Cycling problem

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Wed May 28, 2008 1:22 pm

I've got a set of arrows that I want to appear in sequence, and disappear as the next one appears, like those lights you see on signs that light up in sequence giving the effect of movement. I made four arrows, and spaced them apart, and animated their visibility so they appear and disappear, and then I spaced their keyframes so that the sequence is right, then cycled each set of keyframes. The cycles are the same length, and are spaced so that they work, and they DO work, for a certain length of time, then they start to get out of sync and appear at the wrong times. The whole animation of the arrows is about two minutes long, and the arrows stay in sync for almost a minute, then start going out of sync. Anyone know why this would happen?

The final animation of these arrows is going to be composited over a sequence of images in an editing program. I suppose I could render a shorter movie, and then composite it twice, that might work, but I'd like to get it going in ASPro if I can and do it once.

thanks,
Jack

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Wed May 28, 2008 1:27 pm

Just a guess, but try copying the loop to a point further down the timeline a few times at points which synch nicely. Could be quicker than looking deeper into the issue.

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Wed May 28, 2008 1:48 pm

I think I've solved the problem - sometimes just posting about it makes you think more clearly.

I looked at all the cycles to see that they were the same number of frames, and the very first cycle turned out to be one frame shorter than the others, which were all the same length. So I made it one frame longer and it seems to work just fine now. One frame over the course of two minutes can make a big difference in the sequence.

Jack