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blender keyframes not playing

HeyBraza points at the frame range, the selection and the dope sheet so you can see which one is swallowing your animation.

HeyBraza in a real session - not this exact fix.

keyframes that scrub fine but won't play back are nearly always a range or selection problem, not a broken animation. blender only shows keys for the selected object, and only plays between start and end.

or do it yourself

  1. 1select the animated object - the timeline only shows keyframes for what's selected, so an empty timeline usually means nothing is.
  2. 2check the frame range in the timeline header: 'start' and 'end' must actually contain your keys.
  3. 3look for a key sitting on frame 0 - playback starts at frame 1 by default, so anything before it never plays.
  4. 4press spacebar in the viewport (not over the properties panel) to play, and watch the playhead actually move.
  5. 5if it moves but the object doesn't, open the dope sheet and confirm the keys belong to this object's action, not to one that got pushed down in the nla editor.

let HeyBraza do this with you

HeyBraza is a tiny on-screen guide that points at the right buttons and talks you through it, on windows and mac.

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common questions

why does it animate in the viewport but not in the render?

you rendered a single image. use render > 'render animation' (ctrl + f12), and check the output frame range matches.

my object jumps instead of moving smoothly - why?

the keyframe interpolation is set to 'constant'. select the keys, press t and pick 'bezier'.

more fixes