Staging a Scene

Setting up your scene can be compared to building a set for a television show. This is the point when you position each scene element such as the camera frame, the background elements and the characters.

Adding a Camera

By default, a scene does not have a camera layer. In order to be able to tweak the scene's camera angle and position, you must add one to your scene. Although it is possible to have several cameras in the same scene, you can only view your scene using one camera at a time. This can be useful if you are still working on your scene composition and have different camera framing to try out.

Positioning the Camera

The scene action occurs inside the camera frame, so it’s really important to set it up correctly. You can adjust the camera resolution as well as other related parameters in the Scene Settings window, accessible from the Scene top menu.

Note that the Camera layer is static. If you need to animate it, you must put it under a peg, which you can animate—see Animating the Camera.

You can reposition your camera frame directly in the Camera view by using the Translate , Rotate and Scale tools of the Advanced Animation toolbar. Alternatively, you can set up your camera by typing its coordinates directly in the camera's properties. This can be useful if you've done your scene planning on paper, as the coordinates match the ones on a traditional animation camera grid. Hence, using this approach allows you to position the camera exactly where you want it to be—see Positioning Elements with the Layer Properties View.

Positioning Objects

Setting up the scene also involves positioning the different scene elements within the camera frame.

NOTE: Refer to Animating the Camera to learn how to animate objects.

Repositioning the Pivot

Transformations made on a drawing layer, such as rotation, scale, skew and flip, are made relative to the position of the drawing's pivot point. While making transformations using the Transform tool, you can drag and drop your selection's pivot. However, this has no permanent effect. It will only temporarily change the pivot's position to help you make transformations at the selected frame, but the actual pivot point of your drawing layer will remain the same. You can reposition a layer's pivot point permanently using the advanced animation tools. See to learn how the original pivot is set.