Cineversity

Hello. 

I made the animation attached for a project I recently worked on.  Its done now but the client asked if it was possible to fade the dots up randomly at the start then the rest fade up randomly at 6 seconds.  I could only get one set to fade up so we left it as a scale.  By using the idea of the following tutorial and then changing the mograph colour, using the random effector /noise you get a really nice fade up but it wasn’t random and effected all the clones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhAyxuHolAU

Please have a look at the movie attached and get in touch if you think you can solve it or give me any pointers.  Its harder than it looks!!

AIM

Fade in a random group of the spheres then at 6 seconds fade in the remaining spheres randomly.  It has to be setup sing a cloner (mode object)

Hope you can help!!

M

Hi M.,

Do you have an option to share your scene?

Three things to check, as long as I have no scene-file, to tell you perhaps more:
a) check the Random Effector if the Min/Max setting is to 0-100% (not to -100% to 100%)
b) if everything fails, just to gain some more data for our discussion, use a colorizer on the MoGraph Color Shader and set it to “black-to-white”, which will help if any color is left in the scene from something else.
c) where is color set up in the “pipeline”, and is the color intended.

All the best

Sassi

Hello, hope you had a nice Easter! Here is the project.  If the orange ones could fade up randomly first then the blue ones at 6 seconds that would be fab!

M

Thanks for the file, M.,
much easier to talk then about :o)
Thank you, I hope you had nice Easter too.

The color in the MoGraph Cloner was set to 50% gray, which will have an influence to the scene, set it to black to get out of your set up.

The Random Effector had negative values. These values will not be used in the way you might like it.

I use in the attached scene a second Random Effector, just for the color. If you have some parameter that needs to be always in sync between these two, you might consider to link them via XPresso.
(Is the Random Effector the only way? Not at all. You could use also an Shader Effector and feed this one with a Noise Shader. The noise starts with both values e.g., black, and then one starts faster to turn white, and on the end both have catch up to be white. This allows eventually for more control.)

The Min/Max slider keyframes can be adjusted of course, between the both 0% and both 100% you can vary the results heavily to your liking.

Anyway, here i your scene file back, and please let me know if you have any questions. :o)

Good luck with the project and the client!

Sassi

Thank you for the scene file, I have had a look and its great, it is already further than where I got a bit stuck. Is there a way to split the orange dots and blue dots up so I have control to fade them up at separate times?

Ok,  so if I used a shader effector I could design my own animation mattes?  That might be useful for more complicated bits. 

Thanks for info so far!

M

Thanks for the feedback, M.!

The simplest way to have some control about the way the use the information from the Random Effector is based on the Colorizer (check out the attached file)

As the Min/Max gradually increase (based on the keyframes) it affects all clones. Which the Colorizer option, you change the progress of the information. Make a little preview and have an eye on the blue dots, they pulse! Then have a look at the gradient of the Colorizer in the blue material. I hope that allows for a good control.

If you really want to split up the control to 100%, but like to keep the Cloner Object as the only clone producer, you might do that with MoGraph Selections. In that way there is no limit in separating clone groups and keep the scene set up simple. If you need an example, let me know

Cheers

Sassi

yes I think I can split the layers up on 2 different cloners then use 2 different random effectors, just turn the opposite ones off in each cloner to build the complete groups..

Thanks Dr Sassi of helping me solve this.  If you have any quick tips on making random selections then that would be handy too.  Manually painting the weight using the mograph selection tool could take me hours!!

Kind regards

M

... a very fast method to get a random Selection of a large cloner group? I tried to find the fastest method, and it is certainly a XPresso set-up.

You can just copy and paste this, re-link only the Selection Tag with your scene. Press play, and stop, check if that is to your liking, then disable or delete the XPresso tag. (You can save the Xpresso tag in the Tag presets [Object-Manager> Files] to get it back quickly - relink and done. Relink: click on the MoGraph Selection Node in the XPresso Editor and in the Attribute Manager you will find a link-field, drag your Selection Tag into it—done)

Copy the MG Selection tag and use the Invert option, rename the MG Selection tag to avoid trouble, and done.

I hope that helps, if not, let me know.

Good Luck. :o)

Hey M.,

I was searching for the most simplest and clearest set up possible. Which also is easy to “read”.

In a nut-shell, I set up a scene in a Matrix Object, with all “clones” at once, and I use only one Inheritance Effector to transfer the positions of the clones.

The trick is now to place Null objects as child objects under the Cloner Object, as long as the Cloner Object is set to Iterate, it will produce no “real” clone where a Null is. Check the image and you might see already what I mean. ;o)

In that way we have a source for the clone position, orientation and scale (and could manage many attributes that way already in one step.)

Then we have a certain amount of cloners (three cloners== add two Nulls each time, in the order as in the image). So you have a major layer and a sublayer for each group to work with them.

If you like, check out the Random mode in the Random Effector, the Turbulence allows for some more “life” in the effect ;o) [Select all three to switch at once, which you might know of course]

BTW, this set up works great if you feed a Thinking Particles group into the Matrix (or direct into the Cloner if a general effector work is not needed)

No selection needed. No XPresso either. Plain, pure and simple.

All the best

Sassi

File: (The other file has some more features, but less easy to re-engineer)
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=QQFNwUXdRuAl-ZFM1B2Hx8
File: A thinking particle driven idea, just to add some ideas around this kind of set up
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=06iw2UnfShorZUle9uckMc