About Key Exposures

Before working with key exposures, it's important to understand how keyframes, exposure and key exposure work in Harmony:

  • Keyframe: A keyframe is a point in time where a change to the properties of the object or character occurs. In Harmony, keyframes consist of the coordinates that determine how an entire layer and its contents are moved. Keyframes include these parameters: XYZ position, skew, scale, angle and pivot.
  • Exposure: Exposure is a property; it is the length of time that a drawing is visible over a series of frames. In Harmony, exposure is independent of keyframes. That is, keyframes are not linked to drawings. Keyframes can be moved independently from the drawing exposure.
  • Key Exposure: A key exposure in Harmony is a type of exposure that forces a drawing to remain exposed on a specific frame. If a drawing is exposed before a key exposure and you swap out that drawing for another one, then the original drawing is retained. This preserves the key drawing. Note that Harmony automatically sets a key exposure when you perform a drawing swap.