Movieclips

A movieclip is a piece of animation packed into one object: a walk, a flame, a blinking light. You place it in your scene like a figure, and it plays its own frames by itself. In this guide you turn Blue’s walk cycle into a movieclip, make it loop, and edit it in one place.

Tutorial: turn a walk cycle into a movieclip

A walk cycle is a short loop of poses: left foot forward, then the right, and back to the start. Blue’s walk below is eight frames on Layer 1. Drawn as plain frames, it stops after frame 8. As a movieclip, it can repeat for as long as you hold it on the timeline, and you fix it in one place when something looks wrong.

1. Open the Add menu. Blue is already selected (his joints are red). Click the Add tool, the + at the top of the tool bar on the left of the stage. A menu opens.
2. Capture the walk. Choose Movieclip from frames…. In Create movieclip, type a name such as Walk, set From frame to 1 and Through frame to 8, keep Contents: Selected figures and Replace selection, then click Create. Properties now shows the clip’s name with Edit clip and Make unique, and Playback says Plays: Loop and Frame 1 / 8.
3. Hold it longer. Click frame 8 on Layer 1. A small grip appears at the right end of its bar. Drag the grip to frame 24. The animation is now 24 frames long, and frames 8 to 24 hold the movieclip.
4. Play it. Press Space. Blue keeps walking for all 24 frames: the 8-frame clip loops three times, even though the timeline only holds one pose after frame 8.
5. Try another ending. In Properties, set Plays to Play once · hold and play again. Blue walks one cycle, then stays on the last pose.
6. Edit the clip. Click Edit clip. You are inside the movieclip: the stage header shows Scene › Walk and a bar with ← Scene, Cancel and Done appears. Change a pose, for example lift a hand on one frame, then click Done. The change shows wherever the clip plays.

Try itTurn a walk cycle into a movieclip

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1. Click the + Add tool at the top of the tool bar.
2. Movieclip from frames…: frames 1 through 8, then Create.
3. Drag the grip at the end of frame 8’s bar to frame 24.
4. Press Space: the walk loops.
5. Set Plays to Play once · hold.
6. Edit clip, change a pose, click Done.

Point at the playground first, so the keys go to it and not to the page.

Three ways to create a movieclip

All three are in the Add menu (the + tool) and under Animation → Movieclip in the menu bar. A new movieclip goes on the selected figure layer, next to the other figures there. It doesn’t add a layer and doesn’t make your animation longer.

The Create movieclip dialog has:

• Name: starts as the selected figure’s name plus “clip” (for example Blue clip), or Movieclip. Up to 120 characters.
• From frame and Through frame (frames only).
• Contents: Selected figures or All figures on those frames. Figures that are joined to the selection come along. With nothing selected, only All figures is available.
• Replace selection, on by default: the captured figures are replaced by the new movieclip, only on the captured frames. Turn it off to just make the movieclip and leave the scene as it was; you then find it under Add → In this project.

If the frame numbers don’t make sense, the dialog says Choose a valid movieclip range. If nothing can be captured, it says Select figures to create a movieclip. Nothing in the scene changes until creation succeeds. Drawing layers can be captured too: with All figures, every drawing shown in the range goes inside the clip.

Edit what’s inside

1. Select the movieclip on the stage. Click Edit clip under its name in Properties, or press Ctrl+P and search for Edit movieclip.
2. You are now inside it. The stage header shows Scene › its name, a bar under it has ← Scene, the name, Cancel and Done, and the top bar shows Cancel and Done too. The timeline shows the clip’s own layers and frames.
3. Pose, add frames and change timing as in any animation.
4. Click Done (or ← Scene) to keep your changes and go back to the scene. Click Cancel to throw away everything you changed since you opened it.

Every copy changes. All copies of a movieclip share its inside. That’s the point: fix a foot in the walk once and every walking extra is fixed. To change just one copy, select it, go to a frame where it is shown, and click Make unique first. That appearance gets its own separate movieclip and keeps showing the same clip frame; the other appearances and copies keep the original.

To rename a movieclip, double-click its name at the top of Properties. The new name applies to every copy.

Playback: loop, play once or hold

Each copy has its own Playback settings in Properties. They apply to that copy on every frame where it appears; they never add or move frames.

• Start is the clip frame this copy begins on (default 1). Give each copy in a crowd a different Start so they don’t all step in sync. With Single frame the field is called Hold.
• Speed multiplies how fast the clip plays, from 0.001× to 100× (default 1×). It is greyed out for Single frame.
• Under them, Properties shows which clip frame is showing (Frame 3 / 8), the scene frame, and the clip’s length in frames, seconds and fps.
• Transform moves, turns, scales and fades the whole movieclip: X, Y, Angle, Scale, Opacity, Z-index and its layer.

How a movieclip keeps time

A movieclip moves on by one clip frame (at Speed 1, when clip and scene have the same fps) for every scene frame where it is shown. Held frames count: hold one key for 16 frames and the clip plays 16 frames. A frame where the clip is missing pauses it, and it carries on from there when it comes back.

Example: a clip is shown on scene frames 1, 2, 3 and 5, but not on 4. It shows clip frames 1, 2, 3 and then 4 on scene frame 5: the gap paused it. Hiding the layer or setting it to 0% opacity does not pause it.

Extend, break apart, bake and export

These are in the two folded sections at the bottom of a movieclip’s Properties. Click a section title to open it.

• Extend: set Next keys and click Add to put this movieclip into that many of the following keyframes on its layer, for example after you added poses for other figures later on. A line under it tells you how many keyframes come after this frame and what was added (Added to 2 keyframes., Already present in these keyframes. or No later keyframes.). It never creates frames and doesn’t change the copies already there.
• Break apart frame: replaces the movieclip on the current scene frame only with ordinary, editable figures. The frames around it stay a movieclip, and the clip still counts that frame as played.
• Bake animation: turns this copy into ordinary frames on the scene timeline, everywhere it appears. Use it when you want to tweak individual frames of one copy by hand.
• Export movieclip: saves the movieclip as a .stykmov file to reuse in other projects. Saving your project as .styk keeps every movieclip inside it editable.

Each of these is one step for Ctrl+Z.

Copying and deleting

• Duplicate (Ctrl+D) makes a new copy 24 px down and to the right. It shares the inside, keeps Plays and Speed, and starts at clip frame 1.
• Inserting a movieclip again from Add → In this project or from the Library also makes a new, independent copy.
• Delete on a selected movieclip removes it from the current frame only, even inside a hold. That frame then pauses the clip. To remove time instead, delete frames on the timeline.
• Copy and paste within one project keeps the movieclip’s identity when it isn’t already on the frame you paste into; otherwise you get a new copy.

Common problems

Related features