User Guide > Cut-out Animation > Using the Onion Skin in Cut-out Animation

Using the Onion Skin in Cut-out Animation

When animating cut-out characters, it is useful to see the previous and next frames on the animation. However, it can sometimes be confusing to see the onion skin for every part of the character. You will often only want to see the onion skin on a single part or a few parts, such as the arm, that are currently being animated. Animate offers that possibility.

While animating in the Camera view, there are four different onion skin options:

Add to Onion Skin
Remove from Onion Skin
Remove Unselected from Onion Skin
Add All to Onion Skin
Remove All from Onion Skin

You can enable these options in the menu or manually in the Timeline view using the layer's Show Onion Skin button. Unless you change the onion skin options when you display the onion skin, only the selected layers will be displayed in the onion skin preview.

To use the onion skin options:

1. In the Tools toolbar, enable the Onion Skin option or press [Alt] + [O].
2. In the Tools toolbar, click on the Transform tool or press [Shift] + [T].
3. In the Camera view, select one or many elements.
4. In the top menu, select View > Onion Skin > Add to Onion Skin, Remove From Onion Skin, Remove Unselected from Onion Skin, Add All to Onion Skin or Remove All from Onion Skin.

The Add to Onion Skin command is used to add a series of selected elements to the onion skin preview. The keyboard shortcut is [Shift] + [S].

The Remove From Onion Skin command is used to remove a series of selected elements from the onion skin preview.

The Remove Unselected from Onion Skin command is used to remove all elements except the ones selected from the onion skin preview.

The Add All to Onion Skin command is used to add all of the scene's elements to the onion skin preview. The keyboard shortcut is [Alt] + [Shift] + [O].

The Remove All Onion Skin command is used to remove all of the scene's elements from the onion skin preview. The keyboard shortcut is [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [O] (Windows) or [⌘] + [Shift] + [O] (Mac OS X).

Related Topics 

Flipping through Poses