Pan Following

What is a Pan Setting Really Doing?

It’s important that you understand that when you position a layer using the pan settings, you are actually positioning the layer center to the specified location. So, for instance, a pan-x of -50 and a pan-y of 0 will set the layer such that its horizontal center is now located at the horizontal screen location of -50 (that is, the far left edge of the screen). Vertically, the image layer’s center is located in the vertical center of the screen (50% of the image is above the horizontal and 50% is below it. Likewise, 50% of the image is located off screen to the left and the vertical right half is all you see in the screen.

Pan Following

Modifiers make it easy to have one layer follow the position of another layer. Layers linked by pan following modifiers will change position according to the position of the layer being followed. Assume we have Layer 1 and Layer 2. We want layer 2 to follow layer 1 exactly (and layer 2 is the 2nd layer in the Layers list). This is how to do that. Select Layer 2. Ensure that its pan values are both 0 (that is, Pan-X = 0, Pan-Y = 0).

1. Right click over the first pan box (this is pan-x). When the popup menu appears, select Add Modifier. The Modifier window appears. The title under the Modifier Target is Pan X.
2. The Apply To should read “All Keyframes.”
3. Nothing is in the Actions section.
4. Under the Selected Action Settings, The Type of Action will be “[+] Add to Modifier”.
5. Click on the radial button Variable Amount Using. Next to it is a drop down list which should have the option Pan-X already selected. As of Producer version 5 this is the default selection since it is the first item in the drop down list.
6. Finally, click on the down arrow for the From and select Layer 1

Layer 2 is now following layer 1’s pan-x. Now, do the same thing for pan-y. Right click over layer 2’s 2nd pan box (this is pan-y). Do everything the same as just covered except that you should change the Variable Amount Using to Pan-Y (step 5 above).

Now, layer 2 is following layer 1 wherever it goes. What has just happened is that the modifier has just aligned the layer center of layer 2 to the layer center of layer 1.

Offsetting a Pan Follower

Sometimes you do not want the follower layer to exactly follow the layer being followed. For instance, if you are using a small layer to mask the upper left corner of an image layer and both are linked by pan following modifiers, you will want to offset the image layer from the mask layer.

Assume that layer 1 is 1/4 of the size of the screen. It is positioned at -25,-25 (the upper left corner of the screen). Layer 2 is a full screen image. Layer 1 is a mask that is to allow only the display of the upper left corner of the image layer below it. Layer 2 is using pan following modifiers in pan-x and pan-y (as describe earlier). At present then, the center of layer 2 is aligned with the center of layer 1 … because that’s what modifiers do. So, we need to offset layer 2 from layer 1 to allow it to display beneath the mask correctly. We do that by entering a value into layer 2’s pan boxes. In this case, since layer 1 is located at -25,-25, we want to enter 25,25 into layer 2’s pan boxes. Since -25 + 25 is 0, we have now offset layer 2’s center back to the screen center. So, when the slide is played or scrubbed, only layer 2’s upper left corner is displayed (because that’s where the mask is).

That’s the gist of it!

For more information see also: Mask Image Positioning (Pan Follow)

© Copyright 20130911-1335 Dale Fenimore, All Rights Reserved