Knowing the Environment – Docking Areas

The new Qt UI design lets you drag, dock and combine your various work panels to any area of the screen, allowing for the quickest workflow in any number of scenarios. You can then save your custom UI layout for future use. Quickly switch between different layout frameworks like animation view, scene setup view, or cinematic view.

Dockable Areas

The dockable areas of the program are divided into Top / Bottom and Left / Right areas. At the center, it is the Preview Window in which you observe the 3D contents you are editing.

  • Top Area: On the top area, you are able to dock all types of toolbars, such as Project, General, Camera, Physics, Modify Tools, Slider Tools and Global Illumination.
  • Bottom Area: In addition to all the toolbars that can be docked on the top area, the bottom area can be docked with Project, General, Camera, Physics, Modify Tools, Slider Tools, Global Illumination and Timeline.
  • Left and Right Areas: Physics Toolbar, Global Illumination Toolbar, Content Manager, Scene Manager, Modify, Preference, Project Settings, Visual Settings, Mini View-port, or any plug-in panel, such as Indigo, can be docked to the right or left areas. The docking methods can be Stack or Top-down.
    • Stack: The Stack method means to dock every panels into one single pane. You may thus click on (or mouse-rolling on) the Vertical Tabs to switch them.
    • Top-down: The Top-down method means to dock individual panel vertically. You can see each docked panel on the side.

Benefits of Docking Panels

There are several benefits to dock or undock panels.

  • Customizable Layout of User Interface: You are able to customize your desired layout by re-arranging and saving it as the Standard workspace layout.
    1. Re-arrange the workspace layout to your favorite one.
    2. Execute the Window >> Workspace >> Save Layout command.
    3. Execute the Standard command (Ctrl + 2) in the same main menu, the layout will thus be the one you saved in the previous step.
    4. Execute the Reset Layout to reset the layout to the original one when iClone was installed.
  • Convenient Embedded Layout Templates: iClone also provide several types of layouts for certain purposes.
    • Animation (Ctrl + 3): Specially used for creating animations for the content in the preview window.
    • Visual Effect (Ctrl + 4): When you want to adjust the visual effect or camera related settings, switch to this layout.
    • Final Render (Ctrl + 5): Only the preview window and the Render panels will be shown for you to export the desired media type.

      ClosedNote:
      • You may also utilize the same method described above to overwrite the default layout template.
      • If you want to reset an overwritten template, then switch to the template and execute the Reset Layout.
  • Wider Editing Environment for Dual Monitors: If you are a dual-monitor user, then you have more freedom to re-arrange your workspace.