Layers

Layer Types

Layers in the Timeline#

Animation Layer#

Contains drawings with the visual contents of your animation.

Background Layer#

Adds a solid background color to the animation.

Audio Layer#

Allows you to add audio clips to the timeline.

Video Layer#

Allows you to add videos to the timeline. You usually don't interact with these directly but via a symbol in an animation layer instead.

Transform Layer#

Can be used to apply the same animated transformation to multiple layers at once by adding a new coordinate system to the transform hierarchy.

Camera Layer#

Defines the visible region of the animation during export and can be moved around like any other layer.

Group Layer#

Group layers can be used for organizational purposes, to collapse multiple layers in the layer list and to transform multiple layers at once. They also provide blending options which turn the layer into a pre-composite group.

Group layers can be placed both in the timeline and inside of drawings. Groups in the timeline can be used to loop their contents.

The brush, eraser, fill and transform tools and the cut & paste feature provide special treatment for vector groups, allowing you to edit the vector contents of the group similarly to how you can edit the contents of a single vector layer.

Drawing Layers#

Drawing layers cannot be placed directly in the timeline but must always be added inside a drawing.

Pixel Layer#

The drawing destination for pixel brushes. These layers store their contents as a raster-image.

Vector Layer#

The default drawing destination for vector brushes. These layers store their contents as vector shapes.

Path Layer#

Path layers are used to editable vector shapes to your animation, e.g. using vector brushes or the path tool. Each path layer can contain exactly one shape with one or more subpaths.

Text Layer#

Text layers are used to add text to your animation.

Symbol Layer #

Symbol layers are used to add other animation clips to a timeline. Referencing a different clip through a symbol layer allows you to reuse your animations efficiently.