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.
2D Overlays
Layer Selection Overlays
When layers are selected, they either have a yellow or blue contour. Yellow indicates that the layer is selected and is the active layer, whereas blue indicates that the layer is selected but not the active layer. To turn-off the layer contour overlay, uncheck Enable 2D selection Contour in the overlays panel.
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.
To turn-off the layer contour overlay, uncheck Enable 2D selection Hint in the overlays panel.
Format and Bounding Box
The white rectangle around the Composition, indicates the Composition format frame. The dashed rectangle, if visible, 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.
To turn-off these overlays, uncheck Enable Format Frame in the overlays panel.
Path Overlays Options
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 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 (Ctrl + Shift), the rectangle removes layers from the selection. When holder (Shift), the rectangle adds layers to the existing selection.
3D layers can be selected in 2D in a similar way as 2D layers.
Paths selection is covered in a dedicated section.
3D Overlays
Each type of primitive (lights, cameras, bones) can be filtered from the overlays. Similarly to the 2D overlays, the yellow selection contour can be optionally turned-off. To disable the grid display, turn-off the Enable Grid* option.
For more informations on other 3D viewer options, please checkout the 3D environment section.