Cineversity

I’m having trouble applying the frames of an animated Texture to an object. I’m using a multi shader in a material. When I load the directory of frames, they are imported out of order. Anyone have any suggestions? 

I’m essentially using this tutorial. I noticed that when he selects his directory. It pulls in all the frames in consecutive order.  When I do it, its out of order. The importance of this is when I put that object in to a Cloner, and adjust the Hue sliders ( they end up controlling the playback of said texture). It right now plays the frames randomly- a direct reflection of how the frames were pulled into the Multi-Shader. What do I need to do to make sure they come in or are sorted in consecutive order?
I followed -timestamped here-
  https://youtu.be/HXKGaI0fjKU?t=1051

I’m currently on R20. Appreciate any help.

I’m also looking for any alternative solutions and would like to know the difference between using the Mutlishader vs simply just loading an mp4 as an animated video into a material. Is it optimally more beneficial to use the Mograph multishader option?

Cheers.

Hi ShogunWill,

The problem can’t be reproduced here with clips. I tried mov and mp4 files, all fine. If you have a movie file, I’m happy to check it out here. In case you need an upload link, please advice. (Dropbox, Amazon, Google, Adobe clouds are the only ones I would use at the moment).

I assume you are on the last or current build, I checked both, just to be safe.

I have watched on the suggested time and a few seconds of it. I guess I got the idea. I think no one expects me to go through 40 minutes of this, so thanks for the time-based link! Your description is clear, and I hope I do not miss a detail here.

To run the movie with brightness changes is something I suggested a while ago, and with the fields as an option you can create this nicely. But each clip needs to have the same length, or if a very short one is among the clips, one needs to have two or more repetitions in it, to get some sync into the game. The use of fields is R20 based, here is the latest example I had set up for the forum
https://www.cineversity.com/forums/viewthread/3289/
There are several, some needs rendering to be visible, e.g., the Interactive Render Region.

The Multi-Shader can even hold a clip per layer, and also mixes fine with other layers containing stills.

The advantage of clips is that they run automatically. Layer cycling, on the other hand, is more complex.

Let me know if there is anything else, I’m happy to look into it. (Please with a file, reduced to the problem and no 3rd party items please, thanks a lot!)

Cheers

Sorry for the late reply as I’m getting re-familiarized with C4D. I was able to 

I’ll try to explain the process and the problems I ran into. 



Mission: Animated Texture on hexagon objects scattered on an overall Spherical object. (The frames are rendered RGB +Alpha, 500x500px   format: .png)
I should preface that I am running on an iMacPro using R20.

This is how I achieved. 
1)Created a hexagon using a Nside spline object and an Extrude.

1.Created a material and applied it to the Extrude.
2. In this material: Goal is to apply the frames to a multi shader in Luminance and Alpha. (Hopeful end result is so I can control the playback of the animations using the Hue Slider in the Transform Tab of the Cloner that I will apply this to.) First I make sure in Editor that Animated preview is checked.
  A. I go Luminance> Texture> Mograph> Multishader
Click on Multishader>Add Folder> pointed to directory with the Animated Texture frames.  [FIRST PROBLEM: All the frames came in NOT in sequential order causing playback to be the frames play scattered] Reached out to Maxon- advised to delete prefs. I did, I also went through and removed the software entirely and reinstalled. Problem persists, I also have a laptop that I run R20 on as well. Problem occurs there too.
  B. [WORK AROUND- Texture> Clear> Load first frame from directory, double clicked on image>Animation Tab> hit Calculate (so it recognizes the end/total frames in directory. -Scrub timeline make sure it plays. Go back to Luminance Tab> Texture>Copy Shader.
  C. Luminance Tab> Texture>Multishader. Click on Multishader- Under Shaders> Texture1>PASTE SHADER.  Now click TO LAYERS and hit YES. This seemed to have taken all the frames in the directory loaded them into the multi shader in sequential Order.

3. At this point in order for me to see the playback, I needed to apply the Extruded Nside to a Cloner, in this case to a Sphere Icosehedron. Set Cloner> Object Tab>Mode>Object,  then dragged Sphere to the Object slot. Distribute on vertex with Y+ as Up Vector.  Animation played on all the hexagons created nicely. Now I need the blacks of the animation to be Alphaed.

[SECOND PROBLEM- I backed up went to Luminance Tab> Texture> COPY SHADER (the multishader I set up) simply went to Alpha   Texture>PASTE SHADER . Now animation blacks are transparent works like a charm…. until I have to render.  Now I can’t Render the Scene. I confirm that everything is renderable up until I copy pasted the shader to the Alpha Channel. ]

For both problems, I had friends try to replicate on their machine.  They are on PC and they ran into no problems A)importing to Multishade- frames come in sequentially B) Copying a multishader to Alpha Channel doesnt stop it from rendering. Steve at Maxon support is looking at this on Macs over there. Its very possible I have run into a Mac Bug for R20.

Getting The hexagons to Animate randomly. I applied A random effector Parameter> Position unchecked, Color Mode Effector Color with a Fall offf with a Sphereical Field. Made sure Field Size was about 500CM Clip to Shape. I made sure the Remapping> Contour Mode is set to Curve and the Spline Preset type is SIN. Spline Animation Speed 30F.
I continued to do this to make sure it worked despite knowing it won’t render cause of the Alpha problem.

This all worked BECUASE I was able to get the Multishade setup (despite the render issue). As I understand thats why you choose Effector Color so it knows to work with the multishade material.

Knowing all this and viewing the gif results, Is there a way I could have done all this without using a multishader? 
Key things needed are
1) transparent animated texture on Object that would be cloned all over a sphere
2) Effector that causes the playback of each hexagon animation to play randomly, not at the same time.

Hi ShogunWill,

I’m on a Mac with R20, since I can’t reproduce what you mentioned in the initial post:

Why not share the set-up in a file? Do you need an upload link? Without a scene file, I can’t see what you are doing.

Have you tried the scene files I have had linked?

How many frames has your footage/clip/texture?

Cheers

Thanks Doc!

I’d be happy to share. Please let me know if you have any problems with the link. https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbr0d9ihkwkdcke/Sphere_UI2.zip?dl=0
I’ll go over the previous post you mentioned, regarding the vids.

Cheers

Will

Oh man! This was exactly what I was doing except you used video clips! I’ll give it a shot Doc! Let you know shortly. I wonder if I can do the same with Alphas with a video file.

ShogunWill,

Please have a look into this set-up:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/YKXtkwM9KgPMV7fChYMMTBdIxFcErtduz2oNzlqc6Qv

Wouldn’t this give you all you are after for this project?

Screenshot
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/x546CTwk6hhI9njmmuitEaUAPoIyT7TO0UoVO48DRDg

BTW, yes the sequence of images loads weirdly, and there is kind of a problem going on with these files. I really do not use PNG in my productions, ever. Hence I have minimal experience with issues like this, as in, if I use your sequence in the Alpha channel, my renderer is not willing to even start. I never had any problems with OpenEXR, and I use that format since over a decade by now. Yes, it is bigger, but I couldn’t care less.

Let me know if the example hexagon animation can be replaced with a spline or other animation. I can share other alternatives.

Cheers

Thanks I’m looking into these files now. I see you used Hair, which I’m on Broadcast R20. the image animation was just a placement holder of a bit more complex animation I have rendered. I’ll give the OpenEXR a shot.

Thanks for the extra information, ShogunWill.

I have to explore more why Ae can take the images in as PNG-sequence with no problem and Cinema 4D has a problem.

Perhaps it is a problem out of the reach of any artist, and we have to wait for a fix.

I let you know at the moment I can say anything more definitive.

All the best

P.S.: Here is a roundtrip, ShogunWill.

I have set up file …_01.c4d as a movie clip scene file, RGB in one, Alpha in the other. Those files are rendered into the tex folder. Then opened in …_11.c4d inside of the Multi Shader, in two channels.

Sccene file 01-11
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/nRZah5gmWckRPnq5oMChLXb2nSMF6HPftW77tRtXoaL

This is just a test.

Could you please render out the clips on your machine with scene file 01.

Then open a new file and set it up in a new file and check if you can reproduce the file 11? This would provide hopefully more information.

Cheers

So didnt get any word back from Maxon yet. Turns out if (given my set up) - if all I did was delete Clear the multishader set up in the Luminance channel and kept it in the Alpha Channel. It renders- I get both the texture and the transparency. But I still keep the Luminance on- maybe use it to tweak the overall luminance color.  So I went back to explore if the format of the animation frames (that I pointed the directory to for the multishader) mattered. I rendered in png, exr and tiff, and as it turns out they worked out as well and was able to render view! Soo… I guess this solved the problem?

Big thanks in the help for all this btw!
Results: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8op5j960lgmacw8/Alphadone.mp4?dl=0

So my next immediate problem has to do with the playback speed of the shader, as you can see its seems to be running super fast. How can I slow it down to its normal intended speed?
Here’s a screenshot of Falloff options, tinkered with the Spline Animation Speed from 24 to 30 to 60 F . But I’m not seeing any visible changes as I test it out.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bnzzgm1m48huoyt/Falloff.png?dl=0

Hi ShogunWill,

Thanks for the two links.

Looks good and interesting. Nice that it works for you!

The speed in Spline Animation Speed is the number of Frames it needs to cycle one time through. If you set this from 24fps to 240fps, it will be ten times slower.

Since one can mix materials/textures, as long as the Luminance in the Alpha-based material is black, and on the left side (Object Manager), the Luminance only material/texture Tag could run a Luminance channel and be set to Texture Tag> Attribute Manager> Tag> Mix Textures. The right-sided Texture Tag will add its Luminance to the Black Luminance, while not delivering anything to the outside of the Alph channel.

Mt best wishes for your project