How is this done? There is the ability to add a movie to the material... What exactly does this do? How does it work? Steps/tutorials????

there are instructions in the P4/PPP manuel on how to do it. As for using a movie as a material, that lets you, for example, quickly and easily create a waterfall animation with moving water (apply a movie of a waterfall or running water to the waterfall object) instead of having to try to animate the object to simulate water motion. Works well for animating fire as well.

You can animate something showing on a TV screen. Or what would that Vicky look like standing in a temple where the textures of the walls and floors changed over time. Or what if you used black and white moving patterns (in a movie of course) as a transmap for Vicky's catsuit? Or what if you gave her animated flaming eyeballs? Or you could do weird stuff. (I've used this feature in Lighwtave a bunch of times but I don't have P5 for the Mac yet so I can't tell you how.) Hmmm. I bet if I listen carefully, I'll hear little_dragon stopping by soon. He's got the answer!

I've successfully loaded .avi videos and animated .gifs with the Movie node; it doesn't accept MPEG videos or QuickTime .mov files. Perhaps we can badger CL into adding additional file support.

The Movie node can be plugged into various channels, so you can create animated textures, displacement maps, transparency maps, etc. The effects possible with this shader are limited only by your imagination.

Animated Transmap (MPEG video, 762 KB)

In the example, I'm using a video clip as a transmap. I've placed several square props in front of and behind Sabrina, and applied a short, homemade video clip of falling snow as a transmap to each prop. This technique could also be used to simulate rain.

The shader tree for one of the square props is illustrated above. It doesn't get much simpler than this. All I had to do was plug the Movie node into the transparency channel, with the value set to 1. As your animation moves forward, the Movie node automatically frame-advances your video material.

In the next example, I've applied the previous video as a texture map to create a big-screen TV.

This time, I plugged the movie node into the Alternate_Diffuse channel. Why not the regular Diffuse_Color channel? Because I wanted a bright, glowing screen, and didn't need to fool around with highlights and light sources. Note that I've set the values of the normal Diffuse, Specular, and Ambient channels to zero, effectively turning them off.

Animated Light Projection (MPEG format, 162KB)

Keep in mind that these materials can be applied to almost anything in your Poser scene, including the ground plane, background, and lights.

If you apply a movie node to a spotlight, you've effectively created a movie projector. The image will be projected onto everything in the light's path, as you can see in the example above.

Note the Blending value. This determines the percentage of dissolve between the two textures. At 0.5, the result would be halfway between texture 1 and texture 2.

Since this is an animation, I needed the Blending value to gradually change over time, from 0 to 1. I plugged in some math and variable nodes as an experiment, but for something this simple it isn't necessary. You can keyframe the changes in value, just as you can keyframe movement. Just set the value to 0 on the first frame of the animation, and to 1 on the last.

Take note of the little key symbols next to the Index values. These must be toggled on if you wish to keyframe any changes. The green colour means that keyframing has been enabled.

Another fun feature to animate is UV offset.

Those of you who have downloaded and played with my Furrette figure may have noticed that she doesn't have poseable eyes. With Poser 5 it isn't a problem.

You can offset, or shift, the textures on a material, sliding them across the surface of the mesh. 2D image nodes have U_Offset and V_Offset values, which can be keyframed to change over the course of an animation.

I've discovered that if you want to enter negative offset values, you'll need to change the minimum limits of the parameters, because they default to zero.

Furrette's eyes have their own textures and material groups, so it's possible to have her looking up, down, to the sides, cross-eyed, wall-eyed, etc.

When Furrette discovers that I've posted the image above, I'll never hear the end of it.

Holy canoli !!!! I didn't get a chance to read all this yet...but wow and thanks :) ACtually, the reason I asked this question, or one of them...I applied a .mov file to the cloth square just to see what wouold happen...it rendered 5 frames---on the 6th, everything locked up...was wondering if it was a bug or my not having a clue as to what I was doing....just plugging stuf in and seeing what the heck would come out of it :) I do that a lot---find many cool things that way... So, if it does not support mpeg or .mov files, could be why it locked...but when I opened the browse window, it contained the . wildcard filename so I chose the .mov file.... This may be some work for a long weekend :) Looks very interesting. One of the reasons I first started in all this graphics stuff was for animation, but I haven't really gotten into it yet over many years...still suck at the still images :) Still can't model, and still have no artistic abilities...yikes....mainly don't have enough time. Thanks again....

I see a hologram in my future :) Have you guys seen that new hologram projector stuff...3D appearing visions right before your eyes?

Maybe. Are you talking about those new dual-layer 3D monitors (no glasses required)?

I can't model organic stuff very well at all, and my "artistic" abilities are relatively non-existant. However, through animation I can at least tell amusing stories! Keep at it Dave-So, you'll get there. Someone around here does holographic stuff - I've seen their postings (including images) a couple of times over the last year. You might do a search for the word "hologram" within this forum. I've seen one game (at an arcade) that looked like you could just reach in and pick up the characters. They appeared overed a mirrored surface - not on a monitor screen. It was incredible. That was a while back - I haven't seen anything like it since.

Yes..hologram like that..and also , I've seen these desktop projector units that project a holgram above them... There's one of the ring in LOR...

Oh, that ... it's not really a hologram. The effect is achieved with concave mirrors. I had one of those Mirage gadgets years ago. I'd leave coins in the unit to drive my little cousin crazy.

That looks like the way the game I referred to worked. the illusion was excellent!

Changed servers, new links, wishing that Renderosity's forums had an edit function ....

Animated Transmap (MPEG video, 762 KB)
Animated Texture (MPEG format, 271KB)
Animated Light Projection (MPEG format, 162KB)