Distort node 2026.... my old friend

The free form distort node is busted in flame 2026.0

I’ve spent the day doing a pretty simple animation, versioning up happily, everyting working as expected….until you try to roll back an interation….. then BOOM! You cannot load the older itteration (you get some sort of error reading), then you cannot load the iteration you were on (same error reading), basically the batch and all its iterations are “invalid”.

You can hit “undo” until the batch re-appears, but the distort node is empty.

So it’s got something to do with where the distort node saves it’s processes, as you cannot even manually save the node and re-load a version.

I’ve had so many battles and lost most of them with this node, which is a pity as ithe free form splines are way easier to set up than the grid based extended bi-cube workflow.

I’m sure its a simple fix for autodesk.

Oh well….. of to extended bi-cubic land.

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I feel your pain @justinbromley I’ve found that once I have a decent distort going, rendering A and B warps as ST maps and then using them as UV maps to distort the actual footage in Action gets me a convoluted but more stable workflow.

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I’ve been using Distort a lot and have not seen this… did you report this to support? Please do.. they will address it if you can provide them with clear steps to trigger this..

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@justinbromley This is likely caused by an invalid setup that fails upon loading. When this happens, it would be very helpful if you could send us the setup through our support team.

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Fred, excuse my ignorance (never dealt with support ever) exactly which bit of the set-up? Any of the batch iterations? (minus the media?). I am working on a movie (behind a firewall/security etc) so I cannot send the original issue, but the bug is very easy to re-create, so I can send the super stripped down version?

Bug is not present in 2025.2.3.

Are you using 2026?

Yes sir. 2026.1 .. just tried the following to be sure.. coloursource>distort (animate something) .. iterate a few times.. then roll back and forward those iterations.. no issues..

The only thing we need is either the setup file for the Distort or the Batch Setup (Iteration). We do not need any media.

It could be a situation where one specific parameter is not saved properly and that Justin is using it but others are not.

Thanks Ton, I’m updating to 2026.1 to see if it works, 2025.3 is fine wiht no issues.

All good in 2026.1. Happy days so far…..