I presume you can probably animate a materials emissive value over time, but is it possible to have a marterial cycle from emissive to diffuse and back over time? I’m thinking of something like a glowing surface which effectively goes off / on in a sine wave sort of action but when ‘off’ would like a mix glossy/diffuse setup so it has a better look than an ‘off’ emission value.
I can imagine having two node structures but it’s the mix factor issue I’m struggling to imagine. 
I can imagine having two node structures but it’s the mix factor issue I’m struggling to imagine.
Use a mix shader mixing the emitting shader and non emitting shader network. Keyframe animate the mix factor
I’m thinking of something like a glowing surface which effectively goes off / on in a sine wave sort of action
You can use the F-Curve modifiers in the graph editor to make it animate in a sine wave etc
Thanks for that, never occurred to me that the factor could be animated directly. Is it a rule of thumb that wherever there is a numeric input like that, it can be animated?
Not only numeric inputs! Buttons, checkboxes, colors and other ui elements can be animated also. To check which ones can be animated, just try to insert a keyframe into it. if it’s not animated, then a message will show in the Info view: ‘NAME’ property cannot be animated.
Good to know. 
