Face Me Artifacts During Animations
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Hi Everyone,
I know about the shadow artifact bug that was recently fixed, but has anyone noticed that when they create animations with face me components, in the frames between views you get annoying artifact lines on these components. It only seems to happen when the materials are 100% opaque. This happens on both the mac and PC versions of SU8 and did not occur on SU7.1. Shadow string fix button makes no difference before you ask. See image attached which is from a frame of an animation.
Searched forum and google but have not encountered anyone identifying this issue. Is it a bug or is it just me?
Grice
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Hi Grice,
The image is quite blurry but try a test. From the window menu, open the ruby console and copy/paste this line at the bottom of it than press Enter.
Sketchup.fix_shadow_strings=true(I am not sure it's the same phenomenon from this picture however).Now see if those lines are coming back. Do you have an nVidia card by the way?
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Thanks for replying quickly.
I've tried your solution but the shadow string fix thing does not fix this issue.
Attached image is from an .avi created with my work PC running SU8.0.4811 with Windows Vista. Same problem and all I've done here is set up 2 views around the startup person and exported to .avi
Grice
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Oh... and my work PC just has an onboard Intel HD Graphics chip (Core i3) while my home mac has an ATI Radeon card of some sort (not at home so can't check details - an older but standard mac card)
Grice
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Does it also happen when you do not use any of those sketchy edges?
(Ah, and sorry, I have just re-read your first post about the shadow string fix so I should not have suggested it).
Anyway, are there any transparent png material on those trees? (I know you said they are 100% opaque but png transparency is different than SU transparency).
Can you attach a piece of the model with the problematic pieces and style settings?
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It does not appear to be style specific (last posting was using the default style)
- The face me components are just plain colours (no png materials or alpha channels involved).
- The artifacts show up only when the sun is hitting the face.
- When the face of the component is in shadow, the artifacts do not appear.
- It also does not occur when shadows are turned off in the views.
I have attached the model. File->Export->Animation to create the animation between the 2 scenes.
Grice
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Yes, I can reproduce it (see attached).
Now I understand more clearly.
- When the face is hit by the sun, no problem.
- When the face is NOT hit by the sun (i.e. in shadow), no problem
- However when it is to turn into/out of the shadow, SU probably does not know what to do with it and produces similar flickers like the shadow bug used to be.
Nice catch!
The SU Team will love it!
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Fantastic! I'm not going crazy...
Thank you for following this up Gaieus
Grice
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It does not seem to be new in version 8 however. I get the same when I export from 7.1, too. I ave never noticed it before though...
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Hi Grice/Csaba,
This is indeed a valid bug that was introduced with 7.1 and something we found too late in the game to try to fix for SU8 M1. It is different than the shadow bug and occurs with animation export, but is not visible when viewing the model. We have it in our bug database and it is in the queue to be evaluated for fixing.
I'll add this thread to the bug. Thanks for reporting it!
Tricia
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Tricia,
I realise this was reported a while ago but is there any patch or update in the wings to fix this problem? I can't really offer animated walk-throughs to my clients when this problem is still occurring.
Regards
Grice
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Hi Grice,
This bug has a high priority, but I don't know when it will be fixed. I will, however, bring it up again and lobby for it. I believe it is a complex, risky fix which makes it harder to put into a maintenance release, unfortunately.
Regards,
Tricia
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Hi Tricia,
Thank you for the update. It is an odd problem and I hope that the team can sort it out soon.
Kind regards
Grice
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Hi everyone,
I have also experienced this problem through the native Sketchup animation exporter.
However, I found an animation export using 'SmoothStep' plugin doesn't seem to render the flickering.
Smoothstep does it again, THANK YOU WHAAT!
Unfortunately for me I have a long animation and the 'Smoothstep' animation doesn't seem to stay smooth for long. The first few transitions between scenes look great, but then the camera begins to jolt (at the start and end of the transition). Maybe this is just me?
Could the SmoothStepAnim.rb be modified so that the animation has uniform (not smooth) transitions?
Tomdubbs
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Thank you Tomdubbs. I only just came back to this post and saw your solution. Excellent! Just trying it out now...
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I had this problem as well - similar to a "face-fighting" kind of artifact where the software can't decide which face takes precedence, except with a shadow. When the "sun" is coming straight across a face, the software can't decide whether to show it shadowed or not (thus this artifact).
This shows up on Face-Me components because as the camera travels around the model (if it is roughly 90 deg. off from the sun position) the Face-Me component is rotating to face the camera, and at some point it will become perfectly parallel to the sun's rays. -
Back in 2011, I reported this bug and Tricia S of the Sketchup Team said it was a high priority bug fix. But even the latest release of Sketchup 2016 still has this random artifacting problem on face me components when generating an animation.
Hard to know what to say really. Some of the inference improvements in SU2016 are great; but this problem with the standard export animation is a real disappointment. Smooth-step plugin - it is alright but has a few bugs - has a tendency to get stuck and take about 30mins generating the odd frame now and then which can seriously blow out rendering times. Do I need to export my model files back to SU7 to when animations were working properly?
I hate to be a whinger, but I and many other Pro license owners have sunk many thousands of dollars into the Google/Trimble coffers.
Can we please just get this problem fixed?!
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Hellow Everrybody
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