Collections Toggle

StoryLiner Storyboard Feature available in the Storyboard edition StoryLiner Studio Feature available in the Studio edition
This feature is still under development and will be available in StoryLiner V1.3.
See the feature development notes here: New features to come in StoryLiner V1.3 - Collections Toggle


Concept and entities

Collection Sets

A [Collection_Set] controls the visible and hidden state of one or more collections from the scene for the current shot.

it is made of 2 lists of collection filters, one to specify which collections to set to visible (the “Included Collections”) and one for the collections to hide (the “Excluded” collections).

Note

Collection Sets can only be associated to a [Camera_Shot].

[Storyboard_Shot] do NOT have a Collection Set because this special type of shot has no interaction with the action taking place in the scene.

Collection Filters

A Collection Filter is an item of the Collection Set that will define which collections to toggle. According to the Included or Excluded list of the [Collection_Set] it belongs to, it will display or hide those collections.

2 types of collection filters are available:

  • Single Collection: This filter allows you to specify - explicitly - which collection to toggle.

  • All Collections Parametric: This advanced filter let you create some rules, based on names or icon color for example, that will be used to gather all the collections matching them.

How the collections toggle works

To make a shot control the visibility state of some collections, you have to:

  • Add a Collection Set to this shot,

  • Add a Collection Filter in at least one of the collection lists, either Include, to force the visibility of a collection, or to Exclude, to force it to get hidden.

Then, when a shot becomes the current one: - filters from the Included list are applied to make specified collections visible - filters from the Excluded list are applied to hide specified collections

At the same time, the shot that WAS the current one (and which is not the current one anymore) will “revert” the state of the collections it manages. .. - collections to display get hidden - collections to hide get visible

Changing the visibility properties of a collection means that the following properties are turned on (collection visible) or off (collection hidden): - Hide In Viewports state (the “eye” icon) - Disabled In Viewports state (the “monitor” icon) - Disabled In Renders state (the “camera” icon)

Note

  • Collections that are not managed by filters are not affected at all. Their visibility state is then defined by what is manual set in the Outliner.

  • The visibility state of the parent collection(s) of a given collection is NOT modified by a filter. This means that a collection can be set to visible but will stay hidden if its parents are hidden.


Adding collections to toggle

The Collections Toggle settings are located in the shot Properties panel.

If the settings are not visible in the current layout (default case), you have to activate the Collections Toggle feature in the Features panel, and to do this for each layout you want them to be.

wkip to do: add image

Note

To have the Collections Toggle UI components always visible in the shot Properties panel, you can turn it on in the Preferences panel, in the Features section of the layouts.