Leave a set of storyboard frames, or the few stages of one workflow, alone for a while and they end up scattered all over the canvas. In DOTV you fence them into a group, and from then on they are one thing: moved together, run together, downloaded together — when you make a series of AI videos, one set of shots is one group. This section covers what a group looks like, how it differs from an ordinary node, what you can do with one selected, and its special form, the grid group.
Marquee-select a few nodes, or hold ⇧ and click them, then:
What you get is a translucent slab with its name floating at the top left. Double-click the name to rename it.
Deleting a group deletes the nodes inside it as well. If all you want is the layer gone, use Ungroup — that leaves the contents alone.
Select a group and this bar floats above it:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Color dot | Tags this group with a color, mixed faintly into the slab. Once the canvas holds a lot of groups, color reads faster than names. |
| Arrange | Grid / Row / Column, tidying the nodes inside back into line. |
| Run group | Queues up every node in the group that's waiting to generate and runs them. Once it's going, this one turns into Stop, with done / total next to it. |
| Add to toolbox | Saves this group along with its wiring as a workflow, to lay out again in one click next time (see 9.6). Once saved, this one turns into Update toolbox. |
| To storyboard group | Lays the images in the group out on a grid: one per cell, cells can be numbered, and they stitch back into one big image (see 9.3). Only available while the group holds nothing but images — hover it to read why it is greyed out. To plain group on the grid group's own toolbar takes you back. |
| Ungroup | Takes this layer off; the nodes go back onto the canvas and nothing inside is lost. ⌘⇧G does it too. |
| Download all | Packs everything the group has finished into a single zip, numbered in storyboard order. |
Groups have one special form, the grid group: the number of cells and each cell's ratio are fixed, an empty cell carries a + for filling it in, and the toolbar swaps for a different set (Ratio, Grid, Stitch, Numbers). Most of them are created for you by Split grid on an image or Batch storyboard on a script, and 9.3 goes into them properly.