MSnapshot — Documentation

Requires Blender 5.0 or later.

1. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions.

2. Click the dropdown arrow at the top right of the window and choose Install from Disk…

3. Select MSnapshot-1.0.0.zip. Blender asks you to confirm one permission — Files, because the add-on writes your snapshots to disk.

4. The extension installs and enables itself. Press N in the 3D Viewport and the MSnapshot tab is there, in the sidebar. The same tab is in the Image Editor.

To update later, install the newer zip the same way — it replaces the previous version. To remove it, find MSnapshot in the Add-ons list and uninstall it. Your snapshot images stay on disk; only the list stored in the .blend goes away.

The panel sits in the sidebar of the 3D Viewport and of the Image Editor, so a render can be captured and compared from the render window itself. It holds two sections: Snapshots and Capture.

Every capture is written at your scene's render resolution, including the percentage scale, so snapshots line up pixel for pixel in a comparison.

A capture in Solid, Material Preview or Wireframe shading mirrors the viewport, overlays included. Turn Show Overlays off in the viewport header if you want a frame without the grid, the gizmos and the selection outlines.

The viewer covers the editor it was opened from and shows one snapshot at a time, with a strip of thumbnails along the bottom. The snapshot on screen carries a white frame; the ones chosen as A and B carry their badge.

A sits on one side of the bar, B on the other. Both images are drawn in the same frame, so they stay aligned however you move or turn the split, and the zoom drives the two at once.

The position, the angle and the name visibility are remembered, so the next comparison opens exactly as you left the last one. A and B can never land on the same snapshot: assign one to the side the other already holds and the two simply trade places.

Each capture is written as a PNG in a snapshots folder created next to your .blend file:

snap_20260818_143005.png

Captures taken from a render slot are named render_ instead, and a counter is added if two land in the same second. Until the .blend has been saved once, the folder is created in Blender's temporary directory instead — save your file first if you want to keep the images.

The list itself, with the names you gave, the A and B choice and the state of the bar, is stored per scene inside the .blend. Different scenes hold different lists, and reopening the file brings everything back as long as the PNG files are still where they were.