Props that have to be in front and behind at the same time.

[ok_pepo]

Hi! How are you? Thanks for reading me!

I'm having a trouble. I have a character in front view with a stethoscope, and the stethoscope has to be in front of the character and behind her at the same time. One part behind the neck, and other in front the body (but changing the position throught animation).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I8akUE ... share_link

The neck and the body are separated, but isn't work to put the stethoscope behind the neck because the prop probably change the position a lot of times... And is possible that in one of them the stethoscope also has to be behind some part of the body too (like the shoulders or something), or in front of a part of the neck.

Do you know if there are an easy way for do this? The thing I'm thinking to do is mask the character, making a patch, or something, and then animate it frame by frame. I don't have problem on do that... But maybe there are a better way.

Thank you very much!!

[Greenlaw]

One easy way is to place the prop in a group and duplicate the group, then place one group in front and one behind the body. Next create a mask to hide part of the prop in the front group that's supposed to be behind the body. The duplicate group that's behind the body will fill in what's 'missing' but behind the character. (Note: depending on you design, you can probably keep the mask loosely drawn so it's easier to animate with.)

If you want to go a step further, create a reference of the mask layer for the 'behind' group and change the settings to invert the masking region. (This is probably not necessary unless you're can see a 'doubling up' effect along the edges where the images overlap.) If you decide to use two masks, be sure to disable the AA setting for both mask layers. If AA is enabled, you will see a gap at the seam when you render.

Hope this helps.

[ok_pepo]

Thank you very much for the answer! I'm sorry I couldn't come before, but I've had a busy week.

Great! I will try that with the double mask. But, how do yo do for move two layers (the two stethoscopes duplicated) in the same way and at the same time?

Thank you for the help!!

[Greenlaw]

If you use a Reference layer/group instead of a Duplicate, any changes you make to the original layer will be automatically applied to the Reference.

Hope this helps.

[ok_pepo]

If you use a Reference layer/group instead of a Duplicate, any changes you make to the original layer will be automatically applied to the Reference.

Hope this helps.

Great!! I will work on that way. Thank you very much for all your help!

[Greenlaw]

Sure! BTW, I should clarify what I meant by that: Any keyframed changes you make to the original layer will be automatically applied to the Reference. This includes changing the shape of the curves by moving points, but if you add or delete points in the layer, then the reference layer will need to be updated using the right-click 'Update Layer Reference...' command and enabling the Replace Mismatched Vectors option.

Hope this helps.