Orthographic views – normal or bug?

[Jeff Salman]

Thanks for the response, Dave. I was going to note in the original post but didn’t . . . I am zooming out on the comp view size (even all the way down to 3.1%) to check, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue.

In case it helps (and I’m attaching a pic below) . . . I have four copies of a pre-comp of a circle laid out on the north, south, east, and west point configuration (if viewing from the TOP view). I made four text layers that are numbers (one for each circle) for trouble shooting, and copy/pasted the position of each circle to its corresponding number (so each number is in the middle of its corresponding circle).

From the front view, Circle 3 is closest to the camera, and Circle 1 furthest away. Circle 4 is to the left and Circle 2 is to the right.

Here are the layers I can see in the composition window from each ortho view:

Front: Circles: 1 only; Text Numbers: none; (And curiously, even though Text No. 1 is in the middle of
Circle 1, I can see Circle 1 highlighted in the Composition Window when I select it, but don’t see
Text No. 1 highlighted in the Composition Window when I select it)

Back: Circles: All Circles visible; All Text No.s visible;

Left: Circles 1, 2, and 3 (curiously, can’t see Circle 4, which is the closest to the camera from the Left View)
Text No.s 1, 2, and 3 (same thing . . . Text No. 4 is closest to the camera, and this isn’t visible)

Right: Circles 1, 3, and 4 (flip of Left view . . . can’t see Circle 2 or Text No. 2, both of which are the
closest to the camera in this view)

[Walter Soyka]

You can use the camera tools to navigate within the orthographic views. As Dave notes, you may have elements outside the viewport.

If that’s not helpful, maybe you can post the AEP so we can see what you are seeing?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Jeff Salman]

Thanks for the help Walter (sorry for the late reply … I have a habit of trying to problem solve every little thing that comes up instead of just figuring out work-arounds – wanting to know the ins and outs of every program so I’m prepared in the future – and for once I tried to just finish the project).

In any case, I’ve tried navigating within the ortho views, and it doesn’t seem like that’s the issue. I’m uploading the file just for curiosity’s sake – at this point it’s academic … I’ve noticed that if I can’t find something in one ortho view, I can usually find it in the opposite ortho view, so I’m at least able to keep working.

I’ve simplified the file so that it has just the elements/layers to problem-shoot this. Appreciate the efforts and if anyone has any input/answers, it’d be greatly appreciated. (And I’m afraid that someone is going to find out that I just didn’t have something simple clicked or switched on … but if that’s the case, always good to know).

8146_creativecoworthotest.aep.zip

[Walter Soyka]

Jeff, your scene is enormously large — the layers are very spread out. The orthographic view default cameras are not set wide to catch much, and you have to zoom it out a lot or pan it over a lot to see them.

If you press Cmd+Shift+Alt+\ it will move the camera to look at the currently selected layer. This works in the orthgraphic views as well as perspective camera views.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Jeff Salman]

Hi Walter,

Yeah, the scene is, unfortunately, very spread out. I’m still relatively new and I was following a workflow I read about to make precomps very large to get around the issue of not being able to have precomps both Continuously Rasterized (to keep vectors sharp) and still have the layers within that precomp cast shadows. In any case, lesson learned and I’ll adjust my workflow in the future.

The Shift+Alt+Cmd+\ shortcut was very helpful. Thanks for that. I figure that the large scale of the scene is the culprit, and I’ll just keep an eye on the ortho views on future projects.

Just on a curious note tho … if you:
1). open the file i uploaded
2). go to the left view

…. you can select and highlight the Base 2 layer (to the left), the Base 4 layer (to the right), and the Base 3 layer (in the middle), but if you select the Base 1 layer, nothing is highlighted in the View (even though Base 1 should be in front of Base 3 in that view, just closer to the camera from that view. Then if you

3). Shift+Alt+Cmd+\ while having the Base 1 layer selected, it’ll zoom into that in the view. If you then,
4). Zoom back out to where the view was before, so that Base 2, 3, and 4 are back in the View (just as they were when you opened the file), now the when the Base 1 layer is selected, you can see it highlighted in the View. This is different from when you first open the file.

Base 1 is between Base 2 (to the left) and Base 4 (to the right), pretty much on top of Base 3. But where it wasn’t able to be highlighted in the View before, it is now after I do the keyboard shortcut you told me about.

That shortcut helps a lot, so thanks! Does seem to me like there is something a bit quirky going on with the ortho view, at least at very large scales. In any case … thanks so much for taking the time! I see you and a few others that are regular (and major) helpers on this board. Much appreciated!