Lighting through a timeline in 4.5

lancelmartin_cf51987037

Trying to get the effect of a flashing light on a dashboard

Have tried both point light and linear point light. Turning on illumination at 1 second and off and 2 seconds and repeating. When I playback, I get random diffuse only and specular only on's and off's .

Have tried this even on a blank scene with nothing in it but the light. Same weird results. Is this an issue with the KeyFrame plugin?

Richard Haseltine

It's probably because the states of the light are an enumeration, so it animates through the intermediate values as it would with any other parameter. If you have the separate plugin, setting the frame type to one that doesn't take intermediate values but simply jumps from old value to new may fix it, or you could see if the visibility property will animate.

lancelmartin_cf51987037

I appreciate the help.

It really doesn't seem that hard but this has to be a daz/keymate bug. In Keymate both of the parameters display in render and illumination on/off are shown under the object tree. When either is changed a keyframe is set on that item for that frame.

However, on replay, the whole timeline is shot and sporadically turns the light on/off diffuse only/specular only/ visible in render on /off. It's like the lights don't respond to the keyframing at all.

So I've tried it with the values selectable (TSRV) and without (TS). Same result.
Tried on Animate and Timeline .. same result.
Tried same scene and new scenes with the pointlight as the only item.
Tried both options with display persistence on and off

same crazy results

thanks for your help

BlackFeather1973

It works for me when i set an extra keyframe for the light one frame before i turn the light on/off.

For example :
Frame 0 : light on
Frame 29 : light on
Frame 30 : light off
Frame 59 : light off
Frame 60 : light on
...

lancelmartin_cf51987037

I'm running DS 4.5 with both the animate 2 and keymate plugins

This concept seems pretty simple. Make a light flash on and off.

Go to one second and turn on illumination. Go to 2 seconds and turn off illumination. Repeat

On replay. Specular only, Diffuse only, and on/off appear at random frames. I've also tried controlling the lights with the display/visible on/off and visible in render settings for the light. ...... same result.

Does any one know how to just make a light flash on and off in Daz?

lancelmartin_cf51987037

hmmm.... well thanks for the confirmation.

I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling. Very bizarre.

Richard Haseltine

lm10001 said:

I appreciate the help.

It really doesn't seem that hard but this has to be a daz/keymate bug. In Keymate both of the parameters display in render and illumination on/off are shown under the object tree. When either is changed a keyframe is set on that item for that frame.

However, on replay, the whole timeline is shot and sporadically turns the light on/off diffuse only/specular only/ visible in render on /off. It's like the lights don't respond to the keyframing at all.

So I've tried it with the values selectable (TSRV) and without (TS). Same result.
Tried on Animate and Timeline .. same result.
Tried same scene and new scenes with the pointlight as the only item.
Tried both options with display persistence on and off

same crazy results

thanks for your help

What type of keyframe, though?

lancelmartin_cf51987037

Ive tried both node and object keyframes combined with the keymate settings of TR -- TRS -- and TRSV

I'm thinking it's an issue with my installation that makes the error consistent.

I'll try reinstalling

Thanks again for the help

texjones

I plan on doing something similar in the near furture with traffic lights, and I've already decided how to handle it. Since the final video edit will be done in Movie Maker. I will render the green light, then the amber then the red. Take them all into Movie Maker, and since the light change is sudden, set up the animation there. It would still look convincing enough for animation. I already did that once a couple years ago with Illustrator and Flash.
So if your focus is on the dashboard, I would render one frame with the light and one without and take them into Movie Maker (or whatever video creator you use) and animate them there, you could play with the fade transition until it looks convincing. Then cut back to whatever the main scene is....for the animation (in Movie Maker) make sure the camera is in the exact same position for each render.

Richard Haseltine

Merged duplicate thread.

By type I meant TCB, Linear, Constant (as given on the product page). I think you would want constant.

lancelmartin_cf51987037

Many thanks to BlackFeather1973

I did get the flashing light effect.... but my understanding of keymate was that it should be able to act on all sliding values and not just morphs.

Do any of the surface tab parameters diffuse color, ambient strength, opacity strength ... do any of them work over time?

If I want the glow lights from the genesis bot (joints, ears, eyes) to slowly come on over a couple of seconds, I would think I should be able to set ambient strength to 0% on frame 0 and 100% on frame 60 and the result would be a gradual increase of ambient strength. But I'm not getting that. I've reinstalled DAZ ... so don't think it was a setting I changed.

Is there a different way to alter surface parameters over time?

Richard Haseltine

If you want to animate surface properties you need to use Shader Mixer - its Variable bricks can give frame number or time, which you can then use to control a value like ambient strength.

This for example will go from black to red twice over a thirty frame sequence.

lancelmartin_cf51987037

Aaah.... thank you little light reading ahead :)

lancelmartin_cf51987037

OK...
do I really need to know Trig to get Daz to work? Trying to see the functions behind the bricks but it looks like the value of the frame (12) is converted to a radian then plugged into a sine brick where on I fell and hit my head on the toilet and that's when I drew the flux capacitor and I heard a voice from beyond say 'My God, It's full of Stars.'

So ....

Is there a plug in that will change surface properties over time?
or a tutorial that gives me a hint what these bricks do.... been looking here but it's pretty general

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/start

thanks in advance for any suggestions/help

ReDave

No, it's the frame number times 12, the result of which is converted to radians (I thought it did all computations in radians already?), then you take the Sine of it, and the absolute value of the result. Which should give a shape like this: http://www.tysonibele.com/Main/Images/sine2.jpg
The surface properties should already animate, without Shader Mixer help, but they don't because of a bug.
While Richard's network is pretty nice I'd suggest something slightly different: get rid of the Absolute brick and place instead a Mathematical/"Clamp or Step" brick and a Mathematical/"Binary Operation" brick. You put the Sine output on the Value entry of the "Clamp or Step" and set min at 0 (which should be its default) and Max at 0.5. The Output of the Clamp or Step brick goes into the new Binary Operation brick set to Multiply. Value 2 on the Binary Operation brick should be set to 2. The output goes as in Richard's network to Ambient and Diffuse strength. This way the light will be black until frame 6 then light up until frame 10.
The documentation holds (there's a link in th Shader Mixer Help menu) some valuable information about bricks. If you don't understand something, ask in this forum.