Summary

Interesting things happen when we rotate time and make it go left to right on a graph. A line can be said to “go” places, flatness becomes stillness, steepness becomes quickness, and the smoothness of an F-curve becomes the smoothness of an object’s motion.

Did it feel odd interpreting animation from a bunch of line graphs? In a way, F-curves are a bit like sheet music; at first, it’s difficult to see how the notes on a staff create a melody or how the keyframe handles of an F-curve create the movement of an object in space. Yet the information is there, and with some practice, it becomes easy to “sight-read,” hearing music or seeing motion in one’s mind just by looking at its image. Having completed two chapters on just the Graph Editor, you know enough to bend these lines to your will and get creative with your own compositions.

While working with Bezier keyframes, we also studied ways in which the location or rotation...