[help] Animating the emission intensity of a shader

[6ril]

Thanks Matt !

 

[CaptainAhoy]

15 hours ago, mestela said:

Tried my usual cheap trick of scattering, animate the uv, attrib interpolate.

I've attached 2 versions, one which converts the points to geolights, the other version just transfers the colour of the points back onto the lines (limited render power at home...   )

circuitboard_v01.hipnc

 

 

Ah, also don't forget about houdini's neat trick of shader attribute overrides. You almost take for granted that colours on your geo ( @Cd ) will show up in the render. That's because most of the default shaders have an option, 'use point color' enabled, so if your geo has Cd, it will override the material color.

This applies for _any_ property on a shader. If you hover on the title of a material parameter, it will tell you the internal parm name. If you have a point attrib with the same name, it will override the material property, just like how Cd overrides the material colour.

That said emission from materials can be noisy. Converting to a geo light can be less noisy, but still noisy. Another alternative is to instance a light onto your moving points, with a small active radius and no shadows, that should be noise free and fast to render. All methods are in the following hip file.

circuitboard_v02.hipnc

Thanks a lot matt! This is beautiful!

Very helpful tips!