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Help needed with controlling start of video textures in multi-shader.
Posted: 14 March 2019 01:38 PM   [ Ignore ]  
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Hello

I could use some advice. I have 8 small video textures in a multishader attached to a plane in a cloner object.

The videos randomly appear across the clones but I would like to know if the animated texture on each clone could start on a different preferable random frame?

I can adjust the start frames in the multishader so that each video texture starts at a different time but this isn’t quite what I am looking for since this method only adjusts the start time for groups of clones.

Can anyone suggest a way to target the parameters of a texture, in this case the animation controls, for an individual clone? Are they even considered individual textures when they are in a cloner?

Any insights would be appreciated.

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Posted: 15 March 2019 12:40 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
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Hi cbowye,

The Cloner Object produces a Clone, and each Clone is considered a generated copy. If the Child of the Cloner had an XPresso tag attached to it, this would be already calculated, and each clone would be the same, given one child under the Cloner.
The Material is based on the Clone ID or color for example, so it is not limited as much as the Clones. The idea to use a Multi-Shader uses this kind of information. If you have eight video clips, you are not limited to eight channels in the Multi Shader. In the example below, I have the same sequence in each channel, but different starting times. This would be the simplest way to do it.

How many clones do you want to use in the final setup? Each clip has how many frames? I have to explore this a little bit more, hence my questions.

Scene file
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/Z1ZQehtaRVrjlsH8fWjAjF3DfNdGf3uZeYAVUi5fUeF

All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
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Posted: 15 March 2019 02:07 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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A little bit of your insight goes a long way!

Of course I am not limited to 8 channels in the multi shader (duh) so I just made 3 copies of each video and offset the animation range for each channel, With 24 channels this gives me the look I was after.

I think what I will do now though is make a little xpresso setup to feed random integers (from a range) to the frame start of each channel so no two renders will be the same.

Thanks again. Dr. Sassi!

best regards

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Posted: 15 March 2019 02:21 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
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Thanks a lot for the kind feedback, cbowyer!

Since we have Fields, I have to explore this field (pun intended) for your question of course.
Scene file
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/yehZwWPJWSfowPdBR6pdhABLXm6Ns8ipq25AQz4oN9Q

Screen capture
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/N3pKOOO5c1bALTjHqal712nK5YpxPQwjW55YvaU7JO4

The idea is here to have one Weight Tag to be the information where the clip has to start. Which means a Weight 0-100% equals the starting point 0-100% of the video clip. The second Weight Tag uses the first and remaps it with the Spline-field and use the Spline Field Animation to ‘offset’ the field. This is just for one movie, I have to explore how to do that easily with eight clips and many more clones. With one clip the Gray values work nice, but how to split this among eight for example… (and avoid complicated setups?)

As usual, I am grateful for any question that I get here, as it fills our forum and as I was told, it is more and more used as a WIKI. So, thanks for the question.

ENJOY

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
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Posted: 15 March 2019 02:55 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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P.S.:

cbowyer, I had to explore it and set up an example file. I guess this is the simplest version I can think of right now.

As illustrated above (post #3) the key is the individual cycling- gray-value for the clones based on the Weight-Field_Plain Effector.

Please note that the Material/Texture Tag is at child level.

In the scene file
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/8TEmArVqlpoBs2o6lULnmP10hrdZEqWCGmD7r25qDAF
You will find the same setup, but for each movie clip, we need a new child. Anything else stays the same.
To sort through the clones, randomly or in some other ways was not the question here, but I’m happy to look into that as well. Just let me know.

One more thing: The Weight tag ‘Set’ could have a Random Field if a manual and precise setup is not needed. For clarity, I would keep two Weight Tags.

My best wishes for your project

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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