[Brian Jones]

the file I have does not use an image with that name – the one material that looks like it contains the image (based on the thumbnails) uses an image called ‘static map with dots.png’ – I tried using that for the image’s name and I get the planet with texture and I do see image drop in frame 71 and 75. That stops if I deactivate the Earth sphere and leave just the Earth Preview…
hard to tell what’s happening there as the Earth sphere has the second material with the texture “map marker animation_00336.png” missing… …and if I turn off earth preview Earth renders differently although the same material appears to be applied the same way…

unless something prevents it I’d just disable Earth and go with the Earth Preview but I don’t know what the missing texture files are doing.

[Brian Jones]

issue 1 – probably the Project/Dynamics/Expert settings, Steps per Frame, max Solver Iterations per Step check the Help for descriptions

issue 2 – the Help again Dynamics/Tips and Tricks/The Party’s Over says it – “Let’s say you create an animation in which you pour a large number of Clones into a box. After you render the scene you notice that the Clones still have not completely come to rest, even ten seconds into the animation. There are several ways to keep these Clones quiet:

Increase the Linear Damping and Angular Damping values.
Reducing the Bounce value and increasing the Friction value will also help take the energy out of the Clones.
Increase the Linear Velocity Threshold and Angular Velocity Threshold values.
If this doesn’t help just use steamroller tactics: If Time Scale is set to 0 the simulation will freeze instantly.
Generally speaking, Damping are well-suited for bringing dynamic movements to a rest. For Soft Bodies, damping can even be defined precisely at vertex level.”

[Brian Jones]

animate the object to be cloned, clone it and add a Random effector – in the Random Effector the important bits are
-in the Effector tab: Min/Max (min = 0 not the default -100), Random Mode (Mode = Sorted but try the others to see what they do) and Seed (Seed set it to different numbers and the ‘spheres’ rise in a different random order)
-in the Parameter tab: Time Offset – is the number of frames plus the number of animation frames all the clones will *finish* the animation in – in the example file a sphere rises in 30 frames (well 31 really, 0-30), if Time Offset is set to 15 frames all the spheres will be finished by frame 45 – if time offset is set to 150 each sphere will have time to rise all the way up before the next starts

9467_randomcloneanimate.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

not enough information – it should give you what you see but that can be thrown off if you have enough going on that the sim is dropping frames in the viewport. Dynamics is touchy enough to put this into the help “Different Simulations Using the Same Parameters

Physical simulations tend to deliver different results if even the slightest “environmental” factor is altered. A different operating system, processor or CINEMA 4D version, a different FPS value in the Project Settings, a further object included in the simulation (does not even have to take part in the collisions), an approaching thunderstorm (well, maybe not the thunderstorm … ) can all lead to entirely different results. There is a solution, though, with which a single simulation process can be set for eternity (this is also very advisable when using Team Render): a simulation can be baked using the Dynamics Cache Functionality. Then it will be set for life.”

and given you are using cache you should get your one object behaving like you expect but not if the effective framerate in the viewer is different from framerate in the render

[Brian Jones]

Auto Snapping is a choice if snapping (Enable Snap) is activated, Auto/3D/2D are choices, Auto is a combo of 2D and 3D – “Auto Snapping: If selected, 3D Snapping will take place in the Perspective view and 2D Snapping will take place in the orthographic view.”

[Brian Jones]

increasing Drag in the spline dynamics should stop it but in this case it won’t go away unless you stop the Vibrate Tag at the same time (I tried increasing drag from 6 to 100 and vibrate down to zero over frames 260 to 300 and it looked ok)

[Brian Jones]

the proximal shader is one way to go

[Brian Jones]

only seeing clouds but there are a bunch of missing pictures

static map with dots.png (Mat.3)
map marker animation_00336.png (Mat)
G:\Cinema 4D assets\USFLAG.TGA (usflag)
G:\Cinema 4D assets\WMCLM.TGA (column)
G:\Cinema 4D assets\WMCLMT.TGA (top)
G:\Cinema 4D assets\Tour_eiffel\tex\texture.jpg (texture eifel)
G:\Cinema 4D assets\Tour_eiffel\tex\alfa.jpg (texture eiffel)

try a Save Project With Assets…

[Brian Jones]

the two easiest thoughts are: you have duplicated geometry in the object or the texture is keyframed to turn off – that’s probably not the only two possibilities, it would help to see the scene file.

[Brian Jones]

the help says a lot but in the Tips and Tricks for GI there is this

GI and Animation

GI and animations are technically challenging. If a single image takes a long time to render using GI, then rendering an animation with a series of these images will require very long render times. In addition, Irradiance Cache tends to flicker if its settings are set too low.

You should adhere to the following when creating animations with GI:

When using IR+IR/IR+QMC: if flickering occurs on surfaces, the Samples value probably too low (four-digit figures may even be required). If, on the other hand, flickering occurs in small regions around an object, the Record Density value is too low. In this case, decreasing the Maximum Spacing value should help. If this does not do the trick, set the Record Density to a higher setting.
Flickering can even occur at optimized IR+LM settings if the base light map is of poor quality (see ,Optimize Light Mapping’ below).
QMC+QMC will not flicker (the render times will increase accordingly; these will be at a maximum).

long story short, animation of both camera and objects is going to take time to kill the flicker