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Change Flipbook Parameters from API

GranddadGotMojo

April 17, 2018 17:12

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Please add the ability to change the Flipbook Step Rate and Scroll Rates X & Y from the API.  In this way we could control what is showing on the texture based on things happening in the scene.  Like changing a dance floor or lights to match the beats per minute in a song or change when you hit a trigger volume to playing some kind of flipbook animation or match animation speeds based on something happening in the scene.

8 comments

• 2
  
  OldVamp April 17, 2018 18:43

  or if you could perhaps call a specific frame of a flipbook Object.Material[x].GoToFrame(x);

• 1
  
  Gindipple April 17, 2018 20:10

  If you're going to that step just let us upload multiple materials to an object and select them from a script.

  ObjectPrivate.SetMaterial(MaterialList[0]);

   

   

• 0
  
  Galen April 17, 2018 21:04

  It would be nice to do that, too, but flipbook animation is something that a graphics card can do very rapidly and for low cost. Script-driven materials changing is much more expensive.

  One nice-to-have would be to have script address one of the frames to display at this moment. Essentially, halt the animation but stop on one specific frame.

• 0
  
  Gindipple April 17, 2018 23:02

  It would only be more expensive if you had more textures in the material like a roughness map, metalness map and normal map. Otherwise the video card would see each as a draw of the same texture.

  From the video card's low level standpoint it's a block of memory addressed in both cases.

   

• 0
  
  Galen April 18, 2018 00:00

  Yes, but you're forgetting the script and network component of it. The server runs the script engine, which would be firing off events that tell the surface to change to a different material, which then must be sent as a message from the server to every connected client, which must then interpret it and implement the material change. Now imagine that happening 30 times a second for just one material.

  Compare that to the tiny overhead of a fixed-rate flipbook animation, which could happen purely in the GPU.

  I want that capability, but I would not advocate it as a substitute for the current mechanism.

  Edited by Galen April 18, 2018 00:00
• 0
  
  Gindipple April 18, 2018 10:35

  LOL I'm not forgetting anything, your over exaggerating my example to fit the obvious case where flipbook would be he better solution, animated texture.

• 0
  
  Galen April 18, 2018 12:38

  My mistake. I thought you were advocating getting rid of the existing mechanism in favor of a script-only solution.

• 1
  
  GranddadGotMojo April 18, 2018 17:48

  Please give us flipbook first.  If it is easier.