Simply defined, animation is a simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames. From one frame
to the next certain values are changed. Almost all values can be animated. A value can be anything from the position, rotation,
scaling, or transparency of an object, to the gamma, gain, or offset in a color correction.
It is a good idea to be familiar with the following animation concepts that are used within Composite:
- Keyframe Animation
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Keyframing is the simplest form of animating an object. It is based on the notion that an object has a beginning state, or
condition, and changes over time in position, form, color, luminosity, or any other property to some different, final state.
Keyframing takes the stance that we only need to show the keyframes or conditions that describe the transformation of the
object, and that all other intermediate positions can be figured out from these—see
Interpolation. You can set keyframes for just about anything that has a value, including an object transform, visual attribute, as well as
any tool attribute. When you set a keyframe to animate a particular parameter, a function curve is created. The curve is a
graph that represents the animation of that parameter over time. You can edit the animation by editing its curve in Animation
Editor or by modifying the attribute values in the Tool UI. You can set keyframes manually or automatically—see
Setting Keyframes .
- Interpolation
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When you keyframe, you determine what an object looks like at specific points in time, while algorithms fill the frames in
between the keyframes. This technique is called in-betweening. The intermediate values between the keyframes are computed
by interpolation. Extrapolation is used to determine the behavior of a channel before the first or after the last keyframe—see
Modifying Interpolation.
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