User manual

130 Animating with Keyframes
You’ve now animated the Cog1 layer and the curtains linked to it using keyframes. But the
resulting animation is very similar to the animation in the last lesson: The curtain move-
ment still comes to an abrupt stop at 5:00. You can make the curtains slow to a smoother
stop by using keyframe interpolation.
Changing Keyframe Interpolation
When you recorded a keyframe for the cog rotation value of –300 degrees at 5:00, Motion
automatically set a keyframe at the start of the layer with the original value, 0 degrees.
Therefore, the layer needs to change from 0 degrees at 0:00 to –300 degrees at 5:00. To get
from 0 to –300 over the course of five seconds, Motion calculates, or interpolates, the value
over time between the starting and ending values. You can change the type of interpola-
tion in several ways using the Keyframe Editor.
1 Choose Window > Keyframe Editor. A new window appears below the Timeline. Drag
the divider up to make more room.
Pressing Command-8 will also open the Keyframe Editor.
The animated parameter for the Cog1 layer, Transform.Rotation.Z, appears on the left
side of the window along with the other two Rotation parameters. Next to it is the
value of the parameter at the current frame (–145) and a hollow diamond, indicating
that keyframes exist for this parameter but not at the playhead position.