ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

SLERP

Slerp is a way to calculate how one thing turns into another thing smoothly. Imagine you have a toy that can turn any direction you want. Now, you want to see how this toy turns from facing straight ahead to facing straight up.

If you were to just turn the toy all the way up, it would look like it just jumped from one direction to another. This is not a smooth motion. Slerp helps us to make this transition smoother.

Instead of turning the toy all the way up in one go, we turn it a little bit at a time, until it's finally facing straight up. We do this by figuring out the angle between the two directions and then dividing that angle into tiny parts, like little pieces of pizza. Then we turn the toy a little bit each time until it's all the way up. This makes the motion look smoother and more natural, like the toy is actually turning smoothly.

So, Slerp is a way to help us calculate how to smoothly go from one direction to another direction, instead of just abruptly jumping to the new direction.
Related topics others have asked about: