If you ever use Blender in the heat of a large production, or against sometimes impossible deadlines, you will almost inevitably have to resort to other graphics systems to finish off. You may need to color correct, clean up, or even completely change the appearance of a render long after the event. Unfortunately, life is full of those little challenges for the materials designer and textures artist.
Fortunately, Blender is such a comprehensive 3D suite it provides many of the tools to aid you in that process. We will explore some of these in this chapter from the ability to alter a completed animation because of last-minute changes, or render defects that were not picked up at the time, to directly editing materials and textures in Blender. We will also explore ways to speed up renders and animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times. All of these recipes could save you time as well as minimize the agony of tight timescales.