Set Range Mapper node to an in and out frame

[Darby Edelen]

[Nicholas Toth] “I can’t seem to figure out how to pipe in the values of two times (essentially start frame and end frame) and have them translate the rangemapper to control the values of various other objects in sync along that period of time.”

Not sure what this means exactly.

Do you want to input two different time values and force several objects to take on the animation of one object between those times? Or do you want to take several objects with already keyframed animations and make them occur between those times?

Can you give a specific example of what you’re trying to do?

Darby Edelen

[Nicholas Toth]

I have multiple actions happening/animating, essentially its a mechanical animation of a surgery tool.

Currently I have the range mapper hooked to a slider, so I can slide a min and a max value which animates the content based on the range mappers output/spline graph — and it works great.

However instead of keyframing the start and finish values, I’d like to be able to set them as frames in the timeline. I’m back dabbling in it today, sketched out the thought behind it, and if:

F1 = Start Frame
F2 = Finish Frame
C = Current Frame
V = Range Mapper Input (set from 0 – 1)

if C is less than F1, then set V=0 (<— trying to figure out how to xpress this)
if C is greater than F2, then set V=1 (<— trying to figure out how to xpress this)
else, C/[F1+F2] = V (<— This I use simple math functions, it works)

Now that might not make logical sense, I am not a developer, but I’m trying to translate it to xpresso.

What do you think?

[Brian Jones]

are you looking to have some sort of animation only happen between a certain frame range (the Range Mapper can do that by itself)? That’s what I’m guessing but the math isn’t right for that so I’m still not sure of what you want.

[Nicholas Toth]

I don’t understand if that was a question or a statement —

[Brian Jones] ” range (the Range Mapper can do that by itself)?”

Can it? Can I just put in two frame values and have the range mapper animate across it?

[Brian Jones]

statement, yes. Here’s a very quick example 5042_rangemapper.c4d.zip

[Nicholas Toth]

Any way to have it link to a GUI item instead of having to jump into Xpresso?

I piped the Start frame (Frame User Data) to Input Lower and Finish frame (Frame User Data) to Input Upper, and set Time (Frame) to the Input of the Range mapper…and the cube jumps around a few frames. (Motext object is only to see what sort of data is resulting)

5049_5042rangemappernt.c4d.zip

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Brian Jones]

your User Data values are set as Time units but the range mapper already knows what the input is (since Time is going into the Input port), change the Start and Finish to Integer (or Real) values and it works.