So I have a smoke simulation going on here. This picture was taken from the viewport render mode: 
This picture is what turns up when I hit the render button:
I have no idea why this is happening. The blend file should be attached to this thread. Just lower the bake resolution to 32 or something so you don’t have to bake for 30 minutes like I had to. Thanks!
Ball.blend (564 KB)
In the Render / Film settings you could turn off transparent. If you use transparent and composite onto a plain background you get
I wanted to keep the transparency on so I could composite the video over another video later. If I absolutely cannot keep the transparency on, I can just make the background white and use that but then I’d run into problems with the video getting in the way of the other objects in the scene.
You might not have fully caught the implications of Richard’s post…:eyebrowlift:
Some alpha effects rendered with Cycles seem to look pale and incorrect when viewed with a transparent background, but regain the expected look as soon as they are actually composited over another layer:
Same compositing setup as Richard’s - only with an image instead of a solid color to alpha over.
