In this tutorial, you will learn how to create your own canvas templates.
What are Canvas Templates?
Canvas templates, are backgrounds you create to use over and over again.
And effectively save you loads of time having to re-create certain situations.
When you create a session planner project,
You add a background to the canvas, then drop markers and draw items over the background.
Which is fine, however sometimes if you are creating a large session design you might find that you accidentally select, delete or move layers that you don't want to change.
This is where canvas templates come in very handy.
Creating a canvas template is a very simple task.
You load a background, setup the ground and export the image.
Then, when you load a template image, you will see the ground items are already on the background.
And the ground items cannot be selected, so they cannot be accidentally deleted or moved.
Creating a template
1. Click tools on the top menu and select "canvas manager"
This will open the canvas manager window
2. Navigate to the soccer or football canvas pack.
3. Expand fields and blank folders and click on the style 1 folder.
4. Now double click on [3D]BackCam[P].jpg image to open it on the canvas
- create_canvas_template_1.jpg (103.75 KiB) Viewed 6376 times
When the background has loaded, let's add some markers, and create a basic situation.
5. Locate and click the orange cone, on marker menu 1 so its highlights
6. Now hold the SHIFT key down, and click the canvas in 6 position (as below) to place the cones on the canvas.
- create_canvas_template_2.jpg (123.92 KiB) Viewed 6374 times
Once finished, take your finder off the shift key.
Now let’s place some lines onto the canvas, to complete our situation setup.
7. Select the multi-line tool, and click the white ink colour button.
8. Now move the mouse to the top left cone and click once.
This will place a line onto the canvas which follows the mouse cursor.
9. Then move the mouse to the bottom left cone and click once again.
This will add a line from cone one to cone 3
10. Now move the mouse to the bottom right cone and click to add a line from cone 3 to cone 4
11. Then move the mouse to top right cone and click again to add another line from cone 4 to cone 6.
12. Then finally move your mouse to cone one and double click the canvas to place the line down.
You should now see a white line that goes round all the cones but notice the line is below the cones. This is by design as the multi-line tool automatically is created below markers.
- create_canvas_template_3.jpg (128.66 KiB) Viewed 6374 times
17. Click the selector tool, and click any of the cones that need tweaking into position.
18. Use your arrows keys on the keyboard to position them into place, so they look like the image below
You can hold shift down on the keyboard to move the cones faster if needs be.
Now we have the ground setup, how we want it. It's time to export the image as a canvas template.
19. Click slide on the top menu, and click export full slide.
This will bring up the image exporter window, and render the ground image.
20. Now click "Save to Library"
This will bring up the "save to library" window.
Now let’s create a new folder for our custom canvases.
21. Right click the top most folder on the left pane and select "new sub folder"
22. Type in "Custom Canvases" and click ok
23. A new folder will be created called "Custom Canvases"
24. Now click the new folder, so the image is saved into this folder.
25. In the "Save image as" input box, type "Ground Template 1" and click "Save"
The canvas will now be saved to the new folder.
Now let’s modify the ground template we was working on, and create a new canvas template.
We'll place a line between the 2 middle cones
26. Click the standard line tool and move your mouse cursor to the left middle cone.
27. Click your mouse button to start creating the line and drag your mouse to the opposite middle cone.
28. Again, click your mouse to place the line onto the canvas.
The line should appear above the 2 cones line the image below
29. Click the selector tool, and click the newly create line so it is highlighted.
30. Drag the handles to tweak it into position, if needed.
31. Now click the selector tool again, and click the left middle cone so it is selected.
32. Then holding your shift key down, click the right middle cone so both cones are selected.
33. Click layer on the top menu, and select "move layer to top"
The line should now appear below the cones like the image below.
- create_canvas_template_4.jpg (129.93 KiB) Viewed 6373 times
Now let’s save this as a template.
34. Click "file" on the top menu, and select "export full slide"
The export window will open and render the image (with the new line)
35. Click "Save to library" to save the new canvas template
36. In the "Save Image As" text box, type in "Ground Template 2" and hit save.
The new canvas template will be saved to the same "custom canvases" folder we created earlier, because it was the last folder we selected.
37. Now let’s save the project, in case we want to use it again.
38. Click "file" and "save project as"
39. Navigate to the project folder where you want to save this project.
We recommend creating a new project folder called "Custom Canvas Projects", so you can easily get to your canvas template projects quicker.
40. Once you have the folder highlighted, where you want to save the project. Call it Canvas Ground Template and hit save.
Now let's test the new canvas templates we created.
41. Click "File" on the top menu and select "New Project"
42. Don't change the project name, just click "Create" to create a blank workspace
43. Click "tools" and select "Canvas Manager" to open the canvas manager.
You should see the 2 templates we created.
44. Double click "Ground Template 1", or click the image and select "Load Canvas"
Slide 01 background should now contain the template we created.
You will see that the cones and lines cannot be moved now.
From this point on you would normally add additional markers like players, equipment to the project, knowing that your ground setup cannot be accidentally touched.
Go ahead and add some markers to the canvas.
You will find, as your designs get more complex, canvas templates will become more and more your friend.
If you want to see this in action, then i recommend checking out the video.
