Cycling clones colors - multishader or something different?
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Gang,
I'm missing something that seems like it should be moderately straight forward but after an afternoon of multishader tutorials I'm just not getting it.
I'm trying to get some clones on a path to cycle through 4 colors in a repeating, non-random order. Lets say they are like Vegas lights traveling along a path. Red, green, blue, pink... over and over along the path, and the clones keep the order but their colors are shifting along the path of clones every 5 frames (or whatever speed needed) while staying in the same order.
My cheat has been to use 4 grayscale values on 4 clones, then rendering that out and recoloring in AE with Colorama. This kludge works well but I have to think it could all be done in C4d and therefore saving me a few steps in AE.
There seem to be lots of uses for this technique but I'm just not finding instruction for this very specific task.
Any advice, links, or direction greatly appreciated.
Scott Sp.
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Hi Scott Sp.,
You didn't mention which render you use, so I have set up two materials for standard and Redshift.
You need to change the colors, of course, to your specific target.
The speed is in the Formula effector> Attribute Manager> Effector> f-Frequency (Key is set to linear.
Render the Scene to see the colors; the Editor view will not provide much guidance here.
All the best
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my apologizes for not mentioning which render. RS is great thank you; I was not clear, the file you sent is wonderful!-is there a way to make some of these clones fade to transparent, then opaque again? as if the linear field of the plain effector, as an example, is going back and forth? thank you again for your time, Craig
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How about this, Scott Sp.,
Please have a look here:
CV4_2023_drs_23_MGrl_11.c4dIt is perhaps a lot of data to fade this carefully, but the easiest to set up.
Cheers
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Dr. Sassi,
Thanks for the prompt response!
It would appear that Craig inadvertently hijacked my question... that's OK though as I now have your original 2 projects as well as a project that wipes off with a vertex attribute. Neat!Your original project with the Standard and Redshift versions is doing exactly what I was looking for... thank you! I will actually be rendering in both Standard for roughs and Redshift for finals, so 2 separate versions is great.
However, I am no closer to understanding what's going on so I might later recreate/build this effects than I was. It appears the Formula Effector you've provided is very different from the default Formula Effector... so I have zero idea on how you got there as well. I am also unclear on what the Colorizer is actually coloring. Is there a grayscale on my clones by default the that Colorizer is working on?
So... I'm reading my response above and it sounds ungrateful... please don't take it that way.
I am just unclear on the theory (or buttons clicked) for what is going on.Thanks for any clarification you or anyone else can pass.
Scott_Sp
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Thanks Scott_SP.,
I don't feel like your questions have anything in it that would make me feel that way.
The simplest way to understand the Formula effector is to put just a number into the formula field. When you use a 1.0, all parameters and results of the effector will have 100% (if not limited by other sliders in the Cloner, for example, or Fields). So, if you place a 0.5, you get half of the values. Even the gray value (Cloner Color -Transform- set to black)
Each Clone typically has an ID. Which are integer numbers, like 1 or 6 [not 1.3 or 6.1]. You wanted to have four clones, so I used the Modulo to divide it by four, which gives me the remainder. As a result, you get four gray values.
These four gray values are fed then into the Colorizer or Ramp to translate them to Color.
That would give you a static result. So I use the f -slider, and since that is a Real number (6.1, for example) and animation would not blend from one color to the next, hens the Formula, which cuts the .1 from 6.1 (for example) away. This means it adds only full integer numbers, creating a running light.
The gray values are not easy to predict for the editor and rendering simultaneously, as we have gamma and linear values in the game; hence, I suggest rendering to see what happens. To have linear values in the display is not easy to work with. So we have to deal with both
All the best
