Fractal animation looping

[naughty]

Does anyone know of a good/clever way of animating a 2D fractal texture over "n" frames so that the animation at the first and last frames is the same so it can be continuously, seamlessly looped?

At the moment I'm only animating it's time attribute which looks great without looping, but the only way I can think of to loop it is to animate the time increasing, then decreasing back to 0 at the end of the timeline. This looks rubbish cos you can see it "bounce" halfway.

anyone got any other ideas?

I don't know a whole lot about materials (or even animation for that matter!) and I'm using Maya 3.01

:nathaN

[aken]

well backwards Nathan:

to get it to loop, you could key the fractal 3 times...the first frame...then halfway...then at the end...just copy your first frame...and paste it at the end...then your first and last frames are the same

if I'm not clear...or I missed the mark completely...lemme know...

-peace-
aken009

[nurbousbreakdown]

That was the method he said he didn't want to use; the fractal still bounces back and forth.

I believe you can solve this problem by layering two fractals; let both loop, but with their loops offset. Then transition back and forth between the two fractals such that the 'skip' in each fractal is hidden.

The difficulty of the transition may vary depending on the type and complexity of the fractal, and how it animates, but I'll wager that a simple fade will work in most situations, and I suspect it is the only easy solution.

[naughty]

heh heh, yeah thanks Aken for giving it a go at least, but like NurbousBreakdown said, you just described exactly what I'm already doing..!

I'll try Nurbous' suggestion and see what I come up with. Thanks to you both.

[joojaa]

A fractal i slightly random right? oks so no one will notice if you start going backwards if you choose the values carefully say 1 2 3 4 on the way uo and 3,5 2,5 1,5 ,5 0 on the way back you coulde be even more messy for better results!

[naughty]

hmm.. well, while any single, static instance of a fractal could be considered "random", the smooth motion of one over time is anything but. The tiny time increments I need to use to make the fractal motion look subtle and smooth prevents any time reversal. it doesn't really make any difference if you key totally different and/or irregular times as there's not enough visual difference between times/frames. so you'll still see either a "bounce" or a fractal anim that looks like random white noise which isn't what I want at all.

my entire anim (4secs) only travels between 0 and 0.2 time which explains the lack of visual difference between frames. I'll try your suggestion out though just to convince myself 100%...!

:nathaN

[aken]

well it sounds like nathaN just looped his keys, by going thru the post infinity keys...the way I said, goes back to basically goes like this... 1,2,3,4,5,6,5,4,3,2,1 and the pattern that I thought nathaN was doing was 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6 if that's the case, my way WOULD work..but I guess I mustened of read it right...and i'm sorry...

and if your animation is only 4 seconds long...why do you need a loop in it? what are you doing anyways?

-peace-
aken009

[joojaa]

Also if the walues loop in a seemingly different pattern.
Anyway theres on alternative way for this use 3d noise and rotate the pattern (and move it in a loop or something!)

[user_deleted]

You may find this gives a bit of a 'dull' spot halfway thru the fade, if you just mix across from fractal A to fractal B.

If you can see the result of the fade and you want a way round this, then try to use a THIRD fractal (same rate, different offset) to drive the actual fade, by making a kind of fractal wipe....