[Brian Jones]

I took a quick look and Adam’s right but you’ll have to take the Rotation track off the Cube – or you won’t be able to rotate it – the Position and Scale tracks can go too and keep only the PLA track

[Brian Jones]

Just load in the Standard layout in the Window menu or with the layout icon on the upper-left

[Brian Jones]

[Justin Puda] “How would I apply a dem of the coastline to the plane? Would I apply the dem as a displacement map?”

yes

[Justin Puda] “Do I have to do any photoshop work to the dem prior to applying it?”

no

[Brian Jones]

Quick example (6.2 Meg download because I included a render test) with just a noise in the Displacement channel, using the Sound Effector and the Sample Effector node feeding into the Displacement Strength of the Material, Displacement Height would work too but the math is simpler using Strength.

[Brian Jones]

I don’t think you could do that with the Landscape object, you can turn off the borders but that’s not likely what you want. I would do it with a black to white gradient texture with noises added, applied to a plane with displacement (SPD) (or the Relief object). Or if you have a DEM you could use that (or make it by hand in PS…)

[Brian Jones]

Sorry, ignore my earlier answer, I was obviously brain-dead when I read your post. Adam’s answer is right, you just need to put your movie/image into the Transparency channel of a material, then place the material on a light. An example

[Brian Jones]

The cloner with the pyramid should be simple enough. I suspect the tricks are:
– the helix is used twice, once for the cloner – once for the arrow
– he uses a spline tag for the Cone (Arrow) and animates the cone along the helix and matches the Align to Spline’s ‘Position’ parameter to match the Cloner’s ‘End’ parameter
– set the Cone’s Orientation to +Z and Check ‘Tangential’ and set Axis to Z in the Align to Spline tag
– the Helix should be set to Uniform (makes it easier to match the timing along the spline)

Something like this

[Brian Jones]

Ahh, that was the meaning, I was reading too quickly obviously 🙂

[Brian Jones]

spacebar jumps between Live Selection and the last used tool

[Brian Jones]

W – and if ‘Help Text in Statusbar’ is on (preferences/Interface) the statusbar will show what tool you are over Hints on use and shortcuts.