You can create many forms of animation in Smoke. For instance, your animation can be as simple as a layer gradually floating across the screen or slowly fading out. In contrast, you can create a cartoon animation in Paint, then composite it as media in Action so that it uses motion paths and camera changes to add to the sense of movement.

Assess the composite and determine what layers and objects need to be animated for the result you want to achieve. If you are animating position and speed, determine whether you want the animation to follow a motion path. See Creating a Motion Path.

Keyframe animation, in its simplest form, involves selecting something in a clip such as a layer or 3D object, setting its properties at one frame, moving to another frame, and changing these properties. The values between the keyframes are determined automatically using interpolation. The values before the first and after the last keyframes are determined automatically using extrapolation. Interpolation determines the rhythm of the animation between keyframes, while extrapolation determines the rhythm before and after the animation begins and ends. You can set the default interpolation and extrapolation used when you animate channels. See Setting Interpolation and Setting Extrapolation.

You can set keyframes automatically when you enter values for a channel in the Channel Editor, or you can set keyframes manually. Typically, it is easier and more efficient to set keyframes automatically, particularly when you position an axis or an object in the scene or when you want an effect that changes frequently over time. After setting several keyframes automatically, adjust some keyframes manually for a more precise effect.

Alternatively, you can use a more advanced technique by setting an object's position based on another's animated property setting using an expression. See Expressions.