9

Material Dynamic Operator 191
M ater ia l D y nami c Oper a tor
Particle View (page 2–125) > Click Material Dynamic in an
event or add a Material Dynamic operator to the particle
system and then select it.
The Material Dynamic operator lets you give
particles material IDs that can vary during the
event. It also lets you assign a different material
to each particle based on its material ID. When
used with an animated texture (page 3–908),this
lets you assign a d ifferent frame or map to each
part icle based on its total age or the amount of
time it has spent in the c urrent event. In this
context, one example of an animated texture is a
material that uses a multi-frame bitmap, such as an
AV I f i l e , a s t h e D i f f u s e Bitmap map (page 2–1631).
Otherexamplesofanimatedtexturesarematerials
that use the Particle Age map (page 2–1675) or the
Particle MBlur map (page 2–1676).Alternatively,
you can use different sub-materials from a
compound material such as Multi/Sub-Object.
Note: When using Object Motion Blur, if an event
contains a Material D ynamic operator that uses
a material with a Particle Age/MBlur/Bitmap
map, the event should not also contain a Delete
operator , or a Spawn or Collision Spawn test. Also,
the event should not contain any tests that are
w ired to another event. The only exception to this
is the Age Test operator when set to Absolute Time
without any variation; that is, all particles leave the
eventatthesametime.Thisappliestotheuseof
Object Motion Blur only; there are no restrictions
with Image Motion Blur.
See also
Ma terials and Mapping in Particle View (page
2–186)
Material Static O perator (page 2–187)
Material Frequency Operator (page 2–189)
Procedure
Example: To assign animation frames to particles
bas ed o n a ge:
1.
Prepare a file to b e used as the animated bitmap.
This can be a multiple-frame format such as
AVI, or an image file list (IFL file) that points to
a sequence of st i ll images. With the latter, you
can use images in a format such as Targa that
contain predefined alpha channels to specify
particle opacity selectively.
2. Open the Material E ditor, and assign a
Bitmap map as the Diffuse map.
3. UsetheSelectBitmapImageFiledialogto
assign the file from s tep 1 as the bitmap. This
dialog appears automatically when you first
assign a Bitmap map; alternatively, click the
Bitmap button on the map’s Bitmap Parameters
rollout.
4. On the map’s Time rollout, turn on Sync
Frames To Particle Age.
5. If you want to use the image background or
alpha channel to define transparency, on the
Maps rollout, copy this map to the Op acity slot,
and set the parameters a ccordingly.
6. At the material level, turn on Show Map
In Viewport.
7. Addacameratothesceneandsetitupas
desired. Activate the Perspective viewpor t and
press the
C key to set the viewport to show
the camera view.
8. Create a default Particle Flow system.
9. Open Part icle View.
10. ReplacetheShapeoperatorwithaShapeFacing
operator .
Usingthisoperatormakesiteasiertoseethe
animation.