THANK YOU! The lack of instancing with the cycles "ColorRamp" was driving me nuts. I spent half a day trying to create a good gradient in Animation Nodes. Using a "Mix Color" node, as the controlling, was the part I was missing. I'm sure advanced Blender users already knew this trick, but I guarantee I will use this method for many other purposes from now on :)
Thanks to this explanation of Cycles Material manipulation, and your other videos on Animation Nodes, I have succeeded to make my first 3D midi animation of Beethoven's Für Elise in Blender. I have given special thanks to you at the end of this video, and also in the description. Nonetheless, even with your help, it was not trivial. Again, thank you, Abhay!
Brilliant! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this knowledge. I was struggling with this for a while. I understand much better now what should happen. This opens up significant possibilities!
Wow! Very interesting! I didn't know that you could control so much with AN and Cycles combined! With my own project I have a particular problem, which I have solved partially. I turn lots of cubes into notes. These cubes move like those on Andy Fillebrown's channel. The problem is: how can I make cubes light up, emissive, when midi notes are playing, and become dark when the midi notes are no longer playing? Or, analogously, when the front of a cube is at x = 0, the cube has to light up. And when the back of the cube is at x = 0, the light of the cube has to go out. I can do it with cubes. For that I needed to make some code in the script node, and some code in the script editor. I solved the problem by using the mix shader, put a glass shader on one, input, and an emissive shader on the other input. When I create the notes in the script editor from the timing information, I also provide them with the three shaders, and give them the initial color and lighting. Then, in the script editor, I put the positions of the notes, and when the front of any note is at x = 0, it lights up by giving the fac of the mix shader the value 1, which is the emissive shader. And when the back is at x = 0, the fac is set to 0, setting it to the glass shader. So I used a lot of code, and not many nodes of either AN or Cycles. How would YOU do this? To be precise: how would you make a cube light up, when the front of a moving cube is at X = 0, and stop lighting when the back of the cube is at X = 0? The solution of this problem would help me a lot, because I then could use the Instancer node of AN to make ANY mesh object light up and dim again. So I could design notes of any shape, and make them light up and dim. PS. Thanks to your help I am now working on my first AN music animation, which uses beams (cubes) of various lengths.
"To be precise: how would you make a cube light up, when the front of a moving cube is at X = 0, and stop lighting when the back of the cube is at X = 0?" are you talking about position or rotation? Let's say that you want your objects to be light up in a specific transform state. You can use boolean nodes to compare the transformed state then use a switch node to generate value 1 if true and 0 if false the use vertex color to export data to cycles then use this data to control the mix factor of mix shader.
I have tried to duplicate the first steps in your demonstration, by applying a mixed shader to the first cube, applying a diffuse BSDF shader to the first input of the mixed hader, and an emissive shader to the second input. I did not use the vertex color node, but the Cycles Material Output node, in which I selected the Mix Shader, which caused the Fac to appear. I then could influence the lighting by the Data parameter. This worked, although, as you said, in Rendered mode it makes AN stop. But switching back and forth between material and rendered, I saw that it worked up to this point. So far, so good. BUT... If I invoke the Object Instancer node, and activate the Deep Copy property, the mixed shader and the two other shaders are not duplicated. In other words, the five cubes do not receive five separate mix shaders, and five emission shaders and five Diffuse BSDF shaders. Therefore, this approach does not work for what I have in mind! I DO find ALLof your video interesting, though, because your lectures give a deeper understanding of how Animation Nodes work. Without them I would never have been so far in my project. You have saved me months of investigation on my own, and I am very, very grateful. I now use a combination of Python scripting in Blender combined with Animation Nodes. And that works! Your videos are brilliant! You are a great teacher! Have you taken a look at Udemy? You shoud make a course in AN, and upload it to Udemy. I think you would have many students who would actually pay you for that course. I think it would be a best seller!
Thank you very much for this tutorial! How would you add an image texture to the top of all cubes so that the image would cover the whole area? The goal would be a mosaic that can be animated.
Nice and useful, So i Tried to Use this in my scene and i have run into a problem.. I Tried Attribute(Col) to export Black and white value for position of my cubes and than using that attribute fac for mix shader in my Node Editor(cycles), works perfectly but when I render animation Animation Nodes Executes all other nodes (position change etc) But doesn't Update the values for Attibute(Col) So color remains same .
Is this doable with AN 1.6? Distribute matrices node is added in 2.0 and isnt available in 1.6. I wonder if its possible to redo this in 1.6 without using "matrix > distribute" node?
you need to find the vector distance from current frame to the previous frame then use a distance node to find the distance then map this data on the color attribute.
Hey Jeffrey! it seems like Animation Nodes doesn't have this feature now, I have asked Jaques Lucke about this and he said it's not possible in animation nodes. You can use delay time to calculate the distance but it's not ideal because then you have to deal with lots of duplicate nodes.
Wow, that is unfortunate. Wish I was a programmer, then I'd make an add-on to calculate global position node for each frame and a time delay node.... but my skills are not in programming. Thanks for checking, hopefully it becomes a future Blender feature.
Hi! Abhay Sharma. (I finally have your name right!) I see that you are already familiar with Udemy, and also use Skillshare. You have several courses on Udemy. People should know this! So, anyone reading this, Check Abhay Sharma out on Udemy and Skillshare! He is a great teacher! I have enrolled in your Udemy course about course making. Please, make an Animation Nodes course for Udemy! You could use your RUclips videos for some of the lectures. An Animation Nodes course might be a huge success. Nothing like it exists on Udemy. When I just Googled Animation Nodes, there were 192.000 hits . So the interest is huge, and I expect it will only increase. I also expect that after the update to 2.80 Blender will become a killer application that can no longer be ignored. Not even by the mainstream firms. So you will also have longer term benefits.
Thanks Konrad Swart ! I'll think about it. by the way there are so many abhay sharma in india :). I did a course on udemy for fusion recently : www.udemy.com/create-professional-lower-thirds-with-blackmagic-fusion-9/.
Yes! I just found out that the course I have enlisted to, is made by another Abhay Sharma. I am not disappointed, though. That course is also very good. In his first few lessons he summarized many mental roadblocks that took me years to overcome, to make my first course. And there was one new one. So just by accident you have directed me to just the course I need!
Q: How can one avoid the spline to go beneath the emitter surface at start and end point? Playing with interpolation doesn't help much, Only increasing the lenght of arc in the map range node to something extreem gives a nice result…image.ibb.co/mrVqJ8/splines.png
![[015] Blender Tutorial - Earth curves [Animation nodes]](/img/1.gif)
THANK YOU! The lack of instancing with the cycles "ColorRamp" was driving me nuts. I spent half a day trying to create a good gradient in Animation Nodes. Using a "Mix Color" node, as the controlling, was the part I was missing. I'm sure advanced Blender users already knew this trick, but I guarantee I will use this method for many other purposes from now on :)
Thanks to this explanation of Cycles Material manipulation, and your other videos on Animation Nodes, I have succeeded to make my first 3D midi animation of Beethoven's Für Elise in Blender.
I have given special thanks to you at the end of this video, and also in the description.
Nonetheless, even with your help, it was not trivial.
Again, thank you, Abhay!
Thanks Konrad Swart!
Brilliant! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this knowledge. I was struggling with this for a while. I understand much better now what should happen. This opens up significant possibilities!
I’ve been looking for this actually, nice. But why did you not show the result in the beginning?
Thanks! I will next time!
Great to see you here Olav! Love your tutorials. 👍🏻
As always a great tutorial! Thank YOU for sharing!!
I'm glad I came across this tutorial. I have been looking for this for a while. Thanks!
oh wow Bhai india se bhi itne acche blender videos banate hai
Hum log kisi se kam nahi :)
Hey TP, Thanks for the tutorial. Can you quickly explain how to affect different vertex colors based on an empty's position?
Wow! Very interesting!
I didn't know that you could control so much with AN and Cycles combined!
With my own project I have a particular problem, which I have solved partially.
I turn lots of cubes into notes. These cubes move like those on Andy Fillebrown's channel.
The problem is: how can I make cubes light up, emissive, when midi notes are playing, and become dark when the midi notes are no longer playing?
Or, analogously, when the front of a cube is at x = 0, the cube has to light up. And when the back of the cube is at x = 0, the light of the cube has to go out.
I can do it with cubes. For that I needed to make some code in the script node, and some code in the script editor.
I solved the problem by using the mix shader, put a glass shader on one, input, and an emissive shader on the other input. When I create the notes in the script editor from the timing information, I also provide them with the three shaders, and give them the initial color and lighting.
Then, in the script editor, I put the positions of the notes, and when the front of any note is at x = 0, it lights up by giving the fac of the mix shader the value 1, which is the emissive shader. And when the back is at x = 0, the fac is set to 0, setting it to the glass shader.
So I used a lot of code, and not many nodes of either AN or Cycles.
How would YOU do this?
To be precise: how would you make a cube light up, when the front of a moving cube is at X = 0, and stop lighting when the back of the cube is at X = 0?
The solution of this problem would help me a lot, because I then could use the Instancer node of AN to make ANY mesh object light up and dim again. So I could design notes of any shape, and make them light up and dim.
PS. Thanks to your help I am now working on my first AN music animation, which uses beams (cubes) of various lengths.
"To be precise: how would you make a cube light up, when the front of a moving cube is at X = 0, and stop lighting when the back of the cube is at X = 0?"
are you talking about position or rotation? Let's say that you want your objects to be light up in a specific transform state.
You can use boolean nodes to compare the transformed state then use a switch node to generate value 1 if true and 0 if false the use vertex color to export data to cycles then use this data to control the mix factor of mix shader.
I have tried to duplicate the first steps in your demonstration, by applying a mixed shader to the first cube, applying a diffuse BSDF shader to the first input of the mixed hader, and an emissive shader to the second input.
I did not use the vertex color node, but the Cycles Material Output node, in which I selected the Mix Shader, which caused the Fac to appear. I then could influence the lighting by the Data parameter.
This worked, although, as you said, in Rendered mode it makes AN stop. But switching back and forth between material and rendered, I saw that it worked up to this point.
So far, so good.
BUT...
If I invoke the Object Instancer node, and activate the Deep Copy property, the mixed shader and the two other shaders are not duplicated. In other words, the five cubes do not receive five separate mix shaders, and five emission shaders and five Diffuse BSDF shaders.
Therefore, this approach does not work for what I have in mind!
I DO find ALLof your video interesting, though, because your lectures give a deeper understanding of how Animation Nodes work. Without them I would never have been so far in my project. You have saved me months of investigation on my own, and I am very, very grateful.
I now use a combination of Python scripting in Blender combined with Animation Nodes. And that works!
Your videos are brilliant!
You are a great teacher!
Have you taken a look at Udemy? You shoud make a course in AN, and upload it to Udemy. I think you would have many students who would actually pay you for that course. I think it would be a best seller!
WOW. Wonnnnnnnderful explanations - THANK YOU!!
great video! so many useful tips and tricks. thank you!
Thank you very much for this tutorial! How would you add an image texture to the top of all cubes so that the image would cover the whole area? The goal would be a mosaic that can be animated.
This could be achieved. I'll think about it.
Thanks for getting back to me! Unfortunately, this problem is beyond my skills.
Nice and useful, So i Tried to Use this in my scene and i have run into a problem.. I Tried Attribute(Col) to export Black and white value for position of my cubes and than using that attribute fac for mix shader in my Node Editor(cycles), works perfectly but when I render animation Animation Nodes Executes all other nodes (position change etc) But doesn't Update the values for Attibute(Col) So color remains same .
wow... hope can go that far. thanks a lot
Hey Abhay, love your videos! Can you share your source for HDRs, or comment on where can I get that studio HDR from?
www.deviantart.com/zbyg/art/HDRi-Pack-1-97402522
Yessss, exactly what i needed :) great tut
Is this doable with AN 1.6? Distribute matrices node is added in 2.0 and isnt available in 1.6. I wonder if its possible to redo this in 1.6 without using "matrix > distribute" node?
How would you change the color based upon the velocity? Not linear direction, but an object that could move anywhere and be affected?
you need to find the vector distance from current frame to the previous frame then use a distance node to find the distance then map this data on the color attribute.
Do you think you could make a video on this? I've tried this, but can't seem to make it work right. Bugs will happen, like exponential growth.
I'll do that soon.
Hey Jeffrey! it seems like Animation Nodes doesn't have this feature now, I have asked Jaques Lucke about this and he said it's not possible in animation nodes. You can use delay time to calculate the distance but it's not ideal because then you have to deal with lots of duplicate nodes.
Wow, that is unfortunate. Wish I was a programmer, then I'd make an add-on to calculate global position node for each frame and a time delay node.... but my skills are not in programming. Thanks for checking, hopefully it becomes a future Blender feature.
wow you are good...
Mine doesn't even follow what you just did. JUST FOR ONE CUBE COLOR. I don't know why it won't behave same as yours did.
learned a lot, thx!
Hi! Abhay Sharma. (I finally have your name right!) I see that you are already familiar with Udemy, and also use Skillshare.
You have several courses on Udemy. People should know this!
So, anyone reading this, Check Abhay Sharma out on Udemy and Skillshare! He is a great teacher!
I have enrolled in your Udemy course about course making.
Please, make an Animation Nodes course for Udemy! You could use your RUclips videos for some of the lectures.
An Animation Nodes course might be a huge success. Nothing like it exists on Udemy.
When I just Googled Animation Nodes, there were 192.000 hits . So the interest is huge, and I expect it will only increase. I also expect that after the update to 2.80 Blender will become a killer application that can no longer be ignored. Not even by the mainstream firms. So you will also have longer term benefits.
Thanks Konrad Swart ! I'll think about it. by the way there are so many abhay sharma in india :).
I did a course on udemy for fusion recently :
www.udemy.com/create-professional-lower-thirds-with-blackmagic-fusion-9/.
Yes! I just found out that the course I have enlisted to, is made by another Abhay Sharma.
I am not disappointed, though. That course is also very good. In his first few lessons he summarized many mental roadblocks that took me years to overcome, to make my first course. And there was one new one.
So just by accident you have directed me to just the course I need!
Q: How can one avoid the spline to go beneath the emitter surface at start and end point? Playing with interpolation doesn't help much, Only increasing the lenght of arc in the map range node to something extreem gives a nice result…image.ibb.co/mrVqJ8/splines.png
is sphere your emitter?
The masked sphere is the emitter, just like in your example.