Motion paths and camera

Position keyframes aren't limited to numbers in a panel. The actual path an object travels is an editable shape directly on the canvas, and the camera that frames your scene carries framing tools of its own: automatic tracking, axis locking, resolution presets, and a built-in effect.

Edit motion paths on the canvas

Select any object that has position keyframes, and its motion path appears right on the canvas automatically — no separate toggle needed. It hides itself while you're playing back, so it never clutters a live preview, and it only shows for whatever's currently selected, not every animated object in the scene at once.

What's on the path:

- Keyframe circles: one at each position keyframe, sitting exactly where that keyframe places the object.

- Tangent handles: draggable in/out control points at each keyframe, shaping how the curve arrives and leaves.

- The path body itself: the curve connecting one keyframe to the next.

Dragging a keyframe moves that position keyframe directly: reposition where the object is at that point in time without opening the properties panel at all. One subtlety worth knowing: if your cursor happens to be sitting over the object's own shape rather than over the path, dragging moves the object the normal way instead. The path only takes over when you're clearly grabbing it, so the far more common "just move the thing" gesture is never accidentally hijacked.

Shape motion with keyframes and tangent handles

Selecting more than one motion key. You're not limited to adjusting one keyframe on the path at a time: keys can be selected additively, the same modifier-driven convention used everywhere else in Formo, so you can inspect or work with several points along the same path together rather than one in isolation.

Dragging a tangent handle reshapes the curve on that side of the keyframe. By default, the opposite handle mirrors it to stay collinear, keeping the curve smooth through that point. Hold Alt while dragging to break that symmetry, the same convention as the pen tool, letting the curve arrive and leave at different angles.

Toggling a keyframe between sharp and smooth. A keyframe with no tangent handles is a sharp corner in the motion: the path kinks there rather than curving through. Toggle it, and Formo spawns real tangents automatically, calculated from the shape of the motion on either side of that point rather than just a flat default — so the curve it produces already looks like a natural continuation of the path.

Create and edit motion keyframes

Dragging the path body between two keyframes bends the curve there without needing an existing keyframe at that spot. Hold Ctrl while dragging, and a new keyframe is inserted lazily, only once you actually move the cursor. A plain Ctrl-click with no movement still inserts a keyframe at that point, without bending anything. A pure click elsewhere on the path never mutates your data: nothing is added until you actually drag, so exploring the path by clicking around it is always safe.

Set up the camera in Formo

Placing a camera. Switch to UI mode (Ctrl+4). The Camera tool lives there, not in Prototype, Draw, or Animate mode. Select it, or press H, then click and drag on the canvas the same way you'd place any other object. Once a Camera node exists in your scene, it automatically becomes the active view during Play. There's no separate "camera mode" to switch into beyond having one placed.

Control camera settings and resolution

A Camera node defines what the exported or played view actually frames — pan, zoom, and position, the same way any object has a transform, but specifically driving what's on screen rather than what's drawn. Beyond its basic transform, a camera carries four groups of its own settings.

Follow: the Target property, covered in depth below.

Lock: three independent toggles: Lock X, Lock Y, and Lock R (rotation). These matter most in combination with Follow: a camera can track a character's horizontal movement while its vertical position stays completely locked, the classic side-scrolling-game camera feel, or keep its own rotation locked flat even if whatever it's following rotates. Each axis is independent, so you can mix and match exactly which parts of the camera should react to its target and which should stay fixed.

Resolution: a preset dropdown covering standard targets rather than an arbitrary width/height you'd have to look up: 16:9, 4:3, 9:16 (vertical video), 3:2, 21:9 (cinematic widescreen), 720p, 1080p, 4K, and even device-specific presets like iPhone 15 and iPad. Pick "Custom" to set an arbitrary size instead, when none of the standard targets match what you're actually shipping to.

Effects: a single built-in camera effect, Vignette, togglable on or off directly from the camera's own properties. Not a general effects stack the way a shape's Effects section is — just this one, purpose-built for framing.

Making the camera follow a moving object

Set a camera's Target property to any other node in your document, and the camera automatically recenters on that object's position every frame, tracking it through the scene without you having to hand-keyframe the camera's own position to match.

This is what makes a scene bigger than your final frame possible: build a background wider than what you'll ever show at once, place a character walking across it, set the camera's Target to that character, and the camera does the following on its own. Combine it with a Y-axis lock, and you get a camera that tracks horizontal movement precisely while never drifting vertically, regardless of small bumps or jitter in the target's own path.