Motion path
The trail a moving layer leaves on the canvas, with handles you drag right there to bend its trajectory, independently of its timing.
Select a single layer that has two or more Position keyframes while in Animate mode, with the Move or Transform tool, and its motion path appears on the canvas: a dotted trail tracing every pose it passes through, from its first Position key to its last. It is the fastest way to see and reshape a move without opening a panel.
The Motion Path option on the Tool Options bar shows or hides the path. It is on by default, it is shared by the Move and Transform tools, and it is remembered between sessions. In Edit mode it is greyed out, because there is no motion to show. The Bone tool has a Motion Path option of its own for bone paths: see Bone paths below.
Reading the path
The trail is drawn in the layer's own colour: its colour group when one is assigned, otherwise a pale lavender, close to white. A layer therefore reads as one colour from its duration bar in the timeline through to its path on the canvas, and two layers shown at once are told apart at a glance. Every mark is drawn over a dark halo so it stays legible on a white canvas.
Every frame between the first and last Position key gets a small dot; each keyframe itself gets a square mark. Dots packed close together mean the layer is covering little ground per frame, a slow patch of the move, and dots spread further apart mean it is moving fast. Reading the spacing tells you the timing before you even scrub the playhead.
Spatial handles
Each keyframe mark carries up to two handles on thin lines: one for the segment leaving it, one for the segment arriving. The first key has no incoming handle and the last has no outgoing one, since neither has a neighbour on that side. Drag a handle and the path bends toward it, the same way a bezier handle bends a drawn curve, so a straight hop between two poses can become an arc.
Dragging a plain dot instead of a keyframe mark creates a new keyframe there first, seeded with the value the path was already passing through, so the curve does not jump, and then moves it.
A keyframe mark you click is highlighted in the accent colour. Press Delete, or choose Edit ▸ Delete, and that Position key is removed while the layer stays. Click anywhere off the path to let go of the key, and Delete goes back to deleting layers.
Shape and timing are separate
A spatial handle shapes only the path in space: where the layer travels. How fast it travels along that path is the timing, and that is set with easing, in the Easing panel or the Graph Editor. The two are independent: bending a handle never changes the speed along the path, and reshaping an easing curve never moves a handle here.
The keyframe right-click menu
Right-click a square keyframe mark on the path for six commands: three that shape the path, then Easing, Interval and Delete Keyframe. On a tablet, press and hold the mark instead.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Create Path Line | Builds a real Shape layer that traces the whole path, named after the layer with Path appended |
| Reset Bezier | Retracts both spatial handles on this key, so the path runs straight through it again. Greyed out when the key is not bent |
| Smooth Bezier | Auto-tangents the key: the direction comes from the chord between its two neighbours, so the corner rounds off instead of kinking, and each handle is a third of the length of the segment beside it |
| Easing | A submenu of the same nine presets as everywhere else, applied to this key |
| Interval | A submenu of 1 to 8, holding the outgoing segment on twos, threes and so on |
| Delete Keyframe | Removes this Position key |
Create Path Line needs two Position keyframes to have anything to trace. The new shape is an open path with no fill and a 2 pixel light-grey stroke, dropped in as a sibling directly above the layer that owns the motion, which is the space its points are authored in. Its nodes come across Sharp, with the handles copied verbatim from the motion path rather than re-aligned by the Smart or Smooth rules.
Bone paths
With the Bone tool in Animate mode, the selected bone shows its own motion path, drawn in the bone's colour. It runs across every frame the rig is keyed on, so a bone that only moves because its parent turns still shows a path. A Static bone's path follows the handle itself; any other bone's path follows its tip. Square marks sit on the frames where this bone has a key. The Motion Path option on the Bone tool's bar shows or hides it, and it is on by default.
- Drag a key mark to re-pose the bone at that frame. A Static bone moves there; any other bone turns so its tip points at the cursor.
- Drag a plain dot and it first becomes a key holding the pose the bone already has there, then moves.
- A Static bone's keys have bezier handles that bend its path, the same way a layer's path bends.
- A turning bone can only travel along an arc, so its handles set the timing instead: the longer a handle, the slower the bone eases out of or into that key. Dragging one switches that key's Easing to Custom.
When an action moves the bone, the path shows that motion too. Inside Action Mode you can bend a Static bone's path the same way, and the handle follows that curve when the action plays.
Right-click a key mark on a bone path, or press and hold it on a tablet, for its menu. For a Static bone the menu starts with Reset Bezier and Smooth Bezier. For every bone it then has Easing, Interval and Delete Keyframe, which removes the bone's Angle, Stretch and Position keys on that frame. A clicked key is highlighted, and Delete removes it the same way.