Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Sequencer Intro

What is the sequencer?

When most people first begin using blender, they assume it's basically a 3D modeling and animation program, but what they often don't know is that it also includes a fairly powerful non-linear video editor. With the sequencer you can take your rendered animations and splice them together, chop them apart, add pretty effects, and do all sorts of fun things that most people would go perform in a completely different application... But we're using Blender, so forget about those other programs.

Why use the sequencer?

The sequencer adds a lot of flexibility to your rendering process, using the sequencer you can basically render the same animation as many times as you'd like from different camera angles, and then load the animations back into the Sequence editor and cut 'n' splice them as you desire. You can achieve some nice effects such as blurring that would probably be less efficient if performed during rendering, also an important feature is the ability to add sound clips to your animations. Another feature is the ability to render out sequences in the same renderfarm that you might have set up for rendering the animations.

Prerequisites

The reason this section is near the end of the wikibook, is probably because in order to get any real use out of the Sequencer you'll probably already want to know how to do basic animation and modeling in blender, if you feel fairly comfortable with those subjects, then let's get started on the next page!

Next Page: Getting Started