Layers

Layers are the elements that make up a scene. Without layers, a scene is only an empty frame. Use as many layers as necessary to create your scenes. Some scenes contain dozens of layers, whereas some scenes contain only one layer.

Layers are similar to layers in Photoshop. The primary difference is that each layer usually contains more than one frame, such as a video, an audio track or an image sequence. As in Photoshop layers are composited on top of each other.

You can create several kinds of layers:

• Video and audio layers that are based on footage items, such as still images, videos, and audio tracks. These items can either be local (imported into your project) or remote and loaded at render time via HTTP(s).
• Solid-color layers that are based on a solid-color
• Synthetic layers that hold visual elements that you create, such as shape layers and text layers
• SceneView layers, which use scenes (from Dynamic Movies) as their source footage items.
• Special layers that you create such as adjustment layers, and layer references.

Animations

Layers have animatable attributes such as their positions, sizes, transparency and others. Animations change the values of these attributes over the time the layer is being rendered in a scene. There are number of pre-defined animations, such as "slidein" or "fadein" but you can also define your own animations. To learn more about animations see the chapter Animations.

To animate a layer with a pre-defined animation add an <animation> tag inside of a layer, e.g.

<image src="IMAGE-SOURCE">
    <animation type="slidein" direction="left" duration="0.3s"/>
</image>

Effects

Layers can be filtered and transformed. To learn more about Filters, Masks, Transforms see the chapter Effects.

To filter a layer add an <filter> tag inside of a layer, e.g.

<image src="IMAGE-SOURCE">
    <filter type="saturation" saturation="0."/>
</image>