Animated billboard people question

[Stephen Thomas]

I have an idea to use cutout people mapped to billboards in an animation. Say I have the same person in 3 different poses and I want to animate between the 3 bitmaps as the camera passes the person, what would be the best way to set this up?

 

Should I have 3 objects in the same place and animate the visibility of each? Or animate between the three textures somehow? Not a fade, but just a sharp change from one to the next. Any ideas on the best way to approach this?

[Craig Ramsay]

Stef,

 

If you're using Vray 2.0 you could use a VrayMultiSubTex map for the diffuse and animate the material ID with a material modifier.

[Stephen Thomas]

Not on Vray 2.0 yet, but a standard max multi/sub and animated material modifier works a treat. Cheers!

[Scott Schroeder]

Create an IFL file. You can do this from scratch, it's a simple text file, or you can have Max make it. Make sure your maps are named in a sequence, ex. Image_001, Image_002, etc. Then, in Max, in the bitmap select dialog for your first image and look for a check button called "sequence." Check it, and select your first image and Max will create the ifl file for you.

 

Then, when you select your ifl bitmap in Max, you can control the playback with the Time settings, ie the playback rate is the one you'd want to change. If you leave the playback rate at 1, it will be one frame for one image so only 3 images would cycle pretty fast.

 

However, if you want the ultimate control when they switch between the images, then use a composite material and animate between the three.