Explaining the keyframe system (Page 1 of 2)

The Keyframe System

This is a method which makes animation so much easier to make, and a much smoother animation. Before keyframing was invented, frame-by-frame animation was used. This took a long time to make and was imperfect in many ways.

It was designed so the animator would draw each frame, So if I wanted to make an animation with 6 frames that lasted a second, I'd have to draw 6 frames, and the animation would not play smoothly.

I would have to make each frame here individually:

And that would result in this animation:

As I said, it isn't smooth and it took a while to draw each square in the right position.

But keyframing makes things so much easier, you only have to draw two frames to create the same animation which plays smoothly.

And using these two frames, the program can figure out the frames in between by itself, you dont have to draw them yourself. And you can configure this animation to be as smooth as you want.

And you only had to draw two frames! image that you had to draw 30 frames per second for an animation by doing frame by frame, you can see how much time keyframing can save you!

Here is the animation using keyframes:

Much smoother and quicker to make!

Pivot uses frame by frame animation, but Dimp uses keyframing. Looks like Dimp is already ahead of Pivot and the full version hasn't even been released yet

I hope this helps a few people understand keyframing a bit better,

r4z2

Last edited by r4z2 (2009-01-04 21:43:13)

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