How can I animate my Cycles shaders?

Question

For a scene, I have to change shader parameters (using nodes in Cycles) as time goes on in the scene.

I've looked for a node that inputs a time sweep or frame number, but neither is available in Cycles. Am I looking in the wrong place? Or is there a workaround/trick I don't know about?

You can also see http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/164/can-modifiers-such-as-subdivision-and-array-be-animated/170#170 — iKlsR, May 23 '13 at 16:39

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered May 23 '13 at 16:37

You can keyframe any value on the nodes by Right Clicking on the value and then choosing Insert Keyframe. This will set a keyframe on the current frame.

When you add a keyframe the field will turn yellow to indicate there's a keyframe on that frame. If you move along the timeline, the field will turn green to indicate the field is keyframed, but not on the current frame.

Inserting a keyframe on a node value

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 18 '14 at 14:01

12

If you want to do this often and want to be even faster, you can also always just press I (as in "Insert Keyframe") while your mouse is over basically any value field/button/dropdown/selector/... in Blender and it will insert a keyframe for your current frame.

Press AltI to remove it again.

edited Apr 18 '14 at 14:01

Thom Blair III

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answered Aug 08 '13 at 07:52

JulianHzg

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Is this the capital letter i or the lowercase letter L? – nanofarad Aug 08 '13 at 11:51
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That would be the capital letter India, as in "Insert Keyframe".
EDIT: Corrected above.
– JulianHzg Aug 08 '13 at 13:41

How can I animate my Cycles shaders?

2 Answers2

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