Animating 3D objects in a Three.js scene within a React app relies on efficiently updating the scene at regular intervals to create the illusion of movement. In web development, the requestAnimationFrame API is the standard way to perform such updates. Unlike methods that use fixed time intervals, requestAnimationFrame synchronizes updates with the browser's refresh rate, ensuring animations appear smooth and are not wasteful with system resources. In a React context, you typically start the animation loop when the component mounts and stop it when the component unmounts, ensuring that you do not continue to update the scene after the component has been removed from the DOM.

To animate objects, you update their properties—such as position, rotation, or scale—on each frame. For example, to rotate a cube, you would increment its rotation value slightly every time the animation loop runs. This gradual change, applied frame by frame, results in a smooth animation visible to the user. The process generally involves:

• Setting up the animation loop with requestAnimationFrame;
• Updating object properties based on time or frame count;
• Rendering the updated scene.

By carefully managing these updates, you can create a wide variety of dynamic effects, from simple rotations to complex, coordinated movements.