And we are using it as an individual seed value in Sequence layer. And this is how we are getting randomised colours, per each generated Rectangle Pattern.

There is loads you can do with this system. You can randomise colours, use different types of Noise, Oscillator, add other Behaviours like Bevel and so on. Here are 2 examples I put together, while exploring this technique.