THe Z-axis nudging facility is great but sometimes you can easily lose track of which depth it’s set at. Sometimes you endlessy keep pressing the up and down keys then it suddenly appears where you want it.
Is there some window where I can see at what depth in the Z-axis I’ve nudged something to?
THanks!
Mic
If you double click the drawing layer the dialog will bring up the x y z position. You can manually rest it to zero there.
You are using pro right? If so you know you can just reorder the nodes in network view and not need to nudge?
Hey James,
Thanks for that.
But how do I edit the Z axis? It’s not editable. I can’t select anything…
And yes I do have Pro 2.
Thanks,
Mic
Hi,
In the Timeline view, you can display the Data view to edit the value of your keyframes.
The reason why you cannot select anything is because it is not a static value. When there are keyframes (function curve) created, you have to edit the keyframes themselves, which you can do in the Data view while being on a frame where there is a keyframe or in the Coordinates and Control Points view.
Here are a couple references from the user guide that could help you:
- Chapter 14: Creating Animation Paths > Modifying a Path in the Timeline View > Changing Keyframe Values on page 612
- Chapter 14: Creating Animation Paths > Adding and Deleting Keyframes in the Function View on page 616
- Chapter 14: Creating Animation Paths > Modifying a Path in the Camera View on page 603
Good luck!
Marie-Eve
Thanks Marie. I’ll give that a go tho sounds quite complicated…
Cheers,
Michael
Awesome Lilly. Thanks so much!
There’s a few different ways of seeing what you’re nudging. The way that I like the best is I open a Top view somewhere to the right so that I can look at both the Camera view and the Top view at the same time. Then I zoom in reeeally close on the Top view, and I can see individual nudge increments as they’re going.
Another way that you can see whether you’ve nudged something is to turn on your “Coordinate” toolbar. When you nudge anything with the transform tool, you will see the value change in the coordinate toolbar.
If you double-click on an element, this opens up its layer properties. You can only edit the values in this dialog if you have a constant value. If you have already added some keyframes to your z-value, then it will attach a function to it, and you can no longer edit from this dialog. You can click on the function button to the right to bring up the function editor and edit the values from there.
If you want to set something back to a constant value (deleting your keyframes) you can always do this by clicking on the little down-triangle next to the function button in the Layer Properties. Then select “Local”. This will remove the function attached to it and set it back to an editable, constant value.
Hope this helps! I think the easiest way is the top view, but that’s just my opinion!
As a side note, if you’re having trouble nudging things in Z, just remember that you need to have the focus (the red outline) around the camera view when you use the transform tool. If you have the focus around your timeline, it will not nudge your object. You can get the focus around your camera view manually by clicking once in the view (I usually hold down spacebar and click so that I do a pan instead of accidentally using the tool I currently have selected). Or if you want to you can turn on the preference “Focus on Mouse Enter” which will put the focus wherever the mouse is hovering over. This should be in the General tab of your Preferences window.
~Lilly