The Passepartout (French word, difficult to pronounce) is a setting available in Blender for when we are in Camera View Mode.

When viewing a scene in Blender from the camera’s view, the Passepartout is how dark or light the area outside the camera view appears. Here’s an example:

A scene in Blender viewed through the camera with darkened passerpartout effect visible.

Notice how what’s outside the camera view is darker than what will be rendered? That’s the passepartout.

Blender Add-On Spotlight

Adjusting Passerpartout Opacity

The passepartout settings are specific to each camera in a Blender scene and opacity can be adjusted in both Eevee and Cycles. Here’s how.

Select the camera and go to the camera properties tab. Expand the “Viewport Display” tab and find the setting for “Passepartout.”

Passepartout setting set to .926 in Blender camera property settings.

Passepartout is turned on in Blender by default, but we can turn it off by unchecking the box here. We can adjust the darkness (opacity) of the area outside of camera view by changing the Passepartout value. Values are between 0 and 1.

A value of zero shows no passepartout effect. A value of one will make areas outside the camera view completely black.

Below is an example of full passepartout and zero passepartout opacity in the 3D viewport:

A Blender scene with no passepartout effect.
Passepartout: 0
A Blender scene with passepartout effect at full strength.
Passepartout: 1

Whether you want to use the passepartout effect and how dark you want it is entirely up to you. Passepartout opacity was one of the tips mentioned in my latest 50 More Blender Tips video on YouTube. You might want to check that out!

Learn about other camera settings in Blender.

Hope this helped. Thank you and stay creative!

Brandon Stocking

Brandon Stocking

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