Official Quick Tips

Notch comes with a lot of Viewport Guides that you can use to do things like aligning your scene elements and more.

They’re really handy, and in this short video, you’ll learn how to enable Viewport Guides and get an overview of the different options available.

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In Notch, you can render all your project layers as one unified scene.

In this linear editing mode not only can you cut, blend, and rearrange layer rendering, you can also dedicate specific layers to work as adjustment or post effect layers exclusively.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Clones can’t be used as a source for a Particle Emitter directly, but thankfully the Combine Geometry node is here to help.

Anything connected as a child or to the input of the Combine Geometry node can be used as one single geometry source that you can emit particles from - like a Cloner in this example.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

The raytraced functions on lights are automatically enabled when adding lights to a raytraced scene.

When adding lights to a non-raytraced scene and then enabling raytracing, the raytraced functions on that light will not be enabled and have to be enabled manually.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Notch has a very powerful material system that can create anything from simple to complex materials.

Additional material nodes in your Nodegraph may have a small performance cost for some real-time workflows, so in this video, we will show you how to cache the material to speed things up.

The Exposed Camera node is the best way of getting a Notch camera to work in a media server.

Before the block is exported the Exposed Camera node has to have its main parameters exposed for it to be recognised in the media server.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

In Notch, it’s possible to both render 3D objects and their edges at the same time by enabling the Lines Visible parameter.

In the objects preferences, you’ll have options to change line thickness, colour, opacity, or even hide the object altogether to render just the lines.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Having baked lighting in your Notch scene doesn’t mean that your scene has to be static.

You can easily combine baked and dynamic lights. Simply select the original baked lights and connect them to the Baked Lighting to Object-node.

Then add dynamic lighting over the top of your baked lights.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how to do it:

The Spline Deformer is a great way to deform text or geometry along a spline path.

Once you’ve made sure the text is applied along the splines correct axis, the text will follow along its path.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Applying Post-FX directly to a camera rather than the root node is a great way to help you to see your scene whilst creating it, and not have the post hide what you are working on.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

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Sometimes you might need to save a specific layer or all your layers as separate projects.

This can be done via the Save Layer and the Save Separated Layers properties. And in reverse: you can also merge projects into your current project via the Merge Projects property.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

What’s the difference between rendering a still frame and simply taking a screenshot?

In short: taking a screenshot simply saves the current playhead position as an image, as-is, while using the “Render Still” features gives you way more control. You can set the resolution, the number of refinement passes and more.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how to do it:

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A simple way to accelerate or slow down particle playback speeds using the time stretch node.

This node can easily be added to any particle system simply by placing it between the root node and the particle root node.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Viewport Picking is a great way to select 3D objects and shapes in your Notch scene.

This tip shows you how to use viewport picking and how useful it is when used in conjunction with keyboard shortcut “a” to select objects and navigate your Nodegraph.

Procedurals Falloffs are a really useful way to set the falloff for cloning effectors.

Differing from the default sphere or cube-type falloff, this function uses procedural shapes to set the falloff which opens the way to produce some really interesting content.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Procedural Falloffs to Weightmaps are a fantastic way to control the falloff of an effect on a system, and when using deformers they can be added via the Generate Weightmap node.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

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Importing animated characters to use in your Notch projects is very simple.

In this tip, we’ll show you online resources for character rigging, quick ways to set up your animations and how to utilise the bone system to parent to other objects or to emitter particles!

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

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Selection Sets are a useful way to create quick selectable groups of nodes, making it easy to quickly transform multiple objects repeatedly or to tweak the properties on multiple nodes.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done:

Copy to Clipboard is a simple function that you expect from all applications.

In Notch, not only can you copy-paste nodes between layers you can also copy-paste nodes between different project windows.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how it’s done: