Flipbook for Blender: Realtime Viewport Playback With One Click

Flipbook gives you a fast, independent playback preview straight from the 3D viewport. Hit the button, let it cache, watch it play.

What It Does

Blender Flipbook works just like the flipbook feature in Houdini or playblast in Maya. It captures your viewport as an image sequence and immediately plays it back so you can check timing, spacing, and motion without committing to a full render.

After rendering, the flipbook opens automatically in a lightweight browser-based player or your system’s default sequence player. You get smooth playback, a scrub bar, frame stepping, and FPS control. Re-render and it quietly updates the existing player without needing to reload files.

Features

Viewport Capture

• Captures whatever shading mode you're using: Solid, Material Preview, or Rendered (Cycles not supported)

• Renders from the Active Camera, Current View, or any named camera in the scene

• Fully respects your viewport shading, overlays, and lighting setup

Use your preferred player or a browser-based player

• Opens automatically when rendering finishes, no extra steps needed

• Re-renders update the player without needing to manually reload frames

• Point it at any player on your machine:  DJV, RV, Chaos, etc

• If you don’t have a player, the addon uses your browser to create one locally (no internet connection required)

• Passes the first frame path directly so sequence-aware players load the whole sequence automatically

Flexible Output

• JPEG (small, fast), PNG (lossless), or EXR DWAA (VFX pipeline)

• Custom resolution and percentage scale

• Saves to a flipbook/ folder next to your .blend file automatically, or choose any folder you like

• Custom frame range, or just use the scene range

Automatic Backup

• Optional automatic backup saves a numbered copy of your .blend file before every render (myproject_flipbook_backup_001.blend, _002, etc.)

• Overwrite protection with a confirmation dialog (can be turned off once you're comfortable)

Requirements

• Blender 5.0 or newer (working on older versions)

• No external dependencies - everything runs on what Blender already ships with

• Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux

How to install

5.0+

1. Download the addon from the superhive downloads page

2. Drag and drop the .zip file directly into your blender project

4.0 - 4.9

1. Download the addon from superhive downloads page

2. In Blender, navigate to Edit>Preferences>Addons

3. Click the down arrow in the top right corner of the window

4. Click install from disk

5. Select the zip file from wherever you downloaded it. 

1. Open the N-Panel in the 3D Viewport and go to the Blender Flipbook tab

2. Set your format, resolution, camera source, and frame range

3. Hit Render Flipbook

4. The player opens automatically. 

5. Make changes in Blender, render again, and the player updates with your new frames

Known Issues

1. While the addon supports resolutions higher than 3840x2160, it’s not recommended, as it can cause render to crash on more complex scenes

2. Cycles viewport rendering is not supported. If you want a rendered viewport render, it’s best to use Eevee. 

3. When “transparent” is enabled in the render properties panel, the addon will render much slower. It’s best to disable transparency in the render properties panel when rendering with Eevee using Flipbook. 

4. The “Output” tab must have the media type set to “Image” before flipbook can work. This is usually set by default but if you’ve done a few real renders you’ll have to set it back. Otherwise you will get an error.