Scene Tree
Intro
The Scene Tree consists of a dual hierarchy of Parent/Child Elements and animation channels. Either or both can be disabled to reduce the complexity of the Scene Tree view. From the Scene Tree you can parent Elements underneath one another, you can control their visibility or quickly see what animated channels the Element has, you can also make connections to/from this window as well as use the powerful organisational, search and selection features to help you work rapidly in your Composition.
Anatomy of the Scene Tree
Showing and hiding Elements and Groups
Located on the left hand side of the Scene Window there are three switches. The middle switch has an eye icon, this is the visibility switch. Clicking this toggles the visibility of the Element. If a parent Element is hidden this fact is passed on to its child items.
Making a Behaviour invisible will turn it off (it will no longer calculate).
Invisible shapes are not rendered, but they are still calculated as their shape may be needed elsewhere (such as in a Duplicator or Outline shape).
Locking and unlocking objects in the composition
The left hand button is the lock icon. Clicking this will disable all the interactive aspects of the row such as the visibility switch and renaming, but it will leave the hierarchy button and the Connection Anchor available to interaction.
Controlling the visibility of Element hierarchies
For Elements with children an arrow disclosure icon will appear to the left of the Element's icon. You can use this to toggle whether you see the heirarchy of objects or not. This is useful for simplifying your Scene Tree display. Note that hiding the hierarchy doesn't hide the objects, it's purely an organisational tool.
Showing and hiding animation channels
Animated Elements show a small dot to the right of the Hierarchy switch. Clicking this dot will hide all the channels for this object. It's useful for when you need to concentrate on organisation and scene hierarchy.
A quick way to show and hide the heirarchies of several Elements at once, is to first select them, then use the shortcut Command/Ctrl + Shift + H to toggle the Show Hierarchy state.
Setting the label colour of Elements in the composition
The coloured square to the left of the Element name is the label colour menu, clicking it will open a list of predefined colours which you can use to help categorise and identify everything in your Scene Window.
Element colours are inherited by the Time Editor and Graph Editor, so colours work consistently across the application.
Naming Elements
To rename an Element in Cavalry simply select the row in the Scene Window and hit the return key on your keyboard, this will make the name editable. Once done, either press return again or click out of the box to commit the name change. Pressing escape will stop the editing process without committing the new name.
Creating and editing hierarchies
A hierarchy is a collection of related Elements arranged in a tree. Parent Elements show their children underneath them with their names and icons slightly offset to the right. Children can contain grandchildren, and so on.
Using hierarchies you can create complex animation with relative ease as each child inherits the transformations of its parent.
To parent one Element under another, you click and drag on the one you want to be the child, and then release the mouse when it's over the new parent; a box should appear around the Element you're dropping on, this indicates what's about to happen.
To unparent an Element, drag it out of it's parent hierarchy into a blank space in the Scene Tree, or between two Elements at the top level, and release the mouse.
Changing composition settings
Searching the Scene Tree
There is a search bar at the top of the Scene Window above the main hierarchy of Elements. To search simply click in this box and start typing. Elements will then be filtered by name.
You can also populate the search by dragging an Element into the search field.
Grouping Elements
To group an Element of group of Elements you can simply select the ones you're interested in and then press Command/Ctrl-G. The Elements will then be parented under a new Group.
Selecting Elements in the Scene Tree
Elements can be selected by clicking anywhere on their row. Command/Ctrl clicking a different row will add or remove from an existing selection. Holding shift when selecting a second Element will select everything between the two in the Scene Tree.
Double clicking on an Element will load its UI into the Attribute Editor
Holding Alt while double clicking will clear the Attribute Editor before adding the new UI.
Searching
Use the search bar at the top of the Scene Tree to filter Elements. This is useful when you want to distill what's shown down to only the part of your animation you're working on.
UI
Animation Layer Filter - filter the Scene Tree to only show selected layers and their animated attributes. The following hotkeys can be used:
Hotkey
Result
u
Any selected layers are filtered and, if any animated attributes are hidden, they are revealed. If there is no selection the entire scene is filtered.
alt + u
Any selected layers are filtered including any children with any animated attributes and, if any animated attributes are hidden, they are revealed.
shift + alt + u
Any selected layers are filtered including any children and, if any animated attributes are hidden, they are revealed.
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