Basic animation NSView LayerContentsRedrawPolicy

Note:

This question is about support for layer-aware NSViews on Mac OS 10.10. Please don't mention UIKit.

Question

The Core Animation docs clearly state that NSViewLayerContentsRedrawOnSetNeedsDisplay

this is the way to go for animating a performer. My question is very simple, suppose I have a layer-aware NSViews hierarchy:

WindowContentView
    ScrollView
        ClipView
            DocumentView
               SomeSubview

Each of these views supports a layer, but none of them are designed to draw their layer content to their parent layer.

Do I need to set a policy redrawOnSetNeedsDisplay

on each in the chain, or will this policy on the topmost view affect the layers of child views? I cannot find anything in the docs that discusses this.

The reason I am asking is because although my animations are smooth, it still remains a little awkward and I cannot figure out why.