I'm dealing with an anomaly in IC8, and I wonder if this is a bug or just something I don't understand.
I have a building with a large front window; To make it apparent that it is a window, I set its opacity to a very small positive value.
Outside the building is a street light with a spotlight pointing down at the pavement below the light. The edge of the spotlight partially impinges on the window, producing a slight but visible very diffuse reflection, which one would expect with a slightly dirty or steamy window. It looks good and realistic. (The camera is outside the building, looking toward it from a moderate distance.)
Inside the building, near the edge of the view of the camera, is a Popcorn FX Power Sparkle, with just the edge of the sparkles visible to the camera.
Here's the issue: The diffuse reflection of the street lamp in the window pulses off and on rapidly, perhaps 3-4 times per second. It is ugly and intolerable. I can fix the problem by doing any one of three things:
1) Turn off the power sparkle
2) Turn off the streetlight spotlight
3) Set the window opacity to zero.
Visually, it looks as if the opacity of the window is rapidly cycling between my small set value and zero.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Thanks!