I thought I would try this as a way to share my fun working with Animation Master

Today I an playing with the combiner ...Gradient


Note: click on any image for larger view




Under materials you can choose various combiners that can combine colors and/or materials. I am showing the gradient combiner that is shading a plane that goes on the grid from +25 cm to -25 cm. I indicated that the material combiner should start with the -25cm and flow to the +25cm . This makes the lower attribute which is white gradually change to black from the top to the bottom. This is using the Y values it could be used for the X values and on a 3d object the Z values





Here I have reversed the start and end so the attributes flow from black to white





And here I have it starting at +25 cm to 0 cm so it leaves the second half white and gradually change from the top to the mid point. This has many uses and can be animated. But the next post will show how this can be used with simple materials to get interesting combinations.





Okay now I took the white attribute and right clicked and changed type to combiner ..turbulence...fBm . The two attributes for fBm I made one red and the other yellow with ambiance intensity of 100%. I also in the fBm settings scales the Y to 1000% This with the setting on the gradient start 0 for the Y value and -25 for ending Y value gives us a wall of "fire" blending into the black. Lets continue the fun by adding a percentage pose and tweaking some settings.




Remember to start a pose right click on model select new pose and in this case percentage.
The adjustments to a pose are made in the action area as shown on the images. I start the pose percent of 0% with the gradient Y values at -25 for the start and end which makes the red/yellow "material" not to appear then gradually increase it at 25% I set the start Y value to -10 and end at -25 which gives us a small wall of red/yellow "material".





At the 100% of the pose I have the start Y value at 26 and the end y value at 25 this insures that the entire grid is all the red/yellow material




This will show the grid as the pose slider is increased from 0% to 100% I will add some tweaks to the look...its a bit too smooth on the edge and add some simple animation to the material.





To get this ready for animation I made a few changes. I started by adding turbulence to the gradient..right click add turbulence...fractal sum...then adjusted some settings in the fractal sum ...see image for values as these can be adjust to your taste. I delete the old pose and I set the start and end values of Y in the gradient to -25 so at 0% nothing shows. This helps setup the start of the pose slider. The image shows the results with the pose slider set to 50% you can check the image for the values . The smooth edge is gone. I also changed the black attribute so the transparency is 100%





This image show the values for the 100% position of the pose slider the end and start values for the y value of the gradient and to add animation to the "material" the z value of the material was set to 10 it started at 0. Again see image.



This is the simple results 30 frames moving the pose slider from 0 to 100 The grid is enlarged here but follow the setting proportional to the smaller actual model in the model and pose windows .




I animated the grid here while moving the pose slider over 60 frames this enables addition effects.


Final note this could have use the X values and move the results left to right or the reverse
and by using different models you can get spheres etc to have the same results.