Changing Materials in Timeline for Animation


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By wesley26 - 7 Years Ago
Hi there, I want to change the materials in the timeline in order to create animation.
For example, I want to change images in a presentation screen like prop. So I will start with image 1 in timeframe 1 and change it to image 2 in frame 10 and image 3 in frame 50, etc.

How can I do this?

Thanks
Augustine
By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
You can't animate map changes, so that won't work for you.  Your best bet is to figure out the timing, and then create a movie file (best done in your video editor) that has your "slides" of the presentation changing at the appropriate points, and then use this animation as the base color map for your presentation screen.

Alternatively, if you were dead set on being able to see your changes as you animate, you could create a series of defimage planes right on top of each other, and then animate the opacity of each one (it would be a bit of a PITA as you'd have to select them in the Scene tab, but if your numbers are correct with each image in the order it should be that shouldn't be too much of a problem).  But I'd always go with the animated material.
By animagic - 7 Years Ago
You can do as Kelley suggest using a series of planes, but instead of changing the opacity, you can turn the visibility on and off. I've used that and has the advantage that it is easy to adjust in the timeline.
By 4u2ges - 7 Years Ago
I do not need this often. Today however, I wanted to animate metallic look of the object, but unless I am missing something obvious, I found out I cannot do this anymore (in IC6 secular and glossiness were on a timeline).
So here is what I end up doing (based on Lord Ashes idea). 2 gradient images 1280 x 128 each (spanned by width x10)

For metallic:
https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/23a847af-2823-4e50-8d43-89b0.jpg


For roughness:
https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/3b7dc8d3-c5a3-49d2-9798-7f18.jpg


On frame 1 set "U Tiling" to 0.1 for both Metallic and Roughness
Advance some 100 frames and set "U Offset" to 0.9, again for both Metallic and Roughness
Play animation.

For Base Color texture, images could be hard split into tiles and key-framed (with Step curve) by formula:
U tiling = 1 \ Number of tiles    (set once on frame 1)
U Offset increments = U tiling x (N - 1)   (where N is tile number) in a chain.

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/3abb8db3-24d1-41fc-bda5-24de.jpg

(not really suited for large texture with many tiles)
By justaviking - 7 Years Ago
animagic (1/31/2018)
You can do as Kelley suggest using a series of planes, but instead of changing the opacity, you can turn the visibility on and off. I've used that and has the advantage that it is easy to adjust in the timeline.


+1.

I have used that very successfully.
- Position first plane
- Copy/paste to make as many overlapping copies as you need
- Select a frame in the Scene manager, drag a picture onto your Diffuse (or Base Color) channel
- Keyframe On/off, easy to understand.




For changing stuff like Metallic and Roughness, the "best" answer is to have that be a parameter in a Substance, but that's going to be more work.

Alternative solution --- Add something to the "Blend" channel and keyframe the "Strength" value.

Experiment a bit with black/gray/white images, and the three blending modes (multiple/addition/overlay).
You might be able to achieve the result you're looking for, even if it's not scientifically correct.
By 4u2ges - 7 Years Ago
justaviking (2/3/2018)
animagic (1/31/2018)
You can do as Kelley suggest using a series of planes, but instead of changing the opacity, you can turn the visibility on and off. I've used that and has the advantage that it is easy to adjust in the timeline.


+1.

I have used that very successfully.
- Position first plane
- Copy/paste to make as many overlapping copies as you need
- Select a frame in the Scene manager, drag a picture onto your Diffuse (or Base Color) channel
- Keyframe On/off, easy to understand.




For changing stuff like Metallic and Roughness, the "best" answer is to have that be a parameter in a Substance, but that's going to be more work.

Alternative solution --- Add something to the "Blend" channel and keyframe the "Strength" value.

Experiment a bit with black/gray/white images, and the three blending modes (multiple/addition/overlay).
You might be able to achieve the result you're looking for, even if it's not scientifically correct.



Blend channel does not really give a "wet" look no matter how I tried. Tiling on the other hand is quite easy once you get a hang of it - specially on uneven props surfaces, where plain would not do.
By Lord Ashes - 7 Years Ago
Thanks for mentioning my texture swapping solution. You can see an example of it (with a short story) in the following video:


The corresponding tutorial (written for iC6 but similarly applicable to iC7) can be seen at: