I’m not sure if this is a bug, or my misunderstanding, but I’ve had all of my text flickering badly. They seem to grow a half stroke every frame, and flicker back to normal size. I am using GeoText nodes, and transforming them using geo instancing. It works great for dynamic text motion in my current setup. The client is complaining about the text flickering. As a test, I used a flat plane and a Text TOP as a texture using a constant, and doing the same thing, transforming it using instance transforms, and the same thing happens. As soon as I click off instancing, it stops flickering.
HHC_Round2_Test01.toe (41.7 KB)
Does not look like a bug.
I feel this is because you’re dropping frames (effect does not happen if you only render portion of your scenes) and you’re using TimeSliced OPs like Noise CHOP and Filter CHOP in the chain to control the amount of instances. CHOPs use Time Slicing to assure that curves are always smooth. This results in the output of the Noise/Filter CHOP being sometimes 2 (or more) samples long for a fraction of a time, which in your case then results in an extra instance on a different location. You can see this for yourself by adding a single Constant CHOP as the Scale OP on the Instance page. You’ll see this error pop up on the parent:
“all OPs must generate the same number of instances”
You can see the time slice sizes by creating a Perform CHOP and sending it to a Trail CHOP and setting Perform to the Cook and Time Slice Step channels, cook and timeslice_step.
On my (slow) laptop I see time slice sizes of 2 and 3 frames long in your network.
Several ways to solve it:
option 1 - (the quick fix) add a Trim CHOP (set to Absolute) after the last Time Sliced CHOP in your chain before you instance, so you’ll have guaranteed one sample only always.
option 2 - make your network more efficient so you never drop frames
option 3 - as you are using only transformation for a single instance, perhaps you don’t need instancing and you could also use the Pre-Xform parameters of each Geo COMP to set initial position, and then add your noise on the Xform parameters
You. Are. A. Lifesaver! That worked. This is amazing. I’m so happy, I could reach into the screen and high five you. Thank you SO much!!!
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