It's kinda going to depend on what you want the lights to do — I mean, do you
just need traveling bright spots, or are these lights actually suppoesed to
provide any light throw-off (illumination). If the former, I'd use an animated
self-illumination map (new in r3).
Dave
David,
Right now I'm only equipped with R2. I saw in the demo a
spaceship with running lights. I don't recall any illumination. Is
there any way to change the color of an object during animation?
In R2, you could use an animated texture map on a self-illuminated
material to create flashing or running lights. Or, you could combine
an animated opacity map with a self-illuminated material…Or, you
could cross fade using Video Post…Or, you could switch objects by
moving them in and out of camera range in the Keyframer (set
Continuity to 0 for this). On top of any of the above methods, you
should probably also keyframe some spot or omni lights to flash on
and off, thus affecting the surrounding geometry to match the effect
of the self-illuminated objects.