Cineversity

I have a wall of 16x9 cubes that have to start with one image facing the camera, and then they spin to reveal a different image on the back. This is fairly straightforward if I animate the linear field of a Plain effector through the cubes (rotating 180 on the Y). In the final render a Front camera will be pointing straight at this wall.

The issue is the client wants the cubes to spin and reposition in a VERY specific way, starting with a little clockwise “anticipation” rotation, then rotating CCW, overshooting a bit, then settling back to 180°. There’s also a little move on the z-axis.

So my plan was to keyframe that exact motion into my cube, put that under a null, put the null under a cloner, and then use the Fixed Animation mode in the cloner to trigger the cube animation by the Plain effector. This gives me the motion I want, but my facing texture no longer “sticks” as the cubes rotate (I assume because the cube is now under a null).

If I put the animated cube directly under the cloner I lose my keyframed motion. Turning off “Reset Coordinates” in the cloner returns my motion, and the texture now sort of sticks, but it slides all over the place at the start of the animation.

I tried deleting the motion on the cube and playing with the curve of the linear field to create these rotation motions, but I couldn’t replicate what the client wanted, especially the little “anticipation” rotation at the start.

I’m hoping there’s a simple fix for this. I can’t get a zip attachment to work here (The file you are attempting to upload has invalid content for its MIME type.), so here’s a Dropbox link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6n9ik8dgvlixl5f/CubeWallDemo.zip?dl=0

Thanks!

Shawn Marshall

Hi Shawn Marshall,

Thanks for your file.

Here is your file back. The logo is “glued” to the Cubes.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0f92n1va9pxxqy2/CV3_S26_drs_22_MGcu_01.zip?dl=0

I made a selection and made a copy of the setup, then made it editable [c]. At the same time, I was projecting the logo flat onto it. Then applied, the Material tag to the Children. Selected the Null (magnifying glass) and typed in Null, Which made it easy to delete all the Tags I didn’t need.
While all the Logo material Tags were selected, the Generate UVW function did the work.

Let me know if you have questions.

Cheers

Thanks again for your quick reply; I appreciate it.

I was able to replicate your steps. To apply the materials to the underlying cubes I selected the two on the Cloner and used Copy Tag to Children. Is that how you did it?

Cheers!

Shawn

Hi Shawn, you’re very welcome.

Yes, exactly, and then the Null Objects also had tags. But with the filter options, I got all Null separated in the Object manager, and it was a rectangular selection to get rid of them.

All the best