The viewport
The 3D view you work in, the camera that flies it, the gestures that move it, and the axis views, grid and focus mode that help you navigate.
Reference
- Tool
- Hand
- Menu
- View ▸ Camera
- Gesture
- Two-finger drag
The viewport is the 3D view filling the middle of the canvas. Everything in a shot — layers, strokes, surfaces, the shot camera — sits in one 3D scene, and the viewport is where you stand to look at it.
The camera that flies the viewport is your working view and nothing else. It is never rendered. Orbiting to reach the back of a model, dollying in to place a detail, or pulling back to see the whole scene changes nothing about the final image. The image is framed by a separate object, the shot camera — the distinction is the most common early confusion, and it is worth reading that page early.
This page is about a 3D shot
A 2D shot has no viewport camera to move and no shot camera to frame with. It has a page — the shot's resolution, drawn as an outline — which two fingers pan, pinch and twist. Its View menu offers Reset Zoom & Rotation and nothing else.
Moving the viewport camera
The camera is driven by finger gestures, never by the Pencil. All of the recognizers are finger-only, so a Pencil stroke is never interrupted by a resting hand, and a two-finger gesture always reads as navigation rather than drawing.
Orbits the viewport camera around its target. A drag across the full width of the view turns the scene half a revolution. Set to pan instead with the Two-finger drag picker.
Pans the viewport camera, regardless of what the Two-finger drag picker is set to.
Dollies the viewport camera in and out.
Pan and pinch track together, so a two-finger drag that also pinches is one continuous camera move rather than two competing gestures. Orbit, pan and dolly all stay live while an effect is open and the canvas is otherwise read-only, so you can always move around to inspect.
Gesture travel is measured against the size the scene is actually drawn at. When docked panels shrink the viewport the scene is drawn smaller, and the camera compensates — orbiting does not speed up as you open more panels.
The full gesture set, including the undo and redo taps, is listed under Gestures.
The Two-finger drag picker
Chooses what a two-finger drag does in the free viewport: Orbit (the rotate icon) or Pan (the four-arrow icon). A three-finger drag pans whichever way this is set. The picker sits in the command bar, and again in the focus-mode toolbar.
The Hand tool
The Hand tool pans the viewport with a single finger or the Pencil: drag anywhere and the view moves, with no ink laid down. It is the one tool whose entire purpose is navigation, and it is useful when you want to reposition the view without lifting into a two- or three-finger gesture.
The Hand tool has no controls at all. Its Tool Options section holds a single line of guidance and nothing else, its QuickStrip shows only the colour well, and Brush Settings reports that the tool has no brush tip.
Axis views
The viewport camera can be snapped to a face-on axis view. The axis items live in a group inside the View menu, and the same list is repeated behind the cube button in the command bar.
Reference
- Menu
- View ▸ Camera
| Item | Result |
|---|---|
| Front (Z) | Looks down the Z axis from the front. |
| Back | Looks at the scene from behind. |
| Right (X) | Looks down the X axis from the right. |
| Left | Looks at the scene from the left. |
| Top (Y) | Looks down the Y axis from above. |
| Bottom | Looks up at the scene from below. |
| Reset View | Returns the viewport camera to its default position. |
Axis views are the reliable way to work on one plane. An orbit that is only nearly face-on will still project a stroke slightly off the axis you meant.
View toggles
Three toggles sit in the View menu, and the same three are repeated as buttons in the command bar. Each shows a checkmark while it is on.
Shows or hides the drawing surface's grid in the viewport. The grid marks the surface new strokes land on — see The drawing surface.
Looks through the shot camera instead of the free viewport camera, so the view shows the framing that will be rendered. While it is on, the Camera panel becomes available and canvas gestures reposition the frame rather than the camera.
Hides every docked panel and draws the viewport full-bleed. The tool palette, the QuickStrip and all panel columns go away, leaving the artwork and nothing else.
Focus mode
Focus mode renders an empty workspace layout: no panel columns, no tool strip, no QuickStrip. The docks are not merely collapsed, they are absent, and the viewport takes the whole screen.
Two pieces of chrome remain. A vertical slider rail at the left edge carries the current tool's size and strength knobs — the same knobs the QuickStrip shows — so the values you change most often survive the clear-out. And a single ellipsis button reveals a floating toolbar carrying undo, redo, clear layer, the axis views, the Two-finger drag picker, the grid and shot-camera toggles, and save and close.
The toolbar stays visible when you first enter focus mode and collapses again on the first touch on the canvas, so it is out of the way by the time you draw.
The shot camera in the viewport
While you are working in the free viewport, the shot camera is drawn in the scene as a frustum — the pyramid of space it can see. It moves as you change the camera's orbit, dolly or field of view, which makes the free viewport the natural place to position the camera: you watch the frustum move rather than the framing reflow.
Turning View ▸ Shot Camera on switches the view to the camera's own framing instead. Both routes drive the same object; see Cameras.