Animating with the Channel Editor > Animation > Creating Animations >
Setting Tangents

The tangents define the modulation of the the animation curve. You set the tangent mode to determine the behaviour of tangents for an entire curve.

Tangents Mode | Tangents Behaviour
--- | ---
Auto | Tangents are fixed in an horizontal position to prevent the curve from over- or under-shooting keyframes. Moving a keyframe higher or lower than its neighboring keyframes alters their tangents so the curve remains as uniform as possible. The handles of tangents set to Auto are empty circles. Manually moving a keyframe's tangent voids this setting for that tangent. It will now perform as a Fixed tangent.
Fixed | Tangents are fixed in their current position so that moving a keyframe does not alter its tangents nor those of its neighboring keyframes. The handles of tangents set manually are filled circles.
Smooth | Legacy setting to ensure compatibility with previous versions of a setup. Tangents are not locked like when using the Auto setting: they are affected by the movement of adjacent keyframes. There are no other benefit from using this setting.

To change the tangents mode for an entire curve:

1. Click the channel's animation curve to select it. Or click the channel's name.

   (a) Edit Mode box(b) Channel View box(c) Tangents Mode box

2. From the Tangents box, select a tangent mode.

   As soon as you select the tangents mode, it is applied to the selected curve.

To change the tangents mode of selected keyframes:

1. Press Ctrl and select the keyframes for which you want to change the tangents mode.
   TipWhile pressing Ctrl, you can also draw a selection box around the group of keyframes you want to select.
2. From the Tangents Mode box, select a tangents mode.

   The tangents mode changes for the selected keyframes. For example, the following figure shows the results of changing a keyframe's interpolation from Fixed to Auto in an animation curve that uses Bézier interpolation.

   (a) The original curve with edited tangents(b) Selected keyframes

   (a) The same curve, but with the selected keyframes with tangents set to Auto