Playing back your painting (Pro only)

Use the Playback Mode pop-up menu in the Effect Controls window to specify when and how quickly your strokes appear in your composition. When you draw strokes, Vector Paint records information for the stroke start time and the drawing time of each stroke (in real time). The Playback Mode you select determines when a stroke starts and for how long it appears. You can set the speed at which the strokes play back using Playback Speed.

Play back your strokes using the Spacebar or RAM Preview, or by viewing the results of a rendered Composition.

Note: Regardless of how you record your strokes and which Playback Mode you select when recording, you can always switch to another Playback Mode at any time.

While the Playback Mode chosen affects what you see during playback, it also determines what you see while you are drawing strokes. Onion Skin mode, for example, is used primarily while drawing strokes, and then another mode is selected before rendering.

Important: Notice the position of the current-time indicator when you begin drawing strokes. This position affects the appearance of strokes in all modes except All Strokes.

Adjust the following controls to affect the way that strokes appear in the composition:

All Strokes

Displays all strokes for the full duration of the layer, regardless of the position of the current-time indicator when you drew them.

Past Strokes

Displays strokes from the time at which they were recorded 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 current-time indicator is when you draw the stroke). The stroke animates in the same way as it was drawn.

Current Frame

The default Draw Strokes setting. This control 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 options 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.