ID 378479 - Rendering Replicators with random time variation for animated geometry causes Modo to freeze and render slower than expected

Problem summary
Rendering Replicators with random time variation for animated geometry causes Modo to freeze and if waiting a couple of minutes, the Render window appears and starts to render the Replicator slower than expected. Rendering the Replicator is sped up significantly if duplicating the Prototype item to a group with manually set time-offset for each item and then use the group as a Point Source for the Replicator. 

Customer reported version

Modo 12.2v1 

Customer reported platform
Windows 10 

Steps to reproduce

1) Open Modo and create a Replicator Item. 

2) Create a plane and a sphere for the Replicator Item. 

3) Press "Shift + D" to subdivide both of the meshes multiple times. 

4) In the "Instancing" tab of the Replicator Properties, assign the sphere as "Prototype" and the plane as "Point Source". 

5) Select the sphere and go to Setup -> Deformers tab. Apply a Mesh Deformer to the sphere, for example the "Bend" Deformer. 

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6) Start to deform the sphere with the Bend Effector from the Item List. Animate the "Angle" option and put multiple keyframes on the timeline with different bending angles. 

7) Go to the Replicator Properties and then in the Variation settings set the "Random Time Variation" option to the same frame as the end of the animation.

8) Scrub the timeline at the start of the animation. 

9) Start to render the scene by pressing "F9". Modo is now freezing and if waiting a couple of minutes, the Render window appears and starts to render the Replicator slower than expected. The render time can be sped up significantly if duplicating the Prototype item to a group with manually set time-offset for each item and then use the group as a Point Source for the Replicator. 

Workaround
Unknown. 

Reproduced by support

This bug has been reproduced in:
Modo 12.2v1 - Windows 10 - CentOS 7 - MacOSX 10.13 

Modo 12.1v2 - Windows 10 

Modo 12.0v1 - Windows 10 

Modo 11.2v3 - Windows 10 

Modo 11.1v1 - Windows 10 

Modo 11.0v3 - Windows 10 

Modo 10.2v4 - Windows 10 - CentOS 7 - MacOSX 10.13 

Earliest version tested
Modo 10.2v4 - This issue appears to be in all versions of the product

Expected behaviour
Rendering Replicators with Random Time Variation for animated geometry should not freeze Modo and not render slower than a group of deforming meshes that got manually set time-offsets. 

Actual behaviour
Rendering Replicators with Random Time Variation freezes Modo and it takes longer than expected to render the scene.