Animation

Cinema 4D also allows you to use movies as textures. You can load a video or picture sequence in the same way as you would a bitmap image (by clicking the three dots button etc. to load the file). The Animation settings control how the movie will be played back.

Example 1: You want to play a video or frame sequence.

1. Load the movie into the material channel.
   
2. Click the movie’s name (Texture box) or preview picture.
   
3. Click the Animation tab.
   
4. Click Calculate.

Result: the movie is played back once and is second-synchronized.

Example 2: You want to play a movie from frame 25 to frame 350 of your animation, forwards and backwards (ping-pong) twice.

1. Load the movie into the material channel.
   
2. Click the movie’s name (Texture box) or preview picture.
   
3. Click the Animation tab.
   
4. Click Calculate.
   
5. Set Mode to Ping-Pong.
   
6. Set Timing to Range.
   
7. Set Range Start to 25 and Range End to 350.
   
8. Set Loops to 1 so that the movie will be played twice.

Result: the movie is played forwards and backwards, then backwards and forwards using frame 25 to frame 350 of your animation.

Mode

Mode sets the general playback mode: Simple will play the movie once from start to finish; Loop will play the movie from start to finish repeatedly; Ping-Pong will play the movie from start to finish to start repeatedly. With Loop, the texture remains on the last frame of the movie once it has finished playing.

Timing
Range Start
Range End

Use Timing to set the timing of the movie. Exact Frame will use one frame of the movie per frame of your animation. No frames will be dropped. If the movie and your animation use a different FPS (Frames Per Second) setting, the movie will play back at a faster or slower speed than the original speed. Exact Second matches each second of the movie against each second of your animation, thus ensuring that the movie will be played back at the original speed. If you choose Range, Cinema 4D will play the movie once over a specified frame range (Range Start and Range End) of your animation. Use this option if you do not want the texture to start playing immediately.

Loops [0..1000]

You can use Loops to repeat the movie a finite number of times. If you set Loops to 1, the movie will be repeated once.

Movie Start Frame [0..999999999]
Movie End Frame [0..999999999]
Movie Frame Rate [1..100]

Use these settings to define which part of a film texture should be used with which frame rate. Use Frame Start and Frame End to define when (which frame) a sequence should begin and when it should end. If the same value is entered into both fields, only that frame of the animation will be used as a texture.

Calculate

If you click on Calculate, Cinema 4D will automatically enter the film’s parameters into the corresponding fields. It is not necessary to find out in advance how long the film is and which frame rate it has. When rendering sequential images, this information will be ascertained based on the lowest and highest image number. A frame rate of 25fps will be assumed. Other rates have to be entered manually.

Example:

A video contains 600 frames (0 to 599) and has a frame rate of 15 fps. You can select the range that is played, e.g., from frame 70 to frame 119 (even backwards, if desired).