Animation

Timeline and layers

The timeline lays out your animation in two directions: layers stacked from top to bottom, and frames running from left to right.

The timeline with a list of layers on the left, including an open HATS folder with four hat layers, and the frame grid on the right — Layers on the left, the frame grid on the right. The HATS folder is open, showing the layers inside it.

Reading the timeline

Along the top is the header, with the current frame number, the frame rate, the elapsed time and the playback controls. Below it, the ruler numbers the frames, and the playhead marks the frame shown on the stage. Click or drag in the ruler to move the playhead. While onion skinning or loop playback is on, its markers in the ruler can be dragged too (see Onion skinning and Looping a range).

Each row of the frame grid belongs to the layer beside it. The cells show what is on each frame:

You see	It means
Filled dot	A keyframe with content
Hollow dot	An empty (blank) keyframe
Gray frames	The keyframe's content held over time, ending in a small hollow rectangle
White frames	Empty frames
Lilac span with an arrow	A classic tween
Green span with an arrow	A shape tween
Blue span with diamonds	A motion tween; each diamond is a property keyframe
Yellow-green span	An armature pose span (see Bones)
Red flag, green slashes or gold anchor	A frame label, comment or anchor, followed by its text where there is room
Small a over the dot	A keyframe with a frame script
Waveform	A sound playing over those frames

Layers

Layers keep parts of your scene separate, so you can draw and animate each one without disturbing the rest. Layers higher in the list draw in front.

Layer controls

Each layer row has, from left to right:

Name: Double-click to rename. Click to make it the current layer. Small colored badges at the end of the name show the effects the layer has on: motion blur, echo or posterize time, a layer mode, a mask's edge, an effect layer, and a node graph Layer node taking the layer. Hover over one for what it does; click the echo, mask edge or effect badge to change its settings. Where there is little room they overlap, and hovering lists them all.
Pencil: Marks the current layer, where new artwork goes.
Eye: Shows or hides the layer on the stage. Hidden layers show a red cross.
Lock: Protects the layer from changes.
Color square: Click to view the layer's artwork as outlines in that color. The color is also used for the layer's selection highlights.

The eye, lock and square buttons at the top of the list apply to every layer at once. In the rows:

Alt-click an eye, lock or square to do the same to every other layer: hide all the others, say, and Alt-click again to bring them back.
Drag down a column to set each layer you pass the same way, hiding or locking several in one stroke.
Shift-click an eye to make the layer transparent: it shows faded, so you can see what is under it while you work. A faded eye marks it; Shift-click again for the layer in full. Exports always draw it in full. Layer Properties sets how faded it is.

Add, delete and reorder

The buttons below the layer list add a new layer or a new folder, and delete the layers selected. Insert › Timeline › Layer and Layer Folder add them too.
Ctrl-click or Shift-click layer names to select several layers at once.
Drag a layer up or down to change the stacking order. Drop it onto a folder to move it inside.
Right-click a layer for Insert Layer, Insert Folder, Delete Layer, the layer clipboard commands below, Guide, Mask, Parent Layer, Show All, Hide Others, Lock Others and Properties....
A timeline always keeps at least one layer that can hold frames, so the last one cannot be deleted.

Copy, paste and duplicate layers

Right-click a layer, or use Edit › Timeline, for Cut Layers, Copy Layers, Paste Layers and Duplicate Layers. They act on the layers selected, with everything inside a folder, mask or guide among them, and keep every frame and setting. Pasted layers go in above the current layer; a duplicate goes above the original, named with copy. Copied layers paste into the document they came from. When a parent and the layers that follow it are copied together, the copies follow the copied parent.

Folders

Folders group layers, for example all the parts of one character. Click the arrow beside a folder to open or close it; a closed folder hides its layers' rows in the frame grid too. Hiding or locking a folder hides or locks everything inside it.

Layer properties

Right-click a layer and choose Properties... to set several things at once:

Name, Show and Lock: The same as the controls in the layer row.
Type: Normal, Guide, Guided, Mask, Masked or Folder; a layer can't become a folder, nor a folder a layer. See Masks and guides.
Outline color: The layer's color for outlines and highlights.
View layer as outlines: Draws the layer's artwork as outlines.
Transparent: Shows the layer faded while you edit, at the percentage you set (5 to 95%).
Follow parent's: For a layer that follows a parent layer, whether it takes on the parent's Scale, Skew and Flip. See Layer parenting.

Layer parenting

A layer can follow another layer's artwork, the way a forearm follows the upper arm: move, turn or scale the parent and the child goes with it.

To make a layer follow another, right-click it and choose the layer from Parent Layer (or None to set it free), or use the parenting view: click the linked-circles button at the top right of the layer list and a column of handles appears, with a line from each layer to the one it follows, in that layer's color. Drag a layer's handle onto another layer to make it follow that one, or let go below the layers so it follows none. The objects stay where they are on the stage. A layer can't follow a folder, a guide layer, or one that already follows it. Hover over a layer's name to see which layer it follows. For multiplane camera moves, see Rigs and motion.

A child always follows its parent's position and rotation. By default it takes on the parent's scale, skew and flip too; turn any of them off under Follow parent's in Layer Properties and the child keeps its own. With Scale off, a parent grown to twice its size carries the child along without growing it, and the child's distance from the parent's pivot stays as drawn. With Flip off, a parent mirrored side to side leaves the child unmirrored; a parent flipped top to bottom is a side-to-side flip turned half round, so the child still turns with it. The settings go with the child layer and apply through the whole chain above it. Changing them can move the child on the stage, and Undo puts it back.

Frame view

The ☰ button in the header, beside the loop button, sets how the frames look:

Tiny to Large: How wide each frame is. Narrow frames fit a long scene on screen; wide ones are easier to click. Ctrl+scroll over the frames zooms in and out.
Short, Normal and Tall Rows: How tall each layer's row is. The layer list keeps in step.
Preview: Shows each keyframe's artwork as a thumbnail along its span, cropped to the art.
Preview in Context: Shows the whole stage at each keyframe, so you can see where the art sits.
Time in Seconds: Marks the ruler in seconds instead of frame numbers.
Span Based Selection: A click selects the whole span between keyframes instead of one frame, ready to drag as a block. Shift-click still extends the selection.

Phoenix remembers the frame view between sessions.

Other views of the timeline

The Window menu has panels that show the same layers another way:

X-Sheet: Each layer's exposures frame by frame, typed in by drawing number. See X-sheet.
Function Curves: Any property of the current layer as a curve over time. See Function curves.
Layer Depth: How far each layer sits from the multiplane camera. See Multiplane camera.
Scene: The document's scenes, each with its own timeline. See Scenes.