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Chapter 21: Understanding Animation and Keyframes

Figure 21.16 shows one rendered frame of the television with the IFL file applied.

FIGURE 21.16
IFL files are commonly used to animate materials via a list of images such as the image on the front of this television.

Working with Previews

More than likely, your final output will be rendered using the highest-quality settings with all effects
enabled, and you can count on this taking a fair amount of time. After waiting several days for a sequence to
render is a terrible time to find out that your animation keys are off. Even viewing animation sequences in
the viewports with the Play Animation button cannot catch all problems.
One way to catch potential problems is to create a sample preview animation. Previews are test animation
sequences that render quickly to give you an idea of the final output. The Tools ➪ Grab Viewport menu
includes several commands for creating, renaming, and viewing previews. The rendering options available
for previews are the same as the shading options available in the viewports.

Creating previews
You create previews by choosing Tools ➪ Grab Viewport ➪ Create Animated Sequence File to open the
Make Preview dialog box, shown in Figure 21.17.
In the Make Preview dialog box, you can specify what frames to include using the Active Time Segment or
Custom Range options. You can also choose Every Nth Frame or select a specific frame rate in the Playback
FPS field. The image size is determined by the Percent of Output value, which is a percentage of the final
output size. The resolution is also displayed.
The Display in Preview section offers a variety of options to include in the preview. These options
include Geometry, Shapes, Lights, Cameras, Helpers, Space Warps, Particle Systems, Active Grid, Safe
Frames, Frame Numbers, Background, and Bone Objects. Because the preview output is rendered like

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