frozen meadow
(Note: as much as I'm sure Video timeline would work, I'm stuck using Frame Timelines :c )
If I'm using frame animation, and I've fully animated, say a ball moving in a specified complex path, its possible to manually draw on top of and then erase (in that order) the remnants of the ball with whatever else I've drawn, to have it be like, a a star moving in the path, with it keeping all the "movement data" across the frames its been moved. that is, it's now animated in the same way the ball was, because its not a "new" image, its the same layer just slightly (in the eyes of photoshop) modified. Thats just a true statement
is there any way to paste in a previously copied, more complex image onto the layer holding the "movement data" such that it will keep it? currently pasting creates a new layer, and then merging down does what I've been thinking of as "delete both layers and create a new one", thus the "movement data" across the frames is lost. That is, every frame is now static. and has to be re-animated.
there IS a workaround, but it involves putting at least one pixel someplace else on the layer (So that the layer is always being "modified"), erasing all of the original "ball", and then copying over the new image color by color, recreating it. This effectively Ship of Theseus's the original ball, never creating a "new" layer despite it being completely distinct from the original. Sidenote, Alt + Click n' Drag does this as well if and only if you have made a selection, even if the selection is the entire layer. If you don't have a selection made, it just copies the layer.
This method works, and does what i want (that is, takes the "movement data" of one layer and lets you change what the data pertains to), but its slow and cumbersome, and i would hope there's a better way. does any of this even make sense?
