loop animation - how to?

[themaxxer]

hi all

I have to make some loop animations.
can anyone tell me how to setup this?
I have to animate some particle systems and procedural materials.

best regards
themaxxer

[Da_elf]

ouch. particles and procedurals are going to be a downfall. basically what i might do in these cases would be to make a duplicate particle system.
particle 1 starts at frame -10 (so that at frame 0 its already looking like a steady thing)
particle 1 ends at frame 100
particle 2 starts at 90
when particle 1 is dead. particle 2 will be at the same place where particle 1 was.
for the procedural textures you can have an animated blend between the procedurals with procedural 2 at frame 100 to = the same phase setting procedural 1 was at when it started at frame 0. actually your animated fade between the two might be better to be another procedural since a fade doesnt look all that good

[themaxxer]

thank you very much!

for the procedurals. means that I have to animate no.1 from 0-10 and the no.2 from 10-0? I then get a ping pong effect, that's not I want to get.
and how do I fade from one procedural to another without a blend mat?

best regards
themaxxer

[Da_elf]

no for procedurals you kinda do the same as the particles. in (example) diffuse slot you put a mix map. map1 = noise map... map2 = noise map.
the two noises should be identical at the same phase. map 1 you animate the phase betweens frames 1 and 100 to be phase 0 - phase 10. then noise map2 you would animate with phase -10 to phase 0. in the mix channel you can use maybe a smoke with an animated phase and ramp the peramiter to make it more white than black (i forget the name of the peramiter) this will make the smoke as a non-smooth transition between the two noises. in this way at frame 100 noise map2 will be shown and will be at phase0. which is the same as the start of the animation where noise map1 was at phase0. the smoke map transition can take place at any point. oh. and the other thing which should be kinda simple to see is if your rendering in such a way as to have frame 100 = frame 0 so that you can make a look. then you would need to either render 1-100 or 0-99. if you render the entire 0-100 then you have 2 frames that are the same and put a skip in the loop.

[MegaPixel]

I'll try to complicate the question a tad by going off on a tangent.

I've been trying to setup a procedural noise based "lake" water animation that uses a mix map of two different noises maps at different sizes. I don't really need the animation to loop because I'll just run the phase value high enough to run throughout the entire animation. What I'm trying to figure out is how to fine-tune the motions of the two different sizes without havign to render out the sequence to see what my phases adjustments have done? Do you have a good phase over time relationship you use for water animations?

Also, to add to the answer of the original question, could you not just add an "out-of-range" loop type to the noise animation?

[Da_elf]

actually with animated water these are two good things for some realism. stretch the wave slightly in a certain direction by putting a figure less than 1 in the tileing of the noise map. the 2nd thing is in the animaiton the phase is not the only thing you need to animate. if you do that it just looks like waves are formin and changing. waves dont just form, they move as well. so animate the waves movement using the offset for the noise. as for exact ratios. sorry. cant help you there, you need to do trial runs