So, here’s an intriguing question. I have a number of images. I can make them textures and position them on an object using empties (thank you Nick Towers). Now, what I’d like to do is animate the material so that only one texture is showing at a time, and I can control which one. One way to do this is the “Col” curve in the Material IPO, but doing that for each and every texture seems a little tedious. Is there a better way?
For instance, I know it’s possible to have a single image texture composed of a series of images by clicking “Sequence” in the texture buttons, but is it possible to set at any given time which of those images is showing?
I’m sure there are numerous ways to do this. If you don’t have too many textures and they are set to clip, you could map them to different Empties and animate the positions of the empties. So when you want image A to disappear, move its corresponding empty away from the object and move image B’s empty into position. Change the empties’ IPOs to type “constant” (T-key in the IPO window) to make the movements instantaneous rather than gradual.
Well, that’s pretty much exactly what I was doing before; I was animating the “Col” attribute of the texture (how much the texture affects the material’s color value), which has the same effect as an alpha channel would. I’m just wondering if there’s a better way, given that I already know I only want one showing at a time and I want a sharp cut, not a gradual transition.
Ah well, I’ll probably wind up doing it that way anyway, just with constant interpolation of the IPO curve or something. Thanks for your help, though, guys!
