[hatts]

I'm setting up to network render a very large file for a 480 frame animation. It's very simple; just a turntable. But that means smoothness and consistency are very crucial since any little hiccup would be quite noticeable.

Is this a good candidate for the "pre-roll timeline" option? Still not quite sure when this option is supposed to be used.

Thanks

[JDHill]

Make a particle emitter (or any type of generator, or a model involving dynamics, and so on) and scrub the timeline to frame 45. Now, set it to frame 40 by clicking in the timeline. Next, click on frame 35. Next, scrub forward to frame 40 again. Notice how you get different results every time. However, animating the entire document, you will always get a consistent result for each frame. Pre-roll just makes sure that this happens by forcing the document to animate from the beginning, to the frame you are trying to render, so the decision of whether to use it really depends on the model in question.

[hatts]

Ah. In a way, this is just baking. Makes total sense, thanks

[JDHill]

Just to put a fine point on it, this is kind of the opposite of baking -- it takes no extra memory, but you pay the price in processing time, depending on how long it takes to animate each frame. For any item you have already cached (where that's possible), pre-roll can serve no purpose, since the state for any given frame has already been pre-calculated and stored. But in that case, pre-roll will be cheap in terms of CPU time, since the item in question requires no calculation. I would say that in general, if there is any question in your mind, it is safest to enable pre-roll.

[hatts]

Er yeah sorry, bad wording; I mean in terms of how it functions to serve the user, it's like baking. Making for certain that the motion of objects is consistent rather than just taking every frame at face value.