Graph Editor
Plot a layer's animated values as curves over time, and edit keyframes and their tangents directly on the curve instead of guessing from the Timeline's diamonds.
The Graph Editor is where you shape motion with your eyes on the actual curve instead of on a row of diamonds. Open it from Window ▸ Graph Editor. With no layer selected it reads Select a shape in Animate mode; with a layer selected but nothing keyed, it reads No keyframes.
It plots value only, never speed: the height of a curve at a frame is the value itself, not how fast it is changing. Frame runs left to right and is interpolated in a straight line between samples; value follows whatever easing each segment actually has.
The toolbar opens with the name of whatever the curves belong to: the layer, its type in brackets, and on a bone layer the selected bone after it. The graph is the one panel where that is not obvious from what is on screen, since a curve looks the same whichever layer drew it.
Showing channels
A column of colour-swatch pills along the side toggles which curves are visible. It lists only the channels the selected layer actually has, so a camera and a vector shape open on different lists. Position X and Y start on; every other channel starts off, so the graph opens uncluttered.
Every layer except a bone layer has Pos X (red), Pos Y (green), Pos Z (blue), Rotation (violet), Scale X (orange), Scale Y (violet-pink), Anchor X (yellow), Anchor Y (dark yellow) and Opacity (cyan). Rotation X (tilt) and Rotation Y (pan) are there too, in muted red and green so they read as related to Rotation without competing with Pos X and Pos Y. A bone layer carries its own four instead, listed below.
The rest depend on the layer type. Width (tan) is the stroke width channel and belongs to vector and drawing layers. Blend Radius (pink) belongs to groups, since only a group has a boolean blend. Depth of Field (pale blue), Zoom and Point of Interest X, Y and Z (orange, green and blue) belong to a camera.
Vertices (teal) and Mesh (purple) pills appear only once the layer actually has vertex or mesh keys, and they behave differently from the rest: they draw a diamond and a dashed guide as a reference, but they are not curves you can select, drag or reshape here.
Bone layers
Select a bone layer and the graph plots the bone you have selected in the rig, or its first bone if you have not picked one yet. The header names both, layer then bone, because a bone is addressed through its layer.
A bone carries four channels and the sidebar names them in the bone's own vocabulary: Angle is what a layer calls Rotation, Stretch is what a layer calls Scale X, and Pos X and Pos Y keep their names. Everything else works exactly as it does on a layer: same tangent buttons, same presets, same interval, same handles.
Reading a curve
Each segment is drawn from 32 sampled points, so even a sharp custom curve reads smoothly. A channel driven by a Style, Follow Path, Layer Effects or bone parameter track plots in gold, but only when its value is a number: text and colour-type parameters have nothing to plot. A stepped channel like Switch or Z-Order draws as stairs, jumping at each key, and shows no tangent handles, because a step has nothing to shape.
Selecting keyframes
Click a key to select it. Drag a box across the graph to take several at once, on one channel or across many, and the toolbar names what you have picked as Selected keyframes. Everything that follows in this page then applies to the whole selection rather than to one key: Linear, Smooth and Sharp, the preset combo, and Keyframe Interval all act on every key you have selected.
Hold Alt and drag a key to leave the original where it is and drop a copy at the frame you release on. Right-click the selection to copy the selected keyframes and paste them at another frame, which is the way to repeat a piece of timing further along the same curve.
Editing keys and tangents
Drag a key and its value moves freely while its frame snaps to whole numbers; it refuses to land on a frame that already holds a key on that channel. Dragging a Position X key carries its Y (and Z) along too, since underneath they are one keyframe with two or three values, not two separate keys that happen to line up. Point of Interest works the same way: its three axes are one key, so they move together and share one easing and one interval. Opacity is clamped to the 0 to 1 range; Stroke Width and Blend Radius cannot go negative.
Right-click a key for a one-off easing menu, the fastest way to try a preset without leaving the curve you are looking at. The same menu copies and pastes the selected keyframes.
Tangent types
Three buttons on the toolbar set a tangent with one click: Linear makes the segment dead straight and also straightens the segment before it, since a key sits at the join of two. Smooth fits a tangent-continuous curve through the key, so motion flows through it without a visible kink. On a generic gold curve, which has no continuity math behind it, Smooth instead applies a fixed, gentle curve. Sharp writes a fixed curve that holds near the key's own value, pops quickly through the middle of the segment, and holds again as it nears the next key, a snap rather than a glide.
Beside them, the same nine-preset combo used everywhere else in the app applies any of the named presets to the selected key. Handles only appear on a key using Custom Bezier: drag either one to reshape the curve, holding Shift to flatten it to a level tangent or Ctrl to mirror it onto the matching handle of the neighbouring segment for a smooth, symmetric pass-through. Ctrl-mirroring is not available on generic gold curves.
Keyframe Interval
An Interval combo sits beside the preset combo in the toolbar, and the key right-click menu carries a matching Keyframe Interval submenu. Both hold the selected key on twos, threes and up to eights, the same value the Timeline header and the Easing panel read.
Framing and navigating
Fit Graph, in the toolbar, frames every visible curve at once, on both axes: the frames the animation actually occupies as well as the values it reaches. It works with nothing selected, which is exactly when you have lost sight of the curves. Press F with the canvas hovered for the same fit from the keyboard. The editor also opens framed to the animation rather than to a stretch of empty frames past the end of it.
The view also refits itself whenever you turn a channel on or off, so a curve you have just made visible cannot land outside the view with nothing on screen to say which way to scroll. Double-click a channel's swatch to frame that one channel fully in both directions, including the reach of any Custom Bezier handles.
| F | Fit the view to the curves |
The plain wheel pans vertically; Shift+wheel zooms horizontally and Ctrl+wheel zooms vertically, both pivoting on the cursor; a horizontal trackpad swipe pans horizontally. Middle-drag pans both axes at once, and left-dragging in the ruler along the top scrubs the playhead and stops playback. Vertical panning stops one and a half screens either side of the fitted range, so the wheel cannot carry you somewhere the scrollbar can no longer describe.
The scrollbars along the bottom and the side zoom as well as scroll. Drag a scrollbar by either end to zoom that axis alone, and the length of the handle tells you how far in you are: a short handle means you are looking at a small part of a long animation.
A duration bar sits in the graph editor too, so the frame range can be set without going back to the Timeline for it.