In this tutorial, we will continue to explore the DAZ® Carrara™ 6 Pro user interface and basic tools. Let's open a new empty scene (File - New - Empty Scene) and drop some text into the scene (Insert - Text). When the Text dialog box opens, type anything inside the text entry box and then click on the Assemble Room icon to go back to the Assemble Room. You will see your text placed within the 3D scene. Now that we have something in our scene, let's continue to explore the tools in the Toolbar at the left.

In a previous tutorial, you learned how to use the Move, Scale and Rotate tools. Remember that when the Move tool is selected, the three-pronged control shows three arrows. For the Scale tool the control shows three squares and for the Rotate tool it shows three curved lines. Let's take a look at the Universal Manipulator (UM) tool which is found under the Rotate tool in the Toolbar.

By default, the text object should already be selected. Click on the UM icon and you will see the three-pronged control change to show all three - arrows, squares and curved lines. This indicates that the Universal Manipulator can do all three tasks. It can move, scale and rotate. Just place your mouse over the arrows to use it like the Move tool, over the squares to scale and over the curved lines to rotate the text. Give it a try.

Now, let's take a look at some of the camera navigation tools. The first group of tools we will explore are the Track tools which are used to change the vantage point of the camera within the 3D scene. The first is the YZ Track tool which is used for vertical and depth tracing. Click on this icon and then click and drag within the scene (or directly over the icon itself). If you drag to the right or left, the scene space increases or decreases in depth. If you drag up or down, the entire scene space moves up or down. The next tool is the XY Track tool for horizontal and vertical tracking. Dragging right or left with this tool will move the camera's vantage point to the right or left and dragging up and down will move the scene space up and down. The third tool is the XZ tool for horizontal and depth tracing. Dragging to the right or left with this tool will move the scene space right or left. Dragging up and down will increase or decrease the depth of the scene. You can use any of these tracking tools to control only the depth of the scene space by holding down the Command/Ctrl key.

The next group of tools are the Dolly, Pan and Bank tools which are stored together in a pop-up menu. Click on the small triangle next to the Dolly tool icon to open the menu. At the top is the Dolly tool which you can use to "rotate" the camera within the scene while keeping it pointed at the same spot or object in the scene. Click and drag to the right or left with this tool and the entire scene appears to turn horizontally (even 360 degrees). By dragging up and down, you can spin the scene 360 degrees vertically. But remember that even though it appears that the objects in the scene are moving, only the camera is moving. The second tool in the menu is the Pan tool which can be used to pan the camera 360 degrees both vertically and horizontally. Panning gives the illusion that you are moving all the objects in the scene together as a group. But again, it is only the camera's vantage point that is changing. The third tool in this menu is the Bank tool which you will use to rotate the scene 360 along the Z axis. Again it is only the camera that is moving and appears to tilt the horizon.

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