Animate color or transparency on items with presenter materials

[Anonymous]

Hi All

Is it just common knowledge that you can not animate color or transparency on items with presenter materials?

I have tried to find solution to this problem, but can not.

Can anyone tell me if it is possible?

-Svarrer

[dennis]

Yes you can, in a way.  In the Presenter tool, the Materials tab, you should be able to find under Recommended: Enamel, use these to just color something.  As well, under Recommneded: Glass, use this for your transparency.

You are right in the assumption though, that if I pick an object, right-click and use Override: Transparency, it only works in Shaded Mode and not Rendered Mode.

[Anonymous]

Hi again

Thank you Dennis for your reply.

Sorry for not making the question clear.

My problem is in the Animator. I have a model with presenter materials.

I want to animate a move on a part in my model and then "change color of animation set" while moving.

Or I want to have  a part disappear with "change transparency of animation set".

This only seems possible with parts that are only with color and not with presenter materials.

Maybe it is the same problem - that you cannot change transparency on presenter materials?

[dgorsman]

I think that changing Presenter materials properties would be problematic.  The transparency of materials takes into acount a number of material settings like mapping, etc. which is set in the material, not the object its assigned to.  If you changed material settings on the fly *all* objects with that material assigned would be altered as well, unlike the transparency setting which is a per-object value.  Probably not the best of ideas.

The process of animating a change of material transparency for specific objects while leaving the rest of them alone is very tricky.  It might be possible in another program more dedicated to production-level graphics, like 3DSMax.  For a technical presentation, it probably falls into the category of "Cool effect, but there's more important areas to spend time on."