Viewing all elements and cutting/pasting issues?

So - I’m deciding between TBS and Flash, and am working with the demo version. Unfortunately, I’m experiencing two fundamental problems that are quite frustrating. Hope someone can enlighten me. (FYI, though a newbie to TBS, I have a decent amount of experience under my belt with Maya and Softimage…so the concepts aren’t utterly foreign or new to me.)

One - I CAN’T figure out how to view all elements for a single frame at once. (For instance, Deb Ant’s mouth and body at the same time.) I’ve tried Elements, Display ALL, and it’s not working. Is this a glitch, or am I missing an important step?

Two - How can I cut an element out of one layer, and move to another? (IE: I have a drawing of a complete character, and want to cut and paste the eyes to a different layer. I can cut, but paste is grayed out if I move to another element and try to copy.

Thanks in advance for any info - I initially like the lip sync options of TBS over Flash’s toolset, but if I can’t even do these simple functions, I’m DEFINITELY not choosing TBS!

TIA,

-GG

There are two fundamental ways to view all elements in a frame. One way is to switch your main view to camera view. That is done by clicking on the second icon from your top right on the main view panel the one that looks like a cinema camera. Or from the menus choose WINDOW>CAMERA VIEW. If you are in drawing view then all you need to do is press the keyboard short cut key L to turn on the auto light table.

The copy and paste for drawing objects requires that the drawing view panel has focus. So when you copy a drawing object and then you choose a new element in the timeline or the exposure sheet you must click on the drawing view panel to have it regain focus and then the paste command will be available. The way most people work is they right click in the drawing view panel to use the copy command off the context menu and they right click again in the drawing view panel to use the paste command from the context menu. This always insures that the drawing view panel has focus when you want to copy or paste a drawing object. -JK

Thanks…both suggestions are working!

One followup though - when I cut and paste a drawing element into a new element/layer, the palette automatically changes (which is not something I want.) How to avoid that?

Thanks and best,

–GG

I am not sure what you are doing exactly, because I can cut and paste a drawing element into a new element without effecting the currently selected color palette. So you will need to be specific in describing your steps for me to be able to determine the problem. For example how was your original drawing object created (drawn in TBS or imported)? What color palette is active when you cut and paste and is it the palette for the object selected or not? Step by step what are you doing and what is the results you are seeing? -JK