Moving textures: the actual release

Moving textures: the actual release

Hello all,

Everyone has had a chance to see my MatMovie script in the general section. Perhaps some have even wondered why I didn't post it in the scripts section. Wonder no more, here it is now!
thre is more to it now too!
you know you need to define materials with a .mov extention

and then add this material to an object. By adding a matMovie object it scans the file for any objects having a .mov material ** this is different from the first one **.
As you may have noticed there is now a Tag script you can add to the object containing the .mov material. This will give you options on which textures to use the material with.

the All Frames makes the movie step one image at a time, ignoring the frame parameter.
all images reset at frame 0.
objects can have more than one .mov material.

the MatMovie object has this now:

time has been changed to frame because this is what image is shown.
scan for new materials: look through the objects for any new materials
scan for tags: scan the objects with .mov materials for the MatTag scripts

rescan for materials: does a clean scan looking for both materials and tags

now objects can have one movie for the color and another for its bump map etc.

have fun!
Todd

Very nice work Todd, this is an excellent addition to C3D.

Andrew

Hi Todd, thanks for the update. But I'm not getting it to work with a color and transparency material. The color alone works great. For the transparency, do I need to put the transparency map in the colorchannel or the transparency channel? Could you show a screenshot to show where to put the materials/tags/matmovie polygonobj?

Thanks a lot!!!

Regards,

Peter

peer,
the proper way to set this up is:
define all models
create .mov materials
add .mov to models
add MatTag script to object containing .mov materials
select where you want the textures to be used
add the MatMovie obj to the file - select the files needed for each .mov
like so:
make sure if you are using transparency to set the intensity higher than zero

as for what textures do in the transparency, I have no idea... but you can put a movie in any of the textures.

Does this help?
Todd

Nice work. :icon_thumbup:

while helping Peer with his problem I notice something not working just right. it happens when a material is set to use 'all frames' and the time goes from 0 to whatever. as long as the time was less than 1 but higher than zero the first image would not change. the updated file fixes this. you can find it in the first post.

hopefully peer won't mind if I show what is possible here
a small test file
just need to make sure each image as an alpha mask and check 'use alpha' in the material. works like a charm

Todd

Hi Todd! Nice movie indeed! Of course I don't mind you showing it. It shows how great your script is BTW I did get your mail, but not the applescript. Maybe you could send it? Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Peter

Hi

Hi, I have no idea how this works, I've done the steps mentioned by todd, and it wont let me open a .mov file for the texture.

The idea is:

1) Convert movie to sequence of images.
2) Use first image as the source for the texture.
3) Script swaps in the sequence of images.

(You don't use the MOV except in step 1)

That said, this kind of thing is really best done in a compositing program (such as Final Cut Express/Pro, After Effects, or Shake) and not C3D (note how the guy's foot slides a bit in the test movie, and imagine how hard fixing a problem like this would be).

In a pinch you could do this in QuickTime Pro.

FYI:

"Compositing" in this context means "assembling layers of video using transparency and other blending effects to create a single, seamless video" (in much the same way as Photoshop lets you composite individual frames). There are dedicated tools for doing this kind of thing... doing it in C3D is unnecessarily painful.

Jurf

Ok so I got the concept behind this and can see the image sequence change if I do it manully in the frame properties of the matmovie script, but when I play the animation nothing happens it just stays on the first frame. Am I missing something here.

Switch,

you need to animate the frame parameter for it to change

Hi Todd, I was trying your script on a new sample from got3d.com . Is it possible to setup two image sequences per material (one for color and one for transparency). I know this has come up in earlier posts but there's not a real solution besides the already mentioned adding of an alpha channel per image. This is quite time consuming. I tried to change something in your script, but I'm getting lost ;-) . Adding two materials on one object (the a.mov and b.mov in your example) only renders the last added material and not the first (sounds logical Cheetah wise). It would be nice if you could help me out with this.

Thanks in advance!!

Regards,

Peter

Peer,

after you add both materials to the object, add a mat tag to the object... then you can select where the materials are applied. if you were to add another matmov texture, you would need to delete the mat tag and re add it to the object

hope this helps

Todd

Hi Todd,

I'm still not getting it to work. I'll add the scenefile for you and some images of the sequence (courtesy of got3d.com).

If you could help me, that would be great! I'm working with 4.6.1 by the way.

Regards,

Peter

Peer,

Let me work on it and I'll see what I can do to get it to work like you want

Todd

Thanks Todd, but don't let it take all of your time! Maybe Martin has built in support for animated textures in version 5...

Regards,

Peter

Is there a limit to the imagesequence for this script? I'm trying to render a movie with a movietexture of 4mins 18secs.

I'm also having trouble with the 'all frames' checkbox. It does not seem to override the frame settings and stays on the 1st frame...?

animating frames property

hi,

sorry for being thick, but how can I keyframe the Frame property in the MovieMat object. It does not appear as a keyframable property in the KeyEditor. I also can't get the movie "to play" in C3D, ie the frames to update.

the script is great, will save me hours of four point tracking and endless hours of fixing.

Dont worry just figured it out somehow. Not quite sure what I did actually but control clicking the record button and selecting record frame did the trick. lovely!
adam

Hi, if anyone has got this to work, please could you post an example JAS file? Its potentially really cool but a little too "command-line" think for me.

And if it is working can you see the results in the editor or only when rendering? Thanks

AaronC

Targos said:

And if it is working can you see the results in the editor or only when rendering?

Click to expand...

You will see in right in the 3d editor window.
I attached a zipped folder containing one image sequence and the jas file.
But for some kind of reason it´s not "saveable" - maybe Todd can look into this.
So it´s pretty straight forward:
Open the MatMovie.jas file.
Get the MatMovie script from the tool menu etc. A box will prompt wanting you to find the first pic of the image sequence.
Now with the selected script key frame No 1 (RMB click; record frame.)
Scroll to end of the timeline; go into properties of the script and type in 25 (at "frame") for the end of the image sequence and animation take length.
Again: RMB click; record frame.
Done.
Hit play button.

Cheers
Frank