How To Change The Frame Rate In Blender?

The process of creating animations can be divided up into two sections. One section involves the workflow of creating the animation itself by creating objects with materials, appropriate lighting, and keyframes for the actual animation.

The other part of the process involves setting up the animation itself in terms of its duration, resolution, frame rate and output. One of the most important aspects of any animation is the frame rate, which will define the smoothness of any animation you create.

To change your frame rate in Blender, go to the output tab in the properties panel. Under the format section you should be able to find the option to change the frame rate, and by default it should be set to 24 fps. Click on this option to change from a variety of pre made FPS values as well as the ability to assign your own custom frame rate.

Changing your frame rate is a very simple step in the process, but it’s also a very important one, not only in how it affects our animation, but also when frame rate should be changed.

Changing The Frame Rate Of Any Animation

Regardless of your animation, there are four critical steps to the process that will always be consistent. These are, in no particular order, defining the resolution of your animation, assigning the appropriate frame rates to your video, the total length of your animation in terms of either seconds or frames, and then finally, the outputs that you plan to render your animation to.

All of these options can be changed in the same location of the blender UI. Go to the properties panel, which should be available in the vast majority of workspaces, and then go to the output tab.

This is where we can find all of the options relating to how our rendered images and animations will be processed by Blender.

The output tab is divided into various sections, the first of which is the format section. At the bottom of the format section, you will find a simple menu option for defining your frame rate.

Frame Rate Location

Note that this option only applies to animations requiring more than one frame. If you are rendering a single image, then changing the frame rate will not make a difference.

By default it will be set to 24 fps. This means that Blender will render 24 images for every second of the animation.

If, for example, your animation is 120 frames long, then a frame rate of 24 frames per second means that the total time for the animation would be 5 seconds.

The Frame Rate Options

However, if we change the frame rate to 30FPS, then at the time 40 animation would be reduced to four seconds, but we would have more frames for each individual second and a slightly smoother animation as a result.

If we open up the menu we can see we have a wide variety of options which are also listed below.

  • 23.98
  • 24
  • 25
  • 29.97
  • 30
  • 50
  • 59.94
  • 60
  • 120
  • 240
  • Custom

As you can see, this ranges from the television standard, 23.98 frames per second, to the liquid fluid, 240 frames per second.

If you choose the custom option, you can type in a unique value for your frame rates, although in 99.9% of cases, any of the listed options above will suit your needs.

Why Is It Important To Change Your Frame Rate?

The frame rate controls how many frames will be rendered every second of the animation. The more we increase the value of our frame rate, the smoother the animation will appear.

Different animations are used for different purposes. For example, if you are creating animation for advertising, you will want to match the frame rate for typical TV programming.

Alternatively, you could create animations that would be imported into video games. These animations may be required to run at 30 or 60 frames per second.

If a game is designed to run at 60 frames per second, then it can be ideal for the players’ experience for the cut scenes to also render at 60 frames per second.

When Should You Change The Frame Rate Of The Animation?

Some settings can be changed at any time. For example, the resolution will only impact the animation during the rendering process. So if you ever decide to change the resolution of your animation, you can do that at any point before you click the render button.

However, the same cannot be said for the frame rate, and when you change the frame rate is just as important as what you change it to.

The reason is that your frame rate will affect the speed of your animation and the keyframes used to create it.

Changing Your Frame Rate Changes The Speed Of Your Aniamtion

For example, you have your animation set to 30FPS and add keyframes for a rolling ball. If you assign the keyframes at 0 and 90 for the start and end of the animation, then it will take approximately 3 seconds for the ball to roll across your scene.

If you then decide to change your frame rates from 30FPS to 60FPS and preview your rolling board animation, you will find that the ball rolls at double the speed in the viewport.

The positioning of the keyframes has not been changed. The first keyframe is still at zero, and the second is still at 90. However, we reach 90 frames per second much faster. As a result of the increased frame rate, it now only takes 1.5 seconds to reach that point.

This is why it’s important to change your frame rate as early as possible in the animation process before you have created any keyframes for your models.

Does Increasing The Frame Rate Increase My Render Time?

Another critical question is whether or not your frame rate will play a role in your render times, and the answer is no. However, a byproduct of increasing your frame rate is adding more frames to your animation. The total number of frames is what will increase or decrease your render time.

If one animation runs at 60 frames per second and has a total runtime of two seconds, then a second animation runs at 30FPS for four seconds, it will take the same amount of time to render because they require the same number of frames.

When you render an image, a still shot of your scene is processed. But when you render an animation, every single frame is technically its own image, and they are compiled together in a movie format.

These frames are rendered sequentially to create that movie file and produce the animation because every frame is rendered after the previous one.

Each Frame Takes A Certain Amount Of Time To Render

The more frames that we have, the longer our animation is going to take. This is a very linear process as we continue to render our animation on a frame-by-frame basis.

For example, if a single frame takes one minute to render, and you have 120 frames to be rendered as part of a four-second animation at 30FPS, it will take approximately 120 minutes to complete the process.

However, if we change that to 60 frames per second yet still have our four-second animation, that will total 240 frames. As a result, it will take 240 minutes to render, assuming it still takes one minute to render each frame.

Concurrently decreasing your frame rate will decrease the total amount of time it takes to render your animation considerably. This is another thing to consider when laying out your project specifications. How much time can you invest in the rendering process?

Thanks For Reading

We appreciate you taking the time to read through the article. We hope you found the information you were looking for. If you are interested in learning more about the Blender software, you can check out a few of the articles we have listed below.

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