Around 1:05 in part 2 of Tip #33, Lilly starts to rearrange the snowman parts in space (i.e. front to back) in a way that is different from the parent-child hierarchy of the layers. She does this using Drawing > Arrange > Bring forward or equivalent keyboard shortcut. But in Harmony 10.0.1, the submenu with Bring forward, etc. is grayed out and the keyboard shortcut has no effect. This is with Animate off and Transform tool selected with the focus on the camera view with snowman middle selected, just as in the tutorial video.
I was able to change front-to-back ordering from network view by re-ordering the connections to the Compose module, where left-to-right along the top of the module corresponds to front-to-back in the scene.
So I wonder, is the disabling of the Bring forward etc. commands due to something in my setup? Is there some reason it is supposed to happen? Bug or feature?
Thank you.
P.S.: Love the Tip of the Week series.
I didn’t check the video but it sounds like you are trying to use a drawing feature with a scene planning tool. Let me explain. The Transform tool works on layers. I does not modify the lines inside a drawing. If you want to modify the lines within a drawing you have to use the Select tool. The Select tool puts you automatically in a “special” Camera view state that works on the lines (just like the Brush, Eraser, Contour Editor, etc). You could also do it if you went and did it in the Drawing view instead of the Camera view.
Thank you. Will pay more attention to drawing vs. scene planning distinction in future.
I tried different combinations of Camera vs. Drawing, Animate on/off, etc. but was not able to get options on the Bring Forward etc. menu enabled. The problem has not reappeared in other projects so I wonder if the tool or my drawing was in a bad state.
My last version of the greeting card exercise is here.
When you want to rearrange the order of layers as a whole, you can rearrange them in the Network View or in the Timeline.
In the case of what I was doing with the snowman, the snowman was all on ONE drawing layer. So I wasn’t rearranging the order of layers, rather, I was rearranging the order of strokes on a layer.
To try this out, take any old drawing layer, and draw a circle and fill it in with a colour. Then, draw another circle (on the same layer), off to the side, and fill it in with a second colour. Now if you select one circle with your select tool, and drag it on top of the other circle, the last circle that you drew appears on top.
If you still have your circle selected, you can go to the Arrange menu and Send to Back, or Bring to Front. This can change the order or the strokes on the same drawing layer.
Hope that helps!
~Lilly