topic Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor in 3ds Max Shading, Lighting and Rendering Forum

Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

daldrich1701 — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 19:18:58 GMT

I am using ART Render as it shows a really nice render of the self illumination. Now i am trying to do a series lighting for an LED strip where i want one light to move around the strip. I tried Assigning Keys to each Poly/Face so when the Blue Material goes to the next it will make the one prior go black so it looks like its moving but when i play the animation it doesnt do anything. Is there a way to make this happen without using Placed lighting? I want this to all be animated by self illumination. I have like 16 blocks i want to run the one light down. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

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Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

rendermaster — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 13:47:58 GMT

i guess you are using multi/sub-object material, assign it and animate material ID to your object.

Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

Francisco_Penaloza — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 01:23:35 GMT

If I understand correctly, you have geometry with a multi-material, and one of them is a self-illuminated material. The strips that you mentioned are all the same geometry? or separated geometry?

The issue here is that what you can animate is the intensity of the light, from 0 to 100 or 0-1, which will make the light go on or off. You can't animate the ID of the geometry.

If the strip is a single geometry, then what you can do is apply the self-illuminated object to the whole length, then apply a mask to the self illuminate channel, then using a UVW modifier, you can animate that mask all the length of your light strip, this will reveal part of the self illuminate area, making it look like the light is moving.

If the strip is made of different objects, you could do about the same, but you need to apply the same multi-material to all of them, then group it and apply a UVWmodifier to all of them.

Otherwise, you will have to change the light frame intensity for each frame, which can be painful depending on how long or how many frames you have.

You could also detach part of that polygon and animate the movement across your surface; just put it very close to the actual geometry and apply the self-illuminated material to it; if your camera is not very close, nobody will see that is a separate geometry.

Those are some ideas that I have now.

Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

rendermaster — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 10:11:12 GMT

i mislook that item

Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

rendermaster — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 12:30:53 GMT

anyhow, this is what I'm talking about

(view in My Videos)

Re: Lighting an LED Series using Material Editor

Francisco_Penaloza — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 16:23:54 GMT

oh the polygon changes color, I thought the light would go on and off.

Well, with the material ID modifier, you can animate it the way you already did, so that would work.

If you add a sub material with a light off that also can give the effect that the lights go off, if you need that.

I am pretty sure there is a way to write a script to do that, so you don't have to manually key it, but I am not at home this weekend.

Looking good any ways!