Items

The Items panel contains two lists. The left-side list displays all items in the scene, the right-side displays each bone in the selected skeleton. These lists have several features designed to improve workflow.

Selecting an object in the scene list (left side) will select that object in trueSpace (except for certain cases, see Selecting for more information). Selecting a bone in the bone list (right side) selects that bone in Motion Studio and selects the tip joint of that bone in MotionStudio and in trueSpace. In Motion Studio, the selected bone is the bone that is controlled by the Bone panel. The selected joint is the joint controlled by the Joint panel. The Motion Studio selected objects are drawn in different wireframe colors from other skeleton objects. Motion Studio skeletons use trueSpace groups to stay organized. In trueSpace, selecting children of grouped objects can be tricky. Using the items lists for selecting is often the easiest method.

You can use the scene list to create or edit groups using drag-n-drop. Be careful when manipulating Motion Studio skeleton objects, because they are intended to have the group structure are shown in the section on Skeletons.

Items in either list can be renamed. Renaming works just like it does in Windows explorer: select an item, wait a moment, then click it again to enable editing (or, select an item, and press F2). Get in the habit of naming your bones: it will save time in the long run.

Note: objects in each list have context (right-click) menus.

Each list has clickable columns. Clicking in one of these columns will typically turn some feature on or off. Also, if you select multiple items, the buttons at the top of the columns will activate the feature for all selected columns.

The scene list (left side) has a visibility column. Clicking in the visibility column for an object will toggle the display for that object (equivalent to the Invisible box in the trueSpace Object Render Options panel). Invisible objects show a red icon in the visibility column (some objects, like lights and cameras, cannot be made invisible, and always have a gray box in this column). If you select several objects, clicking the red-circle button at the top of the column will toggle visibility for each of those objects.

The bone list (right side) has two columns, the nail column and the parent column. The nail column shows and controls nailing for the root joint of the listed bone. The parent column controls parent mode for each bone.

Selecting a bone in the right-side list will select the tip joint of that bone in trueSpace. Note: selecting the bone selects the tip of the bone, while the nail icon controls the root of the bone. This convention may seem confusing at first, but it's handy once you get used to it. If you need to nail the tip of a bone, you can use the Nail button in the Joint panel.

Attach objects to bones by dragging them from the scene list and dropping them on a bone in the bone list. Objects that are attached to bones are shown in the bone list as sub-items. Skinned objects are indicated with a skin icon. Attached objects also have context (right-click) menus.