# Controllers

> Using the autorig, and a set of constraints, what you end up with are controllers to drive the animation. You animate the controllers, they drive the structures through the constraints, et voilà! Your character moves.

As the controllers are going to be the interface between the animator and the character, they have to be intuitive and easy to manipulate. That’s why Duik Bassel not only introduces new shapes to make them easier to recognize, but there is also visual feedback on the controllers to see what the controllers are doing! And of course, they can be easily customized, you can change their colors and shapes if needed.

## Panel

This is the Controllers panel in Normal mode.

The controller panel consists of the list of controllers shapes you can use in your rigs (or which are created with the tools like the Auto-rig), and some useful tools related to controllers.

There are 3 special shapes: the slider, the 2D slider and the angle controllers. They are not meant to be used like other controllers - with parenting or IKs, etc. - but with the Connector or expressions: it is easy to get and connect their value to any other property and control almost anything you want with them, in a very visual and easy way.

Hint

Controllers are standard shape layers. You can draw anything you want in the content of a controller, therefore using custom shapes is possible.

The bottom right button creates a null layer instead of a Shape layer to be used as a controller.

## Shortcuts

- `Click` on a controller in the panel to create one per selected layer in the composition. Each controller will be located at the anchor point of the corresponding layer.
- Hold `Alt` when clicking to create only one controller centered in all the selected layers in the composition.
- Hold `Ctrl` when clicking to automatically parent the layer(s) to the new controller(s)
- You can combine `Alt + Ctrl` to create only one controller and parent the layers.

Tip

Controllers created as Null layers will be 3D layers if the corresponding selected layer in the composition is a 3D Layer.

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