Removing finished bits

[dogsby]

Hi Newbie here so must appologise if this is a daft question. I mid way through a small project for educational use in AS pro. How do you get rid of things (shapes etc.) that you no longer need in your animation.
i.e.

I have some small spheres, but they are not needed around half way through the animation. I have been dragging them to the space outside the canvas to get rid of them but there must be a better way as its becoming a little crowded.

Any help please

[Genete]

Have you tried to delete them? To delete them just use the select shape tool, select the shape clicking on it and and go to Menu->Edit-> Clear or press DEL in your computer keyboard.
Maybe you want to reuse later... You can cut and paste into another layer (using the classic Edit-Cut and Edit -Paste menu entries) and make the layer not visible (see the layer options window) during all the animation.
-G

[mooncaine]

At any point along the timeline, you can set a keyframe that will make a layer invisible, or visible again. Check out the manual, under User Interface>Timeline Window, to see the Layer visibility "channel" icon so you'll know what it looks like.

In your Timeline's settings, make sure that channel is shown by checking its box. To set a keyframe, click along that channel's horizontal line in the timeline.

Frequently, you'll find your click has the opposite effect, but just click two more times on either side of that keyframe, and you'll get every kind, on and off. Then you can move those around and delete the ones you don't need.

You might want to save your file to another file first. Don't forget that you don't have to do all your animation in one Anime Studio Pro file. You can pick up where you left off in a second file. That's sometimes necessary for long scenes. I can only work on about 30 seconds on Mac because the audio waveform disappears after that, and I need to see it to help me time stuff quickly and easily.

[dogsby]

Thanks, i will put your help into practise

[mooncaine]

Glad to help in some way. BTW, my work's for educational use, too.