Layer Ordering (Arm>Table>Body)

[gmble922]

Good Day!

since i started with animation and moho there is this one problem i'm starting to desperate about....

Let's say we have a person (bone rigged) standing behind a table but the arms are on the table operating the mouse and keyboard. How would you make it so that the arms are in the foreground but the rest of the body is in the background? Unfortunately I don't have the possibility to take the arms out of the rigged body.

I have found a variant how to solve this on the Internet. It was a Moho webinar by Kilian M. (really helpful!). There it is explained that you create a reference layer of the person and then put it in the foreground and make only the necessary (in this case the arms) visible. This works except for the fact that it breaks my animated layer ordering (but never mind that), but I cannot do this because I am using patches for the joints on my characters. The patches don't work from one character to another (reference layer), of course.

Since I think this should be some sort of "standard problem", I hope someone can help me out. Is there an easy way to do it?

Thank You guys, as always for Your Help!
Best Regards!

[Maestral]

Can't recall the mentioned webinar but I believe the idea is to make a reference copy of the entire character and bring it on top of the table.

- Ref Copy of Your character folder (here, you make only needed layers visible)
- Table (layer or folder)
- Your character folder

Brief reminder...
Make animation only on Your character layers in order to keep reference copy synced/linked/updated

Another approach is to move Table layer within Your character folder. If you enable animated layer order (Layer Settings), you can have hands behind and on top of the table (by moving either Table or
arms/hands layers up or down) while animating just the bones/layers within Your character folder.

Brief reminder...
You'll need to pick (or add) a bone for Table layer to be bind. Otherwise, it would most likely be deformed by the movement of other bones, from the rig.

[gmble922]

Can't recall the mentioned webinar but I believe the idea is to make a reference copy of the entire character and bring it on top of the table.

- Ref Copy of Your character folder (here, you make only needed layers visible)
- Table (layer or folder)
- Your character folder

Brief reminder...
Make animation only on Your character layers in order to keep reference copy synced/linked/updated

Yes this is exactly the way, but I cannot use it because then my Patches (for ellbows and shoulders) won`t work anymore.

So I am searching for new ways

[hayasidist]

you could maybe do this in Post.

use layercomps to render just the arms as well as the "main scene"

then in your video editor layer the arms over the main scene.

===


If that starts to look messy - consider using the arms as a travelling matte.

make a copy by ref of the body then layercomp render the arms with "colourise layer"

Then along with the arms matte; render whole body; table

Then in the video editor layered (Premiere) arms matte; whole body - use matte to reveal; table; whole body

HTH