I wanted to offer up my latest little AddOn for motion graphics, RE:Ring. All it does is create a stack of animated rings for you. This is quite typical in some motion graphics styles. The workflow is like all my other AddOns. RE:Ring is a list processor with each entry in the list having animatable parameters. Each ring is a curve object with a bevel profile applied to it. The taper start and stop control the gap. The AddOn offers up a few premade profiles such as TUBE, SQUARE CIRCLE, C, T and L shapes but you can assign your own shapes as well. It also offers up six default materials, GLASS, MIRROR, MATTE, TOON, EMISSIVE and SHADOW MATTE. After generation, you can change these as you see fit. All rings are parented to the RE:Ring control Empty so you can easily move or animate the entire stack as a whole object.
RE:Ring shows up under curves (SHIFT-A > Curves) because it manages a large curve set. Multiple RE:Ring objects are supported.
But the real power behind RE:Ring is the Generate New Stack button that will automatically make tons of animated rings for you. In this image below you can see ninety six rings that were automatically generated and animated from the click of a single button.
I for one would love a list of other mograph addons if there are more as I’m not sure how (short of combing through every page of these forums) that I would find them otherwise.
I have updated RE:Ring with more features. Get the most recent version in Post #1.
New Features Include:
Increased Maximum Rings Per Stack to 256.
Width and Height parameters for scaling a profile.
Multiple RE:Ring objects can exist in the same scene. (Yeah! Make more than one!:p)
Color generation has been revised to base entire stack upon a chosen color.
Supports three more material types for a total of size types. [Matte, Mirror, Glass, Toon, Emissive, Shadow Matte].
Boolean switch section to allow only specific material within a stack generation.
NOTE: The Toon material implementation is actually the material used in the House Plant Edge Render thread. You need to enable Edge in Blender Internal to make full use of this material type.
I have made another revision to the RE:Ring code get the most recent version from Post #1. I have re-written it to work more like official AddOns not just an inline script. Copy the rering addon folder into your AddOn directory. Under User Preferences search for “RE:”. Activate the RE::Ring Addon and use the standard add menu (SHIFT-A/Curves) to add a RE:Ring object to the scene.
I updated RE:Ring to work with 2.69.7. Internal changes to the Blender system had rendered the previous RE:Ring parenting system invalid. It seems that Blender only supports one level of parenting before cyclic redundancies kick in. If you tried out RE:Ring and you did not see an interface panel, that might have been what was going on. Give this new version a try on a 2.69.7 or better.
