Properties panel
The Properties panel holds every setting of the selected layer, in sections that appear and disappear with the layer type: this is how to read it and what each section contains.
Open it with Window ▸ Properties. It is shown by default. The panel always follows the primary selected layer, the last one you clicked, and shows No selection when nothing is selected.
Which sections you get depends on the type. Every layer has Transform and Layer; Shape layers add Path, Fill and Stroke; Group layers add Boolean / Liquid Shape; Bone, Image and Mesh layers each add their own. Audio layers replace Transform with an Audio section.
Rows, diamonds and undo
Every animatable row starts with a small diamond. Hollow means there is no keyframe on this parameter at the current frame; filled amber means there is one. Click it to add a key, click it again to remove that key.
Diamonds do nothing at frame 0. Frame 0 is the construction frame, the rest pose, so animation starts at frame 1.
Numeric fields are drags: press and pull sideways to scrub the value. A whole drag, from press to release, is one undo step, so scrubbing a value back and forth does not fill the History panel. Double-click one to type into it instead. It takes digits, a decimal point, a sign and the arithmetic signs, so an expression like 100/2 still works, and nothing else gets in.
Auto-key and multiple selections
Editing a parameter that is already animated always re-keys it at the current frame. Creating a brand new key from an edit needs the matching auto-key channel to be armed, in Edit ▸ Auto-Key Channels or the Timeline's auto-key popup. Position, Rotation, Scale, Skew, Distort and the four style channels (Fill, Stroke, Expose and Dash) are armed by default; Vertices, Anchor, Opacity, Blend and Layer Effects are not.
Style edits are always keyed while you are editing an action, whatever the channel arming says.
With several layers selected, style and layer settings (opacity, blend mode, fill and stroke colour, stroke width, dash) are copied to the rest of the selection inside the same undo step. Transforms are deliberately not broadcast, so a nudge moves only the primary layer.
Transform
| Row | Default | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Position | 0, 0, 0 | unlimited | X, Y and Z. Z is animatable data that the flat 2D compositor ignores; it is used by multiplane and by 3D layers |
| Rotation | 0, 0, 0 degrees | unlimited | One diamond keys all three. Z is the flat 2D roll; X and Y are tilts with their own channels |
| Scale | 1.00, 1.00 | 0.01 to 100 | The padlock at the end of the row locks the aspect ratio |
| Skew X, Skew Y | 0, 0 degrees | -85 to 85 degrees | Leans the layer along its own axes. The Transform tool's Skew mode writes these. Not offered for the Camera |
| Distort | Appears once the layer has a Perspective, Distort or Warp from the Transform tool. Its diamond keys all of its corners and warp points at once. Reset takes the whole distortion off, its keys included | ||
| Anchor | Auto | Auto uses the centre of the layer's own content. Switching to manual seeds the fields with that centre and lets you move the pivot | |
| Bone Influence | All bones | All bones / Selected bones | Only for a layer inside a bone layer whose Binding is Flexible or Region. Selected bones limits the layer to the bones selected in that rig when you choose it, and lists them under the row. See Binding and weights |
| Follow Path | None | Pick any other Shape layer with at least two points, or use the eyedropper to click a path on the canvas. Not offered for the Camera | |
| Progress | 0% | 0 to 100% | How far along the path the layer sits, measured by arc length. A closed path also gets a lap counter from -999 to 999 and allows -100 to 100% |
| Orient to path | off | Turns the layer to follow the path tangent, added to its own rotation | |
| Elasticity | 0% | 0 to 100% | Bends the layer along the path instead of carrying it rigid. Keyframeable. See Follow Path |
Select the Camera and Transform gains four more rows: Zoom, default 1.00 with a range of 0.1 to 10; Camera Depth, default 0, range 0 to 8, where 0 is flat and higher values give stronger multiplane parallax; Depth of Field, default 0, range 0 to 100; and Point of Interest, off by default. With Point of Interest off the camera turns on its own rings; with it on the camera aims at a placeable, keyframeable target, seeded straight ahead so nothing re-frames when you switch it on.
Select a Symbol and Transform gains rows of its own: Symbol Type, Graphic or Movie Clip; Swap Symbol, which shows a different symbol from the Library in the instance's place; Playback, one of six ways to play, with the First Frame and Last Frame it plays between, all greyed out while a frame action or Time Remap drives the symbol; and a keyframeable Time Remap, the symbol's own internal frame. See Symbols.
Layer
This section is present for every type.
| Row | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Opacity | 100% | Layer opacity from 0 to 100%. Broadcasts to the whole selection |
| Blend | Normal | The same fourteen blend modes as the Layers panel header, with the same hover preview |
| Z-Order | off, offset 0 | A keyframeable hop in draw order among the layer's siblings. The offset is clamped to the number of siblings minus one. Disabled with fewer than two siblings |
| Variant | off | Shown only when the layer has children. Makes those children mutually exclusive and keyframeable |
| Animate Shapes | off | Shown only when the layer's parent is a variant container. Cycles this layer's own children over time without keyframes |
| Clipping Alpha | off | Confines the layer's outward effects to where the layers below it inside the same parent already have alpha. Cascades to descendants |
| Anti-alias | on | Raster Cells, Pixel and Vector Cells layers only: a Shape layer's edge is its path. Turn it off for hard, aliased pixel-art edges, with or without Pixel Mode |
Path, Fill and Stroke
Shape layers get three more sections. Path shows the vertex count and whether the contour is Closed or Open; its diamond keys the entire vertex set (points, closed state and extra contours) at the current frame.
Fill starts at None. The type combo offers None, Solid, Linear, Elliptical, Radial and Conical, and picking any of the four gradient kinds seeds sensible stops and geometry for you. The solid colour defaults to a mid grey and accepts a swatch dragged onto it from the Colour or Swatches panels. Shapes with extra contours also get a Fill overlaps switch: off is the even-odd rule, where overlaps punch holes, and on is the non-zero rule, where they stay filled.
Stroke starts at Solid, a light grey, 2.0 pixels wide. Its main rows are Width from 0 to 100 pixels, Expose Start at 0% and Expose End at 100% for write-on effects, Line Boil from 0 to 10 pixels with a Boil Step of 2 frames, Dash, Cap set to Round, Join set to Round, Position set to Center, and a Z-Order of Inherit. Turning on Brush stamps the shape's own brush tip along the centreline and reveals the tip, spacing, scatter, jitter, grain and boil controls. See Fill and stroke and Gradients for the detail.
The type-specific sections
| Section | Shown for | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Audio | Audio layers, and video layers whose file has sound | Level in decibels, -60 to +12 dB, default 0 dB and keyframeable; and Mute |
| Boolean / Liquid Shape | Group layers, and each piece of a boolean group | On a group: the Boolean / Liquid Shape switch, then a keyframeable Blend Radius from 0 to 1000 pixels, Elasticity and Blend Colors. On a piece: its own operation (Union, Subtract, Intersect or XOR) and Blend Weight, with the group's blend controls repeated below |
| Bones | Bone layers | Binding for the whole rig (Flexible, Region or Manual), the bone list, then the selected bone's name, colour, Show Title, Shy, type, angle, length, stretch, weight area, Branch Switch, constraints, inverse kinematics with Lock, control bones, dynamics and actions |
| Image | Image layers | Read-only size and file name |
| Mesh | Mesh layers | Read-only vertex and triangle counts, plus (in Edit mode only) grid columns and rows from 1 to 40, default 8 by 8, and Rebuild Grid |
The bone rows are covered in Bone basics, Binding and weights, IK and constraints and Bone dynamics.