are there any tricks to speed up animation preview?

Hi,
I have a scene with something like 50 animated objects, and other than that there is very little.
I have a relatively week hardware, at least for a while.
My problem is that I can’t get the animation playing on the 3D pane faster than 4fps - the animation is
24 fps, and I don’t think I could use a much lower value without significantly sacrificing the animation.
I am rendering on a cloud service, so it’s not an issue, I just need to preview the animation while modeling, so I
was wandering whether there are any tricks or tips to make it run much faster. for instance, i did notice
that it typically runs much faster when the 3D pane is on full screen mode, but still not nearly fast enough…
Thank you

You can render it under the OpenGPL feature. What it will do is create a playblast of the animation that you previewing. Of course it only applies under the 3d View window.

Hide anything not required
Disable any unneccessary modifiers (Scene / Simplify options)
Wireframe or bounding box mode for unimportant objects
In timeline disable playback options you don’t require
In timeline set playback to Frame Dropping


frame dropping was a life saver - thanks !

Is your objects subsurfed? No sub surf for preview only render or get a build with open subdiv.

Do the entire animation layout using “OpenGL Preview” renders until you have the entire sequence fully worked-out. (Try to get all the way to “final cut.”)

This process will produce a set of frame-files, that can then be played-back at what will then be normal speed. The process of producing these frame sequences won’t be in real time, but it will be quick … a second or much-less per frame. Hopefully, your hardware is then fast enough to render the resulting sequence at normal speed.

These preview frames will correspond exactly to the beautifully-rendered and composited frames that will eventually replace them. (Use the “Stamp” feature to label the preview frames so that you can identify them frame-by-frame and file-by-file in your “final cut” edit.)