Looping procedural textures?

[NigelH]

Is there a simple technique/formula for looping animated procedurals over a given period of time? I'm creating a billowing flag/fabric effect with a procedural displacement map for a background and want to just have it loop rather than extend throughout the length of the final piece. TIA.

[jdavidbakr]

If you animate the rotation instead of position then it will loop every 360 degrees.

[NigelH]

Makes sense. I'll try it out and see how it looks. Thanks.
Still, is there no linear repeat in any of the procedurals?

[toby]

just curious, why not set "post behaviour" on the envelope to linear, and have it move indefinitely

[NigelH]

I guess a little more detail is in order here. The billowing fabric is just a background element in a much longer composite in After Effects. Rather than render 3 minutes or more of fabric footage, I just want to render 30 seconds or so that loops seamlessly over the course of the piece. Therefore, the beginning and end frames should match exactly.

[riki]

I'm no expert in this field but it seems to me that you just need to copy all the keys at frame 0 and paste them into the last frame. Then animate the in-between frames.

[NigelH]

Copying the position values from frame 0 to the last frame would result in no motion at all.

[riki]

What I meant was that the start and end frames should be the same, you then animate the inbetween frames.

[bloontz]

Originally posted by NigelH
Still, is there no linear repeat in any of the procedurals?

According to Patrik Beck in his book "Lightwave 6.5/7.0 Project Book", smokey1,smokey2, and smokey3 procedurals "have a setting for turbulence that gives smokey both animation and a loop point". Haven't tried it myself, not sure if it will give the effect you want but worth a try.

[NigelH]

What I'm looking for is a linear, 'top to bottom' motion of the texture. This means that I can't start at '0' on the Y axis, end at '0', move the texture around in between, and get a smooth linear motion. The direction of the motion would have to reverse at some point in order to return to '0'. I need to start at '0', then go to '0-(y)' at the end. 'y' being some point along the Y axis where the texture starts to repeat itself (assuming it does at some point).

I guess to simplify my question, all I need to know are

1) Is the Turbulence procedural a repeating pattern?
2) if so, what is the length (in meters) of the repeat?

Thanks, bloontz, but the effect I want doesn't involve animating the settings, just the position.

I think I'll just create a repeating texure using the 'clouds' filter in Photoshop. Thanks anyway.

[riki]

I do have some screenshots of a flag waving tutorial. The original tut site doesn't appare to be online anymore. But it looks like he uses bones and animating a deformation map.

[NigelH]

Thanks for your help, Riki, but bones are way more than I need. For my purposes, Photoshop and a deformation map are definitely the way to go. Thanks again.

[toby]

The 360 rotation didn't work ? I guess you'd have to offset the position of the prcedural so it's not centered on the flag

[NigelH]

Correct. And the further away you offset the center (for the motion to appear linear), the faster the texture appears to move to reach 360 degrees. I'm looking for a fairly subtle effect.

Too many variables to contend with. Photoshop's still the way to go.