flickering light

Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 2

This course will look in the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. It's aimed at people that have some modeling experience in Maya but are having trouble with complex objects.

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# 1 17-04-2008 , 05:44 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Dec 2006

Location: australia

Posts: 62

ok basically i want to immitate a flickering light for a fire

i have the fire all done and crap, i wanna make the shadows flicker, so i set up a point light with linear decay rate...

basically i want to know how to animate a flickering motion that will endlessly repeat on the point light, and i want to be able to copy it other places in the maya file

help would rock my world, thanks guys

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# 2 17-04-2008 , 08:09 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

Add a "rand" expression to the intensity value of your light:

Example 1:

rand(5)

This returns a random floating point number between 0 and 5, for example, 3.539.

Example 2:

rand(-1,1)

Returns a random floating point number between -1 and 1, for example, 0.452.

Example 2 would be better for your situation, as you can define a MIN and MAX intensity value for your light user added image

So if you don't want it to go below an intensity value of 1, but also go NO higher than say, 4, you would use this rand expression:

rand(1,4)

Also, a messier and slightly less controllable way to add a random value to something is to map a ramp to an attribute, kill all ramp colors except for one, then map a fractal texture to that color.

But personally I would use example 2 from above user added image

Good luck!

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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