Leave the shutter open.

One frame against two seconds

The same street, the shutter open for 2 seconds

2 s, Brightest One frame

Brightest Light trails at full strength, the street sharp Average A true long exposure: moving lights blur and fade

Drag the line and pick a look. The same frame of the same scene, rendered in Cycles: once with the shutter open for 2 seconds, once as a still.

The problem

Blender’s shutter closes after one frame

Motion blur covers at most a frame or two, and a light that crosses the picture in that time leaves a dotted line. A long exposure by hand means rendering every frame, then stacking them in the compositor or another program, and the trails still break where the lights move fast.

ShutterPilot renders every moment the shutter is open, adds moments where things move fast, and gives you one finished picture in Blender.

How it works

1. Select your camera and open Properties > Camera.
2. In Long Exposure, set the Time the shutter stays open and the Look.
3. Click Render Long Exposure. The picture opens in the Image Editor.

What you get

A long exposure that renders like a still

Three looks

Average for a true long exposure, Brightest for light trails over a sharp scene, Stacked for sharp copies like a strobe photo.

Unbroken trails

ShutterPilot measures how far things move on screen and adds moments until a fast light draws a smooth line.

About the time of one still

Your render samples are shared over the moments. On the test street, a 2-second exposure took 1.2 times one still with the same samples.

Cycles and EEVEE

Your compositor develops the finished picture once. Esc stops and keeps what is done, and Ctrl+Z takes the picture back.

Coming soon to Superhive

Blender 5.3 or newer, on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Get started