Images Vanish When Played

[sneed]

When I play through my timeline, certain components like the background and the gray ball disappear. Why?
I would upload an image from my computer but I don't see how to do that.

[Greenlaw]

You need to provide a lot more info.

Do the elements disappear when you render? How about when you step through the timeline (i.e., arrowkeys)?

If it renders okay and only disappears within the workspace, it might be a display/driver issue.

Does this happen when GPU Acceleration is off in the display options?

Do you have the latest graphics drivers installed for your hardware?

What version of Moho are you using? Platform?

Hope you get this figured out.

[sneed]

It renders correctly.
I turned GPU on and off with the same results.
I have the latest graphics drivers.
Moho Pro 12.
Windows.

[synthsin75]

Are you using any fill effects?

[sneed]

Shading for the ball and gradient for the background.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, yeah...some OpenGL effects won't display when you press play. That's normal because real-time playback is optimized for a quick preview of the motion, and the effects are among the things that get dropped in favor of performance.

If you really need to see the effects while playing, use the arrow keys as described above. Just hold down the key in the direction you want to play.

This 'playback' won't necessarily be at realtime though. For a fully detailed realtime-playback with synchronized sound, you'll want to do a full render to a movie file using Export Animation or Moho Exporter.

If the preview movie you need is meant to be a disposable test and you don't want to waste time with a long render, enable Render At Half Dimension and disable anything you don't really need to see like Anti-aliasing and Extra-smooth Images. Obviously, you'll want to have Apply Shape Effects and Layer Effects enabled. I have a configuration preset called Preview Movie with these settings specifically for generating preview quality animations with effects and textures. (You can set this up at the bottom of the render window.)

Fortunately, Moho is pretty fast at rendering, especially when you disable properties you really don't need to see in the preview. If you need to speed up the preview render further, you can set up a Layer Comp that hides features you might not need (i.e., non-animated characters, props, bg elements...whatever.) Tip: before you do that, create a 'Master' Layer Comp so you can quickly get back to your original settings.

Most of the time though, I don't need to see the shapes effects when I'm just checking animation so I just use Preview Animation. It's much faster this way. When I need to check shape and layer effects, making occasional spot renders using ctrl-R is normally all that's necessary before committing to a final full-quality render.

Hope this helps.

[synthsin75]

Shading for the ball and gradient for the background.

If you really need to see these elements, albeit without the effects, while playing the timeline, you can make references of those layers, disable the effects in the reference, and set it to not render. Then just hide these references if you need to animate the effects, and use Dennis' arrows to play suggestion to see the animated effect on the workspace.

[sneed]

I do NOT need to see the shading effects when scrolling thru the timeline.
I just want to see the individual elements.
So I switched off the shading effects and reverted back to <plain> for the ball but it still does not appear while scrolling thru or playing the timeline.

[synthsin75]

Are you sure you turned off all fill and layer effects?

We may need to see a file with the problem shape.

[sneed]

I turned off the shading effect for the ball and for the background. Those are the elements that disappears. See pic below:

http://www.cavasenostudios.com/images/poof-1.jpg
sneed

Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:17 pm

[synthsin75]

Images don't tell us much. Can you save a version with only the problem shapes, so we can see what you're doing in the file?

[sneed]

OK, I created and saved a version with just the ball and the background. It exhibits the same problem. When I scroll thru or play the timeline, both elements vanish.

[synthsin75]

OK, I created and saved a version with just the ball and the background. It exhibits the same problem. When I scroll thru or play the timeline, both elements vanish.

That wasn't meant to solve the problem. You'll need to post a link to that file (using something like FileDropper) so we can actually see what the problem is.

[Greenlaw]

Based on the image you posted, I think this looks like the issue discussed earlier by Wes and I: Moho doesn't display certain Effects when playing or scrubbing the timeline. This is a built-in optimization to ensure Moho can playback the animation in realtime.

If you really need to see the Effects during playback or scrubbing, hold down the right arrow key, or render the range you want to review to a movie file. If you want to speed up the rendering and see the Effects, use the settings that were recommended a few posts back. If you need to do this routinely, create a custom configuration.

[sneed]

Here's a link to the file.
http://www.cavasenostudios.com/images/test-3-ball.moho