The 3D Viewport

Display Buttons

Display Preferences  – Use this button to setup the viewport quality settings and the navigation preset (the Camera Control Scheme: Anima, 3dsMax, Cinema4D, UE4, Maya or Blender). More info about this at the bottom of this article.

Camera Preview – Choose here between the cameras synchronized with Alive synchronization.

Viewport Navigation tools

Let you control the viewport point of view by:

Pan Tool (Ctrl + RMB) – Use the Pan tool to move the camera vertically and horizontally.

Orbit Tool (Ctrl + LMB) –  Use the Orbit tool to rotate the camera about the selected object.

Zoom Tool (Mouse Wheel) – Use the Zoom tool to move closer or far away from the current position.

Zoom Extents – Use the Zoom Extents tool to adjust the magnification and center the camera so that it encompasses all scene objects.

Top View – Use this tool to quickly set the viewport to a Top-down vertical point of view.

Toolbar

This toolbar contains all the tools needed to create or edit the scenes:

Select and transform tool – Used to select objects such as actors, paths, points, areas, escalators or chairs and modify their geometry and/or position in the scene. You can also define offsets for each individual Actor and move them between different animation areas.

Walkway tool – Use the Walkway Tool to draw animation paths that drive the actors. If you draw over a background model the walkway tool allows you to create animated characters on surfaces such as floors, terrain, ramps, and stairs.

Escalator tool – Lets you create fully animated escalator and moving walkways.

Chair tool – Lets you create seated people individually or in groups.

Avoid area tool – Use this tool to define obstacle areas that the actors must avoid.

Area Tool –  Creates Area objects that provide a simple way to place groups of static actors.

Traffic light tool – Creates a special area that let you stop and/or start the actors.

Background Model Clipping

Use the Clipping tool to slice the top from the background model. The bar on the right-hand side of the viewport represents altitude, the lower you drag the bar the more of your model is removed. This tool is designed to allow you to quickly place Actors in multi-level scenes:

Add Clip Level – Use this [+] button to add a quick shortcut to a particular height of the model. This is useful to store different floor heights and then change quickly between them.

Saved Clip level

Current Clip Level

The 3D Viewport (Click to enlarge).

Background Model vertical clipping feature.

Preview Window – Shows the selected Actor animated using the chosen Motion Clip. Any pose adjustments or color variations that you create are also previewed in this view. To orbit the viewports in Edit mode, just click anywhere except a bone node with the left mouse button and drag.

Pose Editor Window – The Pose Editor is used to fine-tune motion clips by adjusting the poses of characters. For example, imagine you have a scene where you need your Actor to look upward at something high, you can easily change the rotation of the skull to achieve this effect.
The pose editor window shows a yellow circle (or white, depending on the orbit position) for each editable bone. Just click and drag to adjust the rotation. The axis the bone rotates around is determined by the orientation of the viewport. Typically sideways rotations are accessible from a front or back view (white dots), and front/back rotations are accessed from the side views (yellow dots).

Preview Viewport Controls 

Synchronize Viewports – Activate this toggle to keep the Preview and Pose editor windows in sync. In this mode orbiting one window changes them both. To change the view in each window independently, disable this option.

Reference Pose – Shows the Anima default standard actor and both bone structures (blue -> default actor & yellow -> current actor) to use it as a reference pose for adjustments. Only is available when the Rest-Pose is selected.

Symmetrical pose edit – Activate this toggle to turn on symmetrical pose editing. In this mode changes made to one side of the body are automatically mirrored to the other side.

Pose Edit Tools – Tools that can help you edit the pose.

Pose Reset – Click to reset the pose for the current Actor and motion clip combination.

Undo Changes – Undo changes since the last time the pose was saved.

Copy pose – Copy the current pose to the clipboard. This is useful for quickly duplicating poses onto multiple characters or motion clips.

Paste pose – Paste the copied pose to the current character and motion clip combination.

The 2D Transform Gizmo is used to move and rotate objects that are only able to be moved horizontally. This does not affect there ability to move vertically to snap to the surface of background objects.

Move Arrows – The move arrows, shown here in green, allow you to translate an object horizontally. The arrows represent object space so if you rotate the character, they’ll rotate as well. To move the object on both axes simultaneously, click and drag inside the rotated circle.

Rotate – The rotate circle, shown here in red, allows you to rotate an object around its vertical axis.

Transform Arrows – The move arrows allow you to translate an object horizontally and vertically. Use individual arrows to constrain the axis or click on the squares between arrows to move objects on 2 axes simultaneously. Right-click the selection tool to access this option . 

Rotate – Click and drag on the circle to rotate an object around its vertical axis.

Node Marker – The selectable node marker allows you to pick certain objects from the viewport. Click this to access the object’s properties.

Bounding Box – Shows the size of the selected object.

Camera control Scheme – Choose between anima®, 3dsMax, Cinema4D, UE4, Maya or Blender navigation modes, and shortcut keys.

Camera Pan Sensitivity – Controls the sensitivity of the Camera Pan tool, decrease this value if you feel the camera pans too quickly or increase it to speed it up.

Camera Rotate Sensitivity – Controls the sensitivity of the Camera Orbit tool, decrease this value if you feel the camera rotates too quickly or increase it to speed it up.

Camera Zoom Sensitivity – Controls the sensitivity of the Camera Zoom tool, decrease this value if you feel the camera Zooms too quickly or increase it to speed it up.

Visible Actor Limit – This value determines the number of Actors in the scene that are displayed in full mesh mode. If the number of Actors in the scene exceeds this value then they will display as simplified boxes to help keep the viewports fast and responsive.

Directional Light X Angle – Controls the angle of the main directional light source on the X-axis.

Directional Light Y Angle – Controls the angle of the light source on the Y-axis.

Viewport Quality – It controls the quality of the texture maps displayed in the viewport.

Shadow Quality – Controls the quality of viewport shadows. Higher resolutions generate better and more accurate results but at the expense of resources.

Ambient Occlusion – Enables or disables ambient occlusion. Recommended to be left On when using background models.

Actor Ghosts – Show or hide Actor ghosts. These are characters that have been removed from the simulation due to unresolvable collisions.

Orthogonal Snap (Drawing) – When drawing walkways this will allow you to snap to angles in increments of 45 degrees.

Tooltips (Application) – Turn on or off the application level Tooltips. If you’re new to Anima we’d recommend leaving these on but once mastered you may prefer them to be disabled.