So i think I found the solution but I’m posting this here in case someone else has the same issue. So I was testing this on a low spec laptop, and i’m almost sure it was a memory issue. The animation was normal on my main pc but when i switched over to the laptop with about 8GB of memory and an outdated processor, the animation fell apart >.< Anyhoo. Make sure you have a good computer, I think that’s the lesson. Wait, although, I was working on a Cintiq which was connected to the laptop… Naw I don’t think that contributed to the issue. Nevermind.
It was, yeah. I had the same thing more than twice (my main PC has 8Gb of RAM). And 8Gb is enough for quite a lot, so the problem is in Synfig, it eats up too much RAM.
Here’s a bug with Shade layer for example that causes Synfig to hog almost 7Gb of RAM instead of 200Mb on 1.0.2 version: Perspective layer eats WAY too much RAM in certain cases · Issue #3430 · synfig/synfig · GitHub
Not everyone can afford a good computer. The sad thing is that Synfig just doesn’t have a lot of developers to fix/optimize the software.
The preview as it is was designed when Synfig was vector-only and real-time render (with lower quality to allow it), to have a rough idea of the animation.
Anything that uses bitmaps (background, parts or effects) eats CPU and memory.
There is now also the caching mechanism to pre-calculate each frame while working on the canvas to achieve (almost) the same.
But it also eats a lot of memory.
As long as we will use a custom rendering engine based on GDK, it will be the same.
Some other softwares can display modifications in realtime, very smooth, but they use engines like Skia for example and the GPU can do most of the job.
All this require a different implementation, even though we could keep the soul and specs of Synfig (file format, design, functionnalities like converters)
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Workaround tips: I recommend png or jpeg sequence export and preview with DJV png animation previewer: DJV
If you need dialog audio preview try export project+video at 1280x720. If it looks good (works with your pc setup) export full hd png seq and put it together with audio in Kdenlive or other software.
So many steps and the use of external tools …
This is not a preview, it’s a full render 