Ayatsuri2D

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Compositions and sound

A composition is a timeline of layers, the way After Effects nests comps. Animation > New Composition… (or the + in the Timeline header) makes one; the picker in the header lists compositions after the scenes.

Each layer plays a stretch of a scene, or of another composition, from a start time on the composition's clock. The stack button in the header adds a layer of any scene, or of any composition that does not lead back to this one. Layers list top first, and each one mixes over everything beneath it by its weight (the percentage in the value column), faded in and out at its ends. At full weight the top layer simply wins; a faded or half-weight layer blends with what is below it, or with the rest pose where nothing is.

In the lanes a layer is a bar:

  • drag the body to slide it, either end to trim it. Trimming the start keeps the content where it was, like dragging a layer's in point in After Effects. The end can run past a looping scene's length, which plays it round again;
  • hold Shift while dragging to snap to other layers' ends and the playhead;
  • drag a layer's name up or down the list to reorder the stack (the top layer plays over the rest); drag the small square at either top corner of a bar inward to set its fade in or fade out, and the ramp draws inside the bar; right-click a bar for the fades and speed, to put its start or end at the playhead, trim either to the playhead, split it there, move it up or down, duplicate or delete it;
  • double-click it to open its scene for editing; a button in the header leads back to the composition;
  • the eye turns a layer off, the twirl shows its scene's keys where they land. They select, drag, key and jump like a scene's own keys, and the edit lands in the scene through the layer's start, in point and speed.

[ and ] slide the selected layer's start or end to the playhead, Shift+D duplicates it, Ctrl+Shift+D splits it there, Delete removes it. Ctrl+Z takes layer edits back the same way as key edits.

The Render window plays and exports compositions like scenes. The model export writes each composition as a motion with a key on every frame, flattened the way a precomp renders, since motion3 has no layers. Compositions are saved inside the .aom; older builds of Ayatsuri2D open the file and ignore them.

Sound

Audio file… in the Add layer menu, or File > Import Audio…, adds a sound (WAV, MP3, FLAC or Ogg). Import Audio drops it at the playhead of the current composition, or makes a composition as long as the sound when there is none. Its bar shows the waveform, its weight is the volume, and it plays through the system output while the composition plays. A stereo file twirls open into its left and right channels under the bar. The Render window mixes the sound layers that are turned on into exported MP4, WebM and MOV. The file is kept by path, relative to the .aom, so move them together.

Audio Mixer

The Audio Mixer palette (Window > Audio Mixer; a tab beside the Timeline) is laid out like a video editor's: one channel strip per sound layer of the current composition and a Main out bus. A strip has a dB scale, a fader (double-click for 0 dB; up to +6 dB), live level meters (two bars side by side for a stereo file, one for mono, with a held peak line), the level read out under them, M (mute) and S (solo) and a pan knob on top (drag to turn, double-click to centre), and the name in a box at the bottom. Changes while playing ease over a few milliseconds, so nothing clicks. Drag the gutter at a strip's right edge to narrow it down to just the meters and the name. The main-out bus shows the editor's own level (the same as Settings > Audio) and the device it goes to. Fader moves are undo steps in the Timeline. EQ and effects are not built yet.