Digital Art Zone

Hello!... I have a group of nearly 150 objects… “stones “in a landscape, in fact… animating the scene, I want that the stones desappear progressively… If just one, I can use the alpha channel, of course… Is it a way to apply that to the whole group???
  thank you!!!!

celmar - 11 January 2013 11:12 AM

Hello!... I have a group of nearly 150 objects… “stones “in a landscape, in fact… animating the scene, I want that the stones desappear progressively… If just one, I can use the alpha channel, of course… Is it a way to apply that to the whole group???
  thank you!!!!

Do they all share the same shader?

no, but effectively there is only two shaders, for all the objects!...

a global shader maybe with a mixer function based on position for opacity I have done it with a noise mixer and colour, not tried opacity, no idea actually, just ranting really while I render.
or
an awful lot of shaders!

I’m not sure what you’re looking to do. Make each stone disappear separately and progressively from one stone to the next, or make the whole group disappear over time as a whole?

If you’re trying to make them disappear one at a time, though, they might each need their own shader and keyframes (unless there’s some arcane way of using universal space instead of local and applying a gradient? not sure how that would work, though). Maybe I’m missing something simple, which wouldn’t be the first time.

Hi,

If you want a gradual fade over distance, you can use the altitude terrain shader in the alpha channel. It can be set to work in the X, Y or Z axis (which is a little odd because the name implies it only works in the Z axis), over Global or Local space and can be animated for the height value. Fiddle with the blend value in the shader and the tweeners in the timeline to get a nice transition.

You could use it from as a reference shader in the alpha channel if you need each stone to have a unique colour shader.

I was hoping to be able to get ‘procedural lock’ to work with it so that any angle could be used but, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be possible.

That shouldn’t be a huge problem if you’re ok with the effect working along a primary axis.

If you’re just wanting sudden dissapearances of selected stones, then I’d suggest creating multiple groups and switching the visibility off on the groups as needed.

RoguePilot - 12 January 2013 06:53 AM

If you’re just wanting sudden dissapearances of selected stones, then I’d suggest creating multiple groups and switching the visibility off on the groups as needed.

Right, or separate shaders for each stone would give flexibility as well.

Or, if you want a gradual fading of the rocks, you could make a few groups, and each group would have it’s own master shader. If the rocks in each group are scattered about it could give you the look you want with only five or six master shaders.