CompuServe Messages

Rob: Rendering a FLIC to ANY machine will give the problematic results you describe. If you render to sequential .tga files all of your problems go away. When you clean a failed machine, that machine will be available to process the next available frame of the animation which failed or it will start on the next item in the net-queue. In your case, you have described a scenario that I haven't experienced – rendering to only one machine on the net-queue and cleaning that entry due to some failure. When rendering a flic the palette options actually create different intermediate files for the final flic file. Low uses the first frame's 256 color palette, medium stores a separate 256 color palette for each frame and then picks the best palette at the end of rendering as you've described. High actually creates 24 bit .tga's which get compiled at the end of rendering. Have you tried Custom? This can save you a bunch of time and keep you flic size down a bit. Personally, I like to render to .tga's for all of my flic work. I usually do the compile at the end with an .ifl file and a Custom Palette. The Net Queue always gives reliable information and I can easily rerender a bad frame or a missing frame as long as I go to tga's. Bob