Keyframing
Pin a value to a frame, move the playhead, set it again, and the motion between the two is interpolated.
Keyframing is hand-authored animation. Set a value at frame A and a different value at frame B, and the parameter glides from one to the other as it plays. It works on almost any numeric parameter: a position, a radius, a colour, an opacity.
Setting a keyframe
Hover the parameter, move the playhead to the frame you are animating, and press K. That stamps the current value onto that frame.
Scrub the playhead somewhere else, change the value, and press K again. The parameter now animates between the two keyframes. Repeat for as many moments as the move needs.
Hovering is what picks the target. With nothing under the pointer, K keyframes every parameter on the selected node at once, which is rarely what you meant. Hover the single field, or one axis of a vector, and only that one is stamped.
New keyframes are given Auto handles, so the value eases in and out rather than snapping. Reshape that motion later in the The curve editor.
Once a parameter is animated, editing its value at another frame drops a keyframe there without K, and only on the components the edit actually changed. Dragging the X of a position does not spawn curves on Y and Z. A parameter with no keyframes yet never auto-keys, so the first one is always deliberate.
Reading the animation state
The two surfaces mark it differently. On a node body the control itself takes a faint orange background wash, brightening when the playhead sits exactly on one of that parameter's keyframes. It is subtle by design, and it tints per axis, so an animated X reads differently from a static Y. An expression-driven parameter washes green instead.
In the Parameters panel the row gains a small dot as well:
Orange means the parameter is keyframed and the playhead sits between keyframes, so you are looking at an in-between value.
Yellow means the playhead is parked exactly on one of this parameter's keyframes.
No dot means the parameter is not animated and holds a fixed value.
Watch the dot flick from orange to yellow while scrubbing.
Compound values animate per axis. A position or colour keeps a separate curve for each component (X / Y / Z, or R / G / B / A), so one axis can take different timing from another. Text and other non-numeric values cannot be interpolated and hold a single value.
Clearing keyframes
Two operations, and the difference matters.
Clear one keyframe. Hover the parameter, put the playhead on the frame, and press
Alt+K. This removes the single keyframe at the current frame and leaves the rest of the animation intact.De-animate entirely. Press
Alt+Shift+K. This wipes all keyframes from the parameter and returns it to a plain fixed value. The tint disappears.
Both take Cmd in place of Alt if that sits better under the hand. The two spellings are the same binding on every platform, not a Mac and Windows pair.
Alt+Shift+K removes the whole animation, not the keyframe under the playhead. To delete one point, use plain Alt+K, or select it in the The timeline and delete it there.
Like K, both clears follow the pointer, and fall back to every parameter on the selected node when nothing is hovered. They are also scoped: they fire while the node graph or the timeline has focus.
Keyframes alongside other inputs
A parameter can take its value from several places, and they resolve in a fixed order: expression, connection, keyframes, typed value. So a = expression overrides keyframes, and so does a wire plugged into the parameter. If a keyframed parameter appears frozen, check for an expression in the field first, then for a wire. See Connections vs expressions.