The Previz workspace

The camera — your own point of view inside the scene — starts in Free view, where you walk through the scene like in a game:

To circle around one thing, switch the view in the top bar to Director view: dragging with the left button orbits around the point you are looking at, and the scroll wheel moves in and out. The strip along the bottom of the viewport always lists the controls for the current view — glance at it when you forget.

The tree at the top right is the scene's inventory. Click a row to select it (the panel at the bottom right follows), and the four small buttons at the end of the row are, left to right:

• Locate — move the camera over and frame the whole thing (the selection stays as it is; in Camera view it switches back to Free view first).
• Eye — hide it. Hidden things stay out of the frame and out of screenshots.
• Lock — lock it. A locked thing is still visible but cannot be dragged; lock things once they are placed so you do not nudge them by accident.
• Trash — delete it from the scene.

When there is a lot in there, use the search box above the tree to find things by name.

With nothing selected, the right side is the scene's own settings.

The Panorama background is not imported here — it comes from the image wired into the previz node (see 8.1). All you choose here is how it is mapped:

Which of the two the incoming image is gets judged once when you open the previz stage; switch it by hand here if that is not what you wanted. With no image wired in, everything around you is the flat color set in Sky color.

Every change you make in the previz stage can be taken back:

• ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z — undo (the back arrow in the top bar does the same thing); ⇧⌘Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z — redo.
• ⌘C / Ctrl+C — copy; ⌘V / Ctrl+V — paste; ⌘D / Ctrl+D — duplicate in place.
• Delete / Backspace — delete what is selected (it will not fire while you are typing in an input).
• F — focus on the selection; H — back to the default view; X / Y / Z — snap to an axis (press the same key again to flip). Move / rotate / scale have no keys: just drag the gizmo on the selection (see 8.4).
• Space — play the animation; ← / → — step the playhead by one frame (hold ⇧ for ten frames); I — add a keyframe to the selected path at the playhead.

Every key is listed in the top bar's How to use button (press ? to open it too) — the help panel and the actual key bindings both read the same table, so they never get out of sync.

If the viewport feels cramped, click Hide panel on the toolbar — the single column on the right folds away and the whole screen goes to the picture. Once folded it reads Show panel; click it again to bring it back. The divider between the viewport and the right column drags, too: hold and pull to widen or narrow it — the width you settle on follows your account to the next session. The timeline at the bottom toggles separately; use Show / hide the animation timeline on the toolbar (shortcut T).