Any way to make nested animations on symbols visible without rendering?

[quicklite]

Over the past month I've been learning Adobe Animate, and have been working on a small animation to try and apply what I've learned. For this, I've designed a simple figure, and turned all of his individual appendages into graphic symbols, as you can see above. However, in trying to do more complex animations with him (e.g. walk cycles), only being able to see the animation of one of his limbs (completely separated from the background that will eventually exist) at any time has made this job infinitely harder than it should be. Is there an easy way for me to see how all my character's limbs look like as I animate them without repeatedly re-rendering my animation?

[ClayUUID]

Animate only uses the term "render" to describe drawing on the screen. Since it's impossible to make something visible without drawing it, I assume you're actually referring to the Test Movie or Publish options.

If you have all your character's parts on the main timeline together, set as looping graphic symbols, they should all animate together when you play or scrub the timeline.

If that's not easy enough, I suppose right-clicking the part you want to edit and selecting "Edit in New Window" might be what you're after.

[quicklite]

So, all of the parts are converted to graphic symbols, and they are all on a single layer in the timeline, but they still don't seem to play when I start the timeline. Does each symbol need its own layer or is there a step I am missing?

I apologize for the misnomer in the title. When I said 'render', I was referring to the publish and test functions of the software.

[ClayUUID]

Are they set to loop? Are they Graphic symbols, not Movie Clips? Are there enough frames on the timeline for the nested animations to actually play?

Create symbol instances in Animate CC

[Myra Ferguson · Accepted solution]

There are a few things that'll help:

1. Your individual symbols each have their own timeline. To see them on the main timeline, you'll need to add empty keyframes so that the duration extends the same length as the timeline of your longest symbol. (And like ClayUUID said, make sure they are set to loop in the Properties panel).

2. Then I would recommend using Modify > Timeline > Distribute to Layers to put each part on a separate layer.

3. When the various symbols are on different layers, you can click on the eye for that layer to make it not visible. There are some other options you can try for the layers instead like Show Layer as Outline, which shows the outline of what's on that layer, or Shift-click the eye, which shows what's on the layer but at 50%. Sometimes it's easier to make adjustments if you have the other parts somewhat visible for reference.

4. Then you can also play it without publishing by hitting Enter or using the buttons at the bottom of the timeline.

[quicklite]

I followed all of you instructions as best I could, and I still seem to be having problems. I reset most of my animation work, and used the distribute as layer feature to put all the symbols on their own layer. I extended all of the timelines to 200 frames, and, I made a simple animation on the head symbol where his expression changes slightly. However, it still isn't showing on the timeline.

As you can see through these screenshots, when it gets to frame 125, his expression remains the same as ever. While not being able to see his expression isn't the biggest of deals, I'm a little worried about how I'm supposed to move the character on the main scene without being able to actually see what his walk cycle looks like.

[Myra Ferguson]

For a character, you should copy and paste the layers into a new symbol. Then you can move that character on the main timeline. When you have symbols (the body parts) inside another symbol (the whole character), that's referred to as nesting.

As far as seeing the facial expression, in the Properties panel under Looping do you have option set to Single Frame and the frame number of the graphic symbol set where the expression occurs?

[quicklite]

Ah, figured I was doing something wrong in terms of nesting...I just had all the individual symbols in the person, rather than having all of them nested in a overall symbol. As for the properties tab, where can I find the 'Looping' section? The only options I have are 'publish', 'properties', 'SWF History', and 'Accessibility', and I couldn't find anything about looping in all 4 of them.

[Myra Ferguson]

The Properties panel will change based on what is selected, so when you have a graphic symbol selected you'll see sections for

• Position and Size
• Color Effect
• Looping

[quicklite]

THAT was the problem! While I had set all of my symbols to graphics upon creating them, for whatever reason they still remained as movie clips despite showing the graphic symbol in the library. When I clicked on the symbol as you suggested, I was able to properly change them into graphics, and now they're working exactly as I wanted them to. Thanks so much for your help with this!