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Help Centre
Sometimes you need to make edits on a very specific selection of layers and panels. This article will show you how to select specific layers across multiple panels.
Step 1: Prepare the layers
- Layer naming: In order for changes to apply across multiple panels, you need to make sure the corresponding layers are named the same, or Storyboard Pro will not know what layers to reference. Upper and Lower case are important as well.
- Artwork: The content of the layers must be logically separated. Make sure that artwork that should be on another layer is not on the layer you want to change and vice versa.
| TIP: A good practice for consistent layer naming is to make sure your layers are named from the first panel you create, this way when you Duplicate or Smart Add a panel, the layers in the new panel will automatically adopt the names from the original. |
Step 2: Select panels and layers
- In the Timeline or Thumbnails view, click on the first panel you want to include in the selection.
- In the selected panel’s layer section, select the layer or layers you want to include in the selection. To select multiple layers, hold Ctrl (Windows) or ⌘ (macOS) and click on the layers you want.
- In the Timeline or Thumbnails view, hold the Shift and Ctrl keys (Windows), or the Shift and ⌘ keys (macOS), and click on the last panel of the series you want to include in the selection. The selected panels will be highlighted in orange:
| WARNING: The Shift + Ctrl/Cmd shortcut is extremely important for this process to work. Simply using a shift selection will only select the panels and not the layers. |
Step 3: Modify the artwork
With multiple panels selected, you can use the following features to make changes to the artwork in the Camera or Stage views:
Select and modify the artwork using selection tools:
- Select
tool
- Select by Colour
tool
- Cutter
tool
- Perspective
tool
- Delete the selected artwork using the Delete
button, or by tapping the Delete or Backspace key.
- Erase across all panels using the eraser
tool.
- Apply a matte to the artwork by using the Generate Auto-Matte feature.
In the Layers menu, you can modify the following:
- Adjust the opacity of the selected layers.
- Toggle the layer visibility.
- Toggle the Background layer
to include or exclude it from the onion skin.
Right-clicking on the selected layer brings up other options that will apply to all selected layers:
- Rename or delete all the selected layers at once.
- Copy all the selected layers to later paste them all in one panel.
- Toggle show and hide layers.
- Change the layers’ opacity.
- Convert the layers from vector to bitmap, or from bitmap to layer.
- Apply bitmap effects like Blur (this will make vector layers into bitmap layers).
- Generate the Auto-Matte.
| NOTE: Drawing tools will not create artwork across all panels. Only the currently active panel will record a new drawing. |
| WARNING: While you have the selection active, do not click on any of the layers. This will deactivate the multiple panel selection and your changes will only apply to the current panel, even if all the panels still appear selected in the timeline. |
| TIP: The multiple panel selection is not limited per scene. You can use this technique to select specific layers across your entire storyboard. However, you will still need to make sure your layers are named consistently. |