MAXON Computer Cinema 4D Tutorials: Animating Material Shaders

Tips & Techniques - Materials

Materials:
Animating Material Shaders
Download:
Project Works with:
R8, XL, Studio Requires:
Version 8.5+

This tutorial will show how to animate shaders. You will animate the change of noise values as well as the blending between different noises.

Click above for a Quicktime Movie

Step 1: To begin animating the shaders, you will need to create a new material (File=>New Material).

Add a Layer shader for the Color channel of this material.

Step 2: Add two Noise shaders to the Layer shader.

Note: Being that both layers have their blend mode set Normal, the topmost layer will take precedence.

Step 3: Click the topmost layer icon to edit the noise's properties. Make sure the Timeslider is at frame 0. While holding Ctrl click both gray dots for the Low Clip and High Clip properties. This will create keyframes at frame 0 for both properties.

Move the Timeslider to frame 29 and keyframe both properties once again. Adjust the Timeslider to frame 14 and change the properties to the following values: Low Clip = 44%, and High Clip = 54%. Keyframe these values.

Step 4: Click the back arrow in the right-hand corner of the Material Editor to access the Layer shader's properties. Click the bottom-most noise icon to edit its properties. Change the Noise property to Cell Veroni.

To make layer identification easier, rename this noise to 'Cell Voroni' in the Basic tab.

Step 5: Navigate back to the layer shaders properties and make a keyframe for the Layers property. The Timeslider should still be at frame 14.

Move the Timeslider to frame 29. Change the noise layers influence to 0% and keyframe the Layers property.

This is a rather simple example of animating shaders, but shows the ability to animate almost every property of any shader!