How To Delete All Keyframes in Blender

Blender is considered one of the best open-source 3D computer graphics editors. It can be used to create a variety of visual effects, animations, video games, and 3D printed models. As a very complex professional editing tool, the software comes with a very high learning curve.

If you’re using Blender, you should get comfortable working with keyframes as fast as possible. They’re the bread and butter of creating animations. The position of a keyframe in a timeline represents the time of the movement. And the sequence of keyframes defines the movements seen by viewers.

There are many types of keyframes that you’ll have to learn and master to create unique animations. Like all animation software, working in Blender involves plenty of trial and error. Therefore, you need to know both how to add keyframes, and when and how to remove them from the scene.

Types of Keyframes

1. Regular keyframe

2. Breakdown

3. Moving hold

4. Extreme

5. Jitter

Adding Keyframes

There are two common ways of adding keyframes in Blender. You can either add a keyframe to an already selected property or you can open up a list of properties to choose from.

Press I to open the menu that allows you to add a keyframe. Then select the property that you want to add the keyframe to.

Or, right click a specific property and select the ‘Insert Keyframe’ option from the menu.

There is also an Auto Keyframe feature. You can turn it on by pressing the red button on the Timeline header. This will add keyframes automatically to the selected frame. However, it only does this if there are any changes made to the values of the properties.

No matter what type of keyframes you add and how you add them, you can use the same methods to remove them if you’re not pleased with the result. Here are a couple of ways to delete keyframes.

Delete Keyframes in 3D View

When you’re in the 3D View mode, you can delete multiple keyframes at the same time. After you select an object, press Alt + I to remove all keyframes for the current selection in the frame.

Delete Keyframes Using Dope Sheet

Select all the objects that you want to edit. Switch to the Animation screen when you’re satisfied with your selection.

Hover the cursor over the dope sheet and select everything by pressing the A key. After that, press Delete.

Delete Keyframes from Menu

If you select an object, you can also open up a context menu to delete specific animations. When the menu pops up, the tag ‘Clear keyframes’ should appear. Click that to delete all keyframes.

Be aware that doing this removes all XYZ keyframes if you’re dealing with a transform channel. If you want to avoid this, select the ‘Clear single keyframe’ option instead.

Delete Keyframes in Action Editor

The action editor also lets you delete keyframes one by one or in bulk. You can press B and then click and drag with the mouse until you’ve selected all the keyframes that you want to delete. Let go and press the Delete button to remove them all at the same time.

Delete Keyframes on Timeline

This is also a viable option if you’re not juggling too many objects. If you go to the Timeline, you can click on a specific keyframe to remove it. Once selected, press the Spacebar to open a command dialog box.

Type ‘Delete Keyframe’. Left click twice to confirm. One downside is that this method only works with single selections. But, since you don’t always have to delete multiple keyframes at the same time, it may just help you do an accurate job of fine-tuning an animation.

Use a Script

If you want to remove all animations for the selected objects, you can also use a script.

context = bpy.context

for ob in context.selected_objects:

ob.animation_data_clear()

You can replace ‘selected’ with ‘scene’ to remove animations from the current scene. And, you can also use ‘bpy.data.objects’ if you want to remove all the animations from all the objects.

A Final Thought

This article offers just a glimpse of the complexity you will encounter in blender. For a simple action that involves removing a keyframe or multiple keyframes at the same time, there are numerous methods that you can use.

Each has its own pros and cons depending on the type of keyframes you’re editing. Knowing all of the methods is not a bad idea as it will help you to achieve your goal from wherever you find yourself in the UI.