Crowd sim - missing parts in render - random and changing between frames

[loogas]

Hi. I don't know how many people actually go crazy with crowds and render them but after simulation fun, all the flipbooks, there's rendering nightmare. I solved many issues but this just beats me - does anybody know what could be the cause of random parts of the agents disappearing? The smaller ones, knights, are taken from Mixamo and they never flicker, but the bigger ones, baked before and and all that stuff, just go crazy. Some of them are ok the whole time, some of them partially disappear and reappear. I'm out of ideas. They're ok in the viewport.

Some short videos:
https://youtu.be/gxx_bYH19Hk
https://youtu.be/jCpBqh-GAb0

I've attached a screenshot.

Is it the scale problem? (they have a scale of 3, with some randomization). But why do we have scale then... I put them in separate network, so after the sim each group is in its own GEO node, because at first it seemed to solve the problem, but no - different frame and it's back again. I've reopened the scene, restarted the computer, rendered several times. I've removed the shader, changed it to simple Principled Shader without any adjustments - nothing helps

Any tips are welcome. 

Edited December 4, 2017 by loogas

[br1]

Sometimes your agent bounds are to small and when generating the geometry for rendering it gets clipped.  You can see this bounding information by enabling the display of primitive hulls (just under primitive numbers in your viewport.).

If they appear to small compared to your agents, you will have to increase it. A trick I personally use is making a big box as agent layer and I set it as collision layer. For the geometry of this layer I delete the primitives and keep the points with a scale of 0 so that it will not appear in the render but will still make valid bounds.

Hope this helps !

[loogas]

Hello. I'm so sorry for replying so late - I had to switch to another project, then I had to change cities - during Xmas season and all that. It was a nightmare, no more time for fun  However, your tip is greatly appreciated! Before you've posted I got close to one solution, explained here:
https://sidefx.com/forum/topic/52961/

Your solution sounds like the best one somebody was willing to share - I hope I will get a chance to get back to this soon. Thank you so much Bruno