Animated Layers

You can create a motion path directly on your layers.

Drawing layers can house drawings and symbols. Also, in that same layer you can create a motion path using keyframes and all the artwork contained in the layer will follow.

You can control and define your trajectory using several different parameters. These parameters are:

X, Y and Z positions
Angle (rotation)
Skew
X and Y scales

Each parameter has its own function curve where you can add keyframes and control the easing.

Do not worry about using graphs and function curves if you are not familiar with this concept. Harmony has a series of easy-to-use tools for visually controlling your trajectories in the Camera view.

To animate a simple object such as an arrow in flight or a wheel spinning, you can use the integrated trajectory. Also, each part of a cut-out puppet will be animated directly on the drawing layer.

If you do not want to animate a drawing layer, you have the option of disabling its animation parameter. To do so, simply select the layer and in the Layer Properties view, deselect the Animate Using Animation Tools option under the Advanced tab.

If your layer was already animated and you deselect the Animate Using Animation Tools option, your keyframes will be dimmed, enabling you to easily identify them as ones that cannot be modified. Select the option in order to modify them again.

Prevent Drawing Layers from being Animated

By default, a drawing layer can be animated but you can disable this feature and render a specific layer to be still. Being able to switch your drawings so they can be animated or not has certain advantages. When selecting the element in the Camera view, the actual Drawing layer is selected, but the motion you will create will automatically be transposed to the Peg layer (if parented to a peg layer). This means that you can have access to the drawing substitution feature for this drawing layer, while being able to create keyframes on it's parent peg. This feature is also available for backward compatibility.

To disable the animation feature on a layer:

1. In the Timeline view, double-click the layer on which you want to set the parameter.

The Layer Properties editor opens.

2. In the Advanced tab, deselect the Animate Using Animation Tools option.

Related Topics 

Pegs
Layer Parameters