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Table Of Contents
2D and 3D Group Interaction
Although 2D and 3D groups share a lot of common properties, there are distinct differences
in how they and their children behave and interact with other objects in a project. 2D
and 3D groups can be parents or children of each other; there are no restrictions on
mixing group types.
Important: Some operations, as well as the application of some filters or a mask, cause
a group to be rasterized. When a group is rasterized, it is converted into a bitmap image.
Rasterization affects 2D and 3D groups in different ways. For more information, see Groups
and Rasterization.
Group Inspector
In the Inspector, the Group pane appears when a group is the selected object. The Group
pane contains the Type parameter, a pop-up menu that allows you to switch a group
between 2D and 3D mode. A 2D group has different available parameters than a 3D
group.
When the Type parameter is set to 3D, the Flatten and Layer Order parameters become
available. When the Flatten checkbox is selected, the elements in the 3D group are
flattened into a two-dimensional plane. When the Layer Order checkbox is selected, the
groups children are sorted by their order in the Layers list rather than depth order (position
along the Z axis). For more information, see Layer Order and Depth Order.
When the Type parameter is set to 2D, Fixed Resolution parameters become available,
allowing you to manually define the size of a group. By default, Fixed Resolution is disabled
and the size of the group is determined by the layers in that group. For more information,
see Fixing the Size of a Group.
Note: When selected, Fixed Resolution crops the group to the size specified in the Fixed
Width and Fixed Height parameters, around the anchor point of the group.
2D Group Properties
A 2D group has the following properties:
Its children are composited in layer order.
1252 Chapter 21 3D Compositing