Blender Equivalent of "Playblast"?

Hello. I am in the process of getting back into Blender after a year without a laptop, and I have one question.

My first serious 3D work was in Maya, and there is a feature called a “Playblast”–this allows you to create a movie file of your scene without rendering it. Without Playblast, the frame rate of the real-time preview in the 3D viewport would fluctuate based on your processor speed, and thus Playblast is essential for viewing your scene in the “true” frame rate.

Does Blender have its equivalent of Maya’s Playblast–a way to view your animated scene at the true frame rate without rendering?

render>OpenGl render Animation?

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There’s also 2 buttons on the 3Dview header (camera and slate icons). The animation opengl render will output however and to whatever folder is set in Properties > Render > Output.

Welcome to BA Forums.

-LP

We (well, some of us…) like to use the term Bassam Kurdali coined: BoomSmash! :slight_smile:

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough–a Playblast in Maya creates a movie file of your animated scene as it looks within the 3D viewport–“jagged” edges on objects, no textures (unless in textured view), no advanced materials, or detailed lighting. Those of you Maya users know what I am talking about.

the feature you describe is exactly what “OpenGL Render” does. see http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Vitals/Quick_render

Sorry about that… I looked on the Wiki and couldn’t find it. Thanks!

And a fine term it is. :slight_smile:

Make sure you’ve set the output to avi jpeg, if you don’t wish to end up with a png sequence.

You can play back the (opengl) animation with Ctrl+F11 in Blender. Use the numpad to play with the playback speed.

If, say, you’re on a Mac, can you save the OpenGL Render out to Quicktime?

wow. A reply to a 6 yr old comment.

You can set the output to Quicktime .mov with H.264 compression (start with FFmpeg video as File Format)

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12 years now bro :sob:

And the answers made 12 years ago and 6 years were satisfying at that time.

Since then, OpenGL Render has been renamed Viewport Render Animation and is located in View menu of 3D Viewport.
And there is an Output Tab in Properties Editor.

The principle is still the same. You set desired movie format in Output panel of Output tab. And you click on View menu > Viewport Render Animation item of 3D Viewport to capture.