Topic: animation of layer visibility + praise

[keyston]

Hi, Im just trying the free 2.1 b3. After banging my head on a wall trying to get good lighting using vue exstream in 3d max, and the render times are just rediculous, Lumion makes other render methods seem pointless and dated. Has anyone tried setting up an underwater scene using vue or max? Lumion just put the camera in the water, done. Even though it has its limitations, on a whole it has most of what you need to make a visualisation video. Most of it is quite easy to figure out except the layer animation tool. I want to animate the visibility of 5 layers, starting from a blank canvass(just terrain) and making the layers visible 1 by 1 until all are visible. But I cant seem to get this to happen. I've tried using the hide and show layer tools in every combination I can think of. Is it possible to do this?

[Morten]

Hi keyston, thanks for your feedback.

Due to a technical limitation, the Show Layer effect will always show layer 1 and the layer that you set the effect to. All you can do is to remove everything from layer 1, and use the Show Layer effect to show Layer 2/3/4/5 one at a time.

[peterm]

To add to Mortens info; you can use the layers to achieve 2 types of progressive display:

1. showing each item (say in construction areas) by itself in sequence.  
Do this by using the Show Layer, either in separate clips, one for each layer, or using keyframes in 1 clip and keyframing for each Show Layer.  Make first clip before either method a hide all item layers.

2. show all items progressively, so items appear as added to the previous.
Do this by hide all clip, then a clip for each item hiding less layers in each clip, e.g. hide 2,3,4,5 then hide 2,3,4 then hide 2,3 etc so that more layers are being shown.  It's not possible to do this in keyframes so needs to be on separate clips.

Attached sample vid showing: show separate items, 1st using spearate clips, then using single keyframed clip, then show progressive show.

Also L2.1B3 scene and library files so you can see in the scene how things can be built up.

[keyston]

Thanks Morten and Peterm. Yeah, I managed to get the layers to appear 1 at a time and was considering the clip method you described peterm. either that or rendering the whole animation 2 times, once with all objects, one with none, then playing in after effects. but I think the clip method would be a lot quicker and less post work.
I just tried a sample scene with small objects and the clips are are actually like keyframes themselves.
Cheers for the quick responses. great community here.