does the layout refer to the rough animation or like a more detailed storyboard with the backgrounds and positions of stuff and whatnot?

Squidward said:
does the layout refer to the rough animation or like a more detailed storyboard with the backgrounds and positions of stuff and whatnot?

both, the first cut here is a layout and a pretty clean one at that. The background elements and unfinished drawings would be the biggest indicators. The other two cuts are genga though, background layer has been removed because its not needed for douga and the keys are completed.

so they do all the backgrounds with rough animation first aka layout. then do the Genga then add the removed background?

yes to that first part, the rough background must be drawn by the animator in the layout stage because in many cases the animation may reference or literally interact with it (ie. climbing, jumping etc.). When the animator turns in their layout to the animation director, the AD will make appropriate corrections and then send the background off to the art studio to complete properly. That's done before returning the now corrected layout back to the animator to complete. From this point on the animation itself doesn't change in the genga phase. All that is to be done is finish the drawings so that douga can properly trace the keys and add inbetweens so it's not necessary to have anything except the parts which are moving (ie. no backgrounds in genga).

I should note that BGs can and are sometimes done off the SB, there's also settings which might be ordered ahead of time for places where the director knows will be needed a lot/frequently repeated. I don't know as much as I should about this part of the production but that's the general idea more or less

are layouts always animated? sometimes I see posts with the tag layout and It's just a pic
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/18407

I think the number of drawings in an anime layout pass just depends on the scene and the supervisor's relationship with the animators. If it's a relatively still scene, you could get away with one drawing.

It can be a little confusing because Japanese and USA/EU studios have different ways of doing things.
Most of the time in USA/EU, 'layout' is the planning drawings for the background and various layers of animation/effects and camera movement. It's often done by BG artists themselves, with only a very basic indication of characters' position and size.
And there's even a third process that some people call 'layout', which is character layouts drawn by American studios to be animated overseas.
CG animation has a layout stage too.
So I think it's best to use it as a general term for BG/scene planning drawings.