Peg Order on Character?

Hi again,

I have a basic problem (one day I’ll get to the advanced ones):

My character is made up of a Head, Body, Upper Arms, Forearms and Hands.

So, I’ve put them all in their relevant pegs but I can’t figure out how to have the hand, which is attached to the Arm Peg (and needs to be behind the Body Peg) go over the top of the Head Peg (which must go over the Body Peg). They mutually exclude each other!

I’ll try explain it more simply: The head is over the body, which is over the arm… but… I need the hand to appear in front of the head. But it can’t because it’s attached to the arm which is behind the body!

I can’t just switch the layers around eg. put the Arm Peg over the Head Peg, because then you see the whole arm which looks ugly and gives away the ‘cut-out animation secret’!

Is there a way to get around this problem, besides redesigning everything from scratch? (Please say yes) Maybe something to do with Masks but I’m not up to speed in that area just yet.

Some help would be great. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

ALEX

I am not sure if this solves your problem, but try this -

Either open the arm-peg hierarchy and select the hand drawing layer,
or select your hand in the exposure-sheet.

Choose the select-tool (6), hold down the option/alt-key and drag
in the camera-view (the cursor changes to a double-arrow) to move
the hand back or forward (z-direction) until you are happy with the position.

Or switch to top-view, choose the select-tool and hit the down-arrow
a few times to move the hand forward, and the up-arrow to move backwards.

You might have to adjust in the same way other elements as well.

Cheers
Nolan

That’s the best method in my opinion.

An other way to use the z position to fix layering problems is the enter a numerocal value in the properties window.

Select the head drawing element in the timeline (as an example) then in the properties windows, in the offset feild where it says 0 F, enter 0.01 B.

This is a very small value and is not visible. It’s just to say that the head element is in the back then the absolute zero coordinates (0 F).

B is for Back of course. If your mesurement properties are set to feilds, it works with: East, West, North, South, Front, Back.

Cheers,

Thanks Nolan and Mathieu,

For your excellent explanations.

Using the 3D space is such a simple solution… but, for the life of me, I just wouldn’t have thought of that. Was thinking in 2D only.

Much appreciated,

ALEX