I’m working on a model which also has a LCD display showing some info. I want to animate the model and show the different kinds of information on the display while doing the animation. I currently have a LCD with an emissive label, basically the opacity map will hide all but the info I want to show.
Because it will be animated I was wondering if there was some smart way to switch the label or for example make it a multi-material and switch between those in animation. In the end it needs to cycle to the different info screens.
There are only about 4 so I can just duplicate the object and hide/show the entire LCD’s during the animation but I thought there might be a more efficient way which doesn’t require me to add extra geometry.
Keyshot actually had a really good talk on label animation that might be worth looking through [15:14]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KylNcVfUCE4
He is just cycling through different lights but the concept is the same. I worked with animating labels and the timings I think have always been fine for me, but I’m not sure I checked too closely as it wasn’t for a client or anything.
Ah yeah, I saw that awesome presentation and thought it was a really smart way of having the coloured lights, I wouldn’t have thought about it. Think I would have done two weeks of color-fades for every other led. The music fit the video also really well and the other thing I really liked was creating a opacity map out of music so it would fit the music. Would have saved me a lot on this animation: (1) KeyShot Rocks YouTube - YouTube
My project is just for fun and a bit crazy anyway so I can always adjust the timings of other things if needed. I was thinking their might be something like animating the position of a texture-map so I could like just skip it 100 pixels up or so with a trigger.
I had to work on similar project few weeks ago.
If you know precisly the timing you want, you can work with video texture.
On my side I prefered to make PNG textures of my LCD segments and hide and show what I want with animated curves. It allows to handle background color/intensity independantly.
It was relatilvly easy to handle in the timeline since you name a bit the animation blocs.
I think it fits for simple transitions but if you have complex animations between LCD states, like blinks or number count down, it could be easier with video texture.
Nice! I think this might be easier in my case because I also want to animate a little knob which gets pushed to cycle to the next. I’ve tried this version, but different than your graph but same idea. I have more than 2 options so I thought labels was the easiest way to get it right.
This is what I thought should work. The curve changes the intensity of the emissive while there is an opacity mask applied to lit only the parts of the display you want.
But it doesn’t work. I would almost think it’s a bug since the image I use for opacity is pure black and with the intensity to 0 there shouldn’t appear some kind of ‘negative’ emissive appearance like it does now. If I changed the bitmap for a black vertex colour in the opacity channel it did work so that brought me to a combination closer to your material nodes:
Here I solved the issue by throwing in a black vertex map into the mix. And that makes sure that you don’t get a black hole kind of emissive which absorbs light like in the first example.
I think I’ll also report this as a bug as I think the first video should have the same outcome as the second. But maybe @dries.vervoort knows what’s happening here.
Instead of just using an opacity map, you could try making the label a multi-material and switch between 'em during the animation. That way, you can cycle through all the different info screens and really make it pop!
I actually thought about that but I couldn’t find the way to switch the materials in the animation timeline. Or would you just render x frames than change the material and render the next x frames?
The only way to animate multi-materials that I know is the Studio Switch Event.
You build multiple studios with only multi-material settings inside and then add event switch from one to the next. (only available from studio panel with right clic on a studio)
Hi @oscar.rottink,
I am not sure if this will get you what you want, but you can animate textures (and labels) by using the curve fade node in the material graph. If you connect it to both your label and the opacity channel on your material, you will be able to have them fade in/out.
Yeah that was also what I thought, but complicated for what I want. But you could of course just enable the other material and render the following frames. Maybe not most practical.
I’ve just come in to the same issue as you and remember this thread. trying to animate an emissive light label to spin or a spinning radial opacity map without having to go in to another software and export an image sequence. It would be really handy to be able to animate labels… I now understand your original point!
I still have to finish the actual animation but yeah some more properties you could animate with labels would be nice. Not sure what your object looks like but sometimes you might be able to cheat by animating some extra geometry containing the label. But like I also show in that top video, sometimes it gives weird transparency issues. From what I understand some are really a technical limitation at this moment.
