Production Switchers

When I use a layer object to do per object masking it seems to break Z space. Anything in the layer object renders at the very back, but just in front of the background object. I thought I found a work around by using a Quad as a null and parenting the layer object as a child, then moving the Quad forward in Z space. However when I reopened the scene everything in the layer object was behind everything else. Tried playing around with rendering modes but could not get anything to work. What do I need to do to make this work?

Richie,

Layer objects tend to work best in a manual depth sorting mode. This is what I would suggest. Take the remaining objects and put them in their own layer object. I will often make a layer object called "mask" and another called "main" that contains everything I do not want affected by the mask.

Now take the two layer objects and move them above and below one another in the object manager and you will see the render priority change. This should fix the problem.

Andrew

#Carbonite

Hmm ok that works. Rather counter intuitive though. Thanks for your help.

#Carbonite

Any tutorial on this subject would be greatly appreciated. I know there are 3 ways of dealing with transparency but I don't understand any of them. My teacher thought you need images with alpha but that is not true. Black and white PNG will do.

#Carbonite