Rendering

What a render needs: Fleshy installed, the cache file beside the .blend, and frames baked at the subdivision level the render uses.

Rendering here

A baked frame renders as it plays, F12 for a still and Ctrl+F12 for an animation. Renders never depend on what is shown in the viewport: hiding Fleshy, the Subdivision Surface or a collider with the eye changes nothing in a render. A frame that is not baked renders undeformed, and a frame that is out of date is refused there just as in the viewport (see When to bake again): you get the undeformed character, never a wrong one.

Why Fleshy switches itself off in the viewport

On any frame with nothing to play (nothing baked yet, a frame outside what you baked, or a frame whose cache is out of date), Fleshy turns its own viewport switch off, which keeps the viewport fast there. On the next frame that plays, it turns it back on. The eye icon on the modifier shows which it is.

It only ever switches off what it switched off itself. If you turn it off by hand, it stays off. Renders never look at this switch, and neither does Live mode, which keeps it on.

It helps most when the Subdivision Surface is the last modifier before Fleshy, with nothing (masks, say) between them.

Another computer or a render farm

• Install Fleshy there. Without it, a character renders with no contact deformation at all: nothing says so in the render. Tick it again and the baked frames play again, straight away.
• Copy the cache file with the .blend, next to it (see Cache files). A cache file that is not where the file says is looked for there when the file opens, so the folder's name and the drive do not matter, and a cache is not tied to a machine, a Blender version or a graphics card.
• On the command line, blender -b shot.blend -a uses that Blender's preferences, so Fleshy is on if it is ticked there. --factory-startup starts with no add-ons at all: leave it out, or add --addons bl_ext.user_default.fleshy, the name Blender gives Fleshy when it is installed from a file.

Motion blur

Motion blur renders as usual from the baked frames: the character's motion is blurred, and the deformation is not blended between two frames. In Live mode it follows the pose through the shutter.

Linked characters (library overrides)

A character linked from another file is set up on its library override (in the 3D Viewport, Object ▸ Library Override ▸ Make). A linked character that is not overridden cannot be baked, and the panel says so. On the override you can use Set Up, the settings, regions, colliders, frame ranges, Bake and playback as on a local character. They are kept when you save and reopen the shot, and when the character's file changes and Blender resyncs the override. If the character's mesh itself was edited in its file, the cache is out of date and says so: bake again.