Troubleshooting 'Rendering Only One Frame' Issue in Blender Cycles Render Engine
When using Blender's Cycles render engine, encountering an issue where your animation only renders one frame can be frustrating. However, this problem is often due to a few key settings and configuration issues. Below are detailed steps and causes to help you troubleshoot and resolve this problem.
Common Causes and Solutions
1. Render Settings
Start and End Frames: Ensure that the start and end frames for your animation are correctly set. In Blender, you can adjust the Frame Step to control how many frames are rendered between animation keyframes. Default settings typically work well, but if you've changed these settings, double-check your values.
2. Output Settings
Output Format: Verify that your output format supports animation. If using a single image format like JPEG or PNG, the render engine will only save the first frame. Ensure you are using an animated format like AVI or an image sequence.
Output Path: Make sure the output path is correctly configured and that you have the necessary permissions to write to that directory. Issues here can prevent the rendering engine from saving additional frames.
3. Render Animation Command
Ensure that you are using the correct render command for animation. The Render Animation option (Ctrl F12) will render all frames in the specified range, whereas the Render Image command (F12) will only render the current frame. Incorrect command usage can lead to incomplete render passes.
4. Animation Data
Keyframes: Verify that your objects have keyframes set at the start and end of the animation range. Without keyframes, the render will only show the first frame. Check your Action Editor or Dope Sheet for keyframe assignments.
5. Scene and View Layer
Active Scene: Ensure you are rendering the correct scene. If your project has multiple scenes or view layers, make sure the scene you want to render is selected in the scene selection tab.
Visibility: Check that the objects you want to animate are visible and not disabled for rendering in the Outliner.
6. Render Settings
Render Engine: Confirm that you are using the Cycles render engine. Accidentally switching to another engine, such as Eevee, can affect the render results.
7. System Resources
Memory Issues: Lack of system memory during rendering can cause rendering to fail. Monitor your system's resource usage during rendering to avoid memory-related errors.
Summary
To resolve the issue, double-check your render settings, output format, and ensure you are using the correct command to render your animation. If everything seems correct, consider restarting Blender or checking for any updates or reported bugs related to your version.
By following these steps, you should be able to troubleshoot and fix the issue of your animation only rendering one frame.
References:
Blender Official Documentation - Cycles Render Engine Blender Stack Exchange - Rendering Animating an Object in One Frame Only