Onion skin
Ghost the frames before and after the current one directly on the canvas, so you can draw or pose against what came before it.
Onion skin overlays nearby frames on the canvas as faint ghosts while you draw or pose the current one: a digital light table. It works on any layer type: painted cells, vector drawings and posed rigs alike.
Turning it on
Click the Onion Skin button in the Timeline toolbar, or press O. It is off by default. The first time you turn it on with no offsets set, it seeds five frames before and five after the playhead for you, up to the maximum of ten active offsets.
| O | Toggle Onion Skin |
The offset bar
Once onion skin is on, a band appears in the Timeline ruler with one coloured cell per active offset: blue for frames before the playhead, red for frames after it. Offsets are stored relative to the playhead, so they follow it as you scrub.
- Click an empty cell to add a new offset there and start dragging it.
- Click and drag an existing cell to move it.
- Click an existing cell and release without moving it to delete that offset.
Right-click a cell and choose Pin to This Frame to pin it. A pinned cell stays on that frame instead of following the playhead, so the ghost of that frame stays in view wherever the playhead goes, which helps when you keep checking poses against one key drawing. It shows a white dot, can be dragged to another frame or clicked away like any other cell, and is saved with the document. Right-click it and choose Unpin to turn it back into an ordinary offset at the same distance from the playhead.
The bar is hidden in Edit mode, since onion skin only makes sense against animated frames.
Opacity, position and colour
Open the caret beside the Onion Skin button for its settings. Enable Onion Skin mirrors the main toggle. The Active count shows how many of the ten offset slots are in use, with a Clear button to drop them all at once.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Opacity | 50% | How strongly the ghosted frames are drawn, from 10% to 100% |
| Position | Back | Whether ghosts draw behind (Back) or in front of (Front) the current frame's own artwork |
| Before | Blue | The tint applied to frames earlier than the playhead |
| After | Red | The tint applied to frames later than the playhead |
Snap to Keys
Turn on Snap to Keys in the onion skin settings to put the ghosts on keyframes instead of on the nearby frames. Keys From decides which keys are counted: All Layers counts the keys on every layer, Selected Layers only those on the layers you have selected. The Timeline outlines the frames the ghosts land on.
Onion skin per layer
Right-click a layer row for an Onion Skin item that cycles the layer through three states: Inherit, the default, follows the global toggle above; a second click forces onion skin on for that layer regardless of the global setting; a third click forces it off. This is how you keep a background layer from cluttering the ghosts, or keep a character layer ghosting even while you have the global toggle off for everything else.
Every layer ghosts the same way, 3D layers included: faint tinted outlines, lined up with the drawing on the current frame. Nearby frames are prepared while you pause, so sitting on a frame with onion skin on is about as light as sitting on any other, and scrubbing stays smooth. Each ghost frame is drawn once and reused, not drawn again every time the canvas redraws.