Working with the Working Area

When a new working area is loaded, two crossing arrows are displayed at the center of the area. These arrows are called the origin, as shown in Figure 3-3, and they denote the center of the working area. It is about the origin that the current layer is scaled and rotated. All coordinate values are also measured from the origin. The Layer category in the Tools palette includes a tool for moving the origin.

Figure 3-3. Origin and visible area border

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The working area also includes a blue rectangle that marks the edges of the visible region. Only objects contained within this visible region are visible in the final animation. You can change the size of the visible region using the File, Project Settings dialog box, which is covered later in this chapter.

You can hide the entire area and all objects outside of the visible region using the View, Show Output Only menu command (Ctrl+J).

Navigating the Workspace

Even though the visible area is the only area that is rendered for the final output, you can use the entire working area for positioning and working with your objects. In order to access the area beyond the visible region, you’ll need to pan and/or zoom the workspace. The Tools palette includes four tools in the Workspace category, listed in Figure 3-4, for navigating the working area.

Figure 3-4. Workspace tools

You can pan the working area using the Pan tool, which is found in the Workspace category of the Tools palette (it looks like a hand). Selecting the Pan tool lets you reposition the visible region by dragging with the left mouse button.

The Zoom tool (which looks like a magnifying glass) is used to zoom in and out of the working area by dragging the left mouse button up and down. This tool is located next to the Pan tool in the Workspace region of the Tools palette. The Zoom tool always zooms in straight to the center of the main window regardless of where your mouse cursor is located. To zoom in on a particular object, you should first pan the working area so that the object is located in the center of the main window before zooming

You can control the exact place where the zoom takes place by dragging over the area that you want to zoom on if you enable the Zoom with Drag Box option in the Preferences dialog box. Once enabled, you can drag to specify a rectangular region to zoom in on.

Although not as important as panning and zooming, the Rotate tool (8) lets you spin the entire working area about the center of the main window. If you find it easier to draw vertical lines by dragging the mouse side to side, then you can rotate the working area to do this.

The Orbit tool (9) lets you rotate the working area into 3D space causing the flat 2D drawings to be tilted at an angle, as shown in Figure 3-5. When rotating the project into 3D space, the visible region border disappears, but a blue view icon appears showing the 3D location of the default view. The Orbit tool can rotate 360 degrees about the center of the working area. The Orbit tool is especially helpful when you have some 3D objects added to your scene because it lets you rotate about them in 3D space seeing them from all angles. Holding down the Alt key while dragging with this tool moves the camera closer or farther from the center.

Figure 3-5. An orbited working area

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Resetting the View

When any of the Workspace tools are selected, you can return the view to its default size and position by clicking on the Reset View button located in the Tool options bar. This same feature can be accessed using the View, Reset menu command or by pressing the Escape or Home keyboard keys. This button centers the entire visible region within the main window.

Using Grids

The Grid control and grid spacing value are located at the bottom of the main window. Enabling the checkbox makes an infinite grid appear in the main window, as shown in Figure 3-6. You can change the density of the grid using the value to the right of the Grid control.

Figure 3-6. Grid enabled

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Grids are great for visually lining up points when drawing on a vector layer, but they offer more flexibility than just visually lining up objects. If you begin drawing curves and shapes with the grid enabled, then any points you create will automatically snap to the closest grid point. This is convenient if you want to draw precise shapes such as perfect squares and circles. But, it can be annoying if you want your objects to have a more freehand look to them.

One way to disable the grid snapping feature is to simply turn the grid off using the grid checkbox at the bottom of the main window, but doing so makes you lose the visual guides also. Another way to disable grid snapping while keeping the grid active is with the View, Disable Grid Snapping menu command. This is a simple toggle command that can be on or off. When enabled, snapping to grid points is suspended.

If you have an existing freehand curve or object that you want to snap to the nearest grid point, you can use the Draw, Snap to Grid menu command (Ctrl+G). If you’ve drawn a freehand curve, be cautious in using the Snap to Grid command because it could distort the curve you’ve drawn, as shown in Figure 3-7.

Figure 3-7. Snap to grid distortion

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You should also be aware that the grid will move with the current layer. If you want to have a grid that doesn’t move, which is useful as a visual reference when animating, then you can simply create your own grid on a lower layer or screen capture the grid and load it into an image layer. By placing a grid image or drawing on its own layer, it will stay stationary as the other layers move.

Enabling Multiple Views

To the right of the Grid spacing value at the bottom of the main window are four boxes. These icons are used to show multiple views of the scene in the working area. The enabled option is highlighted darker than the other options. The four options, from left to right, are as follows:

• Single View: Displays a single view in the main window.

• Side by Side: Displays two vertically stretched views in the main window.

• Over and Under: Displays two horizontally stretched views in the main window.

• Four-way View: Displays four views in the main window, one in each corner.

Figure 3-8 shows the main window divided into four separate views with the Four-way button. Each view can be configured and navigated independently of the others.

Figure 3-8. Four-way view

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When multiple views are available, the current view is indicated by the view that has a gray border around it. The display quality options, covered in the next section, only apply to the current view window. When an animation is played, it is played equally in all windows. The grid and the Fast Buffer display quality option also apply to all view windows.

Using multiple views is helpful when you are working in several different places at once. For example, if you have a character open, one view can focus on the head and another on the hands. The drawback to this is if you switch back to a single view and then return to the four-window view, all of the zoomed views are reset each time you reopen the four-view window

Changing the Display Quality

At the bottom-right corner of the main window is a pop-up set of options for setting the display quality, as shown in Figure 3-9. As your scene gets more and more complex, using these options makes it easy to find and select specific elements, and it also speeds the redrawing of the scene.

Figure 3-9. Display quality options

The buttons on the left are presets that selectively enable several of the options on the right. The preset buttons include Wireframe, Low, Medium, High, and Preview. The Wireframe preset enables only the Construction Curves option, the Low preset adds Fills and Images, the Medium preset adds in Outlines and Masking, the High preset shows all the images as smoothed and adds the Transparency option, and the Preview preset hides the Construction Curves and enables the Brushes options. This shows the scene without any editing controls, just as if the scene were output.

The available options in the Details section include:

• Fast Buffer: Enables the fast method for redrawing the scene, but note that choosing this option can result in inaccurate colors.

• Construction Curves: Displays all points and curves for vector layers.

• Fills: Displays all the vector shape fill colors.

• Outlines: Displays the outlines for all vector layers.

• Images: Displays all imported images.

• Smooth Images: Displays all images with alpha blending.

• Masking: Displays all masking effects.

• Transparency: Displays transparency.

• Brushes: Displays all brush effects applied to strokes.

• Antialiasing: Displays vectors without any jagged edges due to aliasing.

Figure 3-10 shows a character in the side-by-side view layout. The left view window has the Wireframe preset selected. This lets you work with the bones without any distractions. The right view window has the Preview preset selected, which shows the character without any bones.

Figure 3-10. Wireframe and High display quality

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The Display Quality buttons are helpful when your project becomes more complicated, but it can also cause troubles if you forget about your current settings. For example, if you disable the Construction Curves option, then any points or curves you draw in the working area won’t be visible even though they are created. This same problem happens if you draw a curve with the Add Points tool when the Preview display preset is selected.

Concerning the Transparency display option, this only applies to transparent vector objects. Image layers can be made transparent, but you’ll need to render the project in order to see transparent images. You can render the project with the File, Render menu command (Ctrl+R). One work-around for this is to save the image using the .PNG format with transparency. Transparent .PNG images will appear transparent in Anime Studio if the Smooth Images display option is enabled.

Enabling NTSC Safe Zones

When an animation sequence is displayed on a television set, the pixels at the edges of the display can appear distorted, blurred, or even chopped off. It would be tragic to have the opening text of your animation that says, “To Everyone, Hello,” end up with the last “o” chopped off, thus making your cheerful greeting into something offensive.

To prevent this, you need to keep any text or pixels you don’t want to lose in the center of the screen. To know exactly which areas are safe, you can enable the View, NTSC Safe Zones (Ctrl+F) menu command. This shows the safe areas as two light brown rectangles, as shown in Figure 3-11. The inner rectangle shows the safe area for titles and the outer rectangle shows the safe area for action.

Figure 3-11. The light brown rectangles show the NTSC safe zones.

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Loading a Tracing Image

If you have a scanned, sketched image or a digital snapshot that you want to use as a template so that you can trace the artwork, you can use the View, Select Tracing Image (Ctrl+Y) or the File, Import, Tracing Image menu command. This loads and centers the selected image within the main window and dims the image to allow you to easily trace it using the various drawing tools. Figure 3-12 shows an image loaded as a tracing image.

Figure 3-12. Tracing images are dimmed in the main window.

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The background tracing image can be hidden using the View, Show Tracing Image (Ctrl+U) menu command. This command toggles the tracing image on and off, but doesn’t remove it from memory.

The background tracing image can be hidden using the View, Show Tracing Image (Ctrl+U) menu command. This command toggles the tracing image on and off, but doesn’t remove it from memory.

If you don’t want to use the Tracing Paper feature, then you can create your own tracing layer by adding a vector layer above the image you want to trace, creating a large white rectangle, and setting its Opacity setting to 75% in the Layer Settings dialog box. You’ll need to make sure that the Transparency setting in the Display Settings is enabled in order to see through the white rectangle. This method also gives you the option to move the image or the vector layer. It also gives you the chance to change the Opacity if the image is too dim.