How to render animation in blender

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Rendering is at the heart of what we do in Blender. When you are starting out it is good to understand how it works so that you can actually get some output to show and use.

To render in Blender Press F12 for rendering a still image or Ctrl+F12 to render animation. You can also go to the render menu and choose render image or render animation from there.

Of course, there is more to the story. In this article we explore the basics of rendering and what goes into it. I will also direct you to additional resources that are good to follow up with as you learn more about rendering.

What is rendering in Blender?

Rendering is when the computer calculates the light in our scene to create the final image or animation. To calculate the lighting the render engine needs information from our scene. This includes things like:

There is more to it, but these are the basic building blocks used by the renderer in our scene.

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Blender has two render engines built in. Eevee and Cycles. These two render engines aim to be similar in look but work completely different.

Eevee is a rasterized render engine, meaning that its primary goal is to be fast. This kind of render engine is suitable for real-time or close to real-time performance.

Cycles on the other hand is a ray-traced render engine. This is a much slower kind of render engine. The benefit is that it is much more accurate and produce an image based on how light bounce in the real world.

It is possible to produce a good-looking image with both engines, but they take vastly separate ways to the resulting image.

How to render an image in Blender

Pressing F12 is the quickest way to start a render in Blender. The render engine we use can be set in the render settings tab found in the properties panel.

Go to the camera icon in the properties panel, find the render engine drop-down and select Cycles or Eevee.

You will also find the workbench render engine here, but we don’t need it. It is essentially the same as solid shading in the viewport.

Next, we should also check the output properties tab just below the render settings tab. Here we find the dimensions section where we can set the resolution of our render.

For a complete guide on Cycles and Eevee render settings, you can check out these guides.

When the render starts an image editor will pop up showing us the render progress. Once completed, we can save the rendered image by pressing Alt+S or by going to the image menu where we find «Save» or «Save As».

By default, the PNG file format is selected, but if we want to save an image that is equivalent to a photographer’s raw files, use OpenEXR. This file format supports high dynamic range and can support multiple layers.

How to render an animation in Blender

To render an animation in Blender, we press Ctrl+F12 or go to the render menu and press render animation.

With animations we need to prepare a few things before we start our render. First, Blender needs an output folder to store the rendered frames.

We can set this folder in the output section found in the output properties tab just below the render settings. Here we can choose an output folder as well as a file format.

By default, the output folder is /tmp/. This is equivalent to C:\tmp on Windows.

Next, we need to choose a file format. We can choose an image format, for instance PNG. In this case Blender store each frame as its own image file and if an error occurs during the rendering process, we can render from the last successful frame instead of re-rendering the entire animation.

We can also choose a movie format such as FFMPEG Video. In this case, Blender will render each frame directly into a movie file, but we cannot resume the render if an error occurs mid-render.

In the dimensions section found in the output properties, we can also set the resolution and frame settings.

When rendering an animation, the image editor will pop-up and show us the progress one frame at a time until all frames are rendered.

A simple way to get started with animation in Blender is to animate the camera movement through your scene. You can read this guide on how to get started.

How to preview your render in Blender

To preview your render in the viewport you can press the rendered viewport shading button in the top right corner of the 3D viewport.

This will change the viewport to display with the currently selected render engine.

As described above, you can change your render engine in the render tab found in the properties panel. Just click the camera icon and at the top you will see a render engine drop-down.

If your render is particularly slow, you can press Ctrl+B and draw a box to render only that area of the viewport. Use Ctrl+B again to draw a new box if you wish or press Alt+Ctrl+B to clear the render border.

Keep in mind that the render border persists to the final render, so clear it before rendering the final image or animation.

There are many ways to speed up rendering. Check the render settings guides for Eevee and Cycles above for more information.

How to make a viewport render in Blender

We can also create a viewport render in Blender. These renders are even quicker than rendering with Eevee.

You can think of a viewport render as Blender taking a screenshot of the viewport. These are useful if we want to storyboard or create previews without wasting time on rendering.

To create a viewport render, go to the view menu in the 3D viewport. Close to the bottom we have these three options.

These are pretty self-explanatory. The last one will render every frame that has a keyframe on it and skip the rest.

The output from these is stored in the same output folder we set for animations. For a still viewport rendered image we save the image from the image editor. Press Alt+S or save through the image menu.

Since viewport renders are more or less snapshots of the viewport, it can be a good idea to learn how to set up the viewport shading and overlays. You can learn more about that in these articles.

How to pause render in Blender

There is no supported way of pausing a render, but we can pause a render by suspending the Blender process during a render. I have done this with no issues from time to time but there is no guarantee that it will work.

We will look at how we can do this for Windows 10.

As far as I know the task manager in Windows does not have a feature to suspend a process. But we can use process explorer. Process explorer is part of Microsoft’s sysinternals suite of tools and you can find it here.

Once downloaded, you extract the zip file. There is no installation process. You can start the program from the procexpexe. or procexp64.exe file.

Find explorer.exe in the list and expand it. Blender will be a sub-process below this process.

When a render is running, find the Blender process that uses up the most resources. This is likely the process that is currently rendering. Right click and press suspend, and the rendering process will pause.

Right click again and press resume to continue rendering.

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Final thoughts

These are the basics on how we can render in Blender. Both using our «real» render engines, Eevee and Cycles as well as making draft renders with the viewport.

We also learned some basic output settings and how we can pause a render even if that isn’t a supported feature in Blender yet.

Rendering AnimationsпѓЃ

While rendering stills will allow you to view and save the image from the render buffer when it is complete, animations are a series of images, or frames, and are automatically saved directly out to a drive after being rendered.

After rendering the frames, you may need to edit the clips, or first use the Compositor to do green-screen masking, matting, color correction, DOF, and so on to the images. That result is then fed to the Sequencer where the strips are cut and mixed and a final overlay is done.

Finally you can render out from the Sequencer and compress the frames into a playable movie clip.

WorkflowпѓЃ

Generally, you do a lot of intermediate renders of different frames in your animation to check for timing, lighting, placement, materials, and so on. At some point, you are ready to make a final render of the complete animation for publication.

There are two approaches you can use when making a movie, or animation, with or without sound. The approach you should use depends on the amount of CPU time you will need to render the movie. You can render a “typical” frame at the desired resolution, and then multiply by the number of frames that will ultimately go into the movie, to arrive at a total render time.

If the total render time is an hour or more, you want to use the “Frame Sequence” approach. For example, if you are rendering a one-minute video clip for film, there will be (60 seconds per minute) X (24 frames per second) or 1440 frames per minute. If each frame takes 30 seconds to render, then you will be able to render two frames per minute, or need 720 minutes (12 hours) of render time.

Rendering takes all available CPU time; you should render overnight, when the computer is not needed, or set Blender to a low priority while rendering, and work on other things (be careful with the RAM space!).

The Direct Approach, which is highly not recommended and not a standard practice, is where you set your output format to an AVI or MOV format, and click Animation to render your scene directly out to a movie file. Blender creates one file that holds all the frames of your animation. You can then use Blender’s Video Sequencer to add an audio track to the animation and render out to an MPEG format to complete your movie.

The Frame Sequence is a much more stable approach, where you set your output format to a still format (such as JPG, PNG or a multi-layer format). Click Animation to render your scene out to a set of images, where each image is a frame in the sequence.

Blender creates a file for each frame of the animation. You can then use Blender’s Compositor to perform any frame manipulation (post-processing). You can then use Blender’s Video Sequencer to load that final image sequence, add an audio track to the animation, and render out to an MPEG format to complete your movie. The Frame Sequence approach is a little more complicated and takes more drive space, but gives you more flexibility.

Here are some guidelines to help you choose an approach.

Short segments with total render time under one hour.

Video Output¶

Preparing your Work for Video¶

Once you master the art of 3D animation, you will probably want to share your work with others; either on the Internet (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) or with family and friends (DVD/Blu-ray) or even possibly for television broadcast.

To spare you some disappointment, here are some tips specifically targeted at video preparation.

Safe Areas and Overscan¶

For anyone creating motion graphics or simple text overlays, overscan is an important consideration. Although its origins are rooted in historic analog TV systems, unfortunately even in 2017, for various reasons it can still be an issue with modern digital flat screen TVs.

Due to various limitations in analog TV equipment, the displayed image could sometimes end up shifted horizontally or vary in size, which could lead to the area beyond the intended visible picture being shown. This hidden area sometimes contained junk noise, timing signals or closed-caption/subtitle data. To avoid this being visible to the viewer, the standard approach for TV manufacturers was to ‘overscan’ (zoom in) the displayed picture by a small amount (between 5-10% edge crop) to ensure that at no time would the hidden areas be visible.

Although modern digital electronics have eliminated the issue of shifting image position, unfortunately, some TV manufacturers have included overscan on their flat screen TVs. Why? Because for many years it was given that the edge of the visible image would rarely be seen, so broadcasters would sometimes overlay ‘hidden’ data to the very edge of the image (e.g. some types of closed captions). Also, legacy analog recordings might still contain unwanted noise around the edge. To avoid consumer complaints, overscan is quite often enabled by default. For some flat screen TVs, it is not possible to disable it.

Enabling Safe Areas¶

Color Reproduction¶

When exporting to many of the common video formats, the rendered RGB(A) images go through a conversion process whereby they are translated to the YCbCr color model. Y corresponds to a gray-scale representation of the image, Cb and Cr contain data for the blue and red channels respectively. Green is encoded into the Y and Cb, Cr channels with some clever math.

Importantly, the color components are often stored at a lower resolution to the Y (grayscale) channel. This can cause blurring/smearing which can be a problem with small text and some saturated color combinations – so it is well worth doing test encodes to make sure that text remains legible. As with safe areas, a TV network or client might have their own rules on minimum text size and positioning, so always seek clarification when unsure.

Encoding Panel¶

Here you choose which video container, codec, and compression settings you want to use. With all of these compression choices, there is a trade-off between file size, compatibility across platforms, and playback quality.

Some containers and codecs are not compatible with each other, so if you are getting errors check that your container and codec are compatible. Like containers and codecs are sometimes not compatible with each other, some codecs do not work with arbitrary dimensions. So, try to stick with common dimensions or research the limitations of the codec you are trying to use.

Interval The maximum number of B‑frames between non-B-frames.

Rate¶

Rate Maximum bit rate of the multiplexed stream. Packet Size Reduces data fragmentation or muxer overhead depending on the source.

Audio¶

Tips¶

The choice of video format depends on what you are planning to do.

It’s not recommended to render directly to a video format in the first instance. If a problem occurs while rendering, the file might become unplayable and you will have to re-render all frames from the beginning. If you first render out a set of static images such as the default PNG format or the higher-quality OpenEXR (which can retain HDR pixel data), you can combine them as an Image Strip in the Video Sequence Editor (VSE). This way, you can easily:

You shouldn’t post-process a lossy-compressed file as the compression artifacts may become visible. Lossy compression should be reserved as a final ‘delivery format’.

If you are planning on doing significant post-processing and color correction, it is best to output a frameset rendered in OpenEXR format. If you plan to do only minimal changes after rendering and would prefer a single file, choose lossless H.264 for high quality, or regular H.264 for lower quality.

© Copyright : This page is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 Int. License.

Rendering Animations¶

While rendering stills will allow you to view and save the image from the render buffer when it is complete, animations are a series of images, or frames, and are automatically saved directly out to a drive after being rendered.

After rendering the frames, you may need to edit the clips, or first use the Compositor to do green-screen masking, matting, color correction, DOF, and so on to the images. That result is then fed to the Sequencer where the strips are cut and mixed and a final overlay is done.

Finally you can render out from the Sequencer and compress the frames into a playable movie clip.

Workflow¶

Generally, you do a lot of intermediate renders of different frames in your animation to check for timing, lighting, placement, materials, and so on. At some point, you are ready to make a final render of the complete animation for publication.

There are two approaches you can use when making a movie, or animation, with or without sound. The approach you should use depends on the amount of CPU time you will need to render the movie. You can render a “typical” frame at the desired resolution, and then multiply by the number of frames that will ultimately go into the movie, to arrive at a total render time.

If the total render time is an hour or more, you want to use the “Frame Sequence” approach. For example, if you are rendering a one-minute video clip for film, there will be (60 seconds per minute) X (24 frames per second) or 1440 frames per minute. If each frame takes 30 seconds to render, then you will be able to render two frames per minute, or need 720 minutes (12 hours) of render time.

Rendering takes all available CPU time; you should render overnight, when the computer is not needed, or set Blender to a low priority while rendering, and work on other things (be careful with the RAM space!).

The Direct Approach, which is highly not recommended and not a standard practice, is where you set your output format to an AVI or MOV format, and click Animation to render your scene directly out to a movie file. Blender creates one file that holds all the frames of your animation. You can then use Blender’s VSE to add an audio track to the animation and render out to an MPEG format to complete your movie.

The Frame Sequence is a much more stable approach, where you set your output format to a still format (such as JPG, PNG or a multi-layer format), and click Animation to render your scene out to a set of images, where each image is a frame in the sequence.

Blender creates a file for each frame of the animation. You can then use Blender’s compositor to perform any frame manipulation (post-processing). You can then use Blender’s VSE to load that final image sequence, add an audio track to the animation, and render out to an MPEG format to complete your movie. The Frame Sequence approach is a little more complicated and takes more drive space, but gives you more flexibility.

Here are some guidelines to help you choose an approach.

Frame Sequence Workflow¶

First prepare your animation.

In the Dimensions panel, choose the render size, Pixel Aspect Ratio, and the Range of Frames to use, as well as the frame rate, which should already be set.

In the Output panel set up your animation to be rendered out as images, generally using a format that does not compromise any quality.

Confirm the range of your animation (frame Start and End).

Save your blend-file.

Press the big Animation button. Do a long task (like sleeping, playing a video game, or cleaning your driveway) while you wait for your computer to finish rendering the frames.

Choose Add Image from the add menu. Select all the frames from your output folder that you want to include in your animation (press A to Select All easily). They will be added as a strip to the Sequence editor.

Now you can edit the strip and add effects or simply leave it like it is. You can add other strips, like an audio strip.

Scrub through the animation, checking that you have included all the frames.

Click the Animation render button and Blender will render out the Sequence editor output into your movie.

Why go through all this hassle? Well, first of all, if you render out single frames, you can stop the render at any time by pressing Esc in the render window or UV/Image editor. You will not lose the frames you have already rendered, since they have been written out to individual files. You can always adjust the range you want to continue from where you left off.

You can edit the frames afterwards and post-process them. You can add neat effects in the Sequence editor. You can render the same sequence into different resolutions (640Г—480, 320Г—240, etc.) and use different codecs (to get different file sizes and quality) with almost no effort whatsoever.

Hints¶

Unless your animation renders in a few minutes, it is best to render the animation as separate image files. Instead of rendering directly to a compressed movie file, use a lossless format (e.g. PNG ).

This allows you an easy recovery if there is a problem and you have to re-start the rendering, since the frames you have already rendered will still be in the output directory.

Just disable the Overwrite option to start rendering where you left off.

You can then make a movie out of the separate frames with Blender’s Sequence editor or use 3rd party encoding software.

It can be useful to render a subset of the animated sequence, since only part of an animation may have an error.

Using an image format for output, you can use the Frame Step option to render every N’th frame. Then disable Overwrite and re-render with Frame Step set to 1.

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How to render animation in blender

Go to «Output Properties»

Press the «Output» section.

Select which file your going to save the render to.

Checked mark the «File Extension» in saving.

Change the file format to «FFmpeg video»

If your using color, turn on RGB. If not, go BW.

Press «Encoding,» and change the Container to «MPEG-4».

Open the «VIDEO» section, checked if you have this preferences.

Once you’ve done setting up, go to «Render» and press «Render Animation.»

It will take some hour to let the animation render finished (Especially using CYCLES).

The final render animation will have the number of how it start to finished.

WARNING:
Once you start rendering the animation, DO NOT let anything happen to the process. It will lose all progress to what you render. If your computer or laptop is shut down, your progress will be gone and you have to restart the render animation all over again. So keep that in mind.

There are 2 types of render in Blender.

EEVEE Render

A more light and custom render, good for a quick render animation.

CYCLE Render

A heavy and more realistic render where it will take advantage of your computers CPU (for me), the render time will take longer since the software is analyzing the texture you put in the camera view.

Checked mark «Render Region»

You can change the number of when to start rendering here if you want, or how it’ll end.