In 3D animation, movement execution follows a crucial technical workflow: Blocking, Splining, and Polish. Blocking involves setting the primary key poses (like main story points and extremes) with stepped tangents, creating a rough, frame-by-frame guide of the whole scene. Splining is the technical transition where stepped tangents are smoothed out into curves, generating the in-between frames and allowing the software to calculate smooth, continuous movement.

Our technical instruction focuses on the critical shift from stepped to spline tangents, where the animator must use the Graph Editor to fine-tune the auto-generated curves, removing unwanted bumps and ensuring all arcs are smooth and appealing. This iterative process demands both artistic vision (in the blocking phase) and technical precision (in the splining and polishing phases) to achieve broadcast-quality motion without relying solely on the computer’s default settings.