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Reference
Glossary
Short definitions for the terms this documentation uses, from Action Bone to Z-Order.
This is a dictionary, not a tutorial: each entry is one or two sentences, and most link out to a fuller page elsewhere in this manual where one exists. If a word in another article is not doing what you expect, check here first.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Action Bone | A bone whose rotation drives a reusable pose, recorded and played back from the Actions panel |
| Anchor | The point a layer's Position, Rotation and Scale pivot around; its own sub-track, separate from Position |
| Alpha lock | Freezes the transparency of a Raster Cells or Pixel layer so painting can only change colour |
| Animate mode | The mode where posing or moving a layer can write a keyframe, on frame 1 and up |
| Auto Key | Records a keyframe on its own whenever you change a channel it is armed for |
| Auto-Freeze | Before writing a new keyframe, inserts one on the previous frame holding the existing pose, so the change cannot bleed backward |
| Binding (bone layer) | How the layers inside a bone layer follow its bones without being bound: Flexible, Region or Manual |
| Black and White View | A display-only switch, on the Navigator and on Ctrl+Shift+Y, that shows the canvas without colour so you can check values. The References panel has its own for its pictures |
| Blend mode | How a layer's colour combines with what is underneath it; Normal by default |
| Bone | A link in an armature. A Stretched bone rotates and deforms the artwork it moves; a Static bone is a positioned control point that deforms nothing |
| Boolean group | A group whose pieces fold into one outline non-destructively, each piece with its own operation: Union, Subtract, Intersect or XOR |
| Branch Switch | A bone setting that makes its child branches alternatives, one in use at a time, keyframeable |
| Camera View | A canvas mode that shows exactly what the scene camera frames, with panning and zooming switched off |
| Canvas | The rectangle of artwork a project renders and exports, sized in Project Settings |
| Cell | One drawing in a Raster Cells or Vector Cells layer's library. A frame points at a cell rather than owning its own copy of it |
| Cells panel | Lists every cell the selected Raster Cells or Vector Cells layer owns, for dragging onto the timeline |
| Clipping Alpha | Confines a layer's outward Drop Shadow, Outer Glow and Outline to where the layers beneath it already have alpha |
| Construction frame | Frame 0, where Edit mode builds and fixes artwork rather than animating it |
| Drawing layer | See Vector Cells layer |
| Easing | The shape of the transition between two keyframes on the same sub-track, stored on the earlier of the two |
| Edit mode | The mode for drawing, rigging and reshaping. Nothing done here is recorded as animation |
| Erase (blend mode) | Removes the backdrop wherever the layer has alpha, instead of drawing anything |
| Exposure | How many frames a cell holds before the next cell begins |
| Floating selection | A pixel selection lifted off the canvas and moved on its own, committed to the layer once you click away |
| Follow Path | A constraint that locks a layer's position to a path shape and, with Elasticity, bends the layer along it |
| GIF | A palette-based export format with one fully transparent colour and no partial alpha |
| Golden Ratio guide | A composition overlay of golden-ratio spaced lines, on the canvas only: it never appears in an export |
| Graphic | A symbol type that steps with the timeline it sits on, so scrubbing the parent scrubs the symbol |
| Group layer | A layer with no geometry of its own that contains other layers; also the container a boolean operation builds |
| In point / Out point | The start and end frames of the range that plays and exports by default |
| Keyframe | One recorded value, on one sub-track, at one frame |
| Keyframe Interval | How many frames a keyframe's outgoing segment steps across before it holds: 2 is animating on twos, and so on up to 8 |
| Layer Effects | The fixed set of eight non-destructive effects every layer carries: Outline, Color Overlay, Gradient Overlay, Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow and Gaussian Blur |
| Level | The volume of a video or audio layer in decibels, keyframeable like any other channel |
| Library | The panel holding every symbol and imported media asset a project owns |
| Line tool | The tool for clean ink lines: straight segments you bend into curves and chain into one path |
| Liquid shape | A boolean group with a Blend Radius above zero, whose pieces melt together with a smooth neck |
| Matte | The background colour blended into the edges of a Premultiplied alpha export |
| Mesh deform | Warping a layer with a grid of control points instead of redrawing it |
| Missing Media | The dialog that lists a project's video or audio links that could not be found, with Browse to relink each one |
| Motion blur | Smears a moving layer across the frames it travels, shaped by the project's Shutter Angle, Shutter Phase and Samples |
| Motion path | The trail a moving layer or bone leaves on the canvas, shown by the Move, Transform and Bone tools, with keys and handles you drag to reshape the move |
| Movie Clip | A symbol type that runs on the main playhead, so a parent that is stopped or looping does not retime it |
| Navigator | A panel showing the whole canvas with the visible area outlined, used to move around and to set zoom, rotation, flip and black and white view |
| Onion skin | Nearby frames ghosted on the canvas as a drawing aid. It is a viewing aid only and never appears in an export |
| Parametric shape | A shape from the shape tools that keeps its settings, such as a star's points or a cog's teeth, and redraws when they change |
| Pixel Mode | Snaps shapes, fills and strokes to a project-wide pixel grid for a crisp, pixel-art result |
| Post behaviour | What a layer does after its last keyframe: Hold, Loop, Ping Pong or None |
| Pre behaviour | What a layer does before its first keyframe. The same four modes as Post behaviour |
| Premultiplied alpha | Colour stored already blended toward a matte colour as the alpha drops |
| Project | A .cls file: the whole scene, its layers, keyframes and settings, saved and reopened as one document |
| Quick Menu | A strip of on-screen keys and latching modifiers, for working with a pen or a touch screen |
| Raster Cells layer | A layer type holding a library of painted bitmap cells and an exposure per frame |
| References | A panel that keeps reference pictures and videos in tabs inside the project, and can show one tab on the canvas over or behind the artwork. Never rendered or exported |
| Relative Keyframing | Applies a new edit as an offset added to every existing keyframe on that channel, instead of writing a fresh keyframe of its own |
| Rest pose | A skeleton's shape as built in Edit mode, before any posing keyframes are applied |
| Rule of Thirds guide | A 3x3 overlay dividing the canvas into thirds |
| Safe Area guide | An outline at 90% of the canvas size, the traditional broadcast safe boundary |
| Scratchpad | A small sheet in Brush Studio for trying a brush without marking your artwork |
| Shape layer | The bezier drawing layer built by the Pen, Pencil, Line and shape tools. Not the same thing as a Vector Cells layer |
| Shy bone | A bone taken off the canvas while View ▸ Hide Shy Bones is on. It still moves its artwork |
| Skeleton export | File ▸ Export ▸ Skeleton (JSON)…: a rig and its animations written as data for a game engine |
| Skip | The Missing Media button that dismisses every unresolved file at once and leaves those links broken |
| Straight alpha | Colour stored independently of the alpha channel, without blending toward any background |
| Streamline | The string the brush trails behind the pen, in pixels; jitter shorter than the string never reaches the line |
| Sub-track | One animatable channel under a layer's Timeline row, with its own keyframes and easing |
| Symbol | Reusable artwork placed as an instance. Editing the symbol updates every instance of it |
| Time Remap | A symbol's own internal frame as a keyframeable channel, for slowing, freezing or reversing it |
| Timecode | The burnt-in HH:MM:SS:FF readout a video export can overlay on every frame |
| Variant parent | A layer whose direct children are mutually exclusive (only one shows at a time) and which one is showing is keyframeable |
| Vector Cells layer | The frame-by-frame drawing layer type that holds pencil and brush cells, sometimes called a Drawing layer. Not the same thing as a Shape layer |
| Vertex weld | A link that keeps two vertices, possibly on different shapes, moving together as one point |
| Weight | How strongly a bone influences a vertex bound to it |
| Weight Area | A bone's reach: how far it moves artwork that follows the rig by itself, and how far Auto Weight lets it reach |
| Workspace | A saved arrangement of docked and floating panels, loaded from the Window menu |
| Z-Order | The sub-track that keyframes a relative hop in a layer's draw order among its siblings |