Wizard
It should be noted at the beginning that you shouldn’t work in the 3D Editor, or the Wizard, during the live broadcast.
Click File > Open Wizard in the opened 3D Studio Editor window or press the Wizard icon on the bar.
Then, a warning appears, stating that in the case the new camera takes were defined during the ongoing session, the results of the work might be lost.
If you want to keep your previous work in the Production, it’s best to click NO to go to the Production module, save the session there and run the Wizard again. Click YES only after completing those steps.
The first one of the pop-up window series will appear. It will guide you through the Wizard.
If you tick the option: Do not show this window again, the window will not appear the next time you open the Wizard. The same can be done to all the windows that appear in the Wizard. Once you leave the Wizard, you can save changes to your session on the production screen (File> Save session) or create a new session (File> Save Session As…). Afterwards, when you re-enter the session, the pop-ups will not appear in the Wizard again.
However, if the pop-up hints still facilitate your work, you can enable them once again by clicking on the production screen:
Options> Configuration> General> Wizard Studio Editor> Reset pop-up hints visibility to default state (picture below).
The button with inscription: Reset pop-up hints visibility to default state will become highlighted and the hints start appearing again.The first step after opening a Wizard is to choose a studio.
You will be guided through the consecutive steps by the appearing pop-ups.
Picture below – a Window with a mouse – workspace.
A pop-up with instructions on how to select a studio by entering keywords.
A window with search results.
You search the studios by typing the name in the box, news for example. Then, all the studios that have news phrase in their name or in their category, will be listed. You don’t have to type the entire word, the search engine will show you suggestions after entering at least 3 letters of the phrase. (See the previous Picture.
The first step is to choose a studio. The Wizard launches with the Studio tab already open. Other tabs are as follows: Walls material, Floor material, Ceiling material and Decorations. Some of them may be disabled (inactive) by the studio designer’s intent.
First, choose a studio template. When you move the cursor over the template, it becomes highlighted and an additional enlarged window appears.
Move the cursor over the window and right-click it to display the template’s name, category, sub-category and keywords.
If you have a lot of items to search for, just enter the keyword, or its first three letters, for example, search for the studios that have “news” in their name. After entering “new”, the studios that have this phrase in their description will appear. It may be any part of the name or the word in the studio’s description.
For the word “transparency”, you can enter either the first three letters of the word (“tra”) or any string of letters in the middle of the word (like “spa”). Some elements, like “tv”, have only two characters, therefore you can type a two letter string, “tv” for example, and press the space-bar to create “tv “.
Some of the preview pictures have a small icon in the corner. When you click it, another window appears with the stage design preview, showing how it might look like in the final perspective and what elements it contains. This facilitates selection of appropriate elements.
You can narrow down your search by selecting Category and Subcategory from the drop-down list.
A red question mark (“?”) appears on some of the STUDIO TEMPLATE thumbnails. With its help, you can open another window in which you will see a view of the set design along with the use of individual objects, as an example, in the same category.
After selecting the studio template, click it to load it.
Depending on the selected template, all or some of the tabs will be available at the top of the screen. If the graphic designer assumed, for example, that the floor material in the studio cannot be changed, this tab will not be active. You can change the tabs by clicking on them or by using the Back and Next buttons at the top right corner of the screen. Picture below.
You can navigate through the loaded studio with your mouse. The same rules apply as for the mouse movements in the studio editor. See the chapter: Virtual 3D studio editor, paragraph: Operating modes: Camera and Object.
All the operations available in the studio, such as mouse movements or locking XYZ axes, are transferred from the Virtual 3D studio editor. Only the rotation around the selected object is disabled, as it was deemed useless in the Wizard.
Now, you can go to the next tab: Walls material.
You don’t have to mark specific elements of the walls in the Wizard. The material is changed in all the studio areas specified by the designer. All you need is to select the desired wall material from the materials list on the right side of the screen. Just as in the Studio tab, when you move the mouse over a specific material and right-click it, its properties are shown, namely Name, Categories, Subcategories and Keywords.
You can, of course, choose entire group of interesting materials from the drop-down list by selecting Category and Subcategory.
For example: Choose Category: Natural and Subcategory: Shiny. A list of materials with these properties will appear. Next, type the word “red” in the search-bar. Now, only the red ones will be included in the material group.
The process of choosing materials in the Floor material and Ceiling material tabs is exactly the same.
Now, let’s move on to the Decorations tab.
In the Decorations tab, so called “placeholders” appear in the view of the studio.
Placeholder’s positions are pre-defined in the studio’s design. Select any one of the placeholders in the preview window and click it with the left mouse button. Then, the placeholder lights up red and starts blinking. A placeholder can be selected with a mouse or indicated by selecting it from the list of all placeholders.
When you click on the placeholder, the “pin” lights up and starts blinking. Then, select from the list of the elements an object to be “affixed” in that place. Let’s choose a platform.
When you click on the selected object, the placeholder’s pin will disappear replaced by the selected object. The object will be inserted exactly where the placeholder has been. The object will be facing direction indicated by the arrow on the placeholder’s pin.
A red question mark (?”) appears on some of the objects’ thumbnails. With it, you can open another window in which you will see an example this object’s use in the set design prepared by the graphic designer. Picture below.
Simultaneously, a new position will appear on the list of placeholders: a Platform, along with a drawing of a small cube next to it. It means the placeholder has been replaced with an object.
Note that this object, the Platform, also has its own placeholder on its surface. You can now place, for example, a desk on this platform. Click the placeholder visible on the platform and then select the object: Desk. Picture below
What’s more, the desk object has two placeholders. You can place a Talent behind the desk using one of them.
If you want to remove the object from the placeholder, you have to select it on the screen by clicking the left mouse button on it. The whole object will light up and start blinking. Now, remove the object by pressing the button: Remove decoration from placeholder, located at the bottom right corner of the screen.
You have to remember that, if you select the Platform object, as in the example above, you it will be removed along with all the objects attached to it.
The available objects are listed and displayed in the windows. In the windows, the objects are visible in positions as if they were replacing their placeholders located on the floor, that is the placeholder’s pin was pinned to the floor. The arrow on the top of the placeholder determines the direction the object will be facing.
If the placeholder is pinned to the ceiling, and its pin is “upside down”, then an object loaded to such a placeholder will also be turned “upside down”.
Let’s look at the platform placed on the ceiling in our example.
It may happen that, when you want to place an object in your studio on a particular placeholder, it may not be a perfect fit. The object may, for example, “impale” the wall.
Do not worry about that, let’s now leave the object in that place, as accurate corrections and shifts will be done later on in the Editor.
Edit: Undo and Redo functions
There is an Edit option available at the top left side of the screen. You can trigger Undo and Redo functions from the drop-down menu or through the keyboard shortcuts.
- Undo function – erases the last introduced change.
- Redo function – reverses the Undo command.
Principles of the functions’ operation are the same as previously described in the Studio 3D Editor. The only difference is that, in the Wizard you cannot undo the camera movements, which was possible in the Editor. There is no Camera tab in the Wizard, therefore these movements are not recorded when designing the studio.
After adding all the objects, you can go back to the Ceiling tab to see the studio without placeholders. You can neither select, add nor remove the objects in the Ceiling tab and in the Walls tab. Instead, you can once again change the materials covering the ceiling, the walls or the floor if they don’t match the added objects.
You can press the Close button if there are no more changes for you to make . The Wizard will be closed and you will be automatically redirected to the Editor.
Now, you can continue with the editing.
The Wizard allows you to design a studio quickly and easily. But let’s remember that you go through the Wizard only once, putting all the necessary elements in the studio. The studio once created in the Wizard cannot be loaded to the Wizard again. If you have forgotten about some object and you want to add it, you can do it in the Editor.
In order to be able to the design each of the elements in the Editor, you have to change the mode from Simple to Advanced.
In the Advanced mode, you can display an entire tree structure of all the elements by clicking on the triangular markers that appear in front of the names of the objects and their elements. The whole process of building the studio, that is placing a platform, a desk, or a chair on the floor and so on, will be reflected in this structure. You will only see one element in the Simple mode – the Floor. In the Advanced mode, you will be able to display all the items placed on the consecutive placeholders.
When you click on the name of the primary element in the tree, a window will appear below the tree, containing materials that can be used.
You can change the item’s material by clicking on the selected material’s thumbnail.
In the case of such objects as talent or screen, a tab with materials database will not be visible. There is no possibility to change their material, even when you switch the Live option to Bitmap and use graphic images. Some Logo type objects (that could be found in the database) also don’t have an option to change their material. In some set designs, you can find certain logo type objects, under which you can both change a material and apply an appropriate graphics with transparency. In the case of an object’s Clone, both the material and its color are transferred.
If you are not satisfied with the change, you can restore the item’s basic material by pressing the Restore material to default button located at the bottom right of the screen.
It is possible to change the color of some of the materials. It is done with the color wheel.
You should bear in mind that you change a color of a specific material, so if the same material has been used in any other object, that object will also be subjected to a color change. You cannot change the color of some of the objects. In the case of objects loaded with Microsoft Paint 3D such option may be locked and you will be informed about it with a message. If you want to restore a default color, you have to use the Reset function. In the case of an object’s Clone, both the material and its color are transferred.
In the Editor, all the objects added in the Wizard can be moved, cloned, their color changed, their elements removed etc. In the picture below, you can see two desks, original one on the right, and the cloned one with the materials changed on the left.
In the Wizard’s Ceiling and Walls tabs you could only change the materials to the extent determined in the project. If you wanted to change the color of the floor strips (as in the picture above), it would not be possible in the Wizard. You can do it in the Editor. All you have to do is to find the floor stripes element on the tree in the Advanced mode and change the material.
