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Author Topic: Animate Segment Visibility  (Read 2064 times)

archaeotect

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Animate Segment Visibility
« on: August 15, 2018, 10:56:33 PM »
Hi,

For an animation I want to make the pieces of a RC object (Linear 1S) appear one after another. I solved this by exporting the X Counter parameter of a Conditional node and animating it. The segment is plugged into TRUE, FALSE is left empty. So far this works.

The problem: All random values (transforms etc.) shift when a new segment appears, even those of previously visible segments, making the animation very jittery.

Is there another (better) way to animate segment visibility piece by piece?
Or is there another way to apply random transformations, independent of X count (I want to keep some randomness)?

Rokas

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2018, 04:12:57 PM »
Hi
Thanks for question.
I tried to do the same:


Could You please describe in detail, how do You want to improve animation like this?
Rokas

archaeotect

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2018, 06:05:43 PM »
Thanks for your reply. I hope the attachment will better show what I'm trying to do.

I want the pile of logs to grow (to the right). But whenever I increase the log count, the already existing logs change slightly (due to their random values). You can clearly see how the upper end of the pile changes from frame to frame.
I want the pile to grow piece by piece, but once a piece becomes visible it should no longer change shape.

Rokas

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2018, 10:58:43 AM »
Ok, now I understand.

What we can do is to bake randomness based on spline. I have included a scene file for You.


Hope that helps!
« Last Edit: August 17, 2018, 03:52:46 PM by Rokas »
Rokas

archaeotect

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2018, 12:00:13 PM »
Brilliant! That's exactly what I was looking for.

Could you walk me through the expression a bit, though?
You use the Spline Coordinates to create randomness, right? And the randomness parameter acts as random seed?
So where do you derive the scale value of 50 from?
And what does the maxRnd variable do exactly?

Thank you very much!

archaeotect

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2018, 10:15:22 PM »
Interestingly, this seems to work on one generator only. In a RC style with multiple generators all except one still switch randomly, even though the same transform node with the arithmetic expression plugs into all generators. Once I turn this generator off, the next one works.

archaeotect

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Re: Animate Segment Visibility
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2018, 08:54:45 AM »
After some tests I've decided that this method is simply too complicated and time-consuming. I have animated several RailClone objects with multiple generators each (which I'd have to separate), and I've randomized just about everything (transforms, MatIDs, UVWs), so I'd have to manually create an arithmetic expression and custom parameter for each individual value of each of those nodes.

Right now I'll revert to creating standalone objects with RailClone Tools and animate them manually. But thanks for the suggestion!

I don't know if this is the right place for a feature request, but it would be nice if things like this could be made easier, maybe with a macro that created (pseudo-)random values based on position (in world-space?) or a checkbox to not re-calculate random values when segment changes. Something as easy as V-Ray's "lock noise pattern" for animations.