Outputting Your Animations
(Mac users: There is some additional information to be aware of, so read on after this before you try it.)
 Viewed 662 times <br /><br /><br />Go into the Animation window. (Go from SR:2 - Model to Animation. This menu is along the top menubar). <br /><br />Click on the Scene button (F10). (Below the window, and the end of a row of buttons next to where it says Panels.)<br /><br />Set the end frame of the animation, if you want it longer or shorter than the default 250 frames. If you have just a single image to output and you haven't done an animation, you may want to set the end to just 1 so you don't end up with 250 identical images.<br /><br />Select the format. The default is Jpeg which will output individual Jpeg files for each frame, but there are movie options available too such as Quicktime.<br /><br />Click Anim to render and output the frames. <i>(Mac users, please wait and read the rest first.)</i><br /><br />The default place that Blender outputs the files to is a folder (directory) on the root of the hard drive called "tmp". For Windows PC users this is easy to find. Just open the C: Drive and there it is.<br /><br /><br /><b>Setting a Path <i>(Mac Users please read</i>)</b><br /><br />For Mac users and all those who would like the files to output somewhere else, you will want to change where it says "tmp" (just under the Output tab) to something else. If a Mac user accepts the default this tmp folder, along with the files inside it, will be invisible. <br /><br />Here's a screenshot from the Finder to give you a clue as to what to type in to replace where it says "/tmp/" :<br /><br /><img src=)
Because you are inside the home folder of your particular user account, things outside of it are invisible so you will want a "path" (the path for the computer to follow in order to place your files in the right spot) that will put things where you can find them.
 Viewed 643 times <br /><br /><br />I typed this for a path for my Mac to replace where it says "/tmp/":<br /><br />/Users/davidthrasher/Desktop/output/<br /><br />This tells your Mac to go inside of the Users folder, inside of your home folder (yours will probably have a different name than mine), inside the Desktop folder, and to place your files inside a folder called "output" (the name I gave it). Please note that if you haven't actually created this output folder, the computer will create it for you. Having the forward slash on the end is important or else you will have your desktop littered (if outputting individual images) with files named "output001.jpg, output002.jpg, and so on). You can add to this path if you want to and leaving the slash off the end of the last item will make this the name of your outputted files (such as "dominos001.jpg).<br /><br /><br /><b>Finding Missing Output (Mac users)</b><br /><br />Suppose you <i>did</i> output some animation and you forgot to change "/tmp/" to something else. You aren't stuck but you will have to do something you may not be used to.<br /><br />Because the tmp folder is in the root level of your hard drive, it is somehow not visible to you from your home folder. You will need to use a program called Terminal to access these files and move them. Terminal is inside Applications and in the Utilities folder.<br /><br />Here is what it looks like when it opens:<br /><br /><img src=)
Everything you do in it is command line (you type everything).
When it opens it defaults to your home folder. You will need to go to the root level of your hard drive.
To go to the root level of your hard drive type this:
cd ../../
(Make sure to hit return at the end of all commands to make them happen.)
The command "cd" means change directory (a directory is the same thing as a folder). The "../" means back out of the folder you are in one level. What we told it to do was to back out of your home folder into the Users directory (where it sits) and then to back out onto the root (top level) of your hard drive.
Type ls. The command "ls" means list files.
You should now be able to see that missing tmp directory in amongst the other items.
To be sure it is indeed the correct tmp directory (kind of a common directory name), we should go inside it and look.
Type "cd tmp" (no quotations marks) to go inside it and "ls" to see what is there. You should see your files.
Now to move them somewhere where you can see them. You can use the path I suggested above as the spot to move them to.
Type this with adjustments for what is on your Mac:
mv ../Users/username/Desktop/output/*.jpg
The command mv means move. What we are doing is telling the computer to back out of our current directory back to the root level of the hard drive (../), to go inside the Users folder (Users/) into the home folder (whatever it is called, in my case "davidthrasher/"), into the Desktop folder (Desktop/), and finally move the files into a folder called "output" (output/). The asterisk is a wildcard character which I'm using here to tell it to move all files, no matter what the name is, that end in ".jpg". It beats typing this command in 250 times for each individual file. You can adjust this for other file types, such as using ".mov" to move Quicktime movie files.
Hopefully you won't have to use this too often.
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