Animating with Onion Skin

Use onion skinning when you are doing frame-based animation. Onion skinning allows you to see through the current frame to preceding or successive frames. This is useful to see how one frame compares to the frames before or after it.

You can use the onion skinning animation technique when compositing and painting; however, it is most useful when you are drawing a traditional 2D cartoon-type animation in Paint.

You can control the number of preceding and successive frames displayed, the opacity of the frames, and the position of the frames in relation to the current frame. Onion skinning is set for the viewport, which means that you can have different onion skinning settings in different viewports.

To set onion-skinning options:

1. Choose Window | Onion Skin Settings.

Note: You can also press Shift+].

The Onion Skin Settings dialog appears.



2. In the Preceding Frames group, adjust the settings for the preceding frames.
   
   

   Use:	To:
   Number of Frames	Set the number of visible frames before the current frame.
   Starting Opacity	Set the opacity of the onion skin immediately before the current frame.
   Opacity Fade	Set the percentage in which opacity decreases between onion skin frames. For example, if the onion skin frame preceding the current frame is 50% opaque and the fade value is 50%, then the frame before it is 25% opaque, and so on.
   Position	Set the position of the onion skin. Select Above to place the onion skin on top of the current frame, or Below to place the onion skin under the current frame.

   
   
   
3. Use the Current Frame Opacity slider to set the opacity of the current frame. Set the opacity for the current frame below 100% for clips without an alpha channel to see the onion skin frames behind the current frame.
4. In the Successive Frames group, adjust the settings for the successive frames.
   
   

   Use:	To:
   Number of Frames	Set the number of visible frames after the current frame.
   Starting Opacity	Set the opacity of the onion skin immediately after the current frame.
   Opacity Fade	Set the percentage in which opacity decreases between onion skin frames. For example, if the first onion skin frame is 50% opaque and the fade value is 50%, then the next frame is 25% opaque, and so on.
   Position	Set the position of the onion skin in the viewports. Select Above to place the onion skin on top of the current frame, or Below to place the onion skin under the current frame.

   
   
   

To use onion skinning:

1. In Paint, choose Window | Onion Skin, or right-click the viewport and choose Onion Skin. You can also press the ] key.

The onion skin appears in the active viewport.

Note: If you move to a different viewport, the onion skinning does not follow. It appears only in the viewport where you turned it on. You set onion skinning for each viewport separately.

2. Draw the character on the first frame.
3. Move ahead to the next frame.

You can see through the current frame to the previous frame.

4. Draw the second frame using the first frame as a guide, then move ahead to the next frame.
5. Use the frame step buttons to move back and forth a few frames at a time. This lets you preview how your animation is progressing.
6. When you are finished, turn off onion skin. To do so, choose Window | Onion Skin, or right-click the viewport and choose Onion Skin from the menu that appears. You can also press the ] key.