Organizing layers

Nest, group, reorder, link and colour-tag layers, and understand the difference between where a layer sits in the tree and where it is drawn.

A project is one tree. Every layer has a parent, or sits at the root, and a parent carries its children with it: moving, scaling or hiding a group does the same to everything inside it. The Layers panel and the Timeline show the same tree and edit it the same way.

Nesting by dragging#

Drag a row and every other row becomes a three-zone drop target. The top quarter of a row drops above it, the bottom quarter drops below it, and the middle half drops the layer inside as a child. A blue line marks an above or below drop, a translucent fill marks a child drop.

Dropping onto the empty space under the tree moves the layer back out to the root. Dragging a row that belongs to a multi-selection moves the whole selection, keeping its order. Each drop is one undo step.

Grouping#

Ctrl+G wraps the selection in a new Group layer; Ctrl+Shift+G ungroups. The same two commands sit in the Layers panel right-click menu, in the Object menu, and in the Move tool's canvas right-click menu.

A Group has no geometry of its own. It exists to move, hide, mask, blend and animate a set of layers as one, and it is also what the non-destructive boolean commands build: see Boolean shapes. Its transform box wraps the artwork it holds and its anchor sits at the centre of that, groups of groups and groups holding a bitmap layer included.

Reordering#

The row at the top of the Layers panel is the layer nearest the viewer. Dragging is the direct way to reorder, and Object ▸ Order has four commands for the primary selected layer: Bring to Front, Bring Forward, Send Backward and Send to Back.

Dropping a row above or below a layer in another group both reorders and reparents it, so a single drag can move art out of one group and into position inside another.

Tree order versus draw order#

Normally where a layer sits in the tree is where it is drawn. The Z-Order row in the Properties panel's Layer section breaks that link on purpose: switch it on and the offset moves the layer forward or backward past its siblings, without touching the tree.

The offset is a relative hop, so plus one overtakes exactly the one sibling ahead. It is clamped to the number of siblings minus one, and it is keyframeable: a step channel with its own sub-track, so a layer can move in front of another on one frame and behind it on the next. The row is disabled when a layer has fewer than two siblings, and switching it off clears the offset along with its keys.

Linking layers#

Select two or more layers and choose Link Layers from the right-click menu. Linked layers move together when you drag any of them, and a badge of two interlocked rings appears on each row whenever one of its partners is selected. Unlink Layers breaks the link; if that leaves a single layer on its own, its link is cleared too.

Linking is a convenience for moving only. It does not affect stacking, selection, deletion or parenting: for that you want a Group.

Colour groups#

Right-click a row, choose Color Group, and pick from None, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple and Pink. The colour shows as a stripe down the right edge of the row in the Layers panel and in the Timeline. It is a visual tag and nothing else: no filtering, no selection by colour.

Finding a layer again#

Type in the Layers panel search field to flatten the tree into every layer whose name contains what you typed. It ignores case and ignores nesting, so a layer buried four groups deep is one click away. Clearing the field restores the tree with its expanded and collapsed state intact.

Naming as you go pays off here: the default names are the type plus a number, which stops being useful at about the fifth Shape.

What deletes what#

• Delete, or Delete in the right-click menu, removes a layer together with everything nested under it.
• The Delete button in the panel footer removes the whole selection, the same as the menu item and the key. The Duplicate button beside it copies every selected layer, the same as Ctrl+D.
• Deleting a bone is different: its children are promoted to its parent rather than deleted with it.