Texture Animation

A Channels track steps a glyph's texture_id through a numbered image sequence — flipbook animation played on the surface of a 3D object, alongside a video texture.

Try it: download this example below (or the full examples set), then open Texture_Animation_Example/texture_animation_gv_node.csv — or just drag its folder onto the GlyphViz window. Press Space to start the animation.

Download this example (6 MB)

What it is

A single flat panel hangs in space, and a Channels track changes which image is painted on it, one image per frame. That is a flipbook. The twenty images are a numbered sequence of Julia-set renderings, so when you press Space the fractal appears to change shape, even though nothing in the scene is changing except one number: the panel's texture_id.

It is the smallest possible use of texture animation, and a good model for any image sequence you want to play on a surface: slides, rendered frames, satellite passes, microscope stacks.

How it works

• Textures are numbered by folder position. Every image in the scene's media/ folder gets a texture_id equal to its position in the sorted folder, starting at 1. Here, map00001.jpg is texture 1, map00002.jpg is texture 2, and so on up to map00020.jpg.
• A node shows the texture its texture_id names. The panel is saved with no texture assigned, and the channel supplies one from the first frame.
• A channel steps that number. The map file has one mapping, channel 1 to the attribute texture_id, and the tracks file has one column that simply counts 1, 2, 3 up to 20. Each frame, the panel's texture jumps to the next image.

The scene is one node, the Julia-set panel, plus a one-line tag file and the two Channels files. The panel uses the Grid geometry, a flat rectangle that takes an image across its whole face.

Things to try

• Scrub the animation. Stop playback and drag the Channels slider: the panel steps through the images exactly as you move.
• Show a single image. Select the panel and change its Texture ID in the Properties panel to any number from 1 to 20.
• Play a video on the same panel. The media/ folder also holds a short video. Images are numbered first and videos after them, so the video is texture 21. Set the panel's Texture ID to 21 and it plays there instead.
• Use your own images. Replace the files in media/ with your own numbered frames, keep the names in the order you want them played, and make the track count up to the number of images.

Things to know

• Sort order is the animation order. Zero-padded names such as map00001.jpg sort correctly. Without the padding, map10.jpg would sort before map2.jpg.
• Texture changes are steps, not blends. The engine does not interpolate between images. If you want a smooth transition, supply the in-between frames.
• texture_id re-places nothing. Unlike topo or ratio, switching textures changes only what is drawn on the node. The Channel Parameters example shows the attributes that rearrange a node's children.

For the full list of what Channels can animate, see the Channels Animation reference.