Curve Editor
F-curve / graph editor for animation timing
Also known as: Graph editor · F-curve editor · Dope sheet
Definition
The curve editor is the view in any DCC where animators edit F-curves — the interpolation between keyframes — for individual properties over time. It is where the difference between "moves" and "feels alive" actually happens: easing, overshoot, anticipation, and follow-through are all curve work. Maya’s Graph Editor and Blender’s F-Curve view are the standards; understanding tangent handles is non-negotiable for any serious animator.
In production
Maya's Graph Editor and Blender's Dope Sheet/F-Curve editor both let animators manipulate Bezier tangent handles per-keyframe, and switching a tangent from "Spline" to "Linear" or "Stepped" changes whether motion eases smoothly or snaps instantly — stepped tangents are standard for blocking out poses before moving to spline refinement. A flat tangent at the start and end of an ease creates the anticipation and settle that reads as weighty motion, while a default auto-tangent in Maya can introduce unwanted overshoot on rotation curves that animators have to manually flatten. Unreal's Sequencer has its own curve editor for cinematics with the same tangent-handle logic. A classic curve-editor bug is "gimbal flipping" on rotation curves, where Euler rotation values jump 180 degrees between keyframes because two of the three axes crossed a singularity — fixed by switching the rotation interpolation to quaternion or manually correcting the Euler filter in the graph editor.
