pan/tilt makes layers behave strangely

[Nicohk92]

Now this one is for these seasoned animators who've been so helpful in the past. I hope you'll be able to shed some light on this one, especially if you have experience with the z axis.

I could work around this strange behavior with quick fix in the past but it's happening again and I 'll have to dispatch lots of elements in several scene tonight and tomorrow so i'd really like to find the silver bullet.


I have a few planes facing the camera, dispatched on the z axis as follow:



front elements are a river scenery

Back elements are a waterfall and stuff

and the few layers behind the coco trees are all mountains and hills

The move is a dolly out from my characters which are positioned in the shot at the level of the back elements but in a separate group above everything in my layer window. The end position is a wide shot of the whole scene.

So it's supposed to be a cool track-out where I of course want to play with perspective.

Everything's fine as long as I don't tilt and pan. But I really want to start from a panned position cause my characters are on the side of the frame and it allows to reveal some cool things on the way to the wide shot.

Here's the pb: everytime I 've been panning in camera moves in previous scenes and this one, some plates at times randomly pop up in front of the one closer to me for no reason.

- Each layer are neatly placed in z (0, -1, -1.5, 2, 3 etc...)
- The only depth sort I activated is the main plane (sort by depth).
- All items in subgroups have their z at zero
- I didn't activate "rotate to face camera" whatsoever

So I can't figure out what's the issue.

It only happens with pan/tilt, which in all logic should not occur cause the layers are supposed to stay still neatly stacked in order on z, no matter what the camera does.

It's even more obvious when orbiting with workspace tools. I invite you to do the test yourself. As you change view point, back layers decide randomly to jump in front of others and then jump back for no apparent reason.


Can anyone help me here?

[slowtiger]

Check that "Main plane" layer for any layer order keyframes and erase them.

[synthsin75]

Depth sort works by layer origins, so if a layers origin is closer to the camera (which typically occurs with pan/tilt and any differing z-depth) it will be sorted to the top. But it sounds like you don't need any sorting at all, so maybe disabling it will help.

[Nicohk92]

No layer order to keyframes to report

But it sounds like you don't need any sorting at all, so maybe disabling it will help.

Wait you mean that even without "sort by depth" I can play with the z axis and mock-up perspective change?

I don't understand the difference. And there's also "true distance" which the manual states does take the origin as referent.

I've fixed that particular scene by just pushing the culprit layer a bit more to the back. But yes for the next one I'll be more methodical with origin point. Tho here they seem pretty centered. Can origin points found themselves in a different position on z than the layer itself?


Thanks for the leads.

[synthsin75]

You only need to sort by depth if you need the layers to change where in the depth they appear when doing things like camera moves and group layer rotations. It doesn't sound like you need this, but without seeing the file, I may be wrong in that assumption. Without depth sorting, you can still arrange layers in z-depth for things like parallax effect.

As long as your perspective changes do not require the apparent layer order to change, layer order in the layers window is all you need.

[Nicohk92]

I see... How dumb of me. Yes I just need them to stay in place. That'll make things easier.

Thanks!!

[Nicohk92]

Much easier indeed. Damn! I can't believe I missed that. you rock

[synthsin75]

No problem. With all the available options in AS, it can be easy to try to use more than you need.

[Nicohk92]

True, sometimes you don't expect it to be so easy