hmm,
i don’t know what just happened or how to explain it. just that i can’t seem to move my background layers anymore.
i am working on my first animation and it has 4 background layers. i have previously placed them in various positions in the background, but then decided i needed to move one back a little farther. but now i can’t grab it or any of the other layers for that matter. i’ve tried in top view, side view and camera view and i can’t get any of them to register that they are there with my cursor. i don’t get the cross hair movement cursor. i thought it was the layer select tool or the transform tool that you used, but maybe i just confused myself. i can get the the layer highlighted if i go to the timeline, but it still won’t give me the option to move them.
hopefully someone knows what just went wrong,
-m
Make sure you are in camera view and not drawing view, and that you are using the scene ops transform tool (7) if the position of the backgrond object will change during the scene. Only use the scene ops select tool (6) if you are making a single placment of the backround object for the entire scene. Also check to see if you have assigned “background” as the type on each element’s properties. If so that element will not show in front of a “regular” type element. And also the order of all the background type elements is determined by their relationship in the timeline track list. I rarely use background type as I prefer to have all my elements as regular type but it can be useful sometimes.
As to your moving the element it sounds like you are doing the right thing but it could be you have the wrong tool active. One trick when you are having trouble selecting a specific element in a complex stack of elements is to un-check some or all of the other elements in your timeline track list to essentially “hide” those elements while you select the one you want. Then after you finish moving that element re-check the other elements. -JK
hey thanks JK,
i was doing it that way and i had previously set my backgrounds to positions of say, 5B, 10B, 15B, and 20B already. i used the pen to manually set them though, so exact location is something different, but still clear and obvious distances. the problem i was having, was my transform tool wasn’t selecting anything. i say ‘was’ because it has corrected itself. after shutting down myself and the computer for the night, i had an old memory reoccurrence from my programming days in high school. there was a term we use to called ‘memory lag’ that referred the temporary memory being store up but not forgotten after being used. after awhile it builds up to a point in which no more can be place into memory and things start getting a little wiggy. seeing how i had been on and off the program all day without shutting it down, i think i just hit that point. so i guess a good thing to remember is, “animation software isn’t as inanimate as one might think, it needs a refresher too.” shut it down every now and then to clear the memory banks.
but thanks again for the reply, you still gave useful info. i forgot about the back, norm, and foreground settings of layers and the realization of the difference between the layer select and transform tool will be useful too. though it does bring up one more question. if i am initially setting an image in frame one, would it be better to set it with the layer select tool or the transform tool, if i plan on moving it as the animation goes on? it sounds as if i am planning to move an image at all, use the transform tool. if so, not posting anything is as good as say yes.
thanks again,
-m
The answer is yes. 