Appearance
Transport and playback
Playing the timeline, and the controls along the top of it.
Playing
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play / Pause | Space over the timeline. Blue while playing |
| Loop | One control, three settings: plays once, loops, or ping-pongs back and forth. Its tooltip says what a click will change it to. The setting is part of the timeline and travels with the graphic |
| The readout | Where the playhead is. Click it for the settings |
N fps · Nf | This timeline's rate and length |
| Speaker | Only when the scene has sound: mutes or unmutes it. Its tooltip says "Sound on. Click: mute" or "Sound muted. Click: sound on", and the setting is remembered. Muting silences only the speakers; the scene's sounds keep their timing. Orange, and not clickable, when no sound output device could be opened: "No sound output device: the scene plays silent here" |
Sound. A scene with sound plays it on the stage while it plays, whether the sound comes from timeline keys or from Animation States, nested components included. Pause holds a sound where it is; stopping or moving the playhead stops it. The Animation States panel has the same speaker beside its Play controls. See Event › Playing a sound.
Ghosts (onion skin)
Faded copies of the frames around this one, so you can see where a movement is coming from and going to.
Three numbers set them: ghosts before this frame, how many frames apart, and ghosts after. They are in two places, and changing either changes both — hover the ghost button for the quick version, or tick Onion skin in the timeline settings and they appear under it. The tooltip lists the frames being ghosted, for example Ghosting 38, 36, 34, 32, 30.
Ghosts are a way of looking — they are a preference, not part of the document, and they disappear while the animation runs.
Auto-key
The red dot. On by default. It decides whether a property with no keys yet starts getting them: on, editing it on the stage writes a key at the playhead; off, editing it changes the graphic's setup, and you start its keys with its diamond in the inspector.
A property that already has keys always keys. Change it at the playhead (drag, type or scrub) and a key is added or updated there, whether the dot is on or off.
The Key button
Keys the selected object at the playhead across its usual channels, in one press — quicker than clicking several diamonds when you want a whole object pinned at a moment.
Moving keys in bulk
These appear as soon as keys are selected:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shift and a number of frames | Moves every selected key by that many frames |
| Stagger | Cascades them: the first object stays, the next moves one step, the one after two. Needs keys on two or more objects |
| The ⇅ button | Cascades the other way, from the last object back to the first |
| Fit to and a number | Retimes the selection to last that many frames, starting where it starts now |
Stagger is how a list animates in. Key eight rows identically, select all the keys, set a step of 3 frames, press Stagger, and they come on one after another. Changing your mind is one press of ⇅.
The editor says why a control is unavailable rather than doing nothing: "Stagger needs keys on two or more objects, and a step that is not zero."
Moving the playhead
| Keys | What it does |
|---|---|
← → | One frame |
Shift+← Shift+→ | The jump step, ten frames unless you change it |
Home End | First frame, last frame |
, . | The previous or next key on the rows you are working on |
F, Shift+F | Zoom to the selected keys, or out to the whole timeline |
Every step stops at the ends: past the last frame is the last frame, not a wrap.