Hello and welcome to this lesson called Render and Export Animations.

My name's Mr. Coxhead, and I'll be going through this lesson with you today.

Let's get started.

Our learning outcome for this lesson is I can render and export an animation.

And here are the keywords, render, to generate high quality images from a 3D model or scene by taking into account lighting, materials, and other properties.

Ray tracing, a rendering technique that creates realistic images by simulating the paths of light rays as they interact with objects in a scene.

Export, to save image, animation model or scene data in a file format that can be used by other software and applications.

There are two parts to today's lesson.

In the first part we'll look at how to use rendering, and in the second part we'll look at how to export images and animations.

Let's make a start on the first part of today's lesson, which is using rendering.

Look at the images below.

Can you spot the image created in Blender? Pause the video and see if you can find it.

Okay, welcome back.

And it is this one in the middle.

So 3D models and scenes can be rendered to create highly realistic looking images and animations.

And maybe you spotted that image, maybe you didn't.

But there are a few telltale signs that we can see, such as some of the felt on the table looks a little bit more realistic to the images on the left and the right of that middle image.

Now rendering is the process of calculating how light interacts with objects and their environment within a 3D scene.

So rendered images and animations appear realistic because factors such as shadows, reflections, and lighting are taken into account.

Without rendering, 3D scenes and objects appear with only basic colours, simplified shading, and limited lighting, Unrendered scenes look far less realistic.

To render an image, a computer must perform a series of complex calculations.

in stages.

A computer must read the scene data, calculate the light, and then draw the image.

In the first stage of rendering scene data is read by the computer.

This includes the shape and colour of objects, the light source positions and settings, and the camera position and settings.

Once the calculations are complete, the data can be used in the next stage to work out how light interacts with the scene.

In the second stage of rendering, a render engine is used to work out how light bounces around the scene and eventually reaches the camera.

There are two render engines available in Blender, EEVEE or Cycles.

And which engine is chosen to render a scene depends on the requirements of the project and the computer hardware available.

The Cycles render engine can produce extremely high quality photorealistic renders.

The Cycles render engine uses a technique called ray tracing.

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates the paths of light rays as they interact with objects in a scene.

It traces how these rays interact with objects, bouncing, refracting, or being absorbed until they eventually reach the camera.

Although ray tracing with Cycles produces the best renders, it requires powerful hardware and renders can take a very long time.

The EEVEE render engine does not use ray tracing like Cycles.

EEVEE uses a technique to approximate how light behaves and how the image should look.

And EEVEE produces lower quality renders compared to Cycles, as you can see from those two images, but it is much faster and requires less powerful computer hardware.

In the final stage of rendering, information from the previous steps is used by the computer to change the colour of each pixel to form the final rendered image For an animation, this process is repeated for each frame to render a series of still images that are replayed in sequence.

It is easy to select a render engine in Blender, click on the render properties icon, and then select EEVEE or Cycles.

And here we are at the first check for understanding and the question is, the rendering technique that simulates the paths of light rays in the scene is known as A, rasterization.

B, shading or C, ray tracing.

Pause the video and think of your answer.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's take a look at the answer to this question.

and the answer is ray tracing of course.

Well done if you got that correct.

Don't worry if you didn't.

You can always go back and have a look at some of the previous content that we've covered.

And here we are at the second check for understanding question.

And it's a true or false question this time.

So here we go.

Cycles is much faster and requires less powerful computer hardware to render a scene than EEVEE.

Is this true or false? Pause the video and have a think of your answer.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's take a look.

I hope you managed to think of your answer and the answer is false.

Okay, why is this? Well, EEVEE produces lower quality renders compared to Cycles, but it is much faster and requires less powerful computer hardware.

So well done if you remembered that.

And if you didn't, don't worry.

You can always go back and have a look at some of the previous contents.

Well done.

Let's move forward.

And here we are on task A, and this is the first task of the lesson.

So we're going to use the EEVEE and Cycles render engines to view render previews of a bouncy ball.

Part one of the question is to load the example bouncy ball Blender scene.

Make sure you're in camera view and the rendered display is enabled.

Part two is to play the bouncy ball animation, and then switch between EEVEE and Cycles render engines.

Have a think about what you notice about the renders.

Part three is to stop the animation and take a screenshot of whichever render engine is in use.

Switch to the other render engine without replaying the animation and take another screenshot.

And what do you notice about the renders this time? And a tip, is you can change the material colours and lighting in the example scene if you would like to personalise the animation.

So feel free to experiment and get used to the animation and have a little play around in there and see what you can do.

Okay, good luck with this task.

I hope you enjoy it.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, welcome back.

I hope you enjoyed that task.

Let's take a look at some example answers.

So in the first part, we were asked to load the bouncy ball scene in Blender.

And make sure we were in camera view and the rendered display is enabled.

So hopefully manage to do that just fine.

And here we have Aisha and she enabled the camera view and activated the rendered display preview.

Don't forget if you change the colour of the ball and the lighting, your scene may look different than this one.

Part two of task A was to play the bouncy ball animation and switch between EEVEE and Cycles render engines.

What do you notice about the renders? So here we have the first one, which was rendered in EEVEE.

And the second one we have, which is in Cycles.

And Asia has noticed that the Cycles preview looks more pixelated than the EEVEE preview.

What did you notice? Well, this is because EEVEE is faster at rendering than Cycles and it can render each frame with more detail before needing to render the next frame, which is why the Cycles render looks a little bit pixelated.

It hasn't had time to render each frame individually.

Well done if you spotted that difference.

It's likely that your animations may look different depending on your hardware that you've used and what applications you've got open.

Part three of task A was to stop the animation, take a screenshot of whichever render is in use, switch to the other render engine, and take another screenshot.

And what did you notice? So here we have a screenshot from when the EEVEE engine is selected and we have a screenshot from when the Cycles render engine is selected.

What did you notice about the difference? Well, Aisha, she's noticed that once Cycles had time to render the still image, it produced a much higher quality image than EEVEE.

And I think that image really kind of demonstrates that.

The Cycles picture does look a lot more realistic than the one in EEVEE.

And remember, the performance of the hardware used will affect the quality and time taken to render images.

Well done for completing that task.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Don't forget about the different engines of EEVEE and Cycles, we'll be needing these as we go out through the rest of the lesson.

Well done.

If you need to go back and look through some previous content, that's absolutely fine, but we're gonna move on to the next part of the lesson just now.

Let's move on.

And we're onto the second part of the lesson, which is exporting images and animations.

Now, Aisha is wondering if animations made in Blender can be played on other devices.

And Jacob's thinking there must be a way.

He's watched lots of 3D animated films on TV.

To play animations on other devices.

They can be exported from Blender in various formats.

And that's what we're gonna take a look at at this part of the lesson.

So settings for exporting images and animations can be accessed by clicking on this icon.

And this is the Output properties icon, and you'll find it over to the right hand side normally of Blender, and here you can access all those settings.

There are many settings that can be adjusted in the Output Properties panel.

In this lesson, we'll be focusing on adjusting some of the settings in the following panels: the format, frame range and output.

Now the format settings such as the image resolution and frame rate can be adjusted.

In this case, we can select the full HD image resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels.

But this can be adjusted depending on the output of the format that you need for your project.

And we could pick 4K, we could even pick eight K if it was needed.

Just be careful because the bigger the image, the more computational power that you'll be needing to render that image.

A frame rate of 24 frames per second is standard for films and animations.

And this can be adjusted, but again, be careful because if you change the frame rate after you've made an animation, you may actually make it faster or slower.

So just be careful once you set the frame rate, that should be set before making the animation.

Now frame range settings such as the start and end of an animation can also be set up.

So we've got the start frame and the end frame.

And by changing the settings, it's possible to export a full animation or a shorter selection to create a shorter clip.

Output settings such as the destination folder, and the file format should be selected.

A suitable destination folder for the export should be selected.

This helps to keep everything well organised and it makes it much easier to find after you've exported the files.

And the export file format should be selected from the dropdown menu.

Now, Jacob's noticed that there are so many file formats to choose from.

And how does he know which one to use? Well, the best format will depend on how the file will be used.

But in general, the PNG file format is a good choice for a still image of a single frame.

And Jacob's asked a question about exporting animation videos.

Now, there are a few ways to export animation videos in Blender, but a simple way is to export using the FFmpeg video format that we can select here on the right hand side.

An additional encoding menu will appear when the FFmpeg format is selected.

In the encoding menu, the MPEG-4 container should be selected.

And you can select that from the dropdown menu.

The default settings in the video menu should be fine to use.

The image or animation is ready to be exported once the output settings have been selected.

To export a rendered image or animation, click Render in the top menu bar, click on Render Image or Render Animation.

If Render Animation is selected, the animation will be found in the destination folder, set in the output properties.

As you can see here.

If Render Image is selected, the image can be saved into the destination folder once rendering is complete.

So to do that, we have to click on save.

We select the folder and we can save it into that folder.

And we're onto the check for understanding questions of this part of the learning cycle.

So firstly, which icon would you click on to access the output settings? Is it A, B, or C? Pause the video and see if you can remember which icon is correct.

Welcome back.

Let's take a look at the answer to the question.

And the answer is A, well done if you got that correct.

And if you didn't, don't worry.

You can always go back and have a look at some of the previous content.

Let's move on to the next question.

And this question is exported images and animations will be found.

A, in a random place wherever the computer decides.

B, in the destination folder, set in the output properties.

C, always in a folder called Exported Blender files.

Pause the video and see if you can think which answer is correct.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's take a look at the answer to this question.

And exported images, animations will be found in the destination folder set in the output properties.

So well done if you got that correct.

And don't worry if you didn't, please feel free to go back through the previous content and just go through and check your understanding.

Well done.

Let's move on.

And we have another check for understanding question.

Which of the file formats below is suitable to export an animation? Is it A, PNG, B, BMP, or C FFmpeg.

Pause the video and think of your answer.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's take a look at the answer to this question.

And the answer is an FFmpeg is suitable to export an animation.

So well done if you got that correct.

And don't worry if you didn't.

Please feel free to go back over some of the previous content and check your understanding.

Well done.

Let's move on to the next task.

We're onto task B.

You've done a brilliant job so far.

This is the final task of the lesson.

So let's take a look at what we need to do.

And we're going to export a rendered image and animation using the EEVEE render engine.

And you can use the bouncy ball Blender file provided, or you can use your own Blender animation if you have one.

To export a rendered file, adjust the settings in the Blender output property panel accordingly.

The first part of the task is to export a rendered still image.

The second part of the task is to export a rendered animation.

And here's a tip, if you're using your own animation, make sure the animation is no longer than five seconds and use the EEVEE engine.

This will make sure that it doesn't take too long to render and that you have chance to complete the task.

Have a go at that task.

Good luck with it.

I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you back in a moment for the answers, pause the video and have a go.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's take a look at some of the answers to the question.

Okay, so I hope you enjoyed this activity.

Here we've got Jacob, and he created a folder called "Blender Renders." And exported a rendered image of the bouncy ball into it.

He set the render engine to EEVEE, and the image was in PNG format and it looks pretty good.

And here we can see just how he laid out his folder, his file inside the folder, and then an image that he rendered there in EEVEE.

So well done.

I hope your image looks as good as Jacob's too.

The second part of the task was to export the rendered image, adjust the settings in the Blender output properties panel accordingly.

And here we've got Jacob again.

And he set the output path to the Blender under folder he created.

And he set the file format to FFmpeg.

And remember the encoding to MPEG-4.

For all the other settings the defaults were fine.

The exported MP4 file was easy to find in the "Blender Renders" folder.

And it's fun to play the animation outside of Blender.

And here we can see he's now got the two files inside of his folder.

So it's very well organised and we can see his animation there as well, which looks great.

So well done.

You've done a brilliant job in this lesson.

We've come a long way learning about how to render using both EEVEE and Cycles.

And how to export images and animations.

You've done a brilliant job.

There's some tricky content this lesson.

Let's take a look at the summary.

So 3D models and scenes can be rendered to create highly realistic looking images and animations.

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates the paths of lights as they interact with objects in a scene.

Animations and images can be rendered and exported in various formats.

So I just wanted to say to you that you've done a brilliant job this lesson.

I really hope you've enjoyed using Blender, animating and rendering those images and those animations.

Good luck, please keep practising your Blender skills and I hope to see you back in some more lessons soon.