Does Animate have something similar to Photoshop's Layer Comps? ie - A way to snapshot the timeline?

[Mark Paterson]

Allow me to explain. I'm an After Effects compositor working on a TV series which is animated in Flash (sorry, Animate. Still getting used to that change!). Part of my job involves exporting various SWF layers from the FLA using the excellent "Export Layers as SWFs" script. Many of these layer are deep within nested sub layers. It also involves constantly toggling layers between 'guide' and normal visability while I choose which layers I need to export. And all the time navigating up and down layer trees. It's very tedious and a huge time suck.

I would dearly love it if Animate had something like Layer Comps in Photoshop. If you're unfamilar with that, it's basically a way of snapshotting all your layers in their current state (eg visability, guide, etc), and then recalling that state at any point in time. You could have multiple snapshots.

So in Animate, you could have a snapshot (or Layer Comp) that isolated just the main character (and worked right through all the nested layers), then another snapshot for all background elements, another for foreground elements. Exporting would be as simple as just exporting each snapshot. The animator could even set up the snapshots while they're working.

Hopefully someone will tell me there's an Animate equivelent to this (either built in or 3rd party). I would be shocked if this wasn't the case, given how a lot of Animate shows use After Effects for compositing.

[JoãoCésar]

Hi.

I think it is quite possible to achieve this by programming a custom extension with JSFL and AS3. This extension would allow the user to save the current state of the layers and keep it in a list. Then it would be just a matter of clicking on a saved item and restoring it to a previous state.

[Mark Paterson]

Cool. I have no idea where to start, but good to know it's at least possible! Maybe someone way smarter than me will take up the challenge.