Material Velocity Animation

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

In this tutorial you will learn about Material Velocity Animation.

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 you can't see the movie, download the DivX player here for instance.

You can achieve some nice results using this method of animation. It allows you to move the origin of the material in time. The Material Velocity Animation does not create any keyframes, but we can move a material.
Let's burn a fence ;) and you will see how to move the fire.
Open Vue and create a new scene. Choose the 'Black Back' atmosphere from the 'Others' collection.
Press the 'Load Object' button and choose the 'Privacy Fence' from the 'Outside' collection. Move the 'Main camera' to the best-fit position.
Create a 'Sphere' and press the 'Load material' button.
Select the 'Flames 2' material from the 'Special Effects' collection.
Make your sphere much bigger than the 'Fence' and place it similar to my picture.

Press the 'F11' button on your keyboard to load the 'Timeline' window. When the 'Mover Wizard' appears, press 'Close'.

Now, we can set the duration of our movie.
Press the 'Render animation' button to load the 'Animation Render Options' window.
In the 'Animation Limits' box select the 'Render sequence' and enter 5 in the 'End time' field.

Press 'Cancel'.
Select the 'Sphere' in the 'World Browser' if it is not still selected.
In the 'Object properties' window, set the Material scale to 5.
Right click the material pattern and select 'Edit'.
The 'Material Editor' window appears.
Select the 'Transparency' tab and drag the slider in the 'Fuzziness' box to 90%.

Select the 'Effects' tab and in the 'Velocity of material origin' enter the following parameters:
x= -40; y= -80; z= -25.

So, the material will be moving along all axes. Press OK.
Your animation is complete now!
Try to render.
You should have something like this short movie (410Kb, MP4).
Follow me if you want to burn out the fence completely ; )
We need to move the 'Sphere' up over time.
In the 'Timeline' window set the keyframe at the end of movie.
To do that, select the 'Sphere' and move the'Timeline slider' to the frame #5.
Right click the slider and select 'Add Keyframe'.
Now, make the 'Sphere' bigger and move it higher. That's it.
Here is the 'improved version' (465Kb, MP4).