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3d Radio Waves
Is there any way to use a black and white image to make a 3d radio wave. I rendered out a black and white image from AE using the radio waves filter and then used it as a material in the alpha channel or transparencey channel on a “thin” cube in C4D. However, since cubes are hollow, I don’t get solid radiowaves. I just get the front and back of the waves, no sides. Thanks for any advise.
KMS
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12 Replies
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What you want is an After Effects function like ‘Sequence Layers.’ It’s a huge need, but right now there’s no easy answer.
If what you need are radio waves, the brute-force method will probably pay off best. Make a tube object and animate its radius or its scale. Once you have one animated properly, manually offset them in the timeline. It’s ugly, but it’s how it’s done 90% of the time.
There’s also a plugins for offsetting animation. Search c4dplugs.com for the word ‘timeline tools.’ This’ll help with deciding on your timing.
If it was me, I’d do it with Xpresso using the History and Iterator nodes. The setup is described at C4dcafe.com in various posts by a user named ‘base80.’ Search the forum for ‘iterator’ or ‘iterator node.’ Brian Jones in this forum also knows how to do it because he’s kind of an Xpresso freak of nature.
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Well thanks govinda, no pressure eh? 🙂 Since I’ve never seen the AE radio waves filter, what’s the look we are going for? I would like to give it a try but I don’t have any reference.
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You know, Jenna is now free. 3dattack.net, go to plugins. Try out two tube objects inside a Tweener object. You might also get some joy from Iterator on this.
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…or particles. Here is a test. It uses a basic emitter for simplicity but you could get a lot more control over the emission rate with Thinking Particles.
https://members.shaw.ca/bdjones/radioWaves.zip
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Is this of what you speak? I just animated some Tauri:
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com/RadioWaves.mov
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
torus/tubes yes!
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Old-fashioned particles, I completely forget about them. They were brilliant in their own way…
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You guys are awesome, you have me going in the right direction. With all the great help I thought that I should leave well enough alone, but I have to ask, is there any way to make the radio waves fade out over time (animate the transparency)?
Thanks for all the great help!
KMS
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Yeah, absolutely, turn on the alpha channel and keyframe it from white to black over time. Or if you want max control, render each wave as a seperate render and animate it in your compositor.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com
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