New tutorial: Animating Materials
Oroboros
Posts: 326
It's been a long time coming, but here's an intro to animating materials in Bryce.
The tute was basically a broad, introductory overview of what you can do. By far the most useful technique is an offset for real world synthesis, but the two take-home messages are:
1. Do material animation in the material timeline
2. You can't animate States on and off, but once on, You can animate its Parameters.
Enjoy! (720p viewing recommended)
EDIT: Oh yes: Feel free to ask any questions :) Pretty broad topic, and I've only looked at the surface.... Literally... I don't have the render power to animate Volumetrics :) However the intro scene of the ringworld uses a volumetric cloud in a torus, where a gentle texture rotation causes the clouds to roil really nicely, IMO.
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Comments
Thanks for this! Haven't had the chance to view it yet, but I definitely will and will post my results.
Art
Nice tutorial.
Cool tutorial thanks-inspired to try animations
I would find it so much easier to concentrate on the tutorial if there wasn't that music continuously playing in the background, so please, - next time, can you turn the music off when you are speaking - at least during the tutorial.
Unless you actually have a version of this without the music? That'd be great!
You have a nice voice for tuts, so why hide it?
Hi fran, thanks for the feedback :)
Music's always a subjective thing. The two reasons I use music is: a) I like composing, and b) it helps hide the ENORMOUS number of edits I do to my narration in making these things.
However, I can always wind it down a little. I'm not sure, but perhaps I can re-upload the file and re-mix the backing track down a little. If not, I'll have a look at re-uploading a new file and put out a new link.
Was there anything in the information that was unclear, or you felt deserved more attention? Trying to judge the depth of information without going too deep is always the tricky part.
I do know what you mean.
I personally enjoy background music in a tutorial, but it has to be the right type of music. And I prefer it to be "background" music, not something overshadowing the voice of the presenter. And Oroboros, your videos do make one want to give Bryce animation a try. But I'm afraid if one more ingredient is added to the pot the stew will have to be thrown out. Well...maybe not, if that ingredient is an extremely thorough beginners how to. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps.
Editing really is a more complex area than imagined, and filling the 'non-talking/descriptive-image sections' is really a hard task. Yes, some parts of a video you are editing 'call out/dictate' certain sounds (e.g explosion and boom sound...etc.,), but it's the other parts where the above areas require 'filler-sounds' that are the problem.
Oroboros’s initial vid-sounds weren't a problem for this listener/viewer anyway - no need for change. But, as he says himself, "Music’s always a subjective thing". How many times have I recommended a wonderful music piece to a friend only to be told at the end of its hearing that it was 'total c..p'. 'Pedants', that's all I can say is...'pedants' :)
Jay
I hear you, guss. The thing is, I'm my own worst advocate for Bryce animation :D As I said in another tute, animation requires using more than just one application. I mean, you can create and animate a simple scene and make it look like a million dollars without anything other than Bryce, and a simple video application that will simply cut footage together. But the two main reasons most people don't do animation of ANY sort is because it takes so long to see results, and you need to know other applications. At the very least, a video editing app and possibly a sound editing app. It seems like too much work, too complicated, etc.
To a point, this is true. There's a reason the credits in animated or special effects movies is huge. Not because the pipelines are complex, but because there's a high degree of specialisation. For the most part, most high-end movies use a handful of applications, but people specialise within those applications to get the work done.
The first impression many people get with animation is 'TOO MUCH TO LEARN'.
But the sneaky secret is... It isn't. Complexity is created two ways: by doing a few massively complicated things, OR... doing many simple things. I choose the latter.
You don't need to know even 20% of an editing application's features to edit Bryce footage. Just cut it together and export it. No dissolves, special effects, wizbang stuff... Just cut it together and get it out.
Let me tell you right now: Infinity's Child contains scene-after-scene of the most simple animation techniques you can do in Bryce. Linear offset transforms, linear movement, no more than 3 keyframes per object per scene. As beautiful and mesmerising as it might appear, from an animation perspective this was boring :) No paths, no tracking – in fact, not even ONE curved trajectory. While this was a movie, this was about material manipulation, not motion.
All I'm saying is: if you have an idea for something, you're allowed to collaborate with others on it. Or add some simple skills in a different app to get the result. Getting a video app to cut pictures and possibly record sound doesn't mean you have to be an expert at it. Just do what you have to, and if you hit a block, ask questions. Start small. Big successes are built on small victories.
To return, guss: 'Extremely thorough' and 'Beginners How-To' are two completely different worlds, and I simply don't have the time :) You can overload beginners, and you can't talk down to advanced users. However, following this particular tutorial, I did get an insight into how I could break down some steps.
And I hope you're grateful I haven't covered the Advanced Motion Lab yet :) I spend a lot of time in the AML myself. Like the DTE, it's a little arcane to use. But it's the only place where you can control a very important part of movement: acceleration. As well as some housekeeping for more complex tasks.
@Oroboros: I do understand other applications are needed if one were trying to make a cracker jack animation, and that many times, for ones own enjoyment, they aren't needed. But if a person is going to spend the time and energy making a good animation, why not go ahead and try for a cracker jack one, stretch a good animation into a polished one. And this is where I'd find myself headed were I to start learn how to create animations. And unless there are several good, free editing and sound applications available, I'd have to stick with just trying for good. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
In a way, there is a lot to learn in creating an animation. Maybe not in the technical sense, in learning about key frames and the like, but it takes time to learn how something would actually move, how it would look in such and such a position, how the light would play on it, etc., and it takes lots of practice for some to learn this. It also takes time to learn how to visualize all of this when in the process of creating an animation, something that also comes with lot of practice. But if a person doesn't have a good grasp about the technical part, what they try and create is going to be frustrating and extremely time consuming. This is why I think it's very beneficial to have a tutorial which explains timing and key frames and how they are used. If for no other reason than as a reference guide a person can go back to when needed.
Yet, if a person doesn't know how to use the application they will be using for creating animations, no tutorial about animation will do them any good. It's the crawl before walking before running scenario, which is me at the moment. I'm slowly getting to the point where I can walk using Bryce, and when I can run then perhaps it'll be time to try Bryce's other feature.
Minor update: in response to fran's request, I've remixed the music background down about 6dB.
I've also tried to improve the quality of the video... As my master contains a lot less banding and compression artifacts that what is presented in the YouTube video... and added one credit I forgot :) Link has been updated in this thread's initial post, has been added to my tutorial collection (link is in signature below).
Oro, David Brinnen suggested I re-post my inquiry here in hopes you might have a solution.
I’ve done numerous searches and I can’t seem to find a tutorial: I need to know how to set up a repeating or looping motion within a longer Bryce animation, such as pulsating lights, rotating ceiling fan,etc.
There must be a simple way to do this, but I haven’t found anything. Links? TIA
never mind
While watching your Simple Orbits tutorial I learned about the Advanced Motion Lab and the repeat function.