Visibility
The Visibility Tools in Mental Canvas allow you to customize which canvases are visible at each bookmark in your flythrough. Visibility works both in the video playthrough and in the web player.
Visibility lets you:
- Show or hide elements between bookmarks to introduce new characters or change environments.
- Create changing captions or highlights at specific points in your flythrough.
- Make canvases appear or disappear upon user interaction in the web player by combining visibility with bookmark links.
Explore an interactive example of Bookmark Visibility
This scene by Rafa Alvarez depicts a school play unfolding in three distinct acts. Use the Next View button or explore the scene freely to see how the characters and audience change over time.
Each act has its own set of canvases that appear or disappear at specific bookmarks, creating seamless transitions between scenes.
Understanding the Visibility Interface
When you open the Visibility Tab in the Expanded View of the Bookmarks List, you’ll be able to manage canvas visibility across your bookmarks.
Enable Custom Visibility
Turn this toggle on to apply custom visibility settings. When enabled, the system will use your defined visibility settings for each bookmark as the sequence plays.
Canvas Visibility Indicator
Displays the number of hidden canvases at a specific bookmark. For example, if “25” is shown, 25 canvases are hidden at that bookmark. If “0” is displayed, all canvases are visible.
Set Visibilities
Updates the hidden canvases at the selected bookmark to match your current Canvas List settings. You don’t need to be at the bookmark’s camera position to set its visibilities — this makes it easy to apply the same visibility settings to multiple bookmarks.
Visibility Workflow
In this example, we’ll be hiding 4 canvases from the first bookmark to set up a surprise reveal in the second one (where they’ll be visible and show a message).
Turn on Custom Visibility
Switch on the custom visibility toggle in the Visibility Tab to begin customizing which canvases are visible at each bookmark.
Hide Your Canvases
Open the Canvas Panel in its expanded view and toggle the visibility of the canvases you want to hide by tapping the eye icons next to their name.
Update the Visibility
Tap the Set Visibilities button under the desired bookmark thumbnail. In this example we’ve pressed the Set Visibilities button under bookmarks 1 and 3, so their Canvas Visibility Indicator shows that there’s 4 hidden canvases at each. We’ve left all canvases visible on the second bookmark, so the number there is 0.
Play the Animation
If we hit play or tap through the bookmarks, we’ll see the greeting appear at the second bookmark.
If Custom Visibility is on and you add a new bookmark, the visibility settings for the new bookmark will automatically match the current Canvas List settings. This makes it easy to maintain consistency across your flythrough.
Visibility and Layers
Custom Visibility settings apply only to canvases, not layers. If you need layer-specific visibility changes, you can move the layer to a new canvas.