Using Color and Working with Groups

Using Color

Now you’ll introduce a new bird species into the aviary, the Thrush. When you have Objects of differing types, it can be helpful to give them different colors to quickly identify them in the Canvas. Once you import the Thrushes, you’ll use color to distinguish them from the Sparrows.

Use what you’ve learned in the previous exercise to import the Thrush sounds and have them loop.

NOTE: If you have not downloaded the associated Lesson 4 asset files, please visit the Resources page in Lesson 1.

1. Import all of the Thrush sounds found in the Lesson 4 tutorial folder as Objects into the Aviary Scene and loop them.
   
   
   
   You see the four Thrush Objects appear in the Object List and again see them stacked in the center of the Scene at ground level.
   
   
2. As you did with the Sparrows, reposition the four Thrushes into a box shape, keeping them all on the same Z plane for a height of 0 meters.
   
   
   
   To distinguish the Thrushes from the Sparrows, give their Objects a different color.
   
   
3. With the Thrush Objects selected, click the color icon to the left of any of the selected Objects.
   
   
   
   A color picker window appears. The color picker offers different methods of selecting a color by clicking through the tabs of the window.
   
   
4. Click the third icon at the top of the Color Picker, choose red.
   
   
   
   Now you can quickly identify the red Thrushes.
   Now change the color of the Sparrows to Green.
   
   
5. Select the Sparrows and change their color to Green.
   
   
   
   Now you can clearly see where the two different types of birds are located in the Scene. 

Working with Groups

As they say, birds of a feather flock together so instead of individually moving birds to different positions, you may want to move the flock as a whole. To accomplish this, you’ll use Spatial’s powerful grouping feature which will help you easily manage and modify the positioning of the Thrushes.

1. In the Object List, select all of the Thrushes.
   
   
   
   
2. Right-click the selected Objects and choose Group Selected Objects.
   
   
   
   In the Object List, all of the Thrush Objects are placed within a group Object, which is prompting for a name.
   
   
3. Name the group Thrushes.
   
   
   
   In the Object List, you see the four Thrush Objects disappear and they are replaced with a single Thrush group Object. This new Object is the parent Object that contains its individual members referred to as child Objects within.
   
   
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the Thrush's group.
   
   
   
   You can see the individual Thrush Objects inside the Thrushes group.
   
   In the Canvas, you can see a new Object with the default cyan color has appeared in the center of the Objects that you just grouped. This new Object represents the position of the group as a whole, the individual member Objects are positioned relative to this parent group Object. All of the members are connected to this group Object, and moving the group’s parent Object will move all of its members as well.
   
   
5. Move the Thrushes Object slightly to the right.
   
   
   You see that all of the members of the group follow.
   You can still move the individuals relative to the group’s parent Object.
   
   
6. Adjust the right front Thrush so that it’s just a bit closer to the group’s parent.
   
   
   
   Now that you have the Thrushes positioned, change the color of the Thrushes group Object to red so that it matches the color of its members.
   
   TIP: Groups can be audibly soloed so it’s easy to hear the collection of sounds within a group.

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