Cycling Animation

Animating textures adds a bit of fun to a static object. You may use animation for things like candle flames, lights, TV's , posters etc. Once you know how to do it, you can let your imagination run free! For the purpose of this tutorial I am using THIS mesh by Darkideas

There are two types of animation available, scroll and cycling. Think of scrolling animation as though you're scrolling down a webpage, no distince breaks, just a continous movement in one direction of an image. Cycling animation uses cells, like old school film strips

We'll start with scrolling animation. In my example I have used a sound wave. I have done nothing more but added some color for extra effect.

In the creator screen, I have uploaded my texture and have gone down to Texture Animation.

Turn on animation by selecting "ON" and change the mode to scrolling. Then you want to add a number to either "Direction X" which scrolls your animation horizontally or "Direction Y" which moves it vertically. Positive and negative numbers move in different directions. The higher the number, the faster the speed. My animation is set to -1 in Direction X which moves it from the left to the right and click Apply Changes

There you have it, that's all you need to for scrolling.

As I mentioned before Cycling Animation uses cells, like a film strip. This means your texture should be broken up into sections. In my example I'll be using four cells.

I started with a 512x256 canvas. Each quarter of the canvas will become a cell. I have placed a star growing in size in each cell. The cells are labelled 1-4, this is the order in which the creator will read each cell. (You do not need to place numbers there, this is just to show you how it works)

I upload my texture to the client and go down to the Texture Animation section.

Once again turn on the animation, change the mode to Cycling. You will see Cell Width and Cell Height. In here I have place the dimensions of my cells which is 256x128. A little bit of math may be needed to work this out, however because I was only working with 4 cells it was just my canvas size divided by 2. Another way you can find out the dimensions of your cells is by using the rectangle select tool and carefully selecting the area, you should see the dimensions of the selection at the bottom of your canvas window.

Next you see Num Cells, this is the number of cells in your canvas, for me I entered 4. Finally you should see Frames/Cell, this is the speed in which you wish you image to change. 1 being fast and 8 being slow. Set your speed and click Apply Changes

There you have it, cycling animation. You can also animate with opacity maps as well, for example with flames, this is just the same process. Also keep in mind that not everything can be animated such as skin composite and 'anyskin' products as well as eyes.

Good Luck!

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