Cycles rendering differently for image and animation

Support Materials and Textures
1

I have a scene where if I render it to an animation file (ogv) it renders differently in a few cases than if I render it to an image file (png).

To the image file it renders correctly using the texture appropriately. In the animation file it renders the color of the color node I have through the mix shader without observing the keyframe setting. I have the mix shader keyframed to only show 100% texture for the first several frames, and then mix in the color over the next several frames so it fades from textured to color-textured. Cycles is rendering the color always with 100% power to the animation file, but only to a handful of faces (they happen to be the top-most faces using the texture). They’ve all been UV unwrapped, and it’s always the same ones with the error. All of these faces are using the same texture material, and all of the UV faces are on the texture image. I have checkd and it’s not the result of normals. I have gone back in and re-assigned the texture. It renders correctly in any off-angle image as by pressing F12 or setting the viewport to render, but when viewed through the camera it renders the blue color instead of the texture.

Any ideas? This is the same scene in my other thread, and I can upload the .blend file if need be. It’s about 8 MB or so total.

2

From what I can tell, animating materials right now is a bit of a pain in the butt. For some reason materials properties as listed in the side panel doesn’t let you keyframe certain things. Animating mixers or whatever in the node tree isn’t exactly stright forward.

However, there is a way…

You have to go through the outliner. Set its listing mode to datablocks. And be prepared to do some wading into the depths of the file index tree there.

You’ll go through something like this:
Blendfile data --> Materials --> Material.001 --> Node tree --> Shader Nodetree --> Nodes --> (Where properties you want to animate in your material are, typically listed under inputs with something like “default value”.)

So you keyframe the input value there, instead of the more obvious and easy to access location where material properties are in the side panel. (Also keep the material panel visible under the outliner, you’ll see the property value change there too provided you found the right one.) Why that way? Who knows. But it works.