Using Onion Skinning

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In the preceding section, you repositioned a circle to try to create smooth incremental movement for a bouncing ball. To make this task easier, Flash's onion skinning feature lets you see the circle in context with the circles in surrounding frames .

Onion skinning displays dimmed or outline versions of the content of surrounding frames. You determine how many of the surrounding frames Flash displays. The buttons for turning on and off the various types of onion skinning appear at the bottom of the Timeline, in the Timeline's status bar.

To turn on onion skinning:

• In the status bar of the Timeline, click the Onion Skin button.

  The content of all the frames included in the onion skin markers appears in a dimmed form (Figure 8.33). You cannot edit the dimmed objectsonly the full- color graphics in the current frame.

  Figure 8.33. In Onion Skin mode, Flash displays the content of multiple frames but dims everything that's not on the current frame. The onion skin markers in the Timeline indicate how many frames appear at the same time.

  

To turn on outline onion skinning:

• In the status bar of the Timeline, click the Onion Skin Outlines button.

  The content of all the frames included in the onion skin markers appears in outline form (Figure 8.34). You cannot edit the outline graphics only the solid graphics that appear in the current frame.

  Figure 8.34. In Onion Skin Outlines mode, Flash displays the content of multiple frames, but it uses outlines for everything that's not in the current frame. Notice that two of the outlines appear very close together in this example of the bouncing ball. Using that visual cue, you can reposition the ball in Frame 4 to make the spacing (and, thereby, the movement) more even.

  

To adjust the number of frames included in onion skinning:

1. In the Timeline, click the Modify Onion Markers button.

   A pop-up menu appears, containing commands for setting the way the onion skin markers work (Figure 8.35).

   Figure 8.35. The Modify Onion Markers pop-up menu gives you control over the number of frames that appear as onion skins.

   

2. To see frames on either side of the current frame, do one of the following :

   • To see two frames on either side of the current frame, choose Onion 2.

   • To see five frames on either side of the current frame, choose Onion 5.

   • To see all the frames in the movie, choose Onion All.

     Flash moves the onion skin markers around in the Timeline as you move the playhead. Flash always includes onion skins (either solid or outline) for objects in the selected number of frames before the current frame and after it.

Tip

• You can drag onion markers in the Timeline to include more frames or fewer frames in the onion skin view.

To display onion skins for a fixed set of frames:

• From the Modify Onion Markers menu, choose Anchor Onion.

  Flash stops moving the onion skin markers when you move the playhead and simply displays as onion skins the frames currently within the markers. As long as you keep the playhead inside the anchored range, that set of frames stays in onion skin mode (Figure 8.36). This feature lets you work on frames within the set without constantly repositioning the onion skin markers.

  Figure 8.36. When you select Anchor Onion, Flash keeps the onion skin markers in place instead of moving them to follow the playhead. You can select any frame within the marked set and see the same set of onion skinned elements.

  

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