6
$\begingroup$

I have 1800 frames of animation to render for a school project thing, of which only 1/4 of it has animation. I have 7 more days and my computer just doesn't have the strength to do all of the 1800 frames in that time.

Can you skip frames that have no animation? Because that would really help me if there were only around 400 frames to render.

This is different than the other one because those answers weren't Windows compatible. Also, is there a way to only render 1 frame, then only a section on that frame onwards? I have what is technically a still image for ~800 frames, but only a small section is moving, is there a way to render the whole image, then only render and then use that image for 800 frames but only re render a small part of the 800 frames every frame... I didn't know how to word that right but I hope you get what I mean

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
2

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2
$\begingroup$

You can skip frames where nothing changes.

Probably the simplest, is to manually render out different sections of the animations. It works by splitting the different parts into sections, and you render out each of these sections individually.

You do this by setting the start and end frame to match the parts of the animation you want to render, and then pressing animation, making sure that you have it outputting to the correct folder. You then repeat the process. With the parts that aren't animated at all, just render by pressing the render button, or by setting the start and end frame settings to be the same frame (making them only render that frame).

You then need to import everything into a video editor and stretch out the frames that where rendered as a single image instead of an animation.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
7
  • $\begingroup$ I was thinking of that yes, but is there any way to auto skip these frames where nothing changes? $\endgroup$
    – rakagunarto
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 0:39
  • $\begingroup$ @biophaz3 You can launch multiple instances of Blender (or use multiple computers if you have them) and set each one to render a different range of frames. Or alternatively you can just modify the content of the frames you don't need, for example by hiding all the objects in the scene during that span - this will at least speed up the render time and you can delete the blank images later. It would be nice if there were a built-in feature to skip spans of frames, but for now there are those options. $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 0:43
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ There's probably a way to do it with python if someone wants to explore that. What mentalist said is fairly accurate, although I have a feeling that trying to render using multiple instances of blender on the same computer would slow things down instead of speeding them up. $\endgroup$
    – TARDIS Maker
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 0:44
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I did have another idea that might work for you. You could compress the parts that don't change so they only last one frame in the animation and then when editing stretch them out. Same principal, just different ways of achieving the result. $\endgroup$
    – TARDIS Maker
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 0:45
  • $\begingroup$ @TARDISMaker If for example there were three instances of blender running at once each rendering a frame, yes it would take about three times as long for each instance of Blender to finish rendering its frame. The total required computations are the same. The idea is that you save time by not computing spans of unneeded frames. $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 0:52

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .