User Guide

CHAPTER 11
342
Managing Projects Effectively
You can change other properties of a selected element by right-clicking (Windows) or
Control-clicking (Mac OS) the icon to the left of the name in the element tile. The icons
have various appearances, depending on the element type, such as layers ( ), composi-
tions ( ), audio footage ( ), and so forth. For example, you can use the icon context
menu to work with masks and effects or to change switches, apply transformations, and
adjust quality.
Note: When you change element properties in Flowchart View, be careful to click the icon in
the tile, not the name of the element. The context menu associated with the element icon is
different from the one that opens from the element name.
Organizing a project using nesting
When you nest compositions, you organize your project into a hierarchy. In its simplest
form, nesting means that you combine two or more compositions into one main compo-
sition from which you render the final movie. A composition inside another composition
becomes a layer within the parent composition.
Use composition nesting to save time working and rendering. With composition nesting,
you can do the following:
• Apply complex changes to an entire composition. For example, you can create a compo-
sition containing multiple still images, nest the composition within the overall compo-
sition, and animate the nested composition so that all the still images change in the same
ways over the same time period.
• Reuse anything you build. For example, you can build an animation in its own compo-
sition and then drag that composition into other compositions as many times as you want.
This can save large amounts of space, especially for complicated effects, such as 3D layers.
• Update many composition copies in one step by editing the original animated composition.
• Alter the default rendering order of a layer. For example, you can render a transform
change (such as rotation) before rendering effects.
Note: Parenting is another way to apply complex changes to an entire composition. For infor-
mation, see “Understanding parent layers” on page 184.
UG.book Page 342 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM