more cloner time offset woes

[Brian Jones]

judging by the previous threads you are wanting animate the clones (or start the animation) based on the position of something, the more recent thread was correct – one texture feeds all the clones so you can’t try and change it or it changes for all (and if my skim of this was correct same applies to xpresso) but your assumption that you can only use the MultiShader (I assume you meant that) on the Cloner object is wrong, you can use it on objects within a cloner.

11575_animatingcloneswithanimatedtextures.c4d.zip

The problem with this example is I am taking the simple route with your simple example and using Index Ratio to assign the multishader layers, with a copy of the gradient in each layer just offset. To do it based on position I would turn on the Color Mode in the effector setting everything off and make it so the color of the clones change based on the proximity of the effector and then use Color Brightness in the MultiShaders to choose between a still gradient then change to the animated gradient as the color gets bright enough. Color is the color the clone gets with Color Mode on in an effector but it isn’t seen with a material on (I assume I’m just flapping my lips here (metaphorically speaking) since you do a lot of mograph stuff but just in case…) I can do an example of that but I’m out of time and won’t have enough until tomorrow (or maybe Tuesday)

[Steve Bentley]

Thanks for taking the time you have already. Lots of cinema and mograph sure but my wife calls me the dumbest smart person she knows, so I never assume I know it all, so flap away. I’ve learned the coolest stuff from some of the fresh out school interns we have here. Adam just pointed out the undo view that I never new about – I just think about all those years of importing cameras from older versions of the project (sigh). A wise man once told me to never say “I know”. You never know what gem you were about to be told; and there won’t be a second offering.

I’m better at particles than mograph and I’m able to do most of what I’m trying to do now with that system and since it all seems to be threaded together now in the same engine I thought… And mograph is easier for the client to point to one of the iterations and say ” I don’t like that one”, and you can fix it.

Initially there wasn’t going to be this time offset so the architecture I had set out was sound. But now with this new wrinkle I might be stuck (gulp) hand animating. I thought computers were supposed to eliminate repetitive tasks? I guess whoever postulated that never encountered post production.

Cheers

[Steve Bentley]

Whoops hit send too soon. No example needed but thanks for the offer. The problem with using the multi shader (and I worded that poorly about it being on the cloner only, you are quite right) is the sheer number of versions of the textures I would have to include and that would be a nightmare to wade through to assign. There also isn’t a good way for the effector falloff “shapes” to steer that except for a selection tag, but again I would have a line of tags as long as my arm.
I think I’ll head back into xpresso/coffee/python land to make this happen. “One texture to rule them all!” If you hear me burbling “my precious” you will know it didn’t go well.