Symbols
A symbol is a reusable clip with its own internal timeline that you place, and re-place, anywhere in the project: edit it once and every instance updates.
A Symbol layer carries its own embedded layer tree and its own timeline, separate from the scene's. Edit the artwork or animation inside a symbol once, and every place you have placed it in the project picks up the change.
Creating a symbol
Layer ▸ Symbol makes an empty one to build from scratch, and creates its Library entry at the same time. Convert to Symbol (F8) wraps existing layers into a new one in place: the symbol takes their place in the drawing order and stays inside their group, the layers keep their original drawing order inside it, a selected group's children come along, and any animation you converted keeps playing. Either way the symbol lands in the project's Library, and dragging it from the Library onto the canvas places another instance of it. Alt-dragging an instance, or duplicating it, places another instance of the same symbol too.
A new symbol never takes a name another symbol already uses. A symbol cannot be placed inside itself, whether you drop it from the Library or paste it. Pasted into another project, a symbol joins that project's Library; if a different symbol there already uses its name, the pasted one gets a numbered name, such as Symbol 1 (2).
Break Apart (Ctrl+B) does the reverse: it turns an instance back into ordinary layers, inside a group that keeps the instance's place and keys, and nothing moves on screen. Every frame keeps showing what the symbol showed there: the cels and keys of its layers are retimed to its Play, Stop, Loop and Time Remap, and a drawing the symbol never reached in the scene is left out. Convert to Symbol and Break Apart are in the Layer menu and in the canvas right-click menu, and both shortcuts can be changed in Preferences. Neither is available while an action is open, and Swap Symbol does nothing then either.
Convert to Symbol asks first when the selection is linked to layers outside it: a path it follows, a bone it rides or is bound to, a welded shape, a shape link or an action's bone. The question lists them. Yes takes them into the symbol too, so everything keeps moving; No converts nothing and leaves the layers as they are. Paste asks the same way when the layers you paste are linked to a path or a bone that cannot be reached where you paste them, inside a symbol or in another project: Yes pastes those layers along with them, No pastes nothing.
One symbol, many instances
Whatever you change about a symbol is stored on the symbol itself and appears on every instance of it in the project, however deeply nested, whichever instance you edited: its artwork, its group markers, its timeline length and frame rate, and its type. What stays with each instance is what makes placing it twice worth doing: where it sits, which variant it shows, when it plays and how it plays.
Renaming an instance renames the symbol and every other instance of it in one step, including instances placed inside other symbols.
Swap Symbol in the Properties panel makes an instance show a different symbol from the Library, keeping its place, its keys and its playback. Its list leaves out any symbol that would end up inside itself, and it is greyed out while the Library holds only one symbol. Duplicate Symbol, in the Library's right-click menu, makes an independent copy of a symbol that you can change without touching the original.
The internal timeline
A symbol's own timeline runs from frame 1 to frame 24 by default, both ends adjustable, at its own frame rate or the scene's if you leave that at 0. Double-click an instance on the canvas, or its row in the Library, to step inside and edit it: everything you draw or animate there lives on the symbol's own timeline, not the scene's, and a breadcrumb lets you step back out. Stepping in and out is its own History entry.
Symbols can nest inside other symbols, up to eight levels deep. A project nested deeper than that cannot be saved: the save fails rather than writing the deeper symbols empty. Edits made in a symbol inside another symbol are kept when you step back out, and they reach every instance of it, wherever it sits. A bone rig inside a symbol animates on the canvas and in thumbnails, not only while you are editing it.
Graphic or Movie Clip
Symbol Type in the Properties panel chooses how an instance keeps time:
| Type | How it keeps time |
|---|---|
| Graphic | Steps with the timeline it sits on, so scrubbing the parent scrubs the symbol |
| Movie Clip | Runs on the main playhead, so a parent that is stopped or looping does not retime it |
Playback
When nothing on the scene timeline tells an instance what to do, Playback in the Properties panel decides. Each instance has its own setting, so two copies of one symbol can play in different ways:
| Playback | What the instance does |
|---|---|
| Single Frame | Shows the First Frame and stays on it |
| Loop | Plays from the First Frame to the Last Frame and starts again |
| Ping Pong | Runs to the Last Frame and back again instead of cutting back to the start |
| Play Once | Plays through once and stops on the Last Frame |
| Play Once Reverse | Plays backwards once, from the Last Frame to the First Frame, and stops there |
| Loop Reverse | Plays backwards from the Last Frame to the First Frame, over and over |
First Frame and Last Frame, below Playback, set the part of the symbol's timeline the instance plays; left alone, they cover all of it. These settings are greyed out while a frame action or a Time Remap already drives the symbol, so they can never be controls that do nothing. Last Frame is also greyed out for Single Frame, which only shows the First Frame.
Frame actions
Frame actions steer an instance from the scene timeline. Right-click the instance's strip on a frame and choose one:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play Symbol | Starts the symbol forward from a chosen internal frame |
| Stop Symbol | Freezes the symbol on the frame that was on screen |
| Loop Frame | Cycles a range |
| Ping Pong | Runs to the end of the range and back again |
| Hold | Freezes the symbol on exactly the frame it is showing |
A Play action can itself loop or ping pong over the symbol's own range, from the same menu, without a second marker. Hold differs from Stop in what it keeps: Stop keeps whatever playback happened to reach, while Hold names one internal frame. A Hold or a Ping Pong ends or loops the block on the main row as well as on the Playback row below it, and dragging a play block moves exactly the block that is drawn.
On a strip you can select the frames past the end of a symbol's animation and clear them, and drag the edge of what is left.
Time Remap
Time Remap is the symbol's own internal frame, as a channel you can keyframe. Key it to slow the symbol down, freeze it, or run it backwards. It has a timeline row, a curve in the Graph Editor, easing, Auto Key and a field in the Properties panel, like any other channel. As soon as it has a keyframe, its curve becomes the symbol's clock and the frame actions stop being consulted. The layer's Pre/Post behaviour applies to it like any other channel, so Loop or Ping Pong repeats the remapped timing after the last key.
Group markers and variants
Group markers are named, coloured ranges on the symbol's own timeline; add one with Add Group Marker from the timeline's right-click menu. New markers are numbered, so each has its own name. They belong to the symbol, so they survive a save and appear on every instance, whichever way you open the symbol.
A symbol's group markers are also its variants. Turn on Variant in the Properties panel and the Variants panel lists the groups as cards, each with a real preview. Click a card to pick that group; the choice is a keyframe on the timeline like any other variant, so a symbol can switch cycles as it plays. Playback decides what happens inside the picked group, which is how the same mechanism gives either a held pose or a running cycle.
The symbol library
Library ▸ Purge Unused clears out symbols nothing in the project references any more, after showing you the count first. A symbol used only inside another symbol counts as used and is kept.