Wrap a bird's foot around a branch

[KSimon]

Newbie here using ASD11- and I've spent hours ((weeks, actually) on tutorials and reading through this board to get my feet on the ground. Thank you for being such a helpful group!!

I'm trying to create a project for work that illustrates a particular bird's behavior, and I'm trying to get it to perch on a branch. The branch is a vector layer and the feet are obviously on a different set of layers. There are several toes, and I thought the solution would be masking, but I don't know how to mask just part of the toes behind the branch.

Here's the snippet that shows that section:


I hope this is one of those stupidly easy but overlooked solutions - I know others have dealt with but I can't seem to find any posts.

Thank you!

[willf]

I don't know how about masking, but you could do it by putting the feet on switch layers.

Just add them on top of the foot layers already there, and have the feet become invisible (zero percent opacity) at the right time - the switch layers stay invisible as long as you include one blank switch layer, labeled something like "off" - then you jump to the others as needed. You wouldn't need very many switch layers either, as the action concerned takes less than half a second.

Or you could divide the separate claws into "over branch: and "under branch" sections, then use layer sorting to get the claws behind the branch at the appropriate frames.

[KSimon]

Thank you very much! I think I understand what you mean -- will try it now!

[sbtamu]

You could use animated shape order.

[willf]

You could use animated shape order.

Right. I forgot that ASP11 allows you to animate shape order within a layer.