Forum

"Tron" glow - small versus large mask

04 July 2015 09:19
I've finally got around to playing with the "Tron" style glow, but I am confused by what happens with the "small mask" and "large mask" in the additional settings. Can I see a simple example that shows what elements of a material those settings are using, how they're divided up? Thanks yet again!
06 July 2015 10:04
Hi. Here the simple example is.

glow_example.html
Manager and 3D Generalist at Blend4Web
No pain, no gain.
mikhail@blend4web.com
06 July 2015 10:25
Hey, and "Large and small masks" are just two levels of the effect: the small mask is closer to the surface and the large one is more, like, scattered around
07 July 2015 04:28
Ah! I was thinking maybe it had to do with combining level-specific masks in some fashion! I'm going to have fun playing with this.

It seems like my questions will never end - how are you remapping the material so that the animation is only appearing on the eyes?
07 July 2015 09:37

It seems like my questions will never end - how are you remapping the material so that the animation is only appearing on the eyes?

Hi.
Mikhail used a vertex color to animate only eyes:
08 July 2015 02:54
Thanks, Roman! Here's what I'm confused about:

Though I have been using Blender for a few years, I've spent 90% of my time creating plain meshes for export, so there are LOTS of subtleties about it that I am mostly or completely ignorant of, things that a more generally experienced user would take for granted.

In this case, I see that the same vertex coloring has been used for the whole mesh, so i guess there is something different about the way the paint was applied to the eyes? What is the difference that tells B4W "this part gets animated and that part doesn't"?
08 July 2015 10:57
Look at the shots: the VC is painted only on the eyes - if we'll add an output node and connect it to the VC color output of the geometry node, we'll see it - the eyes are painted in red..



Then we separate this RGB color to the B/W channels - with node Separate RGB. Now we get masks that can be used everywhere :) Well, in this example we are using only red channel - and it is "white" only on the eyes, because in RGB Vertex Color only eyes were red.



So - we're animating this mask with our TIME node and some math. The result is used as an influence to the Glow node :) Everything white works, everything black stays untouched
09 July 2015 11:12
Aha! That was what I missed! The vertex colors were "hiding" under the base material! Also, my tired brain completely missed the fact that the vertex color node was being used to drive the glow (I've been pulling too many all-nighters! )!

That's really neat! Thanks for the demo!

(I should be more grateful that Blender/B4W/etc. are complicated - I will NEVER get bored!)
09 July 2015 12:06
I should be more grateful that Blender/B4W/etc. are complicated

Yeah, at some time it seems complicated, but when you spend some time digging into it, it magically starts to work almost automatically
But yeah, there's always something new and some ways to evolve, so no time to get bored!


Glad it helped
 
Please register or log in to leave a reply.