Animated font selection

I’ve been trying to recreate something like the intro sequence to the Enter the Void film. See it below from approx 01:10 (warning: flashing images):

There isn’t a way to set a key frame for Font Family so I used an expression on the Text node. It was here that I noticed a few oddities.

I’m using Natron 2.3.15 on Ubuntu 19.10.

If I just enter frame in the expression editor and press play the Font Family drop down menu updates on each frame but the font display doesn’t change.

Peek 2020-04-21 19-09s

If I enter Text1.name.set(frame) and press play the Font Family and display updates each frame. However, when I try to render it just renders the first frame.

Peek 2020-04-21 19-09

Additionally, no matter which expression I use, if I close Natron and try to reopen the project the program automatically closes. The terminal shows this output when it crashes:

Loading project: /home/hellocatfood/Desktop/animated_fonts.ntp
Caught segmentation fault (SIGSEGV) from thread Main(0x3189a10), faulty address is 0x7f5a1aa4d33a from 0xffffffffffffffe8
Backtrace:
[Frame 1]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/../lib/libstdc++.so.6(_ZNSs6assignERKSs+0xa) [0x7f5a1aa4d33a]
[Frame 2]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/../lib/libstdc++.so.6(_ZNSs6assignERKSs+0xa) [0x7f5a1aa4d33a]
[Frame 3]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron12ChoiceOptionaSERKS0_+0x11) [0xda1451]
[Frame 4]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron10KnobChoice14getActiveEntryEv+0x129) [0xd98429]
[Frame 5]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron10KnobChoice14cloneExtraDataEPNS_5KnobIEii+0x59) [0xd984a9]
[Frame 6]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron4KnobIiE5cloneEPNS_5KnobIEii+0xf6) [0xd80c86]
[Frame 7]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron10KnobChoice17choiceRestorationEPS0_RKSsi+0x34) [0xd98754]
[Frame 8]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron4Node8loadKnobERKN5boost10shared_ptrINS_5KnobIEEERKNS_17NodeSerializationEb+0x5ca) [0xdd01aa]
[Frame 9]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron4Node9loadKnobsERKNS_17NodeSerializationEb+0x95) [0xdd09c5]
[Frame 10]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron17OfxEffectInstance28createOfxImageEffectInstanceEPN3OFX4Host11ImageEffect17ImageEffectPluginEPNS3_10DescriptorENS_11ContextEnumEPKNS_17NodeSerializationERKNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0x129d) [0xe3007d]
[Frame 11]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron7OfxHost15createOfxEffectEN5boost10shared_ptrINS_4NodeEEERKNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0x2d2) [0xe37af2]
[Frame 12]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZNK6Natron10AppManager15createOFXEffectEN5boost10shared_ptrINS_4NodeEEERKNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0x3a) [0xbce63a]
[Frame 13]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron4Node4loadERKNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0xebc) [0xe12edc]
[Frame 14]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron11AppInstance18createNodeInternalERNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0x8ef) [0xbbe99f]
[Frame 15]: /home/hellocatfood/Misc/Other_software/Natron/bin/Natron(_ZN6Natron11AppInstance10createNodeERNS_14CreateNodeArgsE+0x9) [0xbc0369]

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’ve attached my project file.
animated_fonts.ntp (18.7 KB)

I will take a look and see if there are any issues that needs to be fixed (when I get the time, a bit busy this week).

Btw, for advanced text stuff I highly recommend using Pango Markup. Just tick ‘Markup’ in the node and the regular text input will accept Pango Markup “code”.

1 Like

Great, thanks! I didn’t realise that option was available. Will take a look for future projects.

btw, I also noticed that I could slow down the animated font changes using a ReTime node and the suggestion from here of using a Constant node also had no effect.

You need to check that the frame value is >=0 before set().

oooh, didn’t know that. Thanks! Still having problems so I will make a bug report.

Here ya go. Animated Font Family doesn't render · Issue #482 · NatronGitHub/Natron · GitHub In case anyone else wants to contribute.