United3dArtists Archive

Hello all,

First I really want to say thank you, to all the experienced members out there dedicating their time and information to helping out the people just getting started. So I have been reading the manual, watching tuturials and just practicing for a while in TS7.6, and having a lot of fun. I have been following the Forum from Caligari but, unfortunately it would not allow me to register, and post. so I am glad to find out, that the community will survive here once the site is shut down.

I am hoping to find an easy answer to an anamation I am trying to accomplish. I want to take a head already textured with normal skin color and change the RGB scale on that so that the texture changes from skin color to red in a gradual motion and then holds the new color until reversed.

I was reading about posiblly making it an animated texture, but seems rather complicated for something I am hoping should be easy.

I red about changing just the color on an object ad anamating it, but that was more for normal textures and not an image.

Is there an option somewhere I am missing that can control the color scale on the image Texture, and how do I get that to show on the model?


any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Karthogen, don't know if you've already watched these videos or not, but, if you go to the link below (Caligari Video Tutorials/Older Courses/KFE Animation) and check out video #28 & #29 Material Animation 1 & 2, that could possibly help, even though it's a course for an older version of TS you might come away with some info from it. Don't know if will be exactly what you're looking for, I'm a music composer, so I'm still learning 3D & Truespace myself. Hope it helps & welcome to TS!

http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSp ... cate=Older


Best Regards,

Paul

It depends on your target platform or render engine.

I would approach it by using a script object to change the color. Though if you're working in Model-side you can keyframe material changes.

My upcoming procedural animation add-on might be of use to you since that will allow you to drive your script objects with the current frame value.

Thank you for the responses.

I will go through the linked tuturial and see if there is anything I can use.

I do my work on Modelside and render to file option the combine the image sequence to AVI and convert to WMV for space.

I was original thinking of keying the animation and having multiple image materials for the color change from normal to red. But I was thinking I would be stuck with having to have two seperate sets of recorded animations, one for the time he is red and one for the times he is normal. That was why I was hoping just to find a colorize option within the object itself that could tint or control the image file I am using. And then I could have a procedural clip that could switch that values and one that coud switch it back.

Hope this makes sense really new to this and not sure really how to ask some of these questions when diggin into the 2d side.

If you are using Model side it should just be a matter of using a two layered texture- one with the normal skin tone and the second layer to add the blush.

You'd probably want to create a custom texture for the blush using the normal one as a template...so that certain areas such as cheeks, forehead, etc would redden first, or to a greater degree. Other wise I think the change would be too uniform.

You would then animate/keyframe the transparency of the second 'red' layer...more transparent for normal skin tone and less so to indicate rising blood pressure.

Disclaimer: (Done in the Elephant Man's voice) "I, am not, an animator!"

Hi Karthogen,

I'm just thinking out loud here---I haven't done this before. But what if you approach the problem from a different perspective. Think of it like a theater: Instead of changing the color of the subject, why not change the color of the lights that illuminate your subject? If your lights changed from white (daylight) to red, that may provide the appearance you want. Then control the light with your animation.

The only "bad" aspect to this approach is that changing the illumination of your scene will affect the entire scene---everything would be red unless you used very tightly focused lights on just the head of your subject and illuminated the broader scene with different lights. This might be doable if your subject stays in one place. However, if they are moving through your scene during the animation, then keeping just their head lit with red lights that follow them could be tricky.

Also, I don't know if you can actually change the color of the lights, themselves, under animation control. If not, then create separate lights for the different colors and fade them in and out as necessary during the animation. You could also create virtual translucent "gels" or filters like real stage lights use and move them in and out. Perhaps you could create a long multi-color gel that moves in front of each light during your animation to change the illumination color of your scene. There may be several ways to achieve what you want. Hopefully one will work.

Best regards, First Light

Thank you,

My first attempts were done with the spot light and I had some issues finding the option to key the color change on the lights. It did end up with a red tint but, your are correct with the issues of the lighting affecting to much around the subject, and the color was not as intense as I would have liked it.

Hmm Transparency on a second layer may work if I can key gen the transparency. I would assume the system can generate the smooth transition between the keyframes, if I am able to key frame the transparency.

Ooops....

I made the mistake of saying I work on the model side when in fact I have been doing all this on the workspace side. Which is which when is very confusing. Is there a way to get the double layer image on the warkspace side and still do the transparency? the turtorial linked above actually shows the conversion on the model side.

Thank you all for the ideas, They helped me look at it from a different direction.

I was using the d3d material which I found very limited on the workspace side. So after fooling around with a sphere for a while I found some DX9 Model shaders that accomplished what I was looking for, with a tint feature. I switched to the DX9 material, set it up to key frame the tint and saved my animation clip. It does the trick but like Spacekdet mentioned earlier, it is a very uniform change. I believe I saw a shader with the ability to blend two images, as well as a tint and this would allow for the Blush on the cheeks and forehead and the tint for the full picture blend. I am going to have to full around with getting that to work.

So here is what I have so far, the Eyelids are key framed clips of the morph, the head is moved from the Skeleton, and the color controlled by the shader.
....Keep in mind this is my first head, and I picked up TS7.61 2 weeks ago with no 3d background prior. So don't be too cruel.

I still have to morph the eyebrows, which should not be too difficult and fix the mouth (Teeth, tongue and morph)
.

The quickest and easiest solution would be to overlap the 2 colors (before and after final desired colors) in a movie maker program (like Windows Movie Maker). Extend the duration of the image (3 seconds or so) and overlap by 1/2 (or so desired for quickness of color change). I made the color changes in my desired facial areas in a paint program (Paint Shop Pro).

Thank you all for the assistance.

I found what I needed in the shaders. I used the Binn Model shader at first but then replaced the BinnColor shader within the material to use the BlendtextureColor shader. This let me specify the Blend rate between two images for the blushing and still had the color modifier for the overall red color.

I learned a lot from that project but I had one major flaw, I should have done the Morph's prior to SDS. I did not realize that the Morphs will carry through SDS and adjusting the mesh after SDS was very time consuming. I also need to keep better save points.

Live and Learn!