Tweening
From Free net encyclopedia
Tweening, short for in-betweening, is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Tweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation. Sophisticated animation software enables one to identify specific objects in an image and define how they should move and change during the tweening process.
In a traditional animation process, senior artists draw the more important (or "key") frames for the animation of characters or any other animated object. The "betweeners" then draw the frames between the keyframes which the main artist(s) had drawn.
For example, a certain cartoon may require 25 separate sets of cartoon cels per second. The cartoon artist responsible for the storyboard will only draw a series of 10 major cels covering a 3-second period. The remaining cels would then be drawn by inbetweeners, and these drawings could then be further processed for use in the final cartoon.
Note that traditional inbetweening involves the use of drawing tables with underneath lighting to draw a set of pencil-on-paper pictures, but in more recent times computers may be used to speed the inbetweening process.
In the context of Macromedia Flash, the process is simply called "tweening," and the resultant animation is called a "tween."