Layers are the building blocks of your animations. Organize complex scenes using layers, precompositions, and parenting to create hierarchical structures and reusable components.

What are layers?

Layers contain visual content (shapes, images) or structure (groups, precomps). Each layer has transform properties (position, rotation, scale, opacity), draw order (z-index), and optional parent-child relationships.

Layer types

•Shape Layers — vector-based layers containing shapes (rectangles, ellipses, paths, stars)
•Precomposition Layers — references to nested compositions for organization and reuse
•Image Layers — bitmap/raster image assets
•Group Layers — containers for organizing shapes within a layer

Layers have a hierarchy, which is determined by their relationship:

•Parent layers affect child layers
•Precompositions contain nested scenes
•Groups organize shapes within layers
•Draw order determines rendering sequence

Layer Types

Precompositions

Parenting

Outliner

Applies to: Lottie Creator (Web)