Ive been using shot designer for quite awhile now, and mostly love it! One problem to workflow is that adding anything to the scene seems to default to being on ALL pages. It can become very time consuming to have to double click an object, then click the pages tab, then select the page I want the object or character placed on. Is there a selection somewhere where the default can be changed to “current page only”? I find i have to go back through all the pages and select the rogue character or object, because I forgot to tediously select a page I want it on. It makes sense in my mind that whatever I add should default to the page im working on, not across everything.
Hi,
You’re not the first to ask this, and it should be a trivial feature, so you should expect this feature.
Quick powwow, which implementation of this feature is least likely to be misunderstood? I’m thinking that it’s a checkbox in the Pages menu that says “Add To Current Page”, and it’s off by default. My logic would be that you’ll eventually forget which mode you’re in and be surprised to discover that you added all your objects wrong. A checkbox directly in the menu (as opposed to in some settings menu) would continuously remind you which mode you’re in. You’d also be likely to change the mode often.
Per
Thanks for the reply!
What you suggest is excellent! I also wonder if the option couldnt be available right at the “add character” or prop section. Meaning right after you select what you want to add, you have the option of which page. I would still keep the way it works currently as well, just in case things need to be re-ordered later, but being able to choose which page at the add portion would be a big help to faster workflow. For me anyways 
Thanks!
Hi,
I assume that this is then the same global setting just accessible from more places? And then the question is whether it would even need to be in the pages menu at all, since you’re only concerned with it when you’re creating new objects.
And I assume that duplicating objects would also duplicate the page settings for those objects?
Per
Yes. I find that adding to all pages is fine for blocking in the same set, where i want to keep sets and props across all pages, but multiple locations, where everything is different from location to location, is where the page selection grinds the workflow into 1st gear.
So yes, i believe everything should default to “current page” with the ability to then go into the pages menu and re order if need be.
Hi Per, I’m here to join the choir.
But honestly, why not just make it simple.
What ever page you are actively working on, is where the object will be created.
You would never create an object blindly on an inactive page, you can’t see, - so as I see it, would never be a scenario.
Am I not right, or..?
Hi Philip,
It has to be a highly visible option, because automatically creating an object on the current page can just as easily be very wrong. Anything you do to add set or character movement is always expected to punch through to all pages.
Consider that the only purpose of pages is to break up the same diagram into multiple pages solely for clarity. Nobody can comprehend 20 camera setups drawn on top of each other, but you can easily understand blocks of camera setups together, on the same set, with the same character action.
If you’re using pages in order to create completely different scenes in the same scene, you’ll have the whole app fighting you. The entire app is deeply scene-oriented, including for scene numbers and animation. Using pages for different scenes would require a completely new and rewritten app, and it would at the same time cancel the main use case, which is to split a complex diagram up into multiple printing pages.
There are definitely use cases for putting things just on one page. The main one is that when your shots are exploded out to one shot per page, or one multicam group per page, and you’ll have a lot of lighting that’s unique to those setups. Then the best default is clearly to only have those lights on one page, and now it’s frustrating to have to limit every single light to one page. Because of that use case, there should be a prominent default that’s easy continually monitor. The moment you’re in a different mode than you think, you’re trashing the document. At least, right now, you know which mode you’re in, resulting in less trash.
But there is another considering. Most of the love is going into Shot Designer 3D, which is ready to roll out during the coming year. There, pages are less of an important concept, and possibly something you won’t completely control yourself, but instead decide on a philosophy for how things should be automatically paginated.
The reason is that it needs objects bound to shots, not to pages. Lights, for example, are no longer just icons, but real lights, or real props, that are arranged specifically for a particular shot. Those lights should be off and hidden when we’re not cut to that shot, and even invisible in the 3D scene as light fixtures. In that world, binding things to pages isn’t as effective as binding things to shots, because it’s primarily the editing and the playback position, in addition to the page, that decides whether you can see something.
The exactly methodology isn’t settled yet. This is only to mention that there are bigger priorities at play. So the best discussion is about why you need the ability for things to exist only on a certain page, and then accommodate the underlying need, rather than the specific idea for changes in the UI. There’s a good possibility that you’re trying to bind things to shots, and then that problem is already solved in the 3D version.
Per
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