Animating light parameters

[FloydBishop]

Hey Mike,

Welcome aboard!! :beer: What parameters are you trying to animate and on what type of light? You can key just about anything in Maya.

Grab specific channels in the channel box, set your values, and then key them using the right mouse button and "key selected". Move the time slider to a different frame, change your values, and then repeat the right mouse button step. You'll also get a nice neat graph of the values in the graph editor.

Try THAT with Cinema.:rolleyes:

[MJV]

Heya Floyd. :beer: Thanks for the help! That got me one step closer, but I still can't figure out how to animate for example the light's color or intensity. Or what if I want to animate the parameters of the lens flare? I opened the Channel Control editor, but I see no options to make these parameters keyframeable. I could do this easily with Cinema.

[wedge]

open the attribute editor for your light, and right click on the color.... you should be able to set a key for this.

[MJV]

Thanks Brian :applause: but what editor does that key appear in? It doesn't show up in the Graph Editor. And what about keys I set for lensflare attributes? They are listed in a separate page of the Attribute Editor as just a list of keys with no graphs. Is there a graph editor for these keys somewhere that ease can be adjusted? And, last question, the lensflare color has no option for a key to be set, right click gives only the option to lock attribute. Does this mean that it can't be keyed or animated?

Thanks again.

[alexx]

sometimes reading at least some of the manuals might help
:hmm:

[alexx]

oups..

lightGlow really has a strange behaviour.
try the following:enter that line in the script editor:

setKeyframe opticalFX1.glowColor;

this sets a keyframe at the current time for the glowColor of the opticalFX1 (if yours is named differently, you have to change it in the line above of course).

this will enable you to right click on the glowColor attribute to set keyframes from now on.

seems like a bug to me..

cheers

alexx

[MJV]

Thanks for the response. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but your avatar looks like a bug. I guess I'm lucky my avatar has porcelain hair. :cool: Nowhere for your little critter to hide in there. ;)

As far as reading the manual, I always do read as much as I can and try to figure things out before posting a question. But nothing beats the online help you can get from people in the trenches who have gone before. I learned to use Cinema4D largely through the Postforum where people are very friendly and willing to help, so I hope that I can find something similar here and then give back to the Maya community when I'm able.

Thanks again.

MV

P.S. I'm still confused about why these keyframes don't show up in the graph editor.

[MJV]

Since this is such a beginner's question thread I figured I'd post a simple sample showing Maya's default lensflare with magenta colored flare. It is more stylized than Cinema's, and looks like the reflections inside a camera lens more than a completely realistic lensflare. Speaks for itself I guess.

[MJV]

Just for the record, here is the Cinema default lensflare. It is entirely constrained within the frame. The Maya lensflare goes off into lens infinity. Both renders look very good, but it's hard to imagine that there is more to be done either way with lensflares than hasn't been done to death already.

Not that it isn't fun. So, the sad thing is neither of these are very realistic representations of a real lensflare.

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