Method to create video or GIF from 3d viewer?

Is there any method to automate the rotation in the 3d viewer?

My goal is to make it simpler to either create still image for a GIF or to record a video of portion of the screen. I asked on Twitter and someone suggested a plugin could maybe do it but I thought I would ask here if anyone had any ideas. I see some older posts on the topic but no solutions seem to appear in the replies.

Thanks!

I am quite happy with the 3D viewer as it is.
The first time I saw it, I thought it was a fancy but useless gimmick, but I quickly learned it was actually useful. For example to determine readabily of silkscreen under this header:
image

Recently transparency was added, and in the 240-iest post of:

there is more photo realistic rendering.
Simple rotations are boring, and it seems more logical to leave real animations to an external project, such as for example:

There is not an existing method unfortunately. Related issues:

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I asked the same question a while back, you may have see that thread also. Since the 3D viewer already generates views it would seem possible to drive the viewpoint by (Python) script instead of by mouse, instead of invoking a full render chain. Even a simple flyby path would be nice. I think it was @maui or was it @kammutierspule who thought it was worth looking into.

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We generally need to add the ability to render to an off-screen image, which would be required for these two but also for another requested feature (to create images at a specified resolution different from the display resolution) and it would also be useful for QA testing.

Once we have that, passing in the specified camera location for a command-line render is not that hard. I think that would be the first way this becomes possible. More advanced things such as designing animations inside the viewer GUI are another can of worms.

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Thanks for the insights, Jon.

Quick solution is loading the PCB into FreeCad/Stepup and using FreeCad’s tool…

One click to load PCB, One click to run turntable…

hydro6.mov

And, you can use Kicad’s 3D viewer and keep clicking the rotate button while doing a Screen Recording… easy… No doubt some could quickly write a Plugin to do it…

3dViewer_Clicking.mov

The same can be don for the wrl file, so it has better looks.

Hi only use Eeschema standalone so not familiar with procedure but maybe using craftyjon’s method

at same time with (I am on Ubuntu and use Peek Gif Recorder) Peek or another similar program just capture the portion of screen. Below is picture of Peek window (resizeable) and a gif from that window area. Short gif to keep file size down. Don’t know if it will work do your job.
Peek Peek 2020-08-30 14-04

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