Material Surface Animation

In Vue, you can animate materials in three different ways. They are:
- Material Surface Animation,
- Material Velocity Animation, and
- Complete Material Animation (the first and the second method together).

In this tutorial you will learn about the Material Surface Animation.

The easiest way to animate the material of an object is the Material Surface Animation.
A good example is the animation of flat surfaces such as water for example.
It is simpler than you think.
Here are a few steps to create the animated water using the Material Surface Animation.

Fire up Vue and create a new scene.
Choose the 'Clear Spring' atmosphere from the 'Daytime' collection and delete the 'Ground' in the 'World Browser'.
Add 'Water' to your scene.
Press the 'Load material' button and apply the 'Tropical water' material from the 'Liquids' collection.
Right click the sphere in the 'Object properties window' and select 'Edit material'.

The 'Material Editor' window will be loaded.
Just check the 'Animate Material option' and your water is now animated!
Press the 'F11' button on your keyboard to open the 'Timeline'. If the 'Mover Wizard' appears, close it.

Press the 'Show/Hide' properties button. The water material has been added as the animated item of the scene, but you'll not see any keyframes created.
Press the 'Render animation' button. In the 'Animation limits' section, check the 'Render sequence' option.

Now you can set the duration of your movie.
Enter 5 in the 'End time' field.
Press the 'Generate preview' button.
Press the 'Render animation' button again and set the 'Preset render quality' to 'Preview'.
Set the 'Frame resolution' to '320x240'.
Press OK and in a few minutes or seconds (depending your processor) you'll be able to watch the movie!
Here is my example for you to download (213Kb, right click and select 'Save target as').
You need to have the MP4 video codec installed.
If can't see the movie go here and download the DivX player, for instance.