Is there a way to animate Switch Materials switching?

[Anonymous]

I have a car set interior up with 4 screens that have changing textures.  I set these textures up as Switch material nodes and then put all the corresponding Switch materials into Variant Sets.  (Works great live) Now, I'd like to set up an animation that changes from one Variant Set to the next (there are 8).  I tried using the Wizard and Clips, but it doesn't work for this.  Any ideas?

Simple example:

First, all 4 screens show the letter A.  Next, all the screens show the letter B, and so on...

[seiferp · Accepted solution]

Hi Dawn,

you can animate the Switch_Material in the Curve Editor by animating the choice value. The choice value is the ID shown in the Switch_Material in the Editor when you select your Switch.

It is also possible to create VariantSets for all your Material Variants and than trigger these from within the Clip Editor using the + Icon > Variant Set on the lower menu bar.

Cheers

Pascal

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

you can  keyframe the choice attribute of the switch materials in the curve editor. Using variantSets for rendering is more tricky, you would need to create sequences for triggering and rendering out the corresponding frames. Another option would be to use the render queue for this and manually trigger the variant sets and set the render ranges.

Kind regards

Michael

[Anonymous]

Perfect! Exactly what I needed.  I didn't know about the Choice attribute.

The key- animated Choice curve can be brought into the Clip Editor, but when I had the Wizard (choice = Material) create a Clip, it didn't work.

[Anonymous]

triggering variantsets in the clip maker works, thanks for this advice.

I've just identified a possible bug: I've combined changing material switch values with animations in the clip maker. when i run the clips for the first time after opening the files, the material change happens as it is supposed to (at the frame where I've set it up). When repeating the animations, VRED does the material switch change first and is ignoring the specified frame for the material change.

am I doing somethin wrong or is it VRED?

thanks