Hi,
I have a problem with a material I made. The material is flickering. The amount of flickering somehow depends on the distance to the camera but it is always noticeable.
Here is a link to a video of the phenomenon:
This is a screen shot of the material editor:
][1]
(The Panner node has no influence on the flickering)
Does someone know what is causing this? I tried a lot of different material parameters but nothing seems to have influence on the flickering. I also tried to deactivate screen space reflections but that didn’t help either.
I am grateful for any help.
Hi -
I believe your problem lies with your texture samples and how opacity is handled in them. The texture that is hooked up into the Panner what is it and why have you just used the Alpha as opposed to saving into the Red, Green, or Blue Channels?
Let me know and we can work through this problem -
Ketchum
Yes, the apparent flickering would be caused by the fact that you are covering up bits of the main emissive mask with the panning texture over the top of it.
Thank you for your answers,
the panning texture looks like this to create the effect of a badly calibrated monitor:
(The picture shows white stripes on a transparent background. I am afraid it is not really visible here 
)
There are probably much better ways to do this but I’m trying to figuring out one way before trying to find the best way. Now that I think about it, it is probably the worst way of doing this. 
Unfortunately it doesn’t matter if I deactivated the whole lower branch of the material. The effect is the same even if I just use the basic blue texture.
EDIT:
It seems there is nothing wrong with the material itself. I have the same problem when using the ‘TextRenderComponent’ with the default material. The rendered text shows the same flickering. I already tried updating my video driver with no effect.
Hi -
Is the texture you posted above the exact texture that you are using in the engine? If so, it is not a power of 2 based texture and will cause rendering problems. However, if you are not using this texture in the default TextRender Component then that should not be flickering like you showed in your video.
Can you using a New Sample Project and a Default TextRenderComponent reproduce this error? If so, please post screenshot and let us know you CPU specifications.
Thank You
Ketchum
I am still trying to reproduce the issue. The default TextRender material works fine but when I use the emissive input pin instead of the base color pin, the component starts flickering when it moves in the scene. As long as it stands still everything looks fine. I noticed similar flickering on all emissive materials now that I was looking for that in particular.
However, the material shown in the video flickers even when standing still. I still have to check whether this is due to the fact that the texture is not of the power of 2.
I will try to make a video of the flickering and post it in another comment together with my system specifications.
PS: I thought the ‘power of 2’ rule for textures was only a performance issue That is why I ignored that for a lot of textures I use for testing purposes. If this leads to other rendering issues I will stop doing that.
Hi,
I uploaded a video of the effect here:
The default material seems to work as it should but as soon as I modify it like this the flickering in the video appears:
None of the material parameters are changed.
I am not sure if this is connected to the flickering I observed with my original material but it looks similar. Also, using a 1014*1024 texture did not resolve the problem with the custom material.
Here is a DxDiag report of my system:
[link text][2]
Hey -
I am not able to reproduce the flickering that you are showing with the new video using the Text Render default opaque with the emissive color as you have shown above. I am uncertain as to the root cause of this particular flickering but are you using a Crossfire setup? IF so I might want to try to reproduce the flickering on a machine similarly constructed.
Regarding your original custom material, 1014x1024 is not a power of 2 texture. Both the X and Y of the textures must be a direct power of 2, 2^N, so 1024x1024 is ok and so is 32 x 1024 or 64 x 2048, etc.
Thank You
Ketchum
Hi ,
I am using only one graphics card. Is there anything else I can try?
(The '1014 ’ in the texture dimension was a typo. I meant 1024.)
Hi -
Try typing in “t.MaxFPS 30” into the console commands and see if the flickering reduces or disappears. You may also want to look at the VSync settings in your Raedon card.
Let me know -
Ketchum
Hi,
I was reading some other answerhub threads and found a hint somewhere that the motionblur options in the post processing volume might not be as deactivated as the checkbox suggests. I worked around the issue I had with the moving TextRenderers by activating the motionblur in the post processing volume and setting the maximum value to 0.
There is still a little flickering of my original material but removing the motionblur had positive effect on that as well.
Hi,
I tried limiting the frame rate and played around with the VSync settings of my driver software and the engine itself. Without success so far. I noticed however that only pixel on the borderline between the emissive part and the not emissive part are causing the flickering.
Hi ,
I think I found the solution. Since it were apparently borderline pixel that caused the flickering I googled what anti aliasing methods are available and found an appropriate option in the post processing volume details panel. It was little unfortunate that the option is hidded by default but choosing ‘FXAA’ made the artifacts go away. Now i feel a little stupid…
Thank you a lot for the time helping me.
No emissive or opacity mask here, somehow I got a flicker. Specifically it happened when I multiplied two different brightness adjustments on the same string of nodes leading to the base color. I’m rebuilding lighting because I have really high and low adjustments in my post processing volume so maybe that has something to do with it. I’ll let yall know. Also whenever I try to calculate light with the max light res at 1024 the editor crashes but that’s probably best for another thread unless the forums are filled with geniuses
Mine was happening because everything was being ran and loaded before applying the brightness, which needed to be really high to compensate for all the stuff going on with it. Best fix is to get the brighness up (or level) before applying the after effect or apply the effect before all the other math is done
