seleting layer in viewer

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Not sure what you mean by “The Viewer” there is nothing named the Viewer in After Effects.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Jason Mettler]

If I had to guess, I would think you are referring to the composition viewer (the window with the stuff you are visually working on). If that is correct, there are tabs at the top that allow you to switch between ‘layer’ view and ‘comp’ view. “Comp” is the actual full composition you’re working on. “Layer” has a drop down to individually select layers from your comp. This is where you would apply paint effects and track footage.
The easiest was to see a layer in ‘layer’ view is to double click on it.

P.S. If you want a second comp window to see a multiple angle simultaneously, at the top of the program window, click ‘View’/’New Viewer’.

[Anita Sancha]

OK…

I have a shop with shelves and about 50 different products on the shelves. I made these in photoshop and brought them in as a composition and added this in to another comp with a further 20 layers…. so loads of layers. In photoshop I only called the layers “layer 1 to 50” not “pink box” or “blue box” which would have taken me more time to name all the layers.

Ok… so I want to animate them in “viewer comp window”. This is the frame where I can see the animation. Not specific layers windows the view of total comp image. I can see all the shop products, but cant identify the layer it is on in my composition. If I right click on the image of the “pink box” or hover the mouse over it, It wont tell me which layer it refers to. Photoshop does this, if I right click it tells me the layers I am hovering over.. So how can I identify the layer I need because I now want to animate all the shop products, and there are so many layers.

At the moment I go into the composition itself and switch off all layers and switch them on again one at a time, till the pink box shows only and that takes time. Only then do I know which layer to animate.

I often have loads of layers in photoshop as they are drawn animations, writing the names in in photoshop is maybe the only answer, but it would be really helpful if I could find another way. Imagine too… a comp of 500 ants and wanting to find out which layer the ant next to the green leaf was ..and needing nudging. ant 1 ant 2 ant 3 etc…. but right click over the viewer and being told which layers were under the cursor. would be helpful. It is the same as duplicating even more the ants and needed to know which ant was under the cursor? ant 28 copy 30??? which layer is it?

Hope that explains it further. tah.

Thanks for all your help
Anita Sancha.

http://www.anitasancha.co.uk

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I’ve been out at a trade show with little online access.

I’m finding it hard to understand exactly what the problem is but have you tried using the Flowchart view so that you can see the structure of your project? Perhaps this would help?

sorry if I am misunderstanding you.

cheers! 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Anita Sancha]

Hi all,

Thanks for you time, … but…
Try it this way … as a question.

Take a new project and a new comp and make a red dot and put it anywhere. Then make a black dot and duplicate it 50 times or so and animate the black dots all over the place. How would you pick out the black dot that is nearest the red one? If you select each layer in turn there is a bounding box around each dot….. They cant be named effectively because they are moving about so much and they are all the exactly the same.

But in a photoshop imported file with the overall photoshop file size e.g. the same size as the composition then the bounding box is not around the dot. So I find it very difficult to find out which photoshoped/comp layer I am on, especially if I also duplicate a photoshop layer many times. The only way I can find out is to turn the eye switch on and off on each layer which takes time. Therefore in photoshop, it is simply “right click” on the image and it tells me. All the layers that are pixeled under the curser and not alpha.

But how to find out in AE? With 200 – 300 layers in my comps this is driving me mad.

Also I have simplified this question, my photoshop files are of a shop background, so it is the same size as a comp and the analogy of the dots is replaced by lots of objects in the shop. I don’t want to import these as individual photoshop files… that would probably take even longer.

Cheers hope that helps.

Thanks for all your help
Anita Sancha.

http://www.anitasancha.co.uk

[Todd Mail]

Its pretty obvious what she’s asking and heres the answer:

Using a keyboard shortcut

This little-known shortcut is a fantastic way to select a layer. Simply Ctrl+Alt+right-click (Win) or Command+Option+right-click (Mac) the layer in the document window. This works from within all tools except the Hand tool, and it works regardless of the Move tool’s Auto-Select setting