Animating is a very time-consuming process and one of the longest tasks in some pipeline of production. To speed up the artist Blender offers keyboard shortcuts that can save you insignificant amounts of time, in doing things like playback, frame rate or even view frame by frame.

Main

A – toggle frame skipping.
P toggle ping-pong.
↵ Enter start playback (when paused).
Numpad 0 toggle looping.
Numpad . manual frame stepping.

Playback speed

1 NumPad 60 fps
2 NumPad 50 fps
3 NumPad 30 fps
4 NumPad 25fps
⇧ Shift +4 NumPad 24 fps
5 NumPad 20 fps
6 NumPad 15 fps
7 NumPad 12 fps
8 NumPad  10 fps
9 NumPad 6 fps
/ NumPad 5 fps

- slow down playback.

+ speed up playback

Frame by Frame

step back one frame.
step forward one frame.
step back 10 frames.
step forward 10 frames.

Shift+↓ use backward playback.
Shift+↑ use forward playback.
Shift hold to show frame numbers.
LMB scrub in time.
Ctrl++ zoom in
Ctrl + - zoom out
Esc quit

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I compiled a list of software and services that I use to improve my workflow, here is the link to the list.

Darryl Dias

I’m Darryl. I’m a 3D Artist, Programmer and Linux enthusiast. On this site I share my insights, tips and tricks, tutorials, methods and best practices.