Guide
Shape Layers in Toji Motion: Build With Lines and Forms
Shape layers are the editor's building blocks: rectangles, circles, lines and free paths that become backgrounds, frames, lower thirds and transitions. This guide builds with them from the first rectangle onward.
By Felix Marlowe, Motion Graphics App Reviewer
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Why Shapes Carry Edits
Strip a polished fan edit down and half of it is shapes: the bar a title sits on, the circle that wipes the scene away, the line that underlines a name at exactly the right syllable. In Toji Motion editing app a shape layer is a drawn form, rectangle, ellipse, line or free path, that behaves like any other layer: it moves, scales, rotates and takes effects.
Shapes are resolution free and feather light, so they stay crisp at any size and never make a phone work hard. They are the cheapest professionalism in the whole editor.
Your First Shape Layer
Build a lower third, the name bar every edit eventually needs. Add a rectangle shape layer low in the frame, size it to a title's length, and set its colour to something sampled from the scene. Put the text layer above it. Now group their timing: the bar slides in a breath before the letters land.
The beginner path through the whole editor is in our beginner guide; the shape habit to build early is naming. A timeline of Shape 1 to Shape 9 is a timeline you will abandon; name each for its job.
Animating Shape Properties
A shape's own properties animate as richly as its layer does: a line can draw itself by growing its length, a circle can breathe by pulsing its scale, a rectangle can round its corners as it lands. These are keyframe work, and the method is the familiar one from our keyframes guide: two promises and a glide between them.
Path shapes reward patience. A free path drawn carefully once can serve as a signature stroke across a whole channel's worth of edits, saved and reused.
Shapes as Transitions and Frames
The shape's finest trick is the wipe: a full-frame rectangle or circle that sweeps across on the beat, hiding the cut beneath it. Because the shape is a layer, the wipe can carry colour, blur, or a pattern, and its edge can be feathered soft. Paired with a matched movement in the next clip, it stops looking like a transition at all and starts looking like camera work.
Frames are the quiet version of the same idea: a thin shape border gives phone footage a deliberate, designed edge, and costs one layer.
When you need the app itself, the download page on this site is the place to get it.
Quick Answers
What is a shape layer in Toji Motion?
A layer holding a drawn form: rectangle, ellipse, line or free path. It animates like any layer and also has its own animatable properties such as size, corners and path.
Why use shapes instead of images for bars and frames?
Shapes stay perfectly crisp at any size, weigh almost nothing in the project, and can be recoloured or resized in seconds when the design changes.
Can a shape layer be a transition?
Yes. A full-frame shape sweeping across on the beat hides the cut under it, and it is one of the cleanest transitions in fan editing.