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Smooth

One slider melts mocap jitter and softens arcs — while keeping the performance. New in v1.1.

Tier: Free for all Menu: Polish → Smooth

What it does​

Mocap output — webcam, video, or even professional capture — always carries jitter: tiny frame-to-frame trembles that make motion read as nervous and synthetic. Hand-keyed animation can have the opposite problem: arcs that are too harsh, with sudden direction changes that feel mechanical.

Smooth fixes both with a single slider. Drag it and every bone's motion gets gently pulled toward the average of its neighbors — the trembles cancel out, the arcs round off, and the performance (the actual acting, the timing, the poses that matter) stays intact.

The panel shows a live "Smoother by −X%" readout, so you can see how much roughness you're removing before you commit.

The slider — Subtle to Max​

One control: Strength, from Subtle to Max.

  • Subtle — barely-there cleanup. Removes camera noise from a mocap take without touching the motion's character. Start here.
  • Middle — visible rounding of arcs. Good for stylizing jerky motion.
  • Max — heavy melt. The motion turns dreamy and floaty. Useful for slow-motion or ghostly effects, too much for normal action.

The viewport previews live as you drag. No commit until you click Apply.

Scope — exactly what you want, nothing else​

Two scope controls:

ControlOptionsUse it for
BonesAll / SelectedSmooth just a trembling arm while the rest of the body stays untouched — select the bones, pick Selected
ExtentWhole clip / RegionSmooth just a rough stretch — mark a Region on the timeline (the S/E handles), pick Region

The endpoints — clip boundaries or the edges of your Region — are pinned, so the smoothed stretch stitches seamlessly into the surrounding motion. No pops at the seams.

It stacks​

Apply doesn't close the panel. Apply once, judge the result, apply again to go further. Each pass is one undo step — Ctrl+Z peels back one pass at a time. Click Done when you're happy.

This is the intended workflow: sneak up on the right amount instead of guessing it on the first try.

Watch it happen — Trajectory View​

The killer combo: toggle Trajectory View (the spline icon in the right-side viewport toolbar) with a bone selected. You'll see the bone's motion path drawn in the viewport, color-coded by smoothness — green = silky, red = jagged.

Now drag the Smooth slider. The path updates live — you literally watch red turn to green as the jitter melts. No more guessing whether the motion is clean enough.

Workflow — cleaning a mocap take​

  1. Capture motion via Vision Capture (or import a clip).
  2. Select a bone that visibly trembles (a hand or the head is usually worst).
  3. Toggle Trajectory View in the right toolbar — see the red, jagged path.
  4. Polish → Smooth. Drag the slider until the path turns green.
  5. Apply Smooth. Judge. Apply again if needed.
  6. Done. Then Simplify Keyframes to thin the dense mocap keys into an editable set.

Edge cases​

Smoothing a Region next to sharp motion​

The Region edges are pinned, so the transition into the un-smoothed part is seamless. If the contrast looks odd (silky stretch inside aggressive motion), widen the Region.

Over-smoothed and Done already clicked​

Ctrl+Z still works after the panel closes — every Apply is a normal undo step in the editor history.

Very short clips​

A clip needs a few frames of context to average. Clips under ~5 frames won't change much — there's nothing to smooth against.