Dashboard 2.1 Adds Viewport Mode and Channel Filters
August 6, 2014 Leave a comment
A new version (2.1.5) of Dashboard has just released that includes a couple of significant features we think you’ll enjoy. You can download the latest installer at https://archvision.com/dashboard/download.
Viewport
Viewport for Dashboard is a new 3D viewing mode that lets you preview your RPCs in full 3D. For 2D motion RPCs (2.5D) it will also let you scrub through the animation sequence with a simple time slider.
Besides being a great new RPC preview tool Viewport for Dashboard can drastically improve your work flow for using RPCs in Photoshop. If the name Viewport sounds familiar it might be because you’ve been using the RPC Viewport plug-in for Photoshop. That plug-in allows you to open and view RPCs directly in Photoshop, choose a viewing angle, and open the chosen view onto a new layer. Sounds ok but for anybody whose used the tool to place lots of RPCs the process can be tedious. When you use the Viewport plug-in directly in Photoshop it has to close each time in order to place the content on a new layer meaning you have to go back into the menu to initiate it each time. Viewport for Dashboard replaces that workflow.
Now when you preview an RPC directly in Dashboard using the new Viewport viewing mode you can choose your viewing angle and click the Render button. A small thumbnail will appear just below the Render button that you can then drag & drop directly into Photoshop. If you’re using Photoshop CS5 or above the new rendered view of your RPC will be placed on a new layer as a Smart Object that you can scale and place within your scene.
We think you’ll find this new work-flow to be a huge time saver when using your RPCs in Photoshop. Hopefully you’ll love us for it rather than cursing us for not having it sooner!
Filters
We’re continuing to roll in expanded features to the core of Dashboard. With this new release you’ll see the addition of Filters at the bottom of the browser.
The idea is to take meta data associated with content and use it as a Tag Cloud. That Tag Cloud can then be used to filter content being viewed in each Channel. For example, if you click on the People Channel and open the Filters panel you’ll see all of the Tags currently associated with the content in that Channel. The Tag Cloud will by default sort by Popularity of the tag but you can also choose to display them alphabetically. Clicking on one of the Tags will filter the content within that Channel to show only those RPCs that have that Tag. Pretty simple. Choose an additional tag from the cloud and you’re performing a boolean “and” search. Clicking on “female” and “sitting” will show you only the RPCs of sitting females. There’s also a new “local only” option on the Filter bar that lets you choose to see only content that resides locally (ie. already downloaded).
Give it a try! It can be a huge time saver. We believe the concept of filtering rather than explicit searches provides you with an alternative quick way to drill down to just the right content in an intuitive, visual interface.
About Randall Stevens
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