Time Relocate or Time Freeze Map

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I have a material for venetian blinds. It has an animated gradient for a normal map and another for a cutout.

 

I have a bldg with a lot of windows and I'd like to introduce some variety in the blinds.

 

I could render three times and combine in PShop. Nope.

 

How about if I could say "this object exists at frame 37." That'd be awesome because it sounds like a 1 click solution and allows for the greatest flexibility... nah... frame 36 for this one... yeah.

 

Or maybe if I could say "okay, make me a copy of this map at its frame 37 state" and apply that to a new material back at frame 0, that'd be okay.

 

Clues?

[Corey Beaulieu]

Your proposed solutions make me wonder if you could just point cache your blinds. Th point cache modifier allows you to choose a diiferent start frame for each instance. I don't know about materials though. But why not?

 

Otherwise, as a vray user (and I am pretty mental ray has it too) I would use a multi_sub_texture. You would have to copy and manually freeze your material, but it would allow you to apply several different versions of your texture randomly.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Yeah, already working on copy/freezing. I'll look into the point cache. Thanks.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Curve editor helped. "oh, just delete these keys".

[Stephen Thomas]

Not sure if this is easier than the point cache suggestion, but you also have the option to "render map" for any material by right-clicking on the sample slot in the material editor. For an animated map you could then save out multiple versions for different frames.