Playback menu

Found in the Animation menu set.

Playblast

Lets you preview the animation in your scene by outputting a movie or sequence of individual frames, depending on the Playblast Options you have set. (Select Playback > Playblast > to open and set these options.)

The default output formats are .avi (Windows) and .qt (Mac OS X).

See also Playblast an animation.
Cached Playback

Lets you activate Cached Playback, which stores animation in the scene in memory to improve performance and reduce the need for Playblasting.

You can also switch Caching modes, flush the cache, open the Cached Playback preferences and the Cached Playback color window from this menu.

For more information, see Use Cached Playback to increase playback speed.

Controls

Play Controls
This section contains the controls you need to play back a scene. See Playback controls.

Settings

Set Range To
  • Start/End sets the playback range to the Start and End values set in the Playback Range numeric input fields.
  • Min/Max sets the playback range to the first and last keys of the scene.
  • Selected sets the playback range to the range defined by the current selection on the Time Slider.
  • Enabled clips sets the playback range to include the range of all enabled clips.
  • Sound Length sets the playback range to the duration of a sound currently loaded into the Time Slider.
  • Preferences sets the playback range to the values in the Preferences window.
Playback Speed

Lets you set the playback speed or frame rate of your current scene.

Play Every Frame, Free

Sets the playback speed of your current scene to play every frame and not be clamped to a specific maximum frame rate.

Play Every Frame, Max Real-time

Sets the playback speed of your current scene to play every frame and be clamped to a maximum frame rate of 24 frames per second.

Real-time

Sets the playback speed of your current scene to 24 frames per second.

See also Optimize your scene for playback
Playback Looping

To select playback looping options, right-click the Time Slider and select Playback Looping > Once, Oscillate, or Continuous (For a demonstration of this behavior, see Loop in Playback Options.) These are the same options as using the Loop icon in the Playback Options and the Preferences window.

Tip: You can set looping so it either loops the play range or the entire animation using the Loop Play range when stepping frames and keys option in the Time Slider Preferences.
Enable Stepped Preview

Lets you toggle Stepped Preview mode on and off, easily switching curves from Spline to Stepped tangents and back. When on, keys temporarily display with Stepped tangents, so playing back your animation gives a quick view of object positions as they hit each keyframe. When off, the animation plays as usual with the original tangents. See also Stepped tangents.

Playback cache
Turns Playback Caching on and off. Playback caching lets you preview and work on your animation in real time by re-computing only what has been changed in the background of your scene. See Use Cached Playback to increase playback speed for more.

Render

Render Current Frame

Opens the Render View window and renders the current scene.

Display Render Settings
Opens the Render Settings window.
Parent topic: Animation menu set