preset named Final is anything but..as we all know. They should rename it
something else, there is no finesse to it at as far as animation goes.
First and foremost choose anti-aliasing strategy.
(this should remain constant throughout animation sequence rendering)
Most animation imagery would not tolerate a change in this setting
along the timeline, although it depends on what look you want to have.
It would be wise to add softness in post work rather than in rendering.
Automatic- chooses sharp for still image, soft for animation, not good
choice.
Crisp- may be used, was default for older versions of Vue.
Sharp- this is my choice for animation.
Soft- soft imagery and soft flicker or buzz.
Blurred- softer imagery and softer flicker or buzz.
Optimized or Systematic ?? Optimized is supposed to analyze only
the parts of an image where transitions are found and super-sample
to your settings, whereas Systematic does every pixel in the frame per
your settings. I choose Systematic.
The texture filtering control that I show at 30% is an extension
of the default MIP Mapping in the function editor. This is a very
important newer feature.
Under object anti-aliasing I show 2 Min. and 4 Max. Subrays per pixel.
This may be tweaked up along the timeline if imagery needs it, to massage
pixels because of lingering flicker or buzz. I recently did this for
my "Unseen" animation. Used 8/16 and 16/32 in parts of it. Everything looked
seamless along timeline, other than the flicker was controlled.
http://www.artfullydigital.com/Pages/Animation22.html
Under object anti-aliasing I raised the quality threshold from 20% to 80%
compared to my previous setting.
The software that is behind a persons' eyes will have to decide some things,
and come to know what to expect with the reaction of textures to a moving
camera.
Also, do not judge final look always on computer monitor. When outputting to
tape or DVD a degree of crispness improves imagery. Similar to when doing
video, with graphics or text from computer to NTSC. Doing render with
rectangular pixels has a slight improvement over square 640 to Rect. 720.
With animation, have as much CPU as you can afford, almost never enough it
seems.
Interesting note, when compressing a noisy flickering uncompressed animation
sequence to say MPEG 4, compared to a quiet version, the noisy one is a much
larger file size. Because the codec is seeing so much pixel movement it is
working harder to compress.