Animation Props not rendering some effects correctly

[NielsJL]

I’m a newbie to the TimelineFX Editor, literally just a couple of hours.

My setup is:

TimelineFX Editor v1.21 (registered)
Windows XP SP3
Dell Inspiron 1525 with Intel GM965 Express video chipset

I was trying to render frames as separate .PNG files from the “Shield and Electric” effect (from the “ShootemUpEffects.eff” library), but the rendered images are missing the green halo shield part of the effect (even though the preview in Animation Props dialog shows the effect correctly). Further attempts (closing and re-opening the Animation Props dialog) to re-render separate .PNG files didn’t show the green halo and in fact the images appeared to be corrupted with vertical or horizontal lines, for example:
[attachment=0:3qmtbajr]Shield_with_electric-0000.png[/attachment:3qmtbajr]

After closing the Animation Props dialog box, the main Preview pane now shows the effect minus the green halo (so just the electric effect). Am I doing something wrong or is the possibly a bug?

[imported_peterigz]

Hi Niel, I’m currently in the process of trying to fix this issue with the integrated intel gfx chipsets. Hopefully I can get something ready to test today.

Thanks for the report!

[NielsJL]

Hi Peter,

Understood, thanks for the quick response.

Not sure what is the problem with integrated Intel GFX chipsets, though I had an odd problem with it when I was using Blender 3D (http://www.blender.org/) last year — ironically, the Blender app worked perfect running with WinXP inside VirtualBox’s VM (http://www.virtualbox.org/), but as soon as I ran it on the real hardware there were rendering problems.

Let me know if I can be of help with testing?

[imported_peterigz]

Ok, I have a new version here: http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/files/TimelineFXEditorSetupTest.exe

If you could download and install that and let me know how you get on that would be great 🙂 You can just install over the top of your current installation.

As a side note, if you find that the animation dialogue doesn’t appear for some reason, keep trying, it should do after a few attempts (you can keep pressing CTRL+A until it appears). This happened rarely while I was testing, and only after the editor had just been opened, I’ll keep my eye on that.

[NielsJL]

Excellent! The “Shield with electric” effect is working great, as proof I’ve attached an animated GIF from the Animation Props dialog:[attachment=0:hwqlvtgl]Shield_with_electric-Forever.gif[/attachment:hwqlvtgl]

Though, when I exit out of the Animation Prop dialog, the Preview Pane is missing the shield effect. However, resizing the TimelineFX application window appears to bring the shield effect back — forcing a refresh of the window appears to be the solution.

I didn’t see any delay with the Animation Prop dialog appear, but I will let you know if there is a problem.

BTW, opening the Animation Prop dialog a second time shows the complete and correct effect.

Thanks for getting an update out so quickly. 😀

EDIT: Just to add that after using the Animation Props dialog to generate the separate PNG files, opening of the Animations Prop dialog a second time gives the Windows error dialog “Windows exception”, “EXCEPTION_INT_DIVIDE_BY_ZERO”. Clicking OK closes the application.

[imported_peterigz]

Thanks Neil, good to see that it’s exporting properly now, obviously not so good that it crashes like that, but I’ll take a look tonight and hopefully it’s an obvious one I can fix! 🙂

[imported_peterigz]

In the end it was obvious but I had to fire up my old PC to see it 🙂

I think it was only happening in Win XP and lower, and might have been the reason for the animation dialogue not opening sometimes. I also had a go at trying to fix the issue with the effect not restarting properly after closing the dialog, but I couldn’t recreate that on any of my systems so we’ll just have to see. Here’s the link to this new version (same as before) http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/files/TimelineFXEditorSetupTest.exe

Let me know how it goes.

[vgreano]

Hi,

I think I have a somewhat similar problem to the rendering effect…I create this blue explosion with sparks protruding and I wanted to place that on a white background…the problem here is that while the animation looks fine during editing, there seems to be a subtle black border around the entire effect. Am I doing something wrong during export, or is it something to do with the white? I require it to be in PNG, but it needs to blend into a white background.

[imported_peterigz]

Yeh, that’s not right. I think I’ve sorted it though. I was missing out a function that restores each pixel to it’s proper colour after rendering onto a black background. Here’s an up dated test version that should fix the problem, and let me know if your problem with white squares in the animation window is fixed now too.

here’s the link to the test version: http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/files/TimelineFXEditorSetupTest.exe

Also attached is an effect I just exported with this version, the colour is much cleaner now I think.

[attachment=0:2jpfp1ux]test.png[/attachment:2jpfp1ux]

[vgreano]

Hey, thanks for the quick response.

So I installed the new version, and I don’t know if you recall, but I had the Animation Properties window problem where it would be all pixelated because of my graphics card. So now I’m getting the pixelated version exported, whereas your original copy gave me a crisp output (with the black border however)

Here’s the original thread about my pixelated Animation Properties window: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=111&start=0

[imported_peterigz]

Well, I was hoping that I’d fixed that issue by making the changes in this thread but I guess those intel cards have other ideas! 🙄

I think your card is similar to NeilsJL but I make one happy and then other has issues 🙂

Anyway, try this version and let me know what happens, I’m basically telling it to re-upload the textures to the card again when the dialogue opens, so let’s see what happens. Thanks for testing!

Same link as before: http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/files/TimelineFXEditorSetupTest.exe

[vgreano]

Yes! Fixed. Looks great now. Also, this fixed the Animation Properties preview window as well, it shows the preview as it does in the editor window in high detail.

Many thanks.

[imported_peterigz]

Phew, good news 😀

I’ll make it an official update soon, thanks for testing!

[NielsJL]

@vgreano: Good eyes! I hadn’t spotted the subtle grey edges to the effects in the exported .PNG files.

@peterigz: Thanks for all the work on the fixes, and having dust off the old XP machine to check the software with Windows.

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