The Timeline allows you to scrub through the animation, display timecodes where the keys were created, and display the animation duration in seconds. You can also adjust the settings of the final animation duration and speed.
The Timeline lets you rescale the keyframe data for objects in a scene, which is useful if you want to change the speed in isolated parts of the animation, for example, to create a pause.
To do so, hold down Shift and select the start and end point of the time interval you want to change. Then, move one of the displayed arrows on the sides of the selected area to the left or the right.
When you change the playback Length, you have two options: fit the animation to the new length or keep the animation length without changes. You can easily change the Speed value if the playback is too fast or slow.
Note: The playback Speed setting is for preview purposes only. If you’d like to apply the speed setting to your scene, press the Bake Speed button.
You can isolate a small animation section by changing the playback range values on either end of the timeline window. You can also crop the timeline to the selected playback range by pressing the Trim button. This will discard the keyframed data before and after the current selection.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Trim | Trims the animation to the selected frame range. |
| Loop | Toggles looping of animation playback. |
| First Frame | Goes to the first frame. |
| Previous Keyed Frame | Goes to the previous keyframe. |
| Previous Frame | Goes to the previous frame. |
| Play | Plays the animation. |
| Next Frame | Goes to the next frame. |
| Next Keyed Frame | Goes to the next keyframe. |
| Last Frame | Goes to the last frame. |
| Autokey | Toggles automatic recording of keyframes. Keyframes will be recorded for the current frame when a change is detected for most parameters of your selected object. |
| Total Frames | Determines the total frame count of the animation. |
| FPS | Determines the frame rate, or frames per second, of the animation. |
| Length | Determines the length of the animation in seconds. |
| Speed | Sets the playback speed for preview purposes. Preview speed is not applied to exported video content. |
| Apply Speed | Scales the animation to match the preview speed. Use this if you want to speed up or slow down your animation permanently. |
| Link Zoom | Determines whether to show all frames in the timeline or only the frames within the selection range. |
| Playback Range | Determines the selection range, which isolates frames for easy editing and playback. Use the left and right handles to set the first and last frames, and drag the central handle to move the range. |
