[SOLVED] How to key layered material alpha? (Maya)
triangle
Sorry in advance for something that likely is, and certainly should be, simple, but I'm new to and a total noob at animation.
I've got a layered material in Maya 2019 (a lambert, if it helps) with 2 alpha attributes. 0.000 is texture 1, and 1.000 is texture 2. If I drag the slider, it swaps between them. Which is great! But what I need to do is set a key on this so that before frame A, texture 1 is visible, and after frame B, texture 2 is visible. In all the tutorials I've found, most of which are from 2013, you can key the color attribute. However, I can't. I can right click > set key, but doesn't set multiple keys (if I set it to 1.000, aka texture 2, the ENTIRE animation ALWAYS sees texture 2, regardless of previously making a key with the 0.000/texture 1 visible, and if I set texture 1 again, it erases the visibility of texture 2.... and so on) and there are absolutely no keyframes visible on the timeline (though the slider does highlight red as if it's keyframed). Is there another way to do this? Or something I'm missing? I couldn't use a blend node or find any modern documentation on blend nodes in the hypershade editor, so this is the only way I've found to make it work.
I'll post an image as well. If I didn't explain something well, I can clarify, I just can't find anything online covering this specific thing (that isn't completely outdated and functions differently, anyway). Thank you!
I've got a layered material in Maya 2019 (a lambert, if it helps) with 2 alpha attributes. 0.000 is texture 1, and 1.000 is texture 2. If I drag the slider, it swaps between them. Which is great! But what I need to do is set a key on this so that before frame A, texture 1 is visible, and after frame B, texture 2 is visible. In all the tutorials I've found, most of which are from 2013, you can key the color attribute. However, I can't. I can right click > set key, but doesn't set multiple keys (if I set it to 1.000, aka texture 2, the ENTIRE animation ALWAYS sees texture 2, regardless of previously making a key with the 0.000/texture 1 visible, and if I set texture 1 again, it erases the visibility of texture 2.... and so on) and there are absolutely no keyframes visible on the timeline (though the slider does highlight red as if it's keyframed). Is there another way to do this? Or something I'm missing? I couldn't use a blend node or find any modern documentation on blend nodes in the hypershade editor, so this is the only way I've found to make it work.
I'll post an image as well. If I didn't explain something well, I can clarify, I just can't find anything online covering this specific thing (that isn't completely outdated and functions differently, anyway). Thank you!
Replies
Passing along the solution that worked for me based on conversation with Marko S, an Autodesk employee that was able to help me through this whole thing.
1: Blend materials should be available in Maya 2019 and the fact that it wasn't for me means it's missing. I plan on resetting things in the future but at the current moment and project I don't have time to risk it, so here's what to do if you also can't use blend mode/have to use a layered texture for some reason. Apparently Blend is better/simpler (layered textures don't use transparency of uploaded images so I'm hoping that maybe blend does on future projects).
2: Viewport 2.0 has an update bug for Layered Texture when using Evaluation Mode "Parallel". This is why basic keyframing didn't display properly or match the keyframe information
3: To update Viewport 2.0 properly, switch Evaluation Mode from "Parallel" to "DG" (in Preferences > Settings > Animation > Evaluation)
For me, switching to "DG" caused my entire animation to reload, play through and update, and then my keyframes actually effected my texture properly and responded in the right way. Also, I couldn't view keyframes selecting the material (which is what I'd read to do), or the alpha, but I needed to scroll down and hit the "select" button beneath the layered texture alpha info. A simple solution, but I couldn't find any information at all about in my research, so hopefully it'll help someone else down the line.