Exploring the Canvas Preferences

The last preference controls that you'll explore in this lesson are on the Canvas pane of the Preferences window. As the name suggests, the Canvas preferences allow you to modify various aspects of the Motion Canvas window. Tired of that drab gray background in your Canvas? Do you want to change the grid spacing? Perhaps you're working on a project with a yellow background and need to change the Dynamic Guides color to blue. If these are your goals, then you're in the right pane.

The Canvas preferences pane includes controls to modify the background, alignment tools, safe zones, film zones, and snapping.

If I told you to experiment with this pane, I bet you'd figure out all of the settings on your own. However, just to keep the momentum going, I'll point out the highlights.

• Background Allows you to change the background color of the Canvas.

• Alignment Allows you to modify the alignment tools, including the grid spacing, grid color, guide color, Dynamic Guides color, and ruler location.

• Safe Zone Allows you to modify the location of the Action Safe area and Title Safe area on the Canvas. You can also change the Safe Zone color.

• Film Zone Allows you to set the aspect ratio for film with such options as Anamorphic Scope. (If you don't know what these are, chances are you won't need them.)

• Snapping Allows you to change the snapping control for objects from Center or Edges to Center and Edges.

Congratulations! You made it though the lesson. Chances are good that you now want to play with some of these new controls. Have at it. When you're done, save the project, close the Preferences window, and move on to this book's last lesson, where you'll learn how to export your Motion projects and share them with other applications.