Onion Skin View

The Onion Skin view allows you to quickly configure onion skin. Using this view, you can choose the colour of previous and next drawings, which kind of marked drawings to display and whether to measure the span of onion skin per frame or per drawing. When using Advanced Onion Skin, you can also use this view to pick which drawings are included in the Onion Skin, as well as the opacity of the drawings relative to how far they are from the current frame.

A lot of the controls in the Onion Skin view are only accessible when using Advanced Onion Skin.

User Interface Section Description
View Menu Open the Onion Skin view menu, which contains extra options for Advanced Onion Skin—see Onion Skin View Menu.
Previous Drawings Settings
Previous drawings visibility switches

Allows you to select which drawings before the current frame to include in the Onion Skin. A drawing that is toggled on will be visible in the Onion Skin, and a drawing that is toggled up will be excluded from it. You can select a range of drawings, or include and exclude specific drawings individually.

TIP

You can quickly select or deselect a range of drawings by clicking and holding on one drawing, then dragging the mouse cursor over the other drawings you want to toggle.

Previous drawings opacity sliders

Allows you to adjust the opacity scale of drawings before the current frame. Each slider represents the opacity of one drawing.

By default, moving one of these sliders will move the other sliders so that the opacity remain on a gradated scale. In this case, you can start by adjusting the opacity on one end, the opacity on another end and then, if you want, adjust one of the sliders in-between to make a segmented progression.

You can disable this behaviour by unchecking the Link Sliders option in the View Menu in the top-left corner of the Onion Skin view. This option is enabled by default. When disabled, you can adjust the opacity of each drawing independently.

Previous drawings colour Allows you to select the colour in which to display the drawings before the current frame.
Onion Skin Settings
Advanced Onion Skin

Enables Advanced Onion Skin. Advanced Onion Skin allows you to select, on the fly, which drawings to include in your Onion Skin, even if those drawings are not consecutive drawings, as well as the opacity scales for the drawings before and after the current frame.

The controls for selecting which drawings to display in the Onion Skin as well as their opacity sliders are only accessible when Advanced Onion Skin is enabled. Otherwise, when using regular Onion Skin, the opacity of drawings in the Onion Skin is determined by the Onion Skin settings in the Preferences dialog. The amount of drawings to include in the Onion Skin is set using the Onion Skin Add / Reduce One Previous Drawng and Onion Skin Add / Reduce One Next Drawing commands, available in the Camera and Drawing toolbars as well as in View > Onion Skin in the top menu.

Onion skin opacity slider Allows you to set the overall opacity of all the drawings in the Onion Skin.
Include by frames or by drawings

Allows you to select whether the drawings to include in the Onion Skin are selected by frame or by drawing.

  • By Frames: Selects the drawings to display in the Onion Skin by their frame number relative to the current frame. For example, if the Onion Skin is set to include 2 drawings before and after the current frame, it will include the drawings up to two frames before and up to two frames after the current frame, even if those drawings are the same as the one in the current frame. This is more useful for cut-out animation as it allows you to position a drawing relative to its position in adjacent frames.

    NOTE This option only works in the Camera view.
  • By Drawings: Selects the drawings to display in the Onion Skin by the amount of different drawings before and after the current frame. For example, if the Onion Skin is set to include 2 drawings before and after the current frame, this will display the nearest two different drawings before and after the drawing in the current frame in the Onion Skin, even if those drawings are further than 2 frames away from the current frame. This is more useful for frame-by-frame animation.

    NOTE When this option is enabled, the handles allowing you to adjust the extent of the Onion Skin in the Timeline view are not available.
Next Drawings Settings
Next drawings visibility switches

Allows you to select which drawings after the current frame to include in the Onion Skin. A drawing that is toggled on will be visible in the Onion Skin, and a drawing that is toggled up will be excluded from it. You can select a range of drawings, or include and exclude specific drawings individually.

TIP

You can quickly select or deselect a range of drawings by clicking and holding on one drawing, then dragging the mouse cursor over the other drawings you want to toggle.

Next drawings opacity sliders

Allows you to adjust the opacity scale of drawings after the current frame. Each slider represents the opacity of one drawing.

By default, moving one of these sliders will move the other sliders so that the opacity remain on a gradated scale. In this case, you can start by adjusting the opacity on one end, the opacity on another end and then, if you want, adjust one of the sliders in-between to make a segmented progression.

You can disable this behaviour by unchecking the Link Sliders option in the View Menu in the top-left corner of the Onion Skin view. This option is enabled by default. When disabled, you can adjust the opacity of each drawing independently.

Next drawings colour Allows you to select the colour in which to display the drawings after the current frame.
Marked Drawings Settings
Show Key drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings marked as key drawings in the Onion Skin.
Show Breakdown drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings marked as breakdowns in the Onion Skin.
Show In-between drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings with no marker in the Onion Skin. Drawings with no marker are considered in-betweens.
Show RetakeKey drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings marked as retake key drawings in the Onion Skin.
Show RetakeBD drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings marked as retake breakdowns in the Onion Skin.
Show RetakeIB drawings in Onion Skin Only displays drawings marked as retake in-betweens in the Onion Skin.