The dope sheet

The sheet puts a fig’s poses, moves and sounds in time. Each thing has a lane. Blocks lie along the lane, and arrows join a block to the one it follows. The sheet has three homes: the scene editor, a clip’s shot, and the fig editor.

Open the sheet

• In a scene: Animate › Sheet. The page reads Lanes per fig, blocks in time, arrows between blocks. Tap Open the sheet. The sheet opens with one lane per fig and fig group in the scene, with a Camera lane, a Captions lane and a Sounds lane under them. A lane joins the saved sheet with its first block, so opening the sheet changes nothing. Showtime plays it. Changing the scene’s tab closes the sheet. See The camera on the sheet and Captions, talking and sound on the sheet .
• In a clip: every shot’s card has a Sheet row. It reads Sheet · 3 once the shot has three blocks. Each shot has its own sheet, and the Soundtrack lane shows the clip’s music. A shot grows to fit its sheet. See The shot's card .
• In the fig editor: Animate › Sheet, beside Preset moves , Hand pose and Move sets . The page reads Lanes per part, blocks in time, arrows between blocks. A scene plays it as a move set. Every part has a lane, with Whole fig first. A part’s lane beats Whole fig. The fig’s sheet saves as a move set named Sheet, so scenes, .glb files and older versions of Ünflat play it. The Sheet set stays off the Move sets row and out of the count on a scene’s Poses & move sets, which reads its sheet instead. A scene’s Move set list still offers Sheet.

The sheet opens over the stage. Its bar has Play, Full screen, Undo and Redo, Add lane, Zoom in and Zoom out, and Done. Full screen hides the sheet; a tap on the stage brings it back. Held sideways, the lanes read left to right across the whole screen.

Lanes

• Add lane lists the scene’s Fig groups and Figs without a lane, Reference, and Sounds lane for a second sound track. With every fig on the sheet, the list reads Every fig has a lane.
• Tap a lane’s name for its menu: Remove lane, Idle, and Same as [fig]. Same as copies another fig’s lane whole. It lists the same fig’s copies and the figs in its group only. There is no clipboard and no copying between different figs.
• A group’s lane moves the whole group. A loose part reads [Part] · Loose on its lane.
• Only the Sounds lane can overlap its blocks. On the other lanes a block comes after the one before it.

Blocks

Tap + on a lane. The picker reads Add a block to [lane] and lists the fig’s Poses, Its moves, Move set and Blend, then under Moves six to start with, Walk, Run, Hang, Spin, Idle breathe and Wander, then Hold, Sound, and More moves, which opens the rest of the moves and State with Hidden and Shown. Group and emote moves stay out of the picker. See Blends for the Blend block.

• A move block comes in at the move’s own length. A Hold comes in at 2 seconds.
• Drag a block to move it in time. Drag its end to stretch it: a move slows, and a pose holds longer. The edges snap to other blocks’ ends and to whole seconds.
• A loop block runs one lap. Repeats on its card fits more, with Fewer repeats and More repeats.
• Hidden reads Hidden until the lane’s next Shown, or the block’s end. Shown reads Back in view.
• Hold stays on the lane’s last pose: The fig stands in its last pose. In the fig editor it reads The part stands in its last pose.
• A sound block goes on the Sounds lane. A sound added from a fig’s lane lands on Sounds with a Then arrow from the fig’s last block. Its card has Takes, Vary, Place in the shot, Volume and From your files, as a move’s sound window does. See A move's sound window .
• The fig editor’s sheet takes a pose, a move, a move set, a blend and a Hold only.

Every edit is one Undo step.

The block’s card

Tap a block. Its card opens at half height, with the stage above it and the lanes in a side bar beside it, so you can tap another block without closing it. A fig’s sheet frames the fig above the card. In a scene, the stage frames the lane’s fig, and the camera goes back as the card closes. The Camera lane keeps its own view. The Captions, Sounds and Soundtrack lanes frame the scene’s first fig. In a clip, the stage stays on the shot. On a phone, the small map hides while a card is open.

• Swap [block]: The block’s dropdown. It lists the same poses and moves as the move cards, so the block takes another pose or move in one tap.
• Length: The block’s time, with Less and More.
• The move’s own rows come next, the same rows its card has on the Animate pages. A pose block lists its parts.
• Starts: At its time, Then, or On tap. Then adds After with a Delay. On tap adds Fig and Part, with Any part.
• Duplicate: Puts a copy right after the block on the same lane.
• Delete: Takes the block off.

On a phone, a tight block moves its Swap into the card, and short blocks show as many words as fit.

Then and On tap

• Then: Drag a block’s start onto another block’s end. The sheet draws an arrow between them. The block starts as the other ends, after its Delay if you set one. A Then-linked block has no time of its own. Move or stretch the first block, and the blocks after it step along with it.
• On tap: The block starts as a part of another fig reaches the lane’s fig. Fig names the fig, and Part names the part, or Any part. A named part counts only with its own shape. The start lands within a frame of the touch. On a Sounds or Camera lane, with no fig of its own, the block starts as the fig in Fig reaches any other fig, so a sound and a fall can start on one frame.

A chain of three dominoes: three Topple blocks, each with a Then arrow from the one before, a sound on each fall, and a title fig Hidden until the last one falls.

Playback

• The sheet plays from its start in Play, in Showtime, on Home, in a clip and in every video. A chain bakes to one timeline in the export.
• At the end, the last state stays. Play reads Stop until you tap it, and Stop puts every fig back. Home plays the sheet once.
• A fig with its own moves plays them under the sheet. The scene never bends a part itself: a block picks the fig’s own poses and moves. A later block on a lane sends a held fall home.
• Reduce Motion stops the app’s decoration and still plays the sheet, since the sheet is your own work.
• A fig or a scene with no sheet plays as before.

Older versions of Ünflat

A scene saves its first unlinked move for older versions, with the sheet beside it, so an older Ünflat opens the scene and plays that move only. A fig’s Sheet move set plays there. After a save there, the set stays and the sheet goes.