Chapter 6. Graphics on Multiple Layers

6. Graphics on Multiple Layers

In Flash 8, you create an illusion of three-dimensional depth by overlapping graphic elements. As you learned in Chapter 5, you can create this overlapping effect on one layer by stacking drawing-objects, groups, and symbols. The more elements the layer contains, however, the more difficult it becomes to manipulate and keep track of their stacking order. Layers help you to bring that task under control.

You can think of a Flash document as being like a stack of filmstrips: a sheaf of long, clear acetate strips divided into frames . Each filmstrip is analogous to a Flash layer. Shapes painted on the top filmstrip obscure shapes on lower strips; where the top filmstrip is blank, elements from lower strips show through.

When you place items on separate layers, it's easy to control and rearrange the way the items stack up. You can make shapes appear to be closer to the viewer by putting them in a higher layer. Additionally, raw shapes on different layers don't interact, so you don't need to worry about grouping merge-shapes or having one merge-shape inadvertently delete another. You can hide and show layers and label them to make it easier to work with multiple layers and elements in a Flash document.

Touring the Timeline's Layer Features

Flash graphically represents each layer as one horizontal section of the Timeline and provides controls for viewing and manipulating these graphic representations. Several features make it easier to work with graphics on layers, such as viewing the items on layers as outlines and assigning different colors to those outlines so you can easily see which items are on which layers. You can lock layers so you don't edit their contents accidentally , and you can hide layers to make it easier to work with individual graphics in a welter of other graphics. You can create special guide layers for help in positioning elements, masks for hiding and revealing layer contents selectively, and guides for animating motion along a path . (You learn more about motion paths in Chapter 9.)

Complex movies contain dozens of layers. Viewing and navigating such hefty Timelines can get tedious and confusing. Flash lets you create layer folders to organize the layers in a movie. You can keep all the layers related to one character or element together in one folder, for example. Flash considers a folder to be another type of layer, and the methods for adding and deleting layer folders are similar to those for adding and deleting layers. Layer folders don't by themselves hold graphic content, however, and folders have neither frames nor keyframes in the Timeline. (Keyframes are special frames in which you place your graphic elements; you'll learn about them in Chapter 7.)

Figure 6.1 offers a road map to the important layer features in the Timeline.

Figure 6.1. The Timeline represents all the layers in a Flash movie graphically. Layer folders let you organize layers in a complex movie. You can do much of the work of creating and manipulating layers and folders by clicking buttons in the Timeline.

Creating and Deleting Layers and Folders

You can add new layers and layer folders as you need them while creating the ingredients of a particular scene in your movie.

To add layers and folders

In the Timeline, select a layer or folder layer.

Flash always adds the new layer or folder directly above the one you selected, so be sure to select the layer or folder that should wind up directly beneath the new one. To add a layer or folder beneath the current bottom layer, create the layer first, and then click and drag it to reposition it at the bottom of the stack.

To add a layer, do either of the following :

Choose Insert > Timeline > Layer ( Figure 6.2 ).

Figure 6.2. Choose Insert > Timeline > Layer to add a new layer to the Timeline.
In the Timeline, click the Insert Layer button.

Flash adds a new layer and gives it a default namefor example, Layer 4 ( Figure 6.3 ).

Figure 6.3. Select the layer that you want to wind up beneath the new layer (top); Flash inserts a new layer directly above the selected layer and gives the new layer a default name (bottom).

To add a folder, do either of the following :

Choose Insert > Timeline > Layer Folder.
In the Timeline, click the Insert Layer Folder button.

Flash adds a new layer folder and gives it a default namefor example, Folder 1 or Folder 2 ( Figure 6.4 ).

Figure 6.4. Select the layer that should be below the new folder (top). Flash creates a new folder above the layer you selected (bottom). Flash names new folders based on the number of folders that have been created in the current scene of the movie.

Flash bases the number in the default names on the number of layers or folders already created in the active scene of the movie, not on the number of layers and folders that currently exist. Flash tracks layer and folder numbers separately; the first folder you insert among numerous layers gets the name Folder 1 .

To delete layers or folders

In the Timeline, select the layer or folder you want to delete.

Click the Trash icon ( Figure 6.5 ).

Figure 6.5. Click the Trash icon to delete a selected layer or folder.

Flash removes that layer (and all its frames ) or that folder (and all the layers it contains) from the Timeline.

Tip

The contextual menu for layers offers some choices that otherwise are available only via buttons in the Timelinefor example, the Delete Layer and Delete Folder commands ( Figure 6.6 ). To access this menu, Control-click a layer on the Mac or right-click it in Windows.

Figure 6.6. The contextual menu for layers gives you easy access to layer commands, including some that you can otherwise access only via buttonsfor example, Delete Layer. To access the contextual menu for layers, Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) the icon of the layer you want to work with.

To delete multiple layers and/or folders

1.	In the Timeline, select the first layer or folder you want to remove.
2.	-click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (Windows) every layer or folder you want to remove. This method of selection allows you to choose multiple layers that aren't contiguous ( Figure 6.7 ). Figure 6.7. To delete noncontiguous layers, -click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (Windows) the layers you want to add to your selection; then click the Trash icon.
3.	Click the Trash icon. Flash removes the selected layers (and their frames) from the Timeline. If your selection includes folders containing layers, a dialog appears, warning that deleting the layer folder will also delete all the layers it contains.
4.	To delete the folder and its layers, click Yes. or To cancel the delete operation, click No.

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Tip

You can also Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) selected layers or folders to bring up the context menu, which contains commands for deleting layers and folders.
To select a range of layers, click the lowest layer you want to delete; then Shift-click the highest layer you want to delete. Flash selects the clicked layers and all the layers in between.
You can drag selected layers to the Trash icon to delete them instead of selecting and clicking the Trash icon in two steps.
You can't delete all the layers in the Timeline. If you select all the layers and folders and click the Trash icon, Flash keeps the bottom layer and deletes the rest. Even if the bottom layer is nested in a folder, Flash keeps it and promotes it to regular layer status.

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