blender-manual/manual/editors/graph_editor/introduction.rst

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Introduction

The Graph Editor allows users to adjust animation curves over time for any animatable property. F-Curves.

The Graph Editor.

Main Region

The curve view allows you to view and edit F-Curves. An F-Curve has several key parts:

Curve

The curve defines the value (Y axis) of the property over time (X axis).

See F-Curves.

Keyframes

Keyframes are user-defined values on certain frames and are represented by little black squares which become orange if selected.

See Keyframes for more information.

Handles

Each keyframe has a handle that helps determine the values of the curve between keyframes. These handles are represented by extruding lines with circular ends and can be selected and modified to change the shape of the curve.

See F-Curve Handles for more information.

A simple curve.

See also

See F-Curves for more info.

Navigation

As with most editors, you can:

Pan

Pan the view vertically (values) or horizontally (time) with click and drag MMB.

Zoom

Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel Wheel.

Scale View

Scale the view vertically or horizontally Ctrl-MMB.

In addition, you can also use the scrollbars to pan and zoom the view.

Playhead & 2D Cursor

Graph Editor 2D Cursor.

The current frame is represented by a blue vertical line called the Playhead.

As in the Timeline, you can change the current frame by LMB-dragging in the scrubbing area at the top of the editor.

The blue horizontal line is called the 2D Cursor. This can be enabled or disabled via the View Menu or the View Properties panel.

These two lines can be used as a reference for moving and scaling keyframe handles.

See also

See Graph Editor’s Graph editor view properties.

View Axes

For Actions the X axis represents time, the Y axis represents the value to set the property.

Depending on the selected curves, the values have different meaning: for example rotation properties are shown in degrees.

Header

View Menu

Realtime Updates

When transforming keyframes, changes to the animation data are propagated to other views.

Show Cursor

Toggles the visibility of the Playhead & 2D Cursor.

Show Sliders

A toggle option that shows the value sliders for the channels. See the Fig. Fig dope sheet action.

Auto-Merge Keyframes

Automatically merge nearby keyframes.

Show Markers

Shows the markers region. When disabled, the Markers Menu is also hidden and markers operators are not available in this editor.

Show Extrapolation

Toggles the visibility of the extrapolated portion of curves.

Show Handles Ctrl-H

Toggles the display of a curve’s handles in the curve view.

Only Selected Curve Keyframes

Only shows the keyframes markers on the selected curves.

Only Selected Keyframes Handles

Only shows the handles for the currently selected curves.

Frame All Home

Reset viewable area to show all keyframes.

Frame Selected NumpadPeriod

Reset viewable area to show selected keyframes.

Go to Current Frame Numpad0

Centers the area to the Playhead.

See also

• See Graph Editor’s Graph editor view properties.

• See Timeline’s Timeline view menu.

Preview Range

Set Preview Range P

Interactively define frame range used for playback. Allows you to define a temporary preview range to use for animation playback (this is the same thing as the Playback Range option of the Timeline editor header).

Clear Preview Range Alt-P

Clears the preview range.

Set Preview Range to Selected Ctrl-Alt-P

Sets the preview range to playback the selected NLA strips.

Markers Menu

Markers are used to denote frames with key points or significant events within an animation. Like with most animation editors, markers are shown at the bottom of the editor.

Markers in animation editor.

For descriptions of the different marker tools see Editing Markers.

View Controls

View controls.

Show Only Selected

Only include curves related to the selected objects and data.

Show Hidden

Include curves from objects/bones that are not visible.

Show Only Errors

Only include curves and drivers that are disabled or have errors. Useful for debugging.

Filter (funnel icon)

Only include curves with keywords contained in the search field.

Multi-Word

Fuzzy/Multi-Word name filtering matches word snippets/partial words, instead of having to match everything. It breaks down the search text based on whitespace placement. e.g. “lo ro” will filter all location and rotation, while “lc rt” will not work.

Type Filter

Filter curves by property type.

Filtering Collection

Select a collection to only show keyframes from objects contained in that collection.

Sort Data-Blocks

Objects data-blocks appear in alphabetical order, so that it is easier to find where they occur (as well as helping to keep the animation of related objects together in the NLA for instance).

If you find that your playback speed suffers from this being enabled (it should only really be an issue when working with lots of objects in the scene), you can turn this off.

Normalize

Normalize curves so the maximum or minimum point equals 1.0 or -1.0. When enabled, the view scales to fit the normalized curves and the outer range is darkened.

If a preview range is defined, keyframes within the range are normalized, while the rest is scaled proportionally.

Auto

Automatically recalculate curve normalization on every curve edit. This is useful to prevent curves from jumping after tweaking it.

F-Curve Controls

F-Curve controls.

Proportional Editing O

See Proportional Editing.

Auto Snap

Auto snap the keyframes for transformations.

• No Auto-Snap

• Frame Step

• Second Step

• Nearest Frame

• Nearest Second

• Nearest Marker

Pivot Point

Pivot point for rotation.

Bounding Box Center

Center of the selected keyframes.

2D Cursor

Center of the 2D Cursor. Playhead + Cursor.

Individual Centers

Rotate the selected keyframe Bézier handles.

Create Ghost Curves (framed F-Curve icon)

Creates a picture with the current shape of the curves.

Sidebar Region

The panels in the Sidebar region.

View Tab

View Tab.

Show Cursor

Toggles the visibility of the 2D Cursor.

Cursor X, Y

Moves the cursor to the specified frame (X value) and value (Y value).

Cursor to Selection

Places the 2D Cursor at the midpoint of the selected keyframes.

See also

Graph Editor’s Graph view menu.

Further Tabs

F-Curve Tab

See F-Curve.

Modifiers Tab

See F-Curve Modifiers.