Through the previous lessons, we have learned how to create animations using keyframe transitions and using independent layers. They can be used to create some simple single-object animations, and for a long time they were the only way to create animations in Photoshop. Today we are going to learn a new way to animate using the timeline . The timeline method is widely used in many film and television production software, such as Premiere, AfterEffects, etc., including Flash, which also uses this method.
There are many operations in keyframe transition animation that we have not mentioned. This is because they have nothing to do with the timeline method, and the timeline will be our main method of making animations in the future, so we will skip them.
To unify the materials, please click here to download the material file , unzip the PSD file, and open it in Photoshop. This is a file without frame settings (you can also use your own instead). As shown below. Due to the use of text layers, the replacement option may appear due to missing fonts after opening it. Just choose to replace it with the default font. Although the default font is not beautiful enough, the teaching effect is the same.
The PSD file contains 3 layers (not counting the background layer), two of which are text layers and one is a vector shape layer. If you don’t know what a vector shape layer is, it means you haven’t mastered the basics well.
Click in the lower right corner of the Animation palette
button to switch to the timeline mode, as shown in the figure below. Careful readers will notice that the name of the palette has changed to "Animation (Timeline)", while the previous one was "Animation (Frame)". The button in the lower right corner changes to
, clicking will switch to the original frame mode.
It should be noted that these two methods are incompatible with each other, so do not switch during the production process. If you switch by mistake, you can use the undo command [CTRL+ALT+Z] to restore it.
In the timeline we see layer names similar to those in the layers palette, and their high and low positions are also the same as those in the layers palette. Clicking the arrow mark on the left side of the layer will expand all animation items of the layer, that is, elements that can be animated. In layers of different natures, their animation items are also different. The so-called different properties refer to ordinary layers, ordinary layers with masks, text layers, adjustment layers, etc. These are all layers of different properties. As shown in the left picture below, the animation project after the "Go and Stay" text layer and the "Shape 1" vector shape layer are expanded respectively. What they all have in common is position, opacity, and style. The difference is that the text layer has one more "text deformation" item, and the vector shape layer has two more mask-related items.
Animation production cannot exceed the animation project of the layer itself. For example, "text deformation" cannot be performed on the shape layer. However, some animation items can be added later. For example, after adding a mask to a text layer, it will have a masked animation item.
There is a set of numbers 0:00:00:00 in the upper left corner of the palette, which is the current time code. From the right end, they are milliseconds, seconds, minutes, and hours. Generally only seconds are used. There is also 30.00fps after the time code, which is the frame rate, indicating how many frames per second. Generally, the value is an integer, and decimal frame rates are only used in film and television editing.
Click in the upper right corner of the Animation palette Click the button and select "Document Settings", and the timeline settings shown on the right below will appear. Here you can specify the total animation duration and frame rate. According to the default settings, the total length is 10 seconds and 30 frames per second, so the total number of frames is 300 frames. This is a quite large value for web animation. It will occupy a large number of bytes when produced, which is not conducive to Network transmission. Now we change the duration to 5 seconds and the frame rate to 5fps. Once confirmed, you will see the new frame rate indicator in the animation palette.
As shown in the picture below, if you expand the animation palette horizontally, you will see time marks like 01:00 and 02:00, in seconds. The rightmost end of the timeline is the total duration of 5 seconds just set. Drag the slider pointed by the red arrow to the right to enlarge the details of the timeline. The enlarged timeline is within the red box area. You can see that there are signs like 01f and 02f between seconds. This is the frame. The setting we just set was 5fps, so there are 5 frames every two seconds. Although we only see the maximum 04f, we must know that 05f actually overlaps with 01:00. Therefore, it is expressed as 01:00f, which means that it is both the first second and a frame.
Note that there is a less conspicuous thin line between the two orange arrows. This is the render buffer indicator. Other film and television editing software also have this indicator, but its role is not very important in Photoshop. In the following courses will be mentioned.