Animation

The Animations section lets you manage settings related to Animation. This includes how editors look and also some different tools properties.

Blender Preferences Animation section.

Timeline

These settings control things in the Timeline.

Allow Negative Frame

Playhead can be set to negative frames with mouse or keyboard. When using Use Preview Range, this also allows playback.

Minimum Grid Spacing

The minimum number of pixels between grid lines.

TimeCode Style

Format of Time Codes displayed when not displaying timing in terms of frames. The format uses ‘+’ as a separator for sub-second frame numbers, with left and right truncation of the timecode as necessary.

Zoom To Frame Type

Defines what time range (around the cursor) will be displayed when the View Frame Numpad0 is performed.

Keep Range

The currently displayed time range is preserved.

Seconds

The number of seconds specified in the Zoom Seconds field will be shown around the cursor.

Keyframes

The number of animation keyframes defined in the Zoom Keyframes field will be shown around the cursor.

Keyframes

These settings control Keyframes which are the building blocks for animations.

Visual Keying

When an object is using constraints, the object property value does not actually change. Visual Keying will add keyframes to the object property, with a value based on the visual transformation from the constraint.

Only Insert Needed

This will only insert keyframes if the value of the property is different.

Auto-Keyframing

Auto Keyframing

Enables Auto Keyframe by default for new scenes.

Show Auto Keying Warning

Displays a warning at the top right of the 3D View, when moving objects, if Auto Keyframe is on.

Only Insert Available

This will only add keyframes to channels of F-curves that already exist.

See also

Learn more about Auto-Keyframing.

F-Curves

These settings control how F-Curves look and their default behavior.

F-Curve Visibility

Opacity that unselected F-Curves stand out from the Graph Editor.

Default Smoothing Mode

Controls the behavior of automatic curve handles for newly created F-curves.

Default Interpolation

Controls the default Interpolation for newly created keyframes.

Default Handles

Controls the default Handle for newly created F-curves.

XYZ to RGB

Color for X, Y or Z animation curves (location, scale or rotation) is the same as the color for the X, Y and Z axis.