Performance: Switch between layers

How-To
1

Hello notchers!

I’d like to create a show with 5 o 10 patches, I want to play each patch One at time switching between them using a layer with a Layer Precomp node setup.

The question is:

  • When I play the selected patch the others are going to be calculated?
  • Switching between two patches with a fade only they two willy be calculate or the Whole project?
  • There are better solutions to switch between patches?

Thanks

2

Hey There,

This will entirely depend how you set up the projects.

If you want a setup where you can switch between projects with hard cuts, its very easy to make a setup that will do so without calculating for the others (in fact, I think there is a bin for just that).

If you want to make a setup that will blend between different projects, that will be more tricky and you will have to take into account that blending together means having two scenes running at the same time - perhaps more if you switch too quickly. It should be possible to make a system using modifiers which checks if the blend amount is 0, and turns off updating for the layer precomp though.

In general, it depends if you’re looking to use Notch with a media server or without, as with a media server there are more controls and you wont need a system for layer switching, but within notch its easier.

Thanks,

Ryan

3

Hello
I’d like to follow up on this question. I’m trying to set something that where I just switch between looks, and don’t need to render other scenes.
This is something I’d like to do on the fly, is it as simple as switching layer tabs or is there some other way to approach this?
Each layer would have some animated FBXs, so I want to make sure every time I switch the animation is starting from the top

Thanks!

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