I have been trying to work out how to offset the timing of a single IPO for a single material to change over about 20 different objects. The IPO alters the alpha value of the material (halo material) from 0 to 1 then back to 0 over 20 frames. I am trying to get little sparkles across some text as a light passes in front of it so each point will glow at different times. Each of these points is a mesh object made of just a single vertice. Do I have to have a separate material and IPO for each of these points because of the timing difference required or can you adjust the offset in frames of each object for when the material ‘applies’ to it somehow?
If you want the objects to animate differently then they need to have unique materials. (both the material, and the material IPO curves need to be unique.
hmm, upon inspection, it appears that material keyframes do not show up in the NLA editor, and are also not affected by the time IPO.
If the time IPO curve affected material animation, then you could have used a single material, but just given them different Time IPO curves, which vould have easily been offset in the NLA editor.
Anyways, barring some stroke of genius or an obvious overlooked feature (I’m not discounting the possibility of that), it looks like you need to make each material unique and animate them seperately.
what you could do to make this a little easier in the animate the material of one object, then make the material unique for each one and offset the curves in the IPO editor.
Strange, there are multiple different ways to achieve offset Motion keyframes easily, but seemingly none for material keyframes.
you have to switch to the Material channels in the IPO window header. Click the up-down selector where it says “Object” and you have all the same options available for material keyframes that you do for Motion keyframes. see http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Types#Ipo_Curve_Types
Got that covered already Papasmurf.I was trying to find a way to make the same material affect various objects at different times rather than have to create multiple materials for each of those objects. Might not have explained myself properly first.
you can’t make an Action from a Material IPO, so NLA is out, but it’s only two clicks to copy Materials from one object/data block to another, and then the IPOs of the cloned Materials can be tweaked as needed.