Create an Animated Movie in Blender: Part 2

In part two of this series on creating an animated movie in Blender, we will discuss how to properly render your scene, add sound, and prepare your video for export.

Rendering Your Scene

Now that you have done the work, it's time to render your scene. As an animator or designer, you will find that rendering your scene takes time and practice. Blender has a wonderful community that can assist you, with great tips on many assorted topics. 

Rendering an animation involves saving still images of your scene. Here are some tips on rendering your scene fast and with fewer fireflies.

1. Make sure to set up a separate folder for your images.
2. Render all of your scenes as a PNG.
3. Uncheck Reflective & Refractive Caustics.
4. Lower the Bounces to Min 1-Max 10.
5. Use your GPU not CPU to render. (You can check which one you are using in User Settings > System).
6. Use Multiple Importance Sampling (you can find this under the world icon for your HDR, as well as your lamps).
7. Use Clamp Indirect.
8. The higher the Samples, the clearer the scene (be patient—masterpieces take work!).
9. Download the most recent Blender program. I hear Blender 2.79 has a Denoise option.
10. Trial and error—computer systems are different, and scenes are unique. You will need to play around with all of the above until you find the perfect method for you.

Video Editing

Blender comes with an internal video editor which you can use to add sounds and filters and export your scene into a video format. It is easy to use and works seamlessly with your PNG files.

Once you have rendered your scene into separate images, open a new Blender project. Change from the Default menu to Video Editing in your viewport. Start on frame 1, click add > images, and go to the folder containing your still images. Press the A key to select all images, and then open. 

You will now see your animation strip in the video editing viewport. Click play; if it plays too fast, you will need to slow it down by lowering the frame rates. By default, it is on 24. I set mine to 7, as you can see in the above example.

Tip: Use the middle mouse button to zoom into your strip for editing.

Adding Sound

Let's add some sound to our scene. We will need to search for an applause and singing clip sound effect. If you plan on animating often, it would be a good idea to purchase a membership with a sound effect site like AudioJungle. 

There are also a few good sites for royalty-free sound effects. For this scene, let's go to freesound.org. You can sign up for free. I searched for an applause sound along with an opera song clip and saved it in a folder called sound effects. 

Next, we will add our sound effects to the video. As you can see, in the sample above there are separate channels. Add the applause sound effect to start at 1, and then add the song clip followed by the applause sound effect. You will need to move them accordingly to sync them with your frames. Hit play. Once you are happy with the sync and speed, it's time to export.

Tip: Use your right mouse button to move the strips to where you need them.

Video Export & Conclusion

In your video editing viewport, you should have a window for properties. In this window, you will see the frame rate and export folder options. Under output, you will use H264 with an AVI codec, and also use the MP3 format for our audio. Click render, and within a minute or two you will have your final video in your folder. Click play, tweak, and you are done!