Smooth motion with roving keyframes
Using the roving keyframe option in After Effects, you can easily create smooth movement across several keyframes at once. Roving keyframes are keyframes that are not linked to a specific time; their speed and timing are determined by adjacent keyframes. When you change the position of a keyframe adjacent to a roving keyframe in a motion path, the timing of the roving keyframe may change.
Roving keyframes are available only for spatial layer properties such as Position. In addition, a keyframe can rove only if it is not the first or last keyframe in a layer, because a roving keyframe must interpolate its speed from the previous and next keyframes.
- In layer bar mode or in the Graph Editor, set up the keyframes for the motion you want to smooth.
- Determine the beginning and ending keyframes for the range you want to smooth.
- Do one of the following:
-
For every keyframe in the range (except the beginning and ending keyframes), select Rove Across Time in the keyframe menu
. -
Select the keyframes you want to rove and choose Animation > Keyframe Interpolation. Then choose Rove Across Time from the Roving menu.
-
The intermediate keyframes adjust their positions on the timeline to smooth the speed curve between the beginning and ending keyframes.
