Activity 3: Multiplane Setup

T-HFND-009-016

Set up your multiplane on the Z-axis and learn about features like zoom, Timeline layer selection, Top view, Side view, Perspective view, Transform tool and Maintain Size tool.

Material

To complete this topic, you will need the following from the sample material you downloaded:

  • MO-HFND-009/07-camera-multiplane scene - version you worked on in the previous topic

Video Transcript

Hi everybody, welcome to the second part of the tutorial. In this section, we will look at our assets and at how to move them at different depths on the Z-axis.

So first off, let's have a look at what our assets are in this scene. I will use the zoom in and out shortcuts, which are [1] and [2]. And I will also be using the spacebar to navigate in my windows.

Okay, I can see all of my assets here in the camera. In the timeline, I can also see them. So I have two groups right now. One for the animation, which contains all of the animation for the girl here, the character. And then I have the background group, which contains the different layers that I have in my scene. If I click on them, the layer that I selected gets highlighted in pink, so that I can easily identify which layer I am currently selecting. In order to move things in depth, what we will do is bring out two windows. We'll bring the Top window. You can just click on the plus sign, hold it and bring the window of your choice, in this case, Top and Side.

A little explanation of what we are currently seeing here: The white line is the Z-axis, and the arrow-looking triangle that we're seeing points to where our Camera is currently located. So the very tip of the arrow is the location of our camera and then the lines here represent our various layers that we have in our scene.

In the Side view, you're looking at all your assets from the side, and in the Top view you're looking at them from the top. We're now going to move them in space.

So let's select this screen here. And if I was to move it right now--let's just see what happens--we can see that this screen gets bigger, which makes sense because it's moving towards the camera.

Although it's logical, it's not something that I want currently with my scene, because the current size relation of all my elements is proper. So I would like to just move them in depth without actually changing their size. So let me undo this right now and I'll show you how to do that.

First off, before moving layers around, we're going to make sure that we deactivate the Animate mode. And in order to move them in depth without modifying their size, we're going to use the Maintain Size tool. So I'll go ahead and put all of my different layers exactly where I want them to be. The building layers seem like they are disappearing, but they're actually just moving behind the main background, the colourful background that I haven't moved in depth yet. In both the Top and the Side view window, you have a side bar that shows you all of the layers and their position in relation to one another.

You'll be able to do what we just did in any version of the software, be it Essentials, Advanced or Premium. But in the Premium version, you also have a window called Perspective window.

And in this window, you can move, you can actually see your whole 3D space of your scene and move in it and also manipulate each of your layers, directly inside that view. You will use the [Command + Alt] shortcut to move around in your view on Mac and [Ctrl + Alt] on PC.

We are now done for this part.

In the next video, we will see how to create and animate our camera.

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Time Estimated 20 mins

Difficulty Level Beginner

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