Making Animated Materials works

[SirCrowell_xblms]

Hi,
I am trying to animate metalic param of a standard material (no texture) of a simple box on 3ds Max as a first test.
After following the SDK doc and some forum topics I am stuck. The Babylon exporter says that there are no data to be exported and so the box do nothing in the game.
Please find a screenshot of the exporter attached.

I am feeling that something is missing in the documentation as I am already able to animate a movement of a common object (3ds Max animation, Babylon Animation Groups & xml config). Here animating a material seems a little bit trickier.

Thanks a lot for your help, I’m looking forward to discuss about it with you

[Boris]

Hello @SirCrowell ,

What version of 3DS Max are you using?

Did you ensure the “Keep Static Animation” option is selected as shown below?

Also, ensure that you have at least one Animation Node and one Animated Material referenced in the Babylon Animation Groups window.

If you’d like, you can send us your GLTF. Refer to section 3 here.

Regards,
Boris

[SirCrowell_xblms]

Hi @Boris ,
Thank you for your help.
I work with this version of 3ds Max :

I have the same parameters as you in your screenshot, mine below :

Since I only want to animate the material I did not animate the Box001 object.
The exporter gives this message :

And I configure my xml file like this :

All I know is that when I import my object in the sim the game crashes to desktop.

Thanks for your time, am I missing something to suceed in animating materials ? I would really like to be able to do it for my projects.

Hope this could help

[Boris]

Hello,

The crash seems to have originated from the animation.
I will open a ticket in our backlog.
However, I managed to create a sample that runs with material animation. Also note that the basecolor is not working. We will update the documentation to include this information.
You can download the simobject sample here:

Sample_Animated_Material.zip

Hope it helps,
Regards,

Boris

[SirCrowell_xblms]

Hello @Boris ,
Thank you very much for this custom made solution.
I have integrated it and if animating UVs works unfortunately nothing seems to happen for Metallic, Emmissive or Roughness.

Could you confirm that please ? As I am very interested in using Emissive animation for my projects.

Regards

[Boris]

Hello @SirCrowell ,

For some reasons, only the Metallic and Roughness Factor, along with the UV options, are supported.
We will investigate further and I will update you once I have more information.

Regards,
Boris

[SirCrowell_xblms]

I understand @Boris ,
thank you very much, I hope you’ll be able to make this feature available soon.
I look forward to hearing from you.

[DA40CGDFQ]

Once you get 3DS Max to work, could you please add this functionality to Blender exporter.

[SimbolFSReborn]

Also,

for the next platform, could you guys extend the materials animations? giving us the capability to change base color, PBR, and alfa values would allow to extend our development much more.

For example, we could make airplane surfaces to appear wet upon raining, add accumulative snow and many other features via this facility.

All the best,
Raul

[Boris]

@DA40CGDFQ @Simbol ,
I forwarded the feedback from both of you to the dev.

Regards,
Boris

[QuackyDuck1972]

Hi,

I’m having a similar problem with the sim crashing as soon as I try to place a simobject with anim materials applied (adhering to the limitations mentioned). It looks like the link to the sample has expired. Would it be possible to reshare?

Cheers

[Boris]

Hello @QuackyDuck1972 ,

Sure, here is the link to a new sample I have just created

Hope it helps,

Regards,
Boris

[mamuDesign]

while waiting for Blender implementation,
looks like the big teapot is animating as simple scenery object too

[Boris]

You’re right ! That’s now the case.
I edited my post above.
Thank you for the feedback

Regards,
Boris