Original post by red_produkt rendering to frames saved my ass once, on an animation I was making. after it was finished rendering (which took a *lot of hours) to my horror I discovered glitches on various frames in the lighting, and a few objects- just on certain frames, they didn't show up when I was rendering test stills.
Since they were seperate frames, I could load them up in photoshop and do some touchups to erase the occasional glitches and it all turned out fine, so I think its a good idea too :)
thtas actualy a very good point there... ok.... i am sold on the frames idea ;) so you say vdub supports importing frames? and its free?
-------------------------Only a fool claims himself an expert
It's already been said plenty, but there's no harm in reiterating the advice. Rendering to frames is always the best approach for animation unless you are simply trying to create a preview video. I don't know a single professional that I've worked with in the past or currently work with that produce full avi or mov files from their 3d package. If you have any composition or post production at all it's virtually a necessity.
For most of my animations I go one step further and render to layers as well. Once you learn the power of rendering to seperate layers such as a diffuse pass, a beauty pass, a shadow pass, a specular pass, a reflections pass, etc. you won't want to ever go back to rendering all elements in a single pass. The power to be able to change your shadow intensity without having to rerender frames or to use blur effects on specular and reflection or any other element is extremely valuable. In one animation I had a beauty pass, specular pass, reflection pass, shadow pass, and particle pass for a animation sequence that involved a dog surfing on a curling wave. When my project leader wanted to change the relfection intensity, the shadow sharpness/softness, or the particle density of the spray and foam I didn't have to rerender anything. All these types of changes could be done in post and the result is actually better than what I could get out of the 3d package (Maya in this case).
