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Choosing a Playback mode (PB only)


    There are six modes for playing back the strokes in your paint composition:

    All Strokes

    Displays all strokes for the full duration of the layer, regardless of the position of the Time Marker when you drew them.

    Past Strokes

    Strokes cut in at the time at which they were recorded and remain visible until the end of the layer (the Out point).

    Hold Strokes

    Displays strokes from the frame on which they were drawn and holds them only until the point at which the next stroke was drawn. This treats strokes like Hold keyframes; as a stroke appears, it replaces the next, as in a slide show.

    Animate Strokes

    Begins drawing the stroke at the current time (that is, at the frame where the Time Marker is when you draw the stroke). The stroke animates in the same way as it was drawn.

    Current Frame

    The default Draw Strokes setting. It displays the stroke only at the frame at which it was painted.

    Onion Skin

    Displays strokes drawn on the current frame plus strokes drawn on the surrounding few frames. These additional strokes appear color-coded and at reduced opacity, to distinguish them from the strokes on the current frame. Those strokes actually exist only on the frames in which they are drawn. Onion-skinning is very useful for drawing frame-by-frame animations because it gives you reference points for the stroke positions.

    Use the Onion Skinning options in the Vector Paint Preferences dialog box to specify how previous and forward strokes appear when Onion Skin is the active Playback Mode. (To open Vector Paint Preferences, use the Vector Paint contextual menu and choose Options.) These options include:

    • Frames Backward/ Frames Forward. Sets the number of frames backward or forward that are displayed. Both backward and forward frames are displayed unless one or both of these values is set to 0.
    • Color Backward/Color Forward. Sets the color of the display of backward and forward strokes.
    • Skin Opacity. Sets the percentage of opacity for onion-skin strokes.
    Drawing a three-frame animation in Onion Skin Playback Mode: As you draw on successive frames, the strokes you drew on previous (or forward) frames also appear for your reference.
    Drawing a three-frame animation in Onion Skin Playback Mode: As you draw on successive frames, the strokes you drew on previous (or forward) frames also appear for your reference.

    For information about setting Vector Paint Preferences, see Selecting viewing options (PB only).