User Interface : Animation Options

This is the Animation Options; it is where you manage the steps that create an Object Animation set various parameters related to those steps. This tab is only available when the image-mode has been set to Object Animation. The tab is divided into two regions.

The first region shows the currently selected sprite (animated layer) and various action buttons and drop-downs to manage it. A small thumbnail of the sprite is shown on the top-left corner. The following actions are provided:

The second region lists the steps that constitute the animation. You can select a step and apply any of the actions listed above, such as clicking the “Edit” button to edit its start time, duration, or step-specific parameters such as the X and Y coordinates for the Move step.

The list shows an icon and a title indicating the type of step. For a full description of the various step types, refer to the Object Animation documentation.

Whenever this tab is shown, the Animation Timeline will also be shown at the bottom of the main window. This presents you with a graphical view of the time relationships between the various steps. You can also drag the steps within the timeline window to change their start-times, although it is often better to specify them manually.

Next, we have the current colors. Transparency is a very central concept in Chasys Photo, so this section displays the two selected colors (foreground and background, christened colors 1 and 2), as well as the two selected alphas (transparency values). Additionally, the color values are shown is hexadecimal format. A menu button is provided; this opens a pop-up menu with more options. There’s a tiny arrow between the boxes; clicking this will swap the colors. Clicking the rectangle showing the transparency gradient will swap the alphas.