Animation workflow - multiple scenes

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Let’s say I am creating an animation short with 300 frames that has three cuts across two scenes.

Cut#1 frames 1-100. Scene 1
Cut#2 frames 101-200. Scene 2
Cut#3 frames 201-300. Scene 1

Now I could do this in multiple ways.

  1. I could do my animation in scene 1 for frames 1-300, with 101-200 frames having nothing, render all 1-300 frames, and in video editing, replace 101-200 frames from scene 2. This is easiest to setup, but I am unnecessarily rendering 101-200 frames of scene 1. So not a scalable way due to wasted rendering.

  2. I could move the animation of frames 201-300 to 101-200 frames of scene 1 , render 100-200 frames of scene 1 and in video editing make a cut at 100-101 to move frames 101-200 of scene 1 to correct place of cut#3(201-300 frame location)
    This one is not easily manageable as I need to remember the cut location (100-101) and during the process of refining animation if my cut length changes than I have to remember to go and fix in video editing.

  3. I could create a scene 3 which is full linked copy of scene 1. Then render 1-100 from scene 1, and 201-300 frames from scene 3, and put all together in video editing.
    This one is easier than #2, I have to just reveiw video sequencer to make sure all scenes have all the frames in strip ( is there any automated/easy way?).
    But this doesn’t scale well with number of cuts as I’ll keep creating linked duplicates of scene for more cuts. But perhaps still better than others.

Any comments from folks doing animation?
How do you manage scenes across cuts ?

#2

My gut instinct is you may be over complicating things. I try to keep it close to industry or at least in terms of film/content production and segment the roles. Try to keep each scene as each cut/shot/take and then after edit them together. Blender can handle alot of scenes and linked or copied data. For example create the scene and if there are multiple shots/angles create different scenes for each camera shot based on the same base scene. And then yes you can render in sequence through your own script ir an addon. Thats my process as of now anyways.

#3

Thanks Peter.
I think your suggestion is to stick with 3rd way.
I agree that’s easiest one to manage.

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