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Animating Materials
The action in your scene can include much more that just motion. Many subtle or dramatic effects can be created by changing the properties of an object's surface over the course of the animation.
This section assumes that you're familiar with the concepts and procedures involved in creating material and textures. Refer to "Building Materials" for more on creating materials and "Creating and Editing Textures" for more on editing textures.
By animating an object's texture you can create subtle effects like changing the color of an object to simulate things like a tomato ripening. You can also create more dramatic effects like changing all the properties of a material at once. Using this technique you can change an object from marble to metal, or glass to wood.
In Bryce, animating materials is a rather straight-forward process. Using the animation tools in the Materials Lab you set the properties of a material at different points along the Timeline. When you run the animation, Bryce interpolates between the properties to create a transition from one material to the other.
You can animate any property of a material:
- Colors
- Channel values
- Texture component usage (that is, switching between components A, B, C and D)
- Texture properties
- Volume Material properties
Take care when you're choosing which properties to animate. Some properties, like transparency, and volumetric effects can greatly increase the rendering time of your animation.
Material animations are created using the Animation controls at the bottom of the Materials Lab.
These controls let you move along your animation's timeline. This timeline is the same as the one at the bottom of the Working window. It contains all the same key events as the Working window timeline. The Animation controls in the Materials Lab can perform all the same features as the Animation controls in the Working window.
Animating Material Channel Values
By animating the channels in a material you can alter the properties of a material without changing its basic function. Using this technique, a rock material would still look like a rock, but change color, or glass would still look like glass except become shinier.
This is the simplest way of animating a material and it requires the least amount of processing time.
To animate a material's channel values:
2 Click the M icon that appears next to the object's bounding box. The Materials Lab appears.
3 Click the triangle icon in the Animation controls and make sure Auto-Key is enabled.
4 Move the Current Time Indicator to the point where you want to start changing the material.
5 Change the values of the material channels using the Value controls.
Change the color used for a channel by using the color picker.
6 Move the Current Time Indicator to a different point on the Timeline.
The current time appears in the counter next to the preview controls.
7 Change the channel values again.
8 Continue moving the Current Time Indicator and changing channel values until you achieve the effect you want.
9 Click the OK icon to exit the Materials Lab.
Animating Texture Components
Animating a texture component is an effective way of creating motion within a material. When you change the orientation, position or scale within a texture component, the texture elements, (like dots, checks or patterns) will appear to move.
You can use this technique to create realistic wave motion in a water texture. If you change the position of the texture pattern at different points in the Timeline, the waves will appear to move over the surface of the object.
If you wish to avoid unexpected texture movement during a texture animation, use Object Space mapping mode for the texture. This way the texture moves as the object moves. However, you can create some very interesting effects using World Space.
You can also animate a texture component by altering the makeup of the texture using the Deep Texture Editor. Using the editor you can change the make-up of any or all of the four texture components in a material.
To animate a material's texture components:
2 Click the M icon that appears next to the object's bounding box. The Materials Lab appears.
3 Click the triangle icon in the Animation controls and make sure Auto-Key is enabled.
4 Move the Current Time Indicator to the point where you want to start changing the material.
5 Click the button in the upper left corner of the texture component window. The Edit Texture palette appears.
6 Adjust the position, orientation or scale of the texture and click the OK icon to exit the controls.
7 Click the pink button in the upper-left corner of the texture component window. The Deep Texture Editor appears.
8 Adjust the values of the texture's components and click the OK icon to close the editor.
9 Move the Current Time Indicator to a different point on the Timeline.
The current time appears in the counter next to the preview controls.
10 Change the texture properties again.
11 Continue moving the Current Time Indicator and changing texture properties until you achieve the effect you want.
12 Click the OK icon to exit the Materials Lab.
Animating Between Materials
Animating channel values or texture components is a good way of creating subtle effects in a material, but to create more dramatic action, you'll need to animate between two completely different materials.
This is how you create a transition from rock to glass, or wood to metal.
Animating between materials is exactly like creating two different materials for the same object. As long as the Auto-Key mode is enabled, all your settings are recorded as key events, so you can set up a material at one point in time and then move to a different point on the Timeline and create a completely different material.
There are two quick ways of creating different materials:
- By switching the Texture Component used to set a material channel, you can completely change the color, pattern, or bumpiness of a texture.
- Using the Preset Materials Library, you can quickly apply a different material to the object.
To animate between materials:
2 Click the M icon that appears next to the object's bounding box. The Materials Lab appears.
3 Click the triangle icon in the Animation controls and make sure Auto-Key is enabled.
4 Move the Current Time Indicator to the point where you want to start changing the material.
5 Set up a material by setting channel values and texture components.
6 Move the Current Time Indicator to a different point on the Timeline.
The current time appears in the counter next to the preview controls.
7 Set up a different material by choosing different components or applying a preset.
8 Click the OK icon to exit the Materials Lab.
Previewing Material Animations
Any change you make to a material's properties are displayed in the Material Preview area. When you play a material animation, the same preview area shows you the transition of the material from one key event to the other.
This is not the most effective way to see a material animation.The best way of seeing a material transformation is by rendering the scene.
To preview a material animation:
 Corel Corporation http://www.corel.com Voice: (800) 772-6735 Fax: (716) 447-7366 www.corel.com/support |