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  • 1.  Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-12-2022 00:35
    Hey everyone, 

      It's been awhile since I posted and a while since I used XPression (I've been working as a Viz Artist, don't hate me)...  I am doing a project now in which I need to replicate the After Effects file of another designer.  He used a screened animated noise to create a sort of shiny living hold on this chrome frame element.  I made a texture out of the noise, and was able to make an overlay for the frame that gets pretty close to what he made, but in order to make it into a living hold, I need to rotate the reflection texture. Not the texture coordinates on the object itself, bur rather specifically the texture rotation of the reflection map within the material.  I am not seeing a way to access this with keyframes, but I feel like there must be a way.  For clarity I have attached a screen shot of the material editor on which the rotation value I need to animate resides.

      Thanks in advance for any insight!

    Cheers
      - Willie
    PS - I am XPression Designer Version 9.0


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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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  • 2.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-12-2022 05:08
    Hi Willie.
    It's very simple.
    Create a hidden object, animate its rotation as you need.
    In Visual Logic, connect the object's rotation to a texture's rotation.


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    Roman Yaroshenko
    chief specialist
    RBC-TV
    Moscow Russian Federation
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  • 3.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 00:46
    Hi Roma, 

       Thank you for your reply.

       Interesting that you suggested that.  Last night after I wrote this and went to bed I had a very similar idea.  It does work - but not in the way I need it to exactly.  You see, this is meant to be a living hold element, the chrome shine gently moving for however long the graphic is up.  Frustratingly, there only seems to be one way to make a continuously looping animation - the 'continuous animation'. However, the only aspects of a continuous animation accessible via VL are Name, and Enable - and the action of these continuous animations enact no actual change to the value of the object - so the actual rotation value of the object remains at zero even though the CA is driving it, and with the value remaining at 0 it has no data for which to drive the texture linked coordinate rotation value.

      In VizRT, I would simply animate the thing, place it in a separate loop director and set the track to simply repeat for infinity.  Here, I need to figure out how to either get the CA data into VL or create a standard set of keyframes which repeat loop...

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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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  • 4.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 03:40
    Hi Willie.
    For looping animation use an event in the scene director with a "Jump to frame"  property  on the end of your animation​


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    Roman Yaroshenko
    chief specialist
    RBC-TV
    Moscow Russian Federation
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  • 5.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 16:48
    Right - that is essentially what I ended up doing, sorry I didn't make that more clear.  Thanks!

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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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  • 6.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 16:51
    Hi Jeff - that's an interesting idea, good to know those CA functions are accessible in VL, thanks!

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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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  • 7.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 13:24
    You should be able to use the Waveform Function Block in Visual Logic to set the same parameters as you would with Continuous Animation, but apply those values to the Texture Coordinate Rotation of a Material Shader.


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    Jeff Mayer
    Ross Video
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  • 8.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-27-2022 02:06
    Thanks Jeff, just to follow up, I did end up utilizing this technique and it has worked perfectly.  The other approach suggested was problematic as the second scene director I set up with the loop wasn't playing out from the sequencer, only the 'main' director.

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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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  • 9.  RE: Animate a Texture (Reflection Map)

    Posted 09-13-2022 00:53
    Actually I think I figure out a way using a similar process to one I would use in Viz

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    Willie Frazier
    CAKE STUDIOS, LLC
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