Project to iPad

#Starting a projection

1. Save the project (a projection needs a saved project).
2. Press the iPad icon in the header. A panel opens with a QR code and the link.
3. On the iPad, point the camera at the QR code and tap the link, or open the link in Safari.

The link works for 12 hours. Press the iPad icon again to see the QR code and link, and End session to stop the projection straight away. Starting a new projection ends the old link.

Anyone with the link can see the scene while the session lasts, so treat it like a review link.

#On the iPad

• The wheel at the bottom left is the scene: one loop around the ring is the scene's length, and each dot is a frame (12 a second; a long scene gets fewer, at most 60 dots). The red hand shows where the loop is. Drag around the ring to scrub to any moment.
• Play / Pause is at the top. Playing loops the scene.
• Two fingers pinch to zoom, twist to rotate and drag to move the view. This moves only the iPad's view, never the scene itself. Fit in the top bar puts the view back.

Edits you make in the editor show up on the iPad a few seconds after they save.

#Drawing

The Apple Pencil draws. A finger does not draw (unless you turn on Draw with a finger): drag one finger across the scene to scrub the loop, as you would turn Looom's wheel.

• Frames. Each dot on the wheel is a frame. A stroke belongs to the frame you draw it on and shows only on that frame, so drawing on frame after frame makes an animation that loops with the scene. The dots that have strokes turn white.
• Hold (the clock) draws a stroke that shows on every frame, for marks that should stay put.
• Onion skin shows the two frames before this one, faintly, while paused, to draw the next one.
• Step moves to the next frame each time you lift the Pencil, for drawing an animation straight ahead.
• Colour: the design system's brand colours, white and black, any colour from the wheel, or the eye dropper: tap a stroke to take its colour, or tap the scene to take the colour under the Pencil (the first sample of a frame takes a few seconds).
• Width: three line widths, and Pencil pressure to vary the width as you press.
• Eraser removes whole strokes it touches on this frame. Clear empties this frame.
• Undo with a two-finger tap, or the arrows at the top.
• Left-handed (the two arrows) swaps the wheel and the tools. The iPad remembers it.

Threads

A drawing can have up to five threads, as in Looom: separate loops, each with its own number of frames and its own speed. The numbered circles above the wheel are the threads. Tap one to draw on it; the wheel becomes that thread's reel, one dot per frame. Tap the active thread again for its settings:

• Frames, 2 to 60, and Speed, 2 to 24 frames a second. The panel shows how long the loop is.
• Hide takes the thread out of the drawing (and the render) without deleting it.
• Delete removes the thread. Undo brings it back.

Threads of different lengths drift against each other: a two-frame flicker over a six-frame walk never lines up the same way twice in a row, which gives a hand-made loop its life. Every thread starts with the scene, and the scene's own loop still sets when everything starts again.

Exporting the drawing

Export (the down arrow) saves the drawing alone as an animated SVG: transparent, sharp at any size, every thread looping at its own speed. It plays in a browser and in design tools that show animated SVG. In the editor, a Drawing layer has Download drawing on its card, which saves the same file.

In the editor

A second or two after you lift the Pencil, the drawing appears in the editor as a Drawing layer on that scene, the size of the frame and exactly where you drew it. It plays its frames on a loop through the scene in the preview, the export and the render. It is a normal vector layer: move, scale, hide or delete it like any other. Drawing more on the iPad updates the same layer; a deleted Drawing layer comes back only when you draw on that scene again.