say i have a key on frame 1, and a key on frame 3. the inbetweening for that fraction of a second will only be the 1 pose that takes place on frame 2. but what if i want to show more poses but within that short time range. is there a recommended way to do that? should I just animate that sequence on a faster frame rate? like 30…

Frame 1 to Frame 3 takes 2/30 of a second to happen at 30 FPS. If you change your time to 15 FPS, then it takes 2/15 of a second to play this, but it will still be three steps.

You can actually use fractional parts of a frame (like 1.25) and get interpolation (tweening) with it. You may have to change one of your preferences for time snapping to do this, and manually render all the tweens you want. But if you want to just use Playblast you need the keys to cover more than 1 to 3. You can render fractional steps though by specifying a fractional number (like 0.1) in the ‘By Frame’ value in the render settings dialog.

You can go to the Graph Editor and scale the frames out in time, say 1 to 30. I think there is an Edit menu on the Graph Editor that has the Scale Keys in it, and when it open you scale just the time and not the amplitude. That stretches your curve across more frames.

When I am planning an animation, I first determine how long it should be in seconds. Then I multiply that by my frame rate (30 fps) and add one to determine what my start and end frame numbers should be.

<* Wes *>