Located on the left of the interface, the Properties panel gives you access to additional features related to the selected object. If no shape is selected, this panel displays the Properties of the active group. You can click on the header of a group to make it active and thus display its Properties.
These options are in addition to the quick group actions that you can already access from the Layers panel. Check out the presentation of the panel to learn more.
Note: multigroup-selection is not handled (yet), so you can only edit the properties of one group at a time.
Group Properties
Here are the group features you'll find in the panel:
- Group properties Presets: click on the lightning icon
to unfold the list of available group properties Presets and quickly apply a previously saved set of parameters. Presets include the values of all properties listed below. Learn more about Presets here.
- Blend Mode: blend modes define how groups are mixed together in the rendering. The list is the same as the one you can access from the
icon in the Layers panel. Hover over each item in the list to see a preview of the result and click to choose one. Learn more about them here.
- Opacity: this parameter controls the opacity of the whole group as one layer. You can assign a Control to its value to change it remotely.
- Shaders: you can add Postprocessing shader effects to groups. They are the same shaders that you can add on Players, Sequences and Master.
- Overflow clipping: you can control the overflow of effects outside of shapes. Choose a default setting for each type of effect in the Preferences (Edit → Preferences... → Rendering → Overflow) and overwrite it for individual objects. Here, you can choose to clip the overflow of Group Effects and Group Shaders (by the outline of the group). Here's the same example with different combinations of options:
→ Nothing clipped
→ Effects clipped
→Shaders clipped
- MSAA algorithm: this attribute affects the quality and efficiency of antialiasing around the egdes of overlapping groups. Indeed, MSAA, which you can toggle in the Preferences (Edit → Preferences... → Rendering → Antialiasing), reduces the pixelated aspect of the edges of shapes but it also produces a thin dark border around the outline of groups. Choose "Accurate" on top groups to remove this artefact, or "Fast" for an optimized mode.
Group options
Some additional group options are hidden from the Properties but you can access them from the options menu in the Layers panel.
Here are some notable options:
- Rename: allows you to rename the group. You can also directly double-click on its name in the layer list.
- Color: allows you to change the color of the group in the work area. You can also directly click on its color icon in the list. This will unfold a palette of 30 colors to choose from. (It doesn’t affect anything in the output.)
- Copy Group Effects to: gives you the possibility to quickly copy its Group Effects and their parameters and paste them to another group.
- Reset Group Effects: gives you the possibility to quickly reset its Group Effects and their parameters to the default state of only a thin white Border. Use the options menu in the header of the Layers Panel to access the bulk option "Reset All Group Effects".