Fading multiple Redshift materials

[lawyer-platform]

Hi there. I have been given a 3D model that uses 20+ textures and I would like to be able to fade the model on and off. I've tried using the visibility setting on the display tag and it leaves a black shadow whilst fading out which isn't working for what I need.

I know that I can animate the opacity directly in each material but rather than animate all 20+ materials is there a way for one node or controller to control the opacity of all the materials at the same time?

So I only have to animate one value and it changes the opacity of all the materials

Thanks in advance.

[Dr. Sassi]

Hi laywer-platform,

The simplest way is to render with and without the objects, then comp them in, e.g., After Effects, and blend between the two as needed.

Are all materials the same as all Open PBR? Then select all and animate the Opacity for all in the Attribute Manager.

If you have different Material versions in the mix, you need to group those and animate them as separate groups.

To select Groups again, my suggestion - create a Selection Object. Which doesn't take materials. To get it anyway, select anything and call up a Main Menu> Select>Selection Filter> Selection Object.
Now, delete the initial object in the list, and drag materials of the same kind into it.

The Restore Selection will select those and show their common attributes, hence they must be the same (RS Standard and OpenPBR in the same selection will NOT work)

Animating the needed channels (Opacity) will now be easy, even for hundreds of Materials.

Note that parameters typically work linearly, while color-driven input might not. A midpoint (of the animation) adjustment might be advised to keep them in sync, just in case you have that mixture.

Example (use the time slider while RS Render is active)
CV4_2025_drs_25_RSof_01.c4d

Cheers

[lawyer-platform]

Super, thanks Dr. Sassi I will try that.
One of the issues I found with my method of keyframing the Display tag > Visibility is that when the opacity is 0% it stills casts a dark shadow but if I start it's opacity at 3% there is no shadow initially and as the opacity increases to 100% the shadow and object fades in as normal, so that might be a work-around.
But I will also try your method and see how it works. Thanks for taking the time to answer my query