Viewing the composition
There are several ways to view your composition in LiveMotion. You can zoom in and out of it, and use the hand tool to move to a new area. Now, you'll practice working with view commands.
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Click the background of the composition to make sure no objects are selected, or choose Edit > Deselect All to deselect all objects in the composition.
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Now you'll resize the Composition window.
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In Windows, position the pointer over one of the Composition window's corners.
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In the Mac OS, position the pointer over the lower right corner of the Composition window; drag to resize the window.
The pointer turns into a double-headed arrow; drag to resize the window.
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Make the window bigger and notice that a gray area appears around the canvas.
The canvas becomes the visible area of your composition when it is exported. You can draw and store objects in the gray area outside the canvas, although they will not be visible until they are on the canvas. This is useful if you want to bring objects in from off-screen during animations, or keep them to the side for later use.
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To see objects that are positioned outside the edge of the canvas, choose View > Objects Off Canvas. This option shows just the outlines of objects.
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Choose View > Zoom In, and notice how the Composition window changes. The title bar of the Composition menu displays the current magnification level, changing from 01Start.liv @ 100% to 01Start.liv @ 200%.
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Choose View > Zoom Out to return to the original composition size.
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In the toolbox, select the zoom tool (). Click in the Composition window twice to expand the view to 300%.
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Select the hand tool () from the toolbox. Drag to move the composition in the Composition window.
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Select the zoom tool again.
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Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and notice that the plus sign inside themagnifying glass changes to a minus sign. The zoom tool can now be used to zoom out of the composition instead of into it.
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With Alt/Option still pressed, click once in the Composition window to change the magnification level to 200%.
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Choose View > Actual Size to return the composition to its normal size.
Editing composition settings
When you open a new file in LiveMotion, the Composition Settings dialog box opens so you can set initial composition properties. You can also open the dialog box and change settings for files that are not new. Now, you will go to the dialog box and edit the Composition Settings.
Choose Edit > Composition Settings.
Enter 450 for Width and 200 for Height. This will change your canvas size to 450 pixels by 200 pixels.
Click the Frame Rate menu to see the frame rate options. This controls how quickly your animations play. You will not be animating anything in this lesson, so you can keep the default rate.
Click OK. You can see that your composition's canvas has enlarged to show more of the composition.