The scene view is the center region of Studio, showing you the visual result of rendering and compositing the layers of your presentation, and also allowing you to select and transform elements graphically.

Surrounding the scene view is the matte. The matte may not be visible if your presentation is larger than the available space.

Scene View

The content of the scene view depends on whether or not you are using an edit camera. Normally (without an edit camera) the contents of all layers seen through the camera are composited in the scene view. When an edit camera is used, the contents of the selected layer are seen as viewed through the edit camera.

Selecting Elements

In addition to displaying content, the scene view allows you to select and transform visible elements. Click on an element in the scene to select it in the Timeline palette and show its properties in the Inspector palette.

Clicking in empty space will drop the current selection. Alternatively, you can click on empty space in the Slide palette or on the matte to drop the current selection.

Showing and Hiding Bounding Boxes

When an element is selected its bounding box is drawn in the scene view, along with the bounding boxes of immediate children. If this is getting in your way, you can turn off bounding boxes in the View menu.

Transforming Elements

When an element is selected, an interactive transform manipulator will be displayed in the scene view. Click and drag on portions of the manipulator to move/rotate/scale the element. (The manipulator displayed is controlled by the current manipulator mode).

Alternatively, you can click and drag on the element itself to affect the transform:

In Position mode:

• left-mouse dragging on the element will adjust the position perpendicular to the camera's view axis. (For example, if you drag an item to the left, it will move to the left.)
• right-mouse dragging up/down on the element will move it farther from/closer to the camera.

In Rotation mode:

• left-mouse dragging on the element will tumble it.
• right-mouse dragging up/down on the element will rotate it counter clockwise/clockwise within the view.

In Scale mode:

• left-mouse dragging up/down on the element will proportionately scale it smaller/larger.
• right-mouse dragging up/down on the element will affect the local Z scale.

Using Guides

Guides help you position elements in the scene view. They appear as yellow lines overlaying the scene.

Create a guide

To create a guide, simply grab the ruler at the edge of the scene view and drag into the scene view. Dragging from the horizontal ruler will create a horizontal guide, while dragging from the vertical ruler will create a vertical guide.

Delete a guide

To delete a guide, grab it and drag it back to the ruler outside of the scene view. It is possible to delete all guides by selecting View > Clear Guides from the menu.

Edit a guide

To change the position of a guide, do one of the following:

• Drag and drop it to the new position using the mouse.
• Left-click it in the scene view. Then, in the inspector palette, enter the desired position in pixels. (0,0) is the lower left corner of the scene view.

Additional properties available in the inspector palette allow you to set orientation and width for the selected guide.

Matte

Clicking the matte will deselect all selected objects in the presentation.