What have I done to my objects?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

To get a fade-in effect, I put a plane in front of my camera, with some keyframes attached to the plane’s object color. I set the effect to go, and it works fine, but a problem shows up: other objects (a blue cursor and an orange cursor) start behaving strangely.

Some times the orange cursor is invisible. Some times the blue cursor is invisible. I didn’t touch them at all when I was setting up the plane, so I can’t figure out what’s gone wrong.

The cursors should all be selected, in the Blend I’ve attached; if not, they’re called the following:

  • P1 Cursor
    [LIST]

  • P1 Border

  • P1 Overlay

  • P2 Cursor

  • P2 Border

  • P2 Overlay

[/LIST]
The cursors and the plane (“Black Fade”) all share the same material, called “Object Color”, and that may be the heart of the issue. I’ll experiment some now, but I’d love to have a more experienced eye to provide some insight into whatever strange and esoteric mistake I may have made.

Attachments

09_characterselect2.blend (993 KB)

2

Did you animate object color or diffuse color?

3

I animated the alpha on the object color. Turns out I just needed to give the plane its own material: Blender doesn’t like having a material messed with in one place while it’s not being messed with in another place. Marking as solved~

4

Object color is seperate from material. You can find it in the object tab of the properties, not the materials or texture tab. However you can animate the alpha and diffuse of a material and that will affect every object that shares that material. Changing the object color on one object shouldnt affect any othes.

5

For whatever reason, animating the alpha of an object’s color, and displaying that color via a material attuned to an object’s color, will cause weird things to happen to other objects using that same material to show their own color: it’s confusing to even write it down in a single sentence.

Object A uses material M to display its color (“cA”).
Object B also uses material M to display its color (“cB”).

If I alter cA via an action/animation, M will freak out when it comes time to render cB; even though it has nothing to do with cA. The solution is to create a new material, M2, for A to use while messing with cA.

Weird, but it works~