Archive: 12 posts

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Hello all, I've searched using Google and come up with threads relating to the topic but have yet to find an answer. The one discussion I found relating to sprite animations linked to a level in-game which is now locked. My location cannot YouTube (I live in China) so searching there is not an option. I'm working on building a very simple sprite. I've got his three running poses done, and I put them into four emitters (reusing the "middle" twice to keep it flowing) inside a sequencer. The problem is that as it animates, there is flicker between each frame when one object vanishes and the next appears. I am using the Neon material, but it also happens with Holograms and other materials. I have the emitters set to emit immediately, lifetime of 0.2 seconds. The sequencer is set to repeat every 0.8 seconds. Every frame fires and it loops correctly, but the flicker is a problem. Emitters are set to appear/disappear. I did read somewhere that using fade out can reduce the flicker but when I do that it appears glitchy and horrible. Is there some magic key that I've missed? At this point I'm not trying to animate jumps or any weird stuff, I just want the looping run animation to be fluid, rather than blinky. Thanks in advance!

2011-03-20 01:29:00 Author: Unknown User

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Could you use hologram, and use the sequencer to turn each holo on, instead of emitting it? This should remove 'flicker' between images. Just overlap holo like you would have had them emit, but just turn each on and off based on sequencer position.

2011-03-20 01:38:00 Author: SSTAGG1 Posts: 1136

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Use hologram only for animations with overlapping frames. It's possible with other materials, but very hard. What you do is overlap the hologram frames where you want them. Put a sequencer on a microchip and put batteries on the sequencer, making sure they don't overlap. (Unless you want them to!) Hook up the first battery to the first frame, the second battery to the second frame, and so on.

2011-03-20 01:45:00 Author: Green-Tomato Posts: 140

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The problem is there shouldn't be any overlapping frames. They should display in sequence, but the problem is the split second gap between disappear/reappear (despite setting the emitters to be instant). When I did the same thing with Hologram material it had the same problem. If I were to make a four-frame waving animation, using a hologram in which the head, body, and legs are going to never appear to change, but the arm would, instead of flickering, show a split-second of the arm being in two places at once. Would it not?

2011-03-20 02:32:00 Author: Unknown User

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I would use Holo. then set up a sequencer to activate your emiters. This way, using life span and proper timing there should be no flicker. Using a sequencer you can provide a slight overlap do reduce any flicker that remains.

2011-03-20 04:50:00 Author: tdarb Posts: 689

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My followup question is about this hologram thing but I don't want to make a new thread for it. The reason I went with Neon instead of Hologram in the first place is that Hologram glows, and to turn the brightness down makes it partially transparent. Turning animations off makes them look kind of ugly, and Neon allows for bright, vibrant colors without the other issues of Hologram. Is there a way to make holograms bright without the glow/animation? I tried putting colored stickers on an uncolored hologram but it didn't work very well.

2011-03-20 06:48:00 Author: Unknown User

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I have the emitters set to emit immediately, lifetime of 0.2 seconds. The sequencer is set to repeat every 0.8 seconds. Every frame fires and it loops correctly, but the flicker is a problem. Did a quick experiment, and it looks like emitted objects disappear one frame before they should, based on their lifetime. At 30fps, an object with a 0.2s lifetime should be visible for 6 frames, but it's actually only visible for 5. However, if you emit your objects every 5 frames instead, you can't, because they still count as existing on the 6th frame, and block the emitter. You can override the blocking by gluing a small piece of Dark Matter or Light Matter to your 'sprites', then you should be able to animate correctly, but you'll still need to adjust the timing so it emits every 5 frames instead of 6.

2011-03-20 19:26:00 Author: Aya042 Posts: 2870

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Did a quick experiment, and it looks like emitted objects disappear one frame before they should, based on their lifetime. At 30fps, an object with a 0.2s lifetime should be visible for 6 frames, but it's actually only visible for 5. However, if you emit your objects every 5 frames instead, you can't, because they still count as existing on the 6th frame, and block the emitter. You can override the blocking by gluing a small piece of Dark Matter or Light Matter to your 'sprites', then you should be able to animate correctly, but you'll still need to adjust the timing so it emits every 5 frames instead of 6. Yes I second this. In order to overlap the frames slightly to remove the flicker, you'll have to stop them blocking each other. Only way to do this is to make them not able to collide, so either make them out of hologram or glue them to dark/light matter.

2011-03-20 19:49:00 Author: thor Posts: 388

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Proper animation is at about 24 fps, but you can get away with much less...that said 5 fps is pretty low, so you may want to do more. Can you fix the camera for a front veiw, then take advantage of the multiple layers? THen have them emitting at behind each other? Holo looks bad if you don't have a thin layer behind it. Using the 0% visiblitlity you could simply have something looping through the frames to effect the visibility around 30-50% glow can make it look more visible.I also found one trick to making animations work better is using a thin glass layer infromt to hide the transistion between frames. It worked real well in LBP 1. I have run into issues with emitters not always syncing for animations. Also I tried using a zenotrope style animation (a wheel with the animation on it that spins and a flashing light that times with the wheel frames in the same place each time...but did not have any luck yet.

2011-03-20 20:00:00 Author: celsus Posts: 822

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I went through all of the problems that you're going through. I found that with five or six animated characters onscreen moving with sprites being emitted, the thermo began to rise considerably and there was some definite gameplay lag, plus there's really no good way to eliminate the flicker that occurs when the sequencer gets to the end of its cycle without either getting the break in animation, or a blur effect when two sprites overlap in the same space momentarily. The selector method works a lot better because there's absolutely no gap or overlap between frames and since the holo frames are already emitted, no decrease in the games' framerate. Is there a way to make holograms bright without the glow/animation? I tried putting colored stickers on an uncolored hologram but it didn't work very well. You have to turn off the animation speed of the holo when it's on and off. You can then use the UV tool to move the bright point of the holo off of your sprite (depending on how big it is) or at least to a less intrusive location. Hopefully someday mm gives us a new holo material with no animation or hotspot. Sprites also look best when you use a movie camera with flatness at the minimum value and put something dark behind them - black fog works too. Glad to see that you played my tutorial...hope that helps you out.

2011-03-20 20:28:00 Author: Chazprime Posts: 587

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also what about using emitters in chips (since they will all emit in the exact same location, and the set the emitters to offset...and turn the chips on and off instead of the sequencers? Just wondering if that is an option? As for emitters I heard people mention hanging the battery a bit over the start helps...no clue on how to do that, but I read that can solve flicker issues with sequencers looping.

2011-03-21 05:07:00 Author: celsus Posts: 822

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The selector would be my choice tool. Just hook holograms up to it and overlap them. Set the time for cycle input and you should be good to go. Using a NOT hooked up to itself is the fastest pulser I think, but way too fast for your type of project I believe. However, since its the fastest, all you would have to do is hook up a counter that has enough counts before it resets itself to make it look accurate. I don't know, just throwing ideas out there lol. My latest creations all use selectors to the max and are extremely efficient at what I want them to do. They are like my favorite tool in the game haha. Hope I helped. :-) Shadow

2011-03-21 05:57:00 Author: Shadow_Wolf_1987 Posts: 108

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