Change layer display order

[DSisterson]

I'm trying to find out how to change display orders so that, say, part of a character can appear in front of and then behind character or object, and to animate this. For instance, if dog walks behind a tree, then looks round the tree so that his body is still behind the tree but his head in front. How would you do this? All I can find is information on changing a display order of shapes within a single layer, or to move them back and forth within 3D space, neither of which is what I'm looking for. Can anyone help me with this? I can see how it could be done by having the dog and the tree as part of the same bone structure and animating the layers but not how to do it if they're separate objects. is that possible?

[slowtiger]

Ah, standard problem.

Have dog on one layer, tree on another. Duplicte dog layer, put one in front of tree, one behind. Switch visibility of body parts where necessary.

To animate layer order, layers must be in a bone or group folder, in which "animated layer order" is checked.

[DSisterson]

Thanks Slowtiger - I can work with that I suppose. I'm accustomed to CelAction which is very good for being able to change display orders on a frame by frame basis so I thought I might be missing something obvious here. It feels like a serious limitation though.
I guess another solution is to build both the tree and the dog into a single bone group, but that would preclude saving them as separate Moho objects to use in different projects or scenes...unless there's a way to merge two bone groups into a single bone group-? I haven't been able to find it if so.

[Greenlaw]

It varies by the situation but for your dog and tree example, I'd probably make a reference copy of the character so I can place the character both behind and in front of the tree, and then use a mask layer for the overlapping part of the dog.

Tip: when working with references, be sure to animate the original and not the reference to keep the animation in sync. If you happen to break this, you can resync the layers, but you might lose some animation. To make the distinction clearer to me, I like to add REF- to the Reference layer's name, and maybe I'll color the layer red. (Alternatively, use Synthsin75's Lock Layer tool to prevent accidental edting.)

In other 'overlap' situations, I may bring the mid-ground object inside the character's group and simply place it at the appropriate level within the charcter's stacking order.

I can think of other methods but, as mentioned, the method I use depends on the situation.

[DSisterson]

Thanks Greenlaw. I'm quite new to Moho and haven't used reference layers, but I'll look into that. It all feels like a lot of 'workarounds' for what must be a common issue; I expect there's some coding reason that makes it a hard nut to crack.
UPDATE: I've just had a play with that and it works very nicely, thanks again.

[Greenlaw]

It all feels like a lot of 'workarounds' for what must be a common issue; I expect there's some coding reason that makes it a hard nut to crack.

Sometimes I feel like everything I animate in any animation program requires a 'workaround'.

In Moho, it's really not bad once you get familiar with the available options. Like anything, it takes practice.

Good luck and happy animating!

[DSisterson]

Thanks G - it took me years to get round to it but I'm loving it.