Selection and Overlays

A button in the top toolbar of the Viewer let's you control overlays added on top of the image.

Depending on whether you use the Viewer in 2D or 3D mode, these overlays will be different.

The Enable All Overlays option is useful to quickly hide all overlays. This can also be triggered by presssing the H key.

When at least one of the Overlays is deactivated, the icon turns green:

2D Selection Hint

When moving your mouse over an unselected layer, a flash hint animation will play quickly, hinting which layer would be selected if you were to left click at this position.

The layer is also shown illuminated in the timeline, indicating which layer will be selected if the user presses the left mouse button.

2D Selection Contour

When layers are selected, they either have a yellow or blue contour.

• Yellow indicates that the layer is selected and is the active layer
• Blue indicates that the layer is selected but not the active layer.

2D Transform Handler

Hides the Transform Handler when a layer is selected and the mouse cursor is over the Viewer.

Even if this handler is hidden, a layer can still be moved and rotated by pressing the Alt key.

2D Motion Path

Hides Motion Paths on selected layers.

Format Frame and Bounding Box

Hide/show the white rectangle around the Composition, indicates the Composition format frame.

The dashed rectangle, visible when the Clip to Format option is disabled, indicates the bounding box of the actual pixels in the Composition. When using modifiers that increase the bounding box, such as a Blur or a Transform, you can quickly see how large the bounding box is growing.

Path Overlays Options

The following four options are designed to control the display of Paths in a Shape generator.

The path overlay options are described in the Shape an Mask section.

2D Selection

The transform tool can select 2D, 3D layers and 2D paths.

• To select layers, activate the first Layer selection sub-tool.
• To select paths, activate the second Layer selection sub-tool.

Layers can be selected by clicking either:

• On the layer's non-transparent pixels if Selection Method is set to Alpha Channel
• Anywhere within the layer's bounding box if Selection Method is set to Select with bounding box

The Alpha Channel method offers a more advanced selection method that enables to select layers regardless of their position in the layer-stack, as long as they are visible on screen.

Layers can also be selected by drawing a selection rectangle. Any layer that has its bounding box intersecting the rectangle will be selected.

• When holding Shift, the rectangle adds layers to the existing selection.
• When holding Ctrl + Shift, the rectangle removes layers from the selection.

3D layers can be selected in 2D in a similar way as 2D layers.

3D Overlays

Each type of primitive (lights, cameras, bones) can be filtered from the overlays:

• All Overlays
• Grid
• All 3D Guides
  • Light Guides
  • Camera Guides
• Skeleton Bones
• 3D Selection Overlay: similar to the 2D yellow selection contour

For more informations on other 3D viewer options, please checkout the 3D environment section.