Animation¶

The Designer's animation system records keyframes on placement channels and plays them back at runtime via the framework's AnimationClock. This section covers the authoring surfaces.

Six surfaces, one model¶

Animation in the Designer happens across six panels:

Surface	Role
Time slider	Scrub frames, transport controls
Keyframes	Set / edit / delete keys
Graph Editor	Edit per-channel curves and tangents
Dope Sheet	Edit timing in a roll-up view
Trax + Time Editor	Clip-level layout
Motion paths	Visualize and edit translate keys in canvas
Playback controls	Speed, loop, range

Underneath, every animatable channel is a curve: an ordered list of (frame, value, tangent_in, tangent_out) records.

What is animatable¶

Most placement channels are animatable: translate, rotate, scale, opacity, fill, stroke, every numeric Properties pane field, every brush parameter (size, opacity, etc), every deformer parameter, every constraint weight. The Channel Box's small dot to the left of each row marks keyable channels.

Non-animatable: paths (vertex lists), shader programs, file references.

Workflow¶

The conventional flow is:

Block in: rough key poses at sparse frames (block-in).
Spacing: refine the timing in the dope sheet.
Polish: refine the curves in the graph editor.

This top-down approach matches Maya / Blender conventions and keeps you out of the curve weeds until the timing reads.

Auto Key¶

Animate > Toggle Auto Key (red dot on the time slider) records a key whenever you change a value. Convenient for blocking; turn off for polish so a stray nudge does not commit.

Animation playback at runtime¶

When you export the .esk bundle, every keyed channel becomes part of document.json. The framework's runtime reads these tracks into Tweens registered with an AnimationClock, then plays them at the rate you set in playback-controls.

The Aurora Clock and Butterfly Banner tutorials show the runtime side: signals + effects + Tweens are the framework primitives that the Designer's authored tracks ride on.

Layered animation¶

The Designer supports layered animation: stack multiple tracks per channel with blend weights. Useful for procedural overlays (a flap-base loop + a hand-keyed acceleration on top), or for non- destructive iteration ("save the v3 timing as a layer, audition v4 on top, blend").

Manage layers in the Properties pane's Animation section.