smooth invisibly

[stunndman]

you mean to fade to invisiblity ?

animate the transparency

[alexx]

dont animate the visibility.
animate the transparency in the shader (dont forget to fade specular and reflectivity as well)

cheers

alexx

[YellYellYell]

sorry, but I'am realy a beginner in this section.

How can I animate the transparency in the shader ?

I have no idea:hmm:

[luminis]

Select the object you want to animate the transparency for. Open the attribute editor (Ctrl + A) look on the top of the attrib editor and look for the shader tab (usually the last one, might be called lambert1 if you haven't assigned a different one). When you open this, look for the transparency value that has a black box and a slider. Go to the frame where you want to start the transparency fade and right click on top of the word 'Transparency' and a menu pops up, select 'Set Key'. Now go to the frame where you want it to be fully transparent (where the fading ends) and drag the slider to the right until the black square changes to white (white means a value of 1, which means fully transparent). Now again, right click on the word Transparency and select 'Set Key'. It should now smoothly fade to complete transparency.

[FreeQ]

YellYellYell, doing the what luminis is said, go after learn the create new attribute. You can make a link transparency, specular and reflectivity together to one slider and easily animate three of it in the same time. ;)

[YellYellYell]

thanks for the really detailed description.
I did not know, that I can animate a shader this way, that was my only problem. Hey, now I can animate my shader !:buttrock:

I thought it was enough to slide in the graph editor. I think this way would be better.

thanx again for the help


:thumbsup:

[YellYellYell]

is it possible to fade the transparency of a group of objects without animate all of the used shaders ?
Because its a lot of work to duplicate and animate all the shaders.

[alexx]

do stuff like that in post..
just render the objects in a different layer and fade them there..

cheers

alexx

[luminis]

There are quite a few ways of doing this within maya. First of all, the obvious one:

If all objects use the same shader, by animating that shader, you will affect all objects.

Now, assuming each object has different shaders applied:

1.) Animate the transparency (or whatever you want to animate) of one of the shaders. For purposes of this example, we will assume the shader you will animate is called "lambert1" (the default one).

2.) Do one of these things to connect the other shaders' transparencies to the first one:

2.a.) Open the attribute editor for one of the other shaders to be animated as well (let's assume this one is named "lambert2"), right click on the word 'Transparency' and choose 'Create New Expression...', this will open the expression editor. Now in the 'Expression' field of this window type:
lambert2.transparency = lambert1.transparency;
Click on 'Create'. This will make the transp of the shader "lambert2" exactly the same as that of "lambert1", including the animation - and even if you change the transparency later on "lambert1", then the transparency of "lambert2" will change accordingly. Do this for all of the other shaders that need to be animated.

http://www.luminis3d.com/cgt/img/trans-exp.jpg

------ OR ------

2.b.) Select the objects you want their transparencies animated. Open the Hypershade, and on the hypershade menu bar go to 'Graph / Graph Materials on Selected Objects'. This will draw all the shaders in the bottom portion of the hypershade. Now, for the fun part: Using your middle mouse button, drag - the "lambert1" icon on top of "lambert2" (it will not move, but the cursor will change to a cursor with a + sign). When you drop it, a drop down box comes up, choose 'Other...'. The connection editor will come up. Click on 'Transparency' on the left column (corresponding to "lambert1") and 'Transparency' on the right column (corresponding to "lambert2"). Click on 'OK'. A connection will be made from "lambert1" to "lambert2", which will behave a lot like the method on a - transferring all the transparency attributes from "lambert1" to "lambert2". Again, repeat this for any other shaders.

http://www.luminis3d.com/cgt/img/trans-conn.jpg


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The main difference between the two methods is that a connection (like method b) allows only for a direct connection, so for example, transparency of "lambert2" can only be equal to transparency of "lambert1" and there is no other way to connect them. But when using expressions, you can type something like:
lambert2.transparency = lambert1.transparency/2;
and the transparency of "lambert2" will be one half of "lambert1", so it gives you more control.

There are many other ways, but these two are probably the easiest to do.

Let me know if this was clear enough, or if you want to me to explain it a bit more - I'd be glad to help! :thumbsup:

[Nemises]

see..now THAT was an answer:applause:

[YellYellYell]

YES, I like this answer too

thank you all !:beer:

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