Window > Playblast

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Window > Playblast

Previews the current animation. When you playblast an animation, the Playblast outputs a series of individual frames in the format specified in the Image File Output settings of Render Settings. The default Playblast image formats are the following: .avi (Windows), .iff (Linux), and .qt (Mac OS X).

By default, Playblast previews the animation using the active view and the current time range in the Time Slider to determine the animation range. The default scale is 0.5, which makes the Playblast image resolution one quarter the size of the active view. For more information on Playblast Options, see Window > Playblast > .

Note

If the Render offscreen option is not on in the Playblast Options, source images for the movie file are taken directly from the screen display. If the display area has other windows on top of it, the resulting movie file is affected.
Playblast creation calls upon the system movie libraries to generate the selected compression scheme. Autodesk cannot guarantee the reliability or success of all the formats or encoding schemes available to your operating system. (See also Codec support.) For QuickTime^®, ensure that you have properly installed the most recent version.

Note

Playblast is supported for stereoscopic cameras. However, you must install an external stereoscopic player to preview the animation instead of using FCheck. Otherwise, if you use a viewer without stereoscopic support, the viewer only displays the last camera rendered out instead of both the left and right stereoscopic camera output.

After installing the external stereoscopic player, you must enter the application path under Applications preferences in Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences. Use %f to point to the images/movie for the left camera, and %f2 to point to the images/movie for the right camera.

Related topics

Playblasting animation

Window > Playblast >

Opens the Playblast Options window.

Time Range

Lets you set whether to playblast the entire time range represented in the Time Slider, or set your own start and end frames for the playblast.

Time Slider: When on, the playblast is based on the current time range in the Time Slider.
Start/End: When on, the playblast is based on the start and end time you set using the Start Time and End Time fields.

Use Sequence Time: When on, the playblast is based on Sequence Time in the Sequence Editor. (See also Sequence timeline.)
View: When on, Playblast displays the images using the default viewer. When off, blasted images are saved to file according to the Movie file setting in the Playblast Options window.
Show Ornaments: This displays the camera name and the axes at the origin and bottom left of the view.
Render offscreen: Lets you playblast using an offscreen rendering buffer instead of a screen grab. For example, you can playblast using the script editor without having the Maya scene view open.
Multi-Camera Output: Use this option with the stereo camera to capture the output of both the left and right cameras. If your scene view is in stereo mode, and you select the Save to file attribute, selecting this option sends a set of images/movies to disk.
Format: Select the format for the movie output.
Encoding: Select the codec you want to use for the movie output. This list updates based on the selected Format. See Codec support for additional important information.
Quality: Lets you control the compression value for the movie output. Results can vary depending on the codec you select in the Encoding drop-down list. Quality values can range from 0 to 100, with a default value of 50.

Display Size

There are three options for controlling the resolution of the playblast images that are created. In each of these three cases, the final size of the images will be further scaled by the amount in the Scale option.

From Window: Makes the Playblast images the same size as the Active view.
From Render Settings: Makes the Playblast images the size specified by the Image Size section of the Common tab of the Window > Rendering Editors > Render Settings window.
Custom: Activates two fields below the Display Size option that allow you to specify the Width and Height of the Playblast images.

Scale: Whereas the Display Size option gives you control over the size as well as the aspect ratio of the images, the Scale option lets you further refine the size of the Playblast images by applying a scale factor to the resolution specified in the Display Size option.

The default is 0.5, which is one-quarter the size of the Display Size (0.5 of the width and 0.5 of the height).
Frame Padding: For the IFF Format, specifies the number of zeros with which to pad the file names of the images you want to playblast. This lets you customize your image file names for their intended playback tools.

By default, Frame Padding is set to 4 to support Fcheck.

NoteYou can also use the -framepadding flag for the playblast MEL command to set the number of zeros with which to pad the file names of the images you want to playblast.
Remove Temporary Files: Turn on this option to delete the temporary files created by playblasting when you end your Maya session. Temporary files are written to the C:\temp directory on Windows, and /var/tmp/ or /tmp/ on Linux, and under Documents/temp in your Home folder on Mac OS X.
Save to File: By default the movie or image files are written to a temporary directory on your system. Turn this option on if you want to save the movie to a specific location. When on, an entry field lets you enter a filename. You can also click a Browse button to locate an appropriate directory. If the Output Format selection is Movieplayer, the file saved is in Movieplayer format.
Movie File: If you use the Browse button to specify the file name for your Playblast image(s), a full path name will be specified.

If a filename with no path is specified for the movie file, the location of the file image(s) is set by your current project setting. If the Images location is specified in the current project window ( File > Project > Edit Current), the Playblast image(s) is created in the Images location. Otherwise, the images are created in the default location of the project.

Playblasting FCheck files

See Overview of FCheck in the FCheck chapter of the Rendering Utilities guide.