Animate opacity on a texture??

Does anyone know of a way to Animate the opacity Value of a texture on an object along the timeline or over a specific spot in time? 

So I need the object to start opaque and slowley become transparent or really just slightly transparent. Slightly see through the object.

Thanks

Steve

Comments

  • It can be done via a Shader Mixer shader, using the frame number from a Variable brick (or iray equivalent) to control the opacity. Animating the Opacity setting more-or-less directly is, I think, doable but it may require using a script to link to a node property.

  • StevieDStevieD Posts: 103

    Wow I'm going to have to do a lot of work to figure out the Shader Mixer, I guess. I was afraid of that but I really need this to get what I want the animation to work.

    Thank You.

    Steve

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701
    edited November 2017

    Without the obvious 'animate the opacity slider' option available..., the simplest way to accomplish this effect is 'just outside' of the rendering process - try animate the scene twice - once with the item visible, and once with it gone (otherwise the exact animation), then use a video editor to blend/fade between the two scenes. Easy and works well. (you don't have to animate the whole sequence either, just the time to after the fade-out - with the item, and start the second sequence a bit before the item is gone - without the item... then blend to taste.)

    If that's not an option, with the animated textures script, you might be able to use an image sequence of white to grey to black images animated in the opacity map of the object and get the effect you want.

    I hven't used it, but I think mjcasual (see the freebies section) has a 'mjcmatanim' script on his google-site that might be able to accomplish this for free.

    If you can write a simple for-loop script and have access to the image-magik toolkit (windows and mac, I think), you could probably generate the white-to-black image sequence that you'd need to do this at any resolution, and with any number of steps between black and white.

    A lot of folks would like this function (making the opacity slider animate-able), but it hasn't been enable/added yet. maybe someday.

    cheers,

    --ms

     

    Post edited by mindsong on
  • StevieDStevieD Posts: 103

    Oh, Yea Baby. That's what I'm talking about. Thanks a bunch. I'll give this a try.

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