Animate in Formo - what's here and how it's organized

Animate is where drawings stop being static. This is everything related to bringing a scene to life over time: the frame-by-frame triad, onion skinning, property keyframes with easing, motion paths, camera tracking, bone rigging, and sound. Nothing here is complicated on its own; it's a set of tools that each do one job, the same way Draw turned out to be once you knew where everything was.

TL;DR:

- F5, F6, F7 — hold, duplicate keyframe, blank keyframe —  on a real timeline with independent per-part clocks.

- Onion skinning shows the frame before and after, built from your stroke geometry, with depth and mode controls most tools don't offer.

- Beyond hand-drawn frames, any property can be keyframed directly, with a deep easing system: named curves or a fully custom bezier.

- Motion paths are editable right on the canvas, and the camera can automatically track a moving object.

- Bone rigging is real today (FK and IK both work), though it's the one corner of Animate still rougher than the rest.

- Sound is real playback your animation can react to, not just a reference waveform.

Get started with frame-by-frame animation

F5 holds, F6 duplicates a keyframe, F7 drops a blank one — unrenamed, unswapped. Each part of a character lives on its own layer with its own independent clock, so redrawing a mouth doesn't touch the arms.

To get started: click the Tween › toggle next to the Layers header to open the timeline, then use F5/F6/F7 (or their one-tap equivalents in Draw mode's actions bar) to start placing keyframes.

Learn more how frame-by-frame animation works in our guide Frame-by-frame animation.

Onion skinning — seeing the frame before and after

Past and future poses ghost behind your current frame, built from your stroke geometry. Depth (how many frames back and forward), a Keyframes-vs-Interpolated mode, and a Color-vs-Outline render style are all adjustable settings, not a fixed on/off toggle.

To get started: click the onion-skin button in the timeline panel, then open its gear icon for the depth and mode settings.

Learn more how to work with onion skinning in our guide Onion skinning.

Property keyframes and easing

Any property — rotation, color, a shader parameter — keyframes the same way, either manually with Record or automatically with Auto-record. An easing system goes well beyond linear: named curve families grouped by character (Ease-in, Symmetric, Ease-out, Back, Bounce, Step), plus a fully custom cubic-bezier editor when none of them is quite right.

To get started: turn on Auto-record in the timeline panel and start changing properties, or right-click a segment between two keyframes to pick its easing.

Learn more how to work with property keyframes and easing in our guide Property keyframes and easing.

Motion paths and camera

A moving object's path is an editable curve directly on the canvas. Drag its keyframes and tangent handles the same way you'd edit a vector path. The camera can automatically follow any object in your scene, with independent axis locks, resolution presets, and a built-in vignette effect.

To get started: select an object with position keyframes to see its motion path, or switch to UI mode and place a Camera to start tracking something.

Learn more how to work with motion paths and the camera in our guide Motion paths and camera.

Bone tool and rigging

Bone chains, forward and inverse kinematics, and mesh deformation that bulges around a joint rather than rotating two rigid pieces. This is usable today, but it's the one part of Animate where the interactive feel is still rougher than everywhere else.

To get started: switch to Animate mode and start placing bones: drag to build a chain, then hold Shift while dragging to pose it with IK.

Learn more how to work with bones and rigging in our guide Bone tool and rigging.

Sound

Audio plays through a signal chain and exposes live values (loudness, position, frequency) that a formula can read directly, which is the mechanism behind lip-sync and audio-reactive animation. It's deterministic in export too, so what you see in preview is what ships in your video.

To get started: switch to UI mode and place an Audio source, then bind whatever you want reacting to it via a formula.

Learn more how to work with sound in our guide Sound.