Easily nudge layers in Z-Space

[JoelMayer]

I did a couple of projects in Moho recently and found one of the biggest headaches are the reference layer system to get parts of a character in front or behind another object etc.

I kinda like the way Toon Boom does things, granted, which can sometimes lead to confusion as well, but still is faster and easier to do. Basically there you can select any layer you want and with ALT+up or down nudge it by 0.01 increments in Z-Space to get it in front or behind other things, no matter what the hierarchy is.

I'd like to see an easy way like this implemented in Moho.

[hayasidist]

Moho 13.5.5
Select the layer transform tool. Hover the cursor over the z field: it will change to a double headed arrow. Slide the cursor left or right to reduce / increase the z dimension.

[Greenlaw]

Here's another method, a little kludgy but maybe useful in situations where tiny incremental nudging is needed...

1. Set your view to Right, so you're looking at the scene from 'stage right'
2. Select the layer you want to move
3. Press and hold Ctrl and tap the left arrow key. The layer will nudge toward the camera on z a tiny distance. Use the right arrow to move away from camera.
4. To nudge a greater distance, hold Shift+Ctrl.

The above of course assumes the layer is facing camera and the camera has not change orientation, so you may need to adapt.

It's very rare when I need this level of control but it's been handy once or twice for me.

[Greenlaw]

Just curious but when the z-increment is that small, wouldn't it be easier to just stack the layers in a group instead of physically moving them in z-space? You can use animated layer to change the stacking order without offsetting any layers in z-space.

There have been situations when I needed to physically shift things in small increments in z but that's been very rare. (In fact, I don't really remember that last time I did that, only that I had to.)

[SimplSam]

1. Set your view to Right, so you're looking at the scene from 'stage right'
2. Select the layer you want to move
3. Press and hold Ctrl and tap the left arrow key. The layer will nudge toward the camera on z a tiny distance. Use the right arrow to move away from camera.
4. To nudge a greater distance, hold Shift+Ctrl.

I'll be damned. Didn't know you could do that. Thinking it would prob work best with split views Front & Right. Having said that... normal Vector & Image layers don't respect Z for obfuscation - just scaling in camera.

[Greenlaw]

One more thing: I believe the distance of the nudge is based on screen pixel distance (1 pixel with Ctrl and 10 pixels with Shift+Ctrl) so the actual distance can vary depending on how far you're zoomed. In other words, the closer you are, the smaller the nudge.

It's not precise but useful when you want to nudge in tiny regular increments by zooming in or a bigger regular increments by zooming out. (This is one of the reasons I said it was kludgy.)