I have a bunch of gears that are animated, like the clockwork mechanism in a watch. They all rotate at various speeds. Some controlled by regular keyframes, some with waveform float controller.

They all have gradient ramp map controlling the anisotopic reflections, set to spiral map mode.

My problem is that the animation needs to loop. The gradient ramps are pulling the reflections with them, so I want to keep the map static as the object turns.

How can I tell the mapping not to move? Should I be doing this in the material or in the UVW? (cylindrical, capping option checked)

Can I make the object inherit its mapping from an un-animated object?

Any help much appreciated,
Tom.

The only way to achieve that on objects level I know of, is to animate the gizmo of XForm modifier situated before the UVW one. Bur this means, one need to begin with the beginning.
Acquiring a static UVW, from another object won’t work in my opinion, but who knows, maybe it could be scripted.
Anyway, being not strong in this topic (scripts) I just don’t know a way around, sorry.

ivan

try gizmocontrol script:

http://scripts.breidt.net/

link uvw map gizmo to static null object

3D Studio DOS to 3ds Max 2010
Windows XP 64
NVidia Quadro FX 3700
Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram