Well I've run into a situation where I'm sure NextDesign's render script will be my lifesaver. However, before I try that, I'd like to know if anyone is familiar with this situation or has ideas I could try.

I have a series of objects that have a texture animated (element in ramp has changing position). Because all the objects are sharing the ramp, there is a custom attribute providing the position for the ramp element via a switch node, and that's actually what is keyed. I've attached a screenshot of the network. So the custom attribute crawlpos is what's keyed. If I hit the render current frame button, everything is peachy. But if I do a batch render, it figures out what the first frame will look like and all the rest are exactly the same, instead of animated.

Any ideas? I can't figure out what the batch render would see differently.