Timeline View

The View menu contains all the tools and options that you can use to manage models.

The Enable/Disable All button lets you enable or disable layers. Disabling a layer makes the scene behave as if it didn't exist, including when rendering the scene. For example:

• A disabled drawing layer will be invisible.
• A disabled sound layer will be mute.
• A disabled peg layer will not affect the position of its child layers.

To disable a layer, click the layer's Enable/Disable button or press D.

To enable a layer, click the layer's Enable/Disable button or press A.

NOTE Next to sound layers, the Enable/Disable layer button will look like this: .

TIP You can enable or disable all layers by clicking on the Enable or disable all layers button in the top row.

Solo mode allows you to only view specific layers in the Camera view and hide all others. When solo mode is enabled on one layer, only this layer will be visible. If solo mode is enabled on several layers, and only these layers will be visible. If solo mode is not enabled on any layer, all enabled layers will be visible.

You can also use solo mode on sound tracks. If solo mode is enabled on any sound tracks, only those sound tracks will play during playback.

TIP When some layers are in solo mode, you can disable or re-enable solo mode on all layers that have it enabled by clicking on the Toggle solo mode on or off button in the top row.

For when the Onion Skin option is enabled, this allows you to enable or disable Onion Skin on specific layers.

In the top menu, there is a series of locking options. Select Animation > Lock > select one of the following:

• Lock: Locks the currently selected element.
• Unlock: Unlocks the currently selected element.
• Lock All: Locks all the elements in the Camera view.
• Unlock All: Unlocks all the elements in the Camera view.
• Lock All Others: Locks all the elements in the Camera view except the currently selected one.

Each drawing layer has a little colour swatch that has two functionalities:

• Single-clicking a layer's colour swatch toggles Outline mode on or off. Outline mode makes the layer display as nothing but the outlines of its vector shapes in the Camera view, allowing you to see the drawing's shape without it blocking the view of layers behind it.

• Double-clicking the layer's colour swatch opens a colour picker dialog that allows you to change the layer's track colour. The track colour displays in the layer's track in the Timeline view, allowing you to give special visibility to specific layers. It also determines the colour of the layer's outlines if it's in outline mode.

Expands the layer to display a thumbnail of the drawing in the current frame, as well as for each drawing in the timeline.

When a drawing layer is in Show Thumbnails mode:

• An exposure indicator appears at the right of each exposed drawing in the timeline, indicating the amount of frames the drawing spans over.
• An Opacity parameter appears to the left of the layer, allowing you to set the layer's opacity level.

TIP You can show or hide thumbnails for all drawing layers by clicking on the Show/Hide All Thumbnails button in the top row.

Allows you to set the opacity level of the layer. Click and drag the value left or right to decrease or increase the layer's opacity.

This icon appears next to the active drawing layer, which is the layer you draw on when using drawing tools.

The Add Layers button lets you add new layers to the Timeline view. When you click the Add Layers button, a menu appears displaying the most commonly used layer types so that you can quickly add them to your scene. If you need to add other types of layers, you must use the Node view and the Node library.

The Delete Layers button lets you delete the currently selected layers in the Timeline view—see How to delete layers in the Timeline view.

The Add Drawing Layer button lets you automatically add a new drawing layer to the Timeline view. By default, the layer is named Drawing—see Adding Layers and Columns.

The Add Peg button lets you add a peg layer to the timeline. If several layers are selected, a peg is added and parented to each layer—see Adding Pegs.

The Expand/Collapse button is used to display the children layers of a parent layer. Once a layer is parented to another layer, it is indented to the right and the Collapse/Expand Children button appears on the parent layer allowing you to show or hide the child layer.

The Show/Hide Functions button lets you display the functions embedded in each layer. The functions are the different coordinates and values used to record a layer’s parameters at each frame. This information is stored on the function curves using keyframes.

If the layer can be connected to another layer, for example to use a drawing layer as a matte, expanding a layer's functions will also list its possible connections. You can connect layers by dragging and dropping a layer onto another layer's connection.

Adds a keyframe at the current frame of the selected function or removes the keyframe at the current frame of the selected function, if there is one already.

Moves the timeline cursor to the previous keyframe on the selected function.

Moves the timeline cursor to the next keyframe on the selected function.

Displays the Function menu, which allows you to create a new function for the function layer, or to link it to an existing shared function—see About Functions.

A frame where the value for one or more of the layer's functions is preset. The position of each layers in key poses for digital animation is recorded in function keyframes. You can grab and move function keyframes as well as copy, cut, paste and delete them.

NOTE If a collapsed layer has children that have function keyframes, you will see a white square instead.

The Split button lets you split the Timeline view in two sections, allowing you to see two different portions of the Timeline view. This can be useful if you need to often switch between two specific points of a lengthy scene.

In the Timeline view, when a drawing is exposed, it is represented by a grey block that extends from the first frame it is exposed to the last frame it is exposed.

Lets you choose between different view modes allowing you to decide which layers are listed in the Timeline view. This can be useful if you're working on a scene with a lot of layers, and you only want layers you will be working on to appear in the Timeline view so as to declutter it. The following view modes are available:

• Normal View Mode will show all the layers that are connected to your scene's display node.
• Selection Only Mode will hide all the layers that are not currently selected, leaving only the currently selected layers in the Timeline view.
• View Tagged Layers will only show layers which you have tagged.

Shows or hides the Parameters column, right of the Layers column. The Parameters column displays information on the layer at the current frame, depending on the type of layer it is:

• If the layer is a drawing, it displays the name of the drawing at the current frame.
• If the layer is a function, it displays the value of the function at the current frame.
• If the layer is a sound track, it displays the sound track's volume.

Using the mouse, you can drag the parameter left and right to change its value. This is especially useful for quickly changing a drawing's exposure at the current frame.

Shows or hides the Additional Links column. The Additional Links column displays layers that are connected under the layer, but for other purposes than being the parent of those layers. For example, if a layer is used as the matte of an effect, the effect will be displayed in that layer's Additional Links.

If more than one layers are in a layer's Additional Links, only the first of these layers will be displayed, followed by the amount of extra linked layers there are.

By clicking on the Additional Links, you can open a menu listing the linked layers, and click on one of these layers to navigate to it.

In the following example, the BOOM_Animation layer is used as the matte of Cutter_1 and Cutter_2: