Here's a few small, but oh-so-handy tips for Layout that help speed up your productivity.  Essential when you're on a deadline...


Bulk-selecting whole limbs in a character

Ever get sick of tasks such as shift-clicking on lots of bones in a hand so you can bend the fingers?  In Layout, if you Right-click on the first bone of a finger, it will select the bone and all of its child bones (ie. the rest of the finger).

Use a Right-click to select entire heirarchies in one-click.  Oh so useful!


Stop the annoying accidental selection of other items in a scene

Ever get sick of selecting a load of bones in a character, and just as you thought you'd clicked on the last one, suddenly the camera or light got selected - Now you have to go reselect all those bones again!  Argh!

Never fear - In LightWave 9.6, open the General Options window (o) and then activate the Dbl. Click Bone Mode option!



If you have objects selected, you need to double-click on a bone to select the first one.  However, once this is on, it makes sure that when you single-click to select another, only bones will be selected and avoids the pain of losing your time reselecting things.

Note that to select other items (ie. objects) again, you need to double-click on the other item.  However, its a real improvement and well worth knowing!


Need to duplicate the envelope from one thing to another?

For sake of a simple example, imagine that you've gone and animated the intensity of a light and wanted to make sure that a lens flare you've switched on would follow it as well?

One way to automate things is to write an expression, however lets say you just wanted to copy the animation?

Right-click on the E button.  A pop-up menu appears - Low and behold, you can copy-paste directly without needing to even open the graph editor to do so.

Note that this will only work on single-value animated channels - ie. things that are based on a percentage, angle or other value - it won't work on things like colour channels (since they have 3 values - R,G and B)

However - Extremely useful to know nonetheless!


So just 3 to get this thread started.  If anybody else has any snippets of advice for working in Layout (ie. tips on quick ways to do things) then please do add to this thread...  I'll be back with more later!