Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Using the sequencer to compile frames into an animation

Preamble

edit

When you render an animation, often it's a good idea to render the individual frames and then compile them into the animation. This has several benefits over rendering directly to a movie file. Some of them are these:

    • If you discover a mistake in the render, you can modify sections of the animation and rerender those frames without having to rerender the whole animation.
    • If the render crashes because the power went out or, (psst), blender crashed, you can pick up the render at the last rendered frame without having to rerender the whole animation

Tutorial

edit
  • Open your animation in blender

Begin by opening blender to an animation that is ready to be rendered.

  • If you don't have one and don't want to wait to long, just download the demo file from blender.org For You
  • The output format should stay PNG. Though you can use any image format you want, I recommend PNG because it is lossless format.
  • Set the file output location.

Set the location on your file system where you want all the frames to be saved to.

  • Set Endframe to match the animation

If you animated 500 frames, set the end frame to that same number. the default is 250.

  • Render the animation!

Simply press the "Render" button under the render tab.

  • For "For You", you only need to click Num0 and go to "Render" in the menu bar. Then click on "OpenGL Render Animation". For exercise, 100 frames must be enough.



Use the Sequencer to compile the images into a movie file

edit
  • Open a new blender and delete everything except the camera.
  • Change the 3d window into the "Video Sequencer Editor" window.
 
video Sequence Editor











  • Add the images to the sequencer.

On the bottom of the sequencer window click Add>>Image then browse to the location where you saved the images, Press A to select all the images and finally press “Add Image Strip" on the top-right.

  • Set final movie format.
  • Set the location that the movie will be saved to by changing the output path.
 
Format











  • Change the End Frame.
 
Ready for Render











  • Render!

Just Press the Render "Animation" button and wait a few seconds till it's done. Browse to the location you saved your movie and enjoy the animation.