C4D Quicktip: Using Dampening to Keep Clones From Exploding Apart

Have you ever cloned a sphere to an object only to experience them explode outwards when you play the simulation?

I have found an easy way to get the clones to maintain the shape they are being cloned to without exploding away from each other and all it takes is 2 keyframes.

The exploding clones happen because the cloner object places the clones at random and cannot detect if the clones are overlapping each other, when the simulation is played the dynamics engine tries to put each clone in it's own space resulting in the clones exploding away from each other.

I have found that setting the linear dampening and angular dampening to 100% at the beginning of the simulation allows the clones to find their own space without them exploding away from each other. After about 10 frames the dampening can be key-framed to 0% and the first 10 frames can be trimmed off the simulation.

Linear dampening and angular dampening can be found under the force tab of the dynamics tag and is only available in C4D R12