Smoother animation ≠ Better animation [read pinned comment]

The animator Noodle recently put this video on YouTube that explains why he despises the idea of interpolated video: [VIDEO]

I'm usually a big critic of AI, and I remember seeing people complaining years ago about increasing framerates with AI[0], but maybe this could be a good usecase. You do, say, half the cameras, and then some crafty solution to interpolate (filling in the edges with AI, some sort of angle adjust) [0]: [VIDEO]

Counterpoint: this YouTube rant by an animation person called Noodle is a pretty good overview of why frame interpolation sucks. [VIDEO] Basically, low FPS can be a stylistic choice, and making up new frames at playback time often completely butchers some of the nuances present in good animation.

Can't have a conversation about inbetween frames without sharing this[1] Noodle video. Now granted the interpolation there is pretty rigid, and the goal of this dataset will be to train an LLM replicate hand tweening, but I can't help but feel there's going to be a massive uncanny valley. [1] [VIDEO]

A really good video on the subject: [VIDEO] The gist is that, for animation, frame interpolation messes with intended timing and can produce incoherent images on interpolated frames and odd frame rate issues for certain kinds of animations. Interpolation can thus cause animations to lose their punch and feel wrong. While interpolation may be nice for live action films, it should still be an option to turn off.

This video is laced with profanity and focused specifically on animation, but give a pretty good overview of why interpolation does not inherently make things look better: [VIDEO]