Editor Guide
Introduction
The Anishare collaborative editor allows you to create 2D animations in the browser in up to groups of 4. Users can navigate through the animation and edit layers and frames independently, while seeing collaborators' updates in real time.
The animation files are managed and saved on the server, so collaborators can always open animations, leave or close the tab, and come back later to continue editing.
Attention
There are certain things to watch out for when using this editor for the first time:
- Your undo/redo edit history remembers the last 10 actions only, and these actions only include
- brush / eraser strokes
- cutting / deleting a selected area
- pasting
- using the paint bucket
- To move a drawing, select an area and cut. When you paste, while the contents are still "floating", you can drag it to move it around the canvas. Click outside of the dashed bounding box or press escape to finalize the paste.
- There are 3 stroke colours available per frame, like a colour palette. These colours can be managed on a per-frame basis in the Colour Palette menu.
- There are exactly 3 layers per frame, foreground, middleground, background.
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Action | Description | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Add frame after | Add a new frame after the current frame. | i |
| Add frame before | Add a new frame before the current frame. | shift + i |
| Delete current frame | Delete the current frame. Not reversible! | shift + backspace |
| Increase / decrease frame rate | k / j | |
| Move to next frame | d, right arrow key | |
| Move to previous frame | a, left arrow key | |
| Play / pause animation | space | |
| Brush | Switch to the Brush tool. | b |
| Eraser | Switch to the Eraser tool. | e |
| Select | Switch to the lasso select tool. | t |
| Fill / Paint Bucket | Switch to the paint bucket tool. | f |
| Hand | Switch to the Hand tool to pan the canvas around the window. Must hold the key. Switches back to previous tool when released. | shift |
| Increase / decrease stroke size | Changes the stroke size for the currently active tool (brush or eraser). | w, up arrow key / s, down arrow key |
| Cut | Copy to clipboard and erase the current selection in the current layer. | ctrl + x, ⌘ + x |
| Copy | Copy the current selection in the current layer to the clipboard. | ctrl + c, ⌘ + c |
| Paste | Paste from the clipboard to the current layer. Can move the pasted contents before finalizing. | ctrl + v, ⌘ + v |
| Select all | Select all contents of the current layer. | ctrl + a, ⌘ + a |
| Deselect | Clear the current selection / finalize paste action. | escape |
| Delete selection | Erase all selected contents in the current layer. | backspace |
| Zoom in | Zoom in your view of the canvas for detail work. | =, right click, scroll up |
| Zoom out | Zoom out your view of the canvas. | -, scroll down |
| Reset view | Resets all zoom and pan back to default. | r |
| Undo | Undo the previous stroke, deletion, or paste, limit of 10 actions stored. | ctrl + z, ⌘ + z |
| Redo | Redo previously undone, deletion, or paste, limit of 10 actions stored. After commiting a new action, redo history is reset. | ctrl + shift + z, ⌘ + shift + z |
| Background | Switch to editing the background layer. | 1 |
| Middleground | Switch to editing the middleground layer. | 2 |
| Foreground | Switch to editing the foreground layer. | 3 |
| Show / hide background | Toggle visibility of the background layer. | shift + 1 |
| Show / hide Middleground | Toggle visibility of the middleground layer. | shift + 2 |
| Show / hide foreground | Toggle visibility of the foreground layer. | shift + 3 |
| Show / hide backward onion skin | Toggle visibility of onion skinning showing the previous frame. | o |
| Show / hide forward onion skin | Toggle visibility of onion skinning showing the next frame. | shift + o |