Layers

Compositions hold an ordered stack of layers. Layers draw from the bottom up, meaning the top layer composites over everything below it.

Add a layer

• Drag an asset from the Project panel into the timeline. Several dropped together lie end to end in the panel’s order, and the composition lengthens to fit. Hold Shift to stack them all at the start.
• Or choose Layer ▸ New and pick the type of layer you need.

The layer kinds

Kind	What it is
Footage layer	One footage item as a source. Supports Retime.
Solid layer	A flat colour. Often used as a base for effects.
Precomp layer	Another composition, used as a layer. Supports Retime. A node graph placed this way carries its Inputs as a section of the layer’s own controls.
Text layer	Editable text.
Shape layer	Vector shapes with fills and strokes.
Sequence layer	Similar to Footage, but allows cutting within one layer.
Adjustment layer	A comp-sized layer with nothing of its own to show, born with the adjustment switch on.
Null layer	Invisible and transform-only. Used to drive other layers.
Camera layer	A 3D viewpoint. Affects layers with the 3D switch on.
Light layer	A source of light: Point, Spot or Area. Shades layers with Accepts lights on.
Audio layer	Sound with no picture. Made by placing an audio file, or by Add audio only on an item that has a picture too.

Order and selection

Drag a layer up or down to change ordering. Select several layers to apply commands to all of them at once.

Selection applies across the application. For instance, picking a layer in the Viewer selects it everywhere.

Shortcut	Does
Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[	Move the selected layers one place up or down the stack.
Ctrl+Shift+] and Ctrl+Shift+[	Move them to the top or the bottom.
Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down	Select the layer above or below.
Alt+Page Up and Alt+Page Down	Move the selected layers a frame earlier or later. With Shift, ten frames.

The first two are also under Layer ▸ Arrange.

Double-click a layer’s name in the Timeline to rename it. On a Precomp layer the double-click opens its composition, and on a Sequence layer its clips. Enter renames either.

Stagger

The Stagger panel starts the selected layers one after another. Layer ▸ Stagger layers… opens it. Locked layers stay put.

• Offset per layer: how many frames each layer starts after the one before it.
• Order: Top down, Bottom up, Order clicked or Random. Order clicked follows the order the layers were added to the selection. Random shuffles again each time.
• Stagger: the first layer starts on the earliest in point among them, and each one after it starts later by the offset.
• Line up: every layer starts on that earliest in point.

Hold Ctrl+Alt and drag a selected layer’s bar to stagger by hand: Cmd+Option on macOS, Ctrl+Shift on Linux. The drag follows the panel’s order. The first layer stays put, the bar under the pointer follows it, and the ones between are spaced evenly. With the first layer’s bar in hand, the last layer moves the whole distance.

Copy and paste

Edit ▸ Cut / Copy / Paste can copy whole layers if selected and can be pasted into other compositions as well. A copied layer retains all information: transform, keyframes, masks, paint, effects, switches, markers, and retime values.

Edit ▸ Duplicate (Ctrl+D) duplicates every selected layer.

Layer ▸ Split layer (Ctrl+Shift+D) splits every selected layer at the playhead. A Sequence layer gains an edit point there, and any other layer becomes two.

By default a pasted layer starts at the playhead. To paste at the time it was copied from instead, turn on Paste layers at their original time in Settings ▸ Timeline. A parent or matte reference is retained only if the target composition still contains that layer.

The row menu

Right-click a layer’s row in the Timeline outline, or its bar, for the row menu. Its commands act on every selected layer and skip locked ones.

Item	Does
Duplicate	Duplicates the layers.
Accepts lights	Whether Light layers shade the layer.
Bring forward, Send backward	Moves the layers one place up or down the stack.
Convert to sequence layer, Convert to footage layer	Turns a Footage layer into a Sequence layer, and back. A Sequence layer of several clips refuses.
Detach audio	Moves the layer’s sound onto an Audio layer directly below it, and mutes the layer. Not on Audio layers.
Audio streams ▸, Split audio streams, Merge audio streams	On a file with several audio streams: which streams the layer plays, each stream onto a layer of its own, and back onto one.
Enable Retime or Disable Retime, Stretch…, Freeze frame at playhead	See Retime. Not on Sequence layers.
Pre-compose…	See Compositions.
Stagger layers…	See Stagger. With several layers selected.
Copy sequence shape, Paste sequence shape	On Sequence layers. See Sequence layers.
Delete	Deletes the layers.
Delete all markers	Removes the layers’ markers. Only on a layer with markers.

On a locked layer the menu leaves out the commands that edit it.

Label colours

The dot after the layer number is the layer’s label colour. Click it for nine chips; the first is plain grey. The pick applies to every selected layer, locked ones included. The label colours the dot and the layer’s bar.

Each new layer starts on its kind’s colour:

Kind	Colour
Footage and Audio	Azure
Solid	Amber
Precomp	Violet
Text	Mint
Camera	Teal
Sequence	Indigo
Adjustment	Magenta
Null	Coral

Switches

The switches on a layer's row.

Each layer has two runs of switches in the Timeline outline.

The switches column holds what the Timeline keeps about a layer: visibility, mute, solo, lock, shy, and guide. The modes column holds how the layer is rendered: collapse, flow, disable effects, motion blur, 3D, and adjustment.

The columns open on visibility, mute, solo and lock, and on disable effects, 3D and motion blur. Drag a column’s seam wider to show the rest.

Ctrl+L locks or unlocks the selected layers, and Ctrl+Shift+L unlocks every layer. A locked layer refuses every edit except its lock, shy switch and label colour. It cannot be clicked in the Viewer; the click goes to the layer behind it.

A row shows only the switches its layer can use. An Audio layer has no visibility switch, and a layer that can never be heard has no mute switch. A layer with sound and no picture has no box in the Viewer and cannot be picked there. Guide is drawn on every row.

• Click a switch on a selected layer and every selected layer takes the same state.
• Press a switch and drag up or down its column, and every row the pointer crosses takes that state too. The drag is one undo step.
• Alt-click a solo switch to solo that layer alone.

A switch that is off is drawn dimmer than one that is on.

The motion blur switch blurs a layer from its own animated transform. The Motion blur effect is different, see Effects.

A blurred layer is drawn at more moments the faster it moves, its parents and the camera included, from Samples up to the count after to in Composition settings.

Adjustment

Adjustment is a switch, on any layer that draws something — turn it on and the layer’s effect stack runs on the composite of everything below it. Effects apply only to the area the layer covers.

Layer ▸ New ▸ Adjustment makes a comp-sized layer with the switch already on. Turn the switch off on one of those and it becomes an ordinary white solid.

Camera, Light, Null and Audio layers cannot be adjustment layers, and the cell is left out on their rows.

Guide layers

Guide marks a layer for reference only. The Viewer draws it like any other layer and no exported file contains it, picture or sound.

Guide beats solo. A locked layer refuses the guide switch.

The export dialogue can be told to write guide layers anyway.

Light layers

Layer ▸ New ▸ Light… opens Light settings, where the light’s name, type and options are set before it is made. A new light stands in front of the composition, aimed at its centre; an area light starts at a fifth of the composition. Layer ▸ Light settings opens the window again for the selected light. A keyframed option reads animated there and is left alone.

A light is placed by its ordinary transform, so it animates and parents like anything else. Which layers it shades is per layer: Accepts lights, on by default, in a 3D layer’s Material options and on the layer’s right-click menu in the Timeline.

A light adds to the picture, so a layer no light reaches is left as it is. Like After Effects, under Lights in Composition settings, lights a layer from black instead, with the ambient lights as its base, and leaves 2D layers unlit. It lights the picture as the screen shows it, as After Effects does without Linearize working space. A composition imported from After Effects has it on, in linear light if the project was linearised.

Light options, inside the light’s Transform group, holds its own rows:

• Light type: Point, Spot, Area, Parallel (every ray runs the same way, along the light’s aim) or Ambient (light from everywhere, with no place or direction).
• Intensity: how bright the light is, as a percentage. Below 0 it takes light away.
• Colour: the colour of the light.
• Cone angle and Cone feather, on a spot: the cone’s full angle, and how much of its edge fades.
• Size, on an area light: its width and height.
• Falloff: None, Smooth or Inverse square clamped. Radius is how far the light keeps its full strength, and Falloff distance how far past it a smooth falloff takes to fade out.
• Casts shadows: whether the light casts the shadows of layers that cast them. An ambient light casts none.
• Shadow darkness and Shadow diffusion, while it casts: how dark its shadows are, and how soft their edges get with the distance from the layer casting them.

Every row but the type and the falloff can be keyframed. Point of interest, in Light settings, aims a spot, parallel or area light at a point rather than by its rotation; the point’s row then shows under Transform, and the rotation rows turn the light from there.

Material options, beside Transform on a 3D layer, sets how it takes the lights:

• Casts shadows: Off, On, or Only, which casts the shadow without drawing the layer.
• Accepts shadows: Off, On, or Only, which draws nothing but the shadows that fall on it, in the colour of any light a layer lets through. In Normal they multiply what is under the layer, so a coloured shadow tints footage exactly.
• Light transmission, while it casts: how much of the light passing through the layer takes its colour rather than stopping.
• Accepts lights: whether the lights shade it. Shadows still fall on it when this is off.
• Ambient: how much of the ambient lights it takes.
• Diffuse: how much of the other lights it takes.
• Specular intensity: how bright the highlight a light makes on it is.
• Specular shininess: how small and hard that highlight is.
• Metal: how much the highlight takes the layer’s own colour rather than the light’s.

A layer in a project saved before materials existed has no highlight until its Specular intensity is raised.

3D layers separated by a 2D or adjustment layer don’t shade each other. Up to 16 layers in each run of 3D layers cast shadows, those nearest the layers they shade.

Not built yet

Motion blur on a moving layer’s shadow. A track matte or a precomp’s masks in the shadow it casts.

Parenting

Parent a layer to another and it inherits the parent’s transform and can apply its own on top of them. Cameras and lights follow their parents too. A two-node camera’s point of interest is read in the parent’s space, as its position is. A parent’s scale moves a camera or a light but never stretches or mirrors it.

Related

• Transforming layers
• Keyframes
• Masks and Mattes
• The Timeline