Your "Rooms" Setup...

[ndstephens]

I'm not sure if this has already been done, but i didn't find it doing a search.

I was wondering if users of the Pro Version would mind sharing how they have their 4 "rooms" set up...in general terms. What is the theme of your rooms and what sort of layout and tools/bins are you primarily using? Such as, room 1 for sketching, 2 for coloring, 3 for compositing, etc etc.

Thanks.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Below is my basic drawing setup; Room #1

Below is my room #2 for drawing in sync to a sound track

What you see are four monitors so I like to map my Wacom drawing area to the area of the project window. Everything else I reach with a mouse. In room one my timeline is too far to the right, so I setup room two to have the timeline directly above my drawing area where everything is also within reach of my pen.

If I would have to do my own color work I would have a third room for that. I'll try to grab a screen print off of Sandra's setup so you can see how different her layout is. She has just three monitors.

[ndstephens]

Congrats on your 5000th post, Paul.

Thanks for sharing the screen grabs. So i guess you both have made a lot of custom tool bins. I see you have some below, above, and to the side of your Project Window. Sandra seems to have many bins with dozens and dozens of custom brushes with color. I haven't yet fully covered that stuff in the manual, but looks to be very handy when setting up your own personal work flow.

Would you mind briefly explaining what you have going on in each of your monitors in the different rooms. I mean, i can get an idea just from looking at it, but i'd be interested to hear what your purpose is for each screen in the "room" and why you then have it set up the way do.

[Paul Fierlinger]

First of all, the fourth monitor is there because I need it when editing in Vegas as a full screen preview monitor. But once having it, it's nothing totally superfluous in TVP either. The monitor on the far left contains the same kind of stuff as the fourth one, on the right; reference pictures imported from the web.

There's a photograph of a the 19th century village you can see I used for the background of the scene I am working on. So these outlying monitors serve as desk space for useful junk. BTW, they are Picture Palettes made for us by youngmonkey.com years ago and they can do lots of useful things, there primary purpose being model sheets, which you can see Sandra uses a lot. You'll find a lot debated about these if you search for Picture Palette. It is on the to do list of future features for TVP.

The custom buttons running along the periphery of the project panel are the shortcuts I use the most. Most are obvious by their icons, but on the bottom are some strange ones; all related as extensions of the video controls. The orange ones right in the middle let me jump to preceding or following clips because I often work on these three clips at the same time. Then there's a button to open the Project Tab and once there, another orange button to jump back to the timeline.

On the right are shortcuts that control the layer panel; making new layers the way I like them to appear below or above my current layer -- matching the length of the entire clip, or matching the length of the layer aBOVE OR BELOW THE CURRENT LAYER ( oops-caps lock). Color groups are a fantastic contribution to our work flow as many items in the RMB drop down menus attest to -- I have buttons that do things with color groupings I use most often which I lifted from those drop down menus and placed outside.

Some buttons are redundant, such as the ones at the very top left corner, because I often have two clips opened at the same time and it's useful to have the shortcuts handy when working up there.

I'd say that's about it in a nutshell. Sandra's custom panels are her color palettes which she saves not just with the brush and paper but a single color as well because each palette gives her all the brushes she will need for one particular character or type of water she often needs to paint -- she assignees these palettes to certain scenes that travel with the scene wherever she opens it.

I think most of our buttons function as a custom distribution of features we use most often, placing them close to the action. This is one of the greatest advantages of having so much space -- not to pile up all the panels available, but to stick only those we use the most where we use them. The extension of these strategic placements are the rooms -- particularly for people with just one or two monitors or laptops. If I had to work with something that small, I'd make a room for working in a close up and another room for working on backgrounds and another one for working on panoramic scenes.