Bake Action to Keyframes on Every Frame in Blender

Baking an action in Blender converts dynamic, constraint-based, or physics-driven animation into explicit keyframes for every frame. This process is essential for exporting models to game engines, optimizing playback performance, and freezing procedural bone movements into permanent animation data. This guide explains how to bake your animations to keyframes on every single frame using Blender's built-in Bake Action operator.

Step-by-Step: Baking an Action

  1. Select the Object or Armature
    Select the target object in the 3D Viewport. If you are baking a character rig or bone animation, switch to Pose Mode (Ctrl + Tab). If you are baking a standard mesh or camera, stay in Object Mode.

  2. Select All Bones or Objects
    Press A to select all bones (in Pose Mode) or all objects (in Object Mode) that need to be baked. Blender only bakes elements that are currently selected.

  3. Open the Bake Action Menu

    • For bones/armatures: Go to the top menu and select Pose > Animation > Bake Action...
    • For objects: Go to the top menu and select Object > Animation > Bake Action...
    • Alternatively, press F3 (or Spacebar depending on your keymap), type Bake Action, and press Enter.

  4. Configure the Bake Settings
    In the pop-up dialogue box, configure the following parameters:

    • Start Frame / End Frame: Set the timeline range you want to bake.
    • Frame Step: Set this to 1. A step value of 1 ensures that Blender generates a keyframe on every single frame.
    • Only Selected Bones / Objects: Check this box to restrict baking only to the selected elements.
    • Visual Keying: Check this box. This is crucial as it captures the final transformed positions generated by constraints, drivers, or parent inversions.
    • Clear Constraints: Check this if you want Blender to remove constraints (like Inverse Kinematics or Track To) after baking, leaving purely keyframed motion.
    • Clear Parents: Leave unchecked unless you want to unparent the object during the bake.
    • Bake Data: Choose Pose for armatures or Object for standard meshes/transforms.

  5. Execute the Bake
    Click OK. Blender will process the timeline and generate transform keyframes (Location, Rotation, Scale) on every frame along the specified range.

Verifying the Result

Open the Dope Sheet or Graph Editor (Shift + F12) to verify the output. You will see a dense line of keyframes occupying every integer frame marker across all channels. Your dynamic rig or constrained setup is now fully baked into standard keyframe animation data.