Having explained what Record Previews are, let’s look at the specific settings stored by each table when a record is created, starting with the Camera List. When you add a camera to the table, The View Keeper captures a group of settings and saves them thereby making those settings unique to that camera.
Typically, these are settings you’d find in Blender itself, but The View Keeper allows each camera to have its own configuration. For instance, instead of using the same settings throughout your project, you can assign different settings to different cameras, letting you render for specific needs without constantly reconfiguring.
There are two main settings in Blender that get saved whenever a new Camera Record is created:
- Format Settings
- Output Settings
Format Settings #
Format Settings are located in Blender’s Output Properties (the first set of options you see when you open the Output Properties panel). These settings control the dimensions of your renders, letting you choose a landscape format for platforms like YouTube, a vertical format for Instagram Reels or TikTok, or a square format for something like an ArtStation thumbnail. You can even crop your renders or specify a certain area to render.
By default, Blender only lets you set one resolution at a time, meaning you’d have to render a frame, go back, adjust the settings, render again, and repeat until you get all the shots you need. A tedious process for those producing content for multiple platforms.
With the Camera List Table in The View Keeper, you can store unique format settings (like resolutions) for each camera. For example, you can save one camera’s format for Instagram Reels (vertical) and another for YouTube (landscape), and then render both formats without constantly switching settings. Just remember to create or update the camera record whenever you change the format settings so your changes are saved.
Output Settings #
Just like Format Settings, Output Settings are found in the Blender Scene Output Properties Panel (the last group of settings in that tab). These settings tell Blender where to save your file and in which format (e.g., PNG, JPEG, etc.). By default, you can only render to one location and format at a time. However, with The View Keeper’s Camera List Table, you can render from one camera record to one folder and with one file format, and another camera record to a different folder and a different file format.
Keep in mind there’s some extra context needed to ensure multi-format and multi-location rendering works correctly. We’ll cover that in the Animation/Multi-Rendering and Alternative Rendering sections.
