Glossary
Tweening
Also called: In-betweening, Inbetweening
Definition
Tweening, short for in-betweening, is the process of generating the intermediate frames between two keyframes so that an object appears to move or change smoothly from one state to the next.
What “tweening” means
You define where an element starts and where it ends; tweening computes everything in between. In a motion tween, the software interpolates position, scale or rotation. In a shape tween (or morph), it interpolates the outline of a shape so a circle can become a square. Color, opacity and blur can be tweened too. The term comes from hand-drawn animation, where “in-betweeners” drew the frames between a lead animator’s key poses.
How the in-between values are spread over time is controlled by an interpolation curve. Linear interpolation moves at a constant speed, which often looks mechanical. Easing curves make the motion speed up and slow down, which is why most professional tweens are eased.
Why it matters for short explainer videos
Short explainers rely on many small transitions: a label slides in, a chart bar grows, an icon morphs into another. Each of those is a tween. When tweens are too fast, the eye can’t follow on a small screen; when they are too slow, the video loses pace and viewers swipe away.
Good tweening also keeps continuity. Moving the same element from one place to another, rather than cutting to a new layout, helps the viewer track what changed, which is the whole point of explaining.
Example
A video explains a database migration. Instead of cutting from “old table” to “new table”, the table’s columns tween: two of them slide right, one fades out and a new one grows in. In about a second, the viewer sees exactly which columns moved, which disappeared and which are new, without a single extra word of narration.
In Motiongist
How Motiongist handles it
All tweening in Motiongist is automatic. The engine builds each scene from vector elements (titles, diagrams, numbers, UI mock-ups, illustrated characters) and animates the transitions between their states, eased and timed to the narration. The video is rendered at 30 frames per second, so every tween is computed frame by frame.
You don’t adjust tween curves or durations by hand; there is no timeline. You shape the result through the script and the storyboard: one idea per scene gives the engine room to animate clearly.