MANUAL

Tools

The toolbar on the left of the viewer — selection, navigation, drawing, painting, masks, puppet pins and 3D.

The toolbar runs down the left edge of the viewer. Its buttons are grouped, top to bottom:

  1. Move / Anchor Point and Hand / Zoom — two shared slots. Click a slot to use the tool it shows; click and hold to pick the other one.
  2. Shapes, Pen, Pencil, Text, Edit Path — drawing and path editing.
  3. Brush, Eraser — painting on drawing layers.
  4. Mask, Puppet Pin.
  5. 3D — New Camera, the Camera navigation tool, New Light and New 3D Primitive.

At the foot of the bar are the Fill and Stroke squares, the paint the next shape gets.

Buttons with a small corner mark hide more choices: click and hold to open the flyout. Hover any button to see its name and shortcut.

When a tool is active, the tool options bar above the viewer shows its settings. The ? button on that bar shows a short help line for the current tool.

Tool shortcuts follow the active keymap preset (Brio or After Effects). The keys listed in these pages are the Brio preset; letter keys are the same on every platform, and ⌘ / ⌥ mean Ctrl / Alt on Windows and Linux.

  • Anchor PointDrag a layer's anchor cross to move its pivot without moving the layer.
  • BrushPaint frame-by-frame on vector drawing layers or raster brush layers.
  • CameraOrbit and dolly the 3D view with the mouse.
  • Edit PathSelect, move, bend and keyframe individual path points on shapes and masks.
  • EraserErase pixels on raster brush layers or whole strokes on vector drawing layers.
  • Fill and StrokeThe paint squares at the foot of the toolbar that set the colour of the next shape.
  • HandPan the viewer.
  • MaskDraw rectangle, ellipse or path masks on the selected layer.
  • MoveSelect layers in the viewer and move them; align and recolour the selection from the options bar.
  • New 3D PrimitiveAdd a cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, torus, plane or scale figure, or a whole studio stage.
  • New CameraAdd a camera layer, making the comp 3D.
  • New LightAdd a light layer to a 3D comp.
  • PenClick and drag to draw bezier paths as shape layers.
  • PencilDraw freehand paths that are smoothed into bezier shapes.
  • Puppet PinPin a layer and drag the pins to bend it; add Starch and Overlap pins.
  • ShapesDrag out rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars and donuts as shape layers.
  • TextClick for point text or drag for a paragraph box, then type.
  • ZoomZoom the viewer in and out by clicking.