Material Dynamic Operator

[ldotchopz]

The material dynamic is really great part of pflow, can be used to create material effects by age very easily

[tyFlow]

tyFlow already supports material IDs, animated bitmaps synced to particle age, etc...

[ldotchopz]

tyFlow already supports material IDs, animated bitmaps synced to particle age, etc...

I did try an animated gradient but couldn't get it to activate. it just jumps between 2 materials in an on/off fashion. And would this work with multiple object with different materials in 1 flow?

My attempt 
  particle-age gradient.zip (Size: 147.67 KB / Downloads: 171)

Thank you

[tyFlow]

Actually you're right, tyFlow can do full cross-fades between colors and things, but can't natively do a UVW coordinate shift like that. You'd need to use OSL to do that.

[ldotchopz]

Actually you're right, tyFlow can do full cross-fades between colors and things, but can't natively do a UVW coordinate shift like that. You'd need to use OSL to do that.

ah, OSL is over my head. Do you think this is something that would be added in future? Would be a powerful motion graphics tool

[pedrodeleo]

+1 for easier syncing of maps/materials with particle age/events!

it's something really basic in PFlow and, in my experience, involves a more complex workflow in tyFlow.
(BTW PFlow is approximately 198236 times worse than tyFlow in 99.9% of uses!)

In this particular example, I guess it would make sense to get the animated UVW modifier info (Gizmo position or whatever value) like the Bend animation info, so tyFlow would play the Bend animation and also the UVW animation when the tyActor animation is triggered.

Not sure how easy or aligned with your vision but that's something I'd love to see!

[tyFlow]

Yea I'm not actually sure how PFlow does its material syncing, to be honest. A renderer samples materials directly, not through tyFlow, so how the renderer/viewport is able to simultaneously query the particle age for keyframe syncing is a mystery. I think perhaps PFlow is actually duplicating the materials internally and offseting the keyframes on a per-particle basis. So when you create a Material Dynamic operator for 1000 particles, for example, internally it's creating and offsetting 1000 materials. It's something I'd have to look further into at some point.

[TubeSmokeGuy]

Ask the pFlow devs or AD if they have the code, maybe they're willing to tell you ;D ...