Moho Animation Forum

everything will take care of itself -- your character(s) can be off screen and then walk / fly / be thrown / ... on - even while you're moving the camera.

hayasidist wrote:everything will take care of itself -- your character(s) can be off screen and then walk / fly / be thrown / ... on - even while you're moving the camera.

Great, thank you! So basically, as long as everything has the same Z position, I don't have to worry about anything messing up during the animation, such as when I zoom in or move the camera around.

Exactly. In fact I recommend to set every items Z value to 0 (zero), because anything else will cause havoc when camera begins to move.

Tip: create a top level group layer (or bone layer) and put everything inside. This way, you can easily scale your whole scene at once and still have all options for camera moves later.

yes. but if you choose to make a z difference between character and background you'll get a parallax effect if you move the camera. this is often desirable. but you'll need to break the bg into layers at different z - one for where you need character to be grounded; and the rest where you need them. This is the best explanation I can suggest: (yep - it's 60 years old - but it's still **totally** relevant to understanding z!!)

Each of the planes in the multiplane camera has a different z separation between it and camera. It's not important whether the camera has moved or the layer has moved - what we've said up til now is "move the camera to (say) z=+4". You could equally move the layer back to (say) z=-3 (as well as the character(s) - which is why a camera move is often easier in the simple case).

but if you keep the character(s) plus their "grounding" bg at z=0; you can keep the camera at its default BUT now you use the layer translate tool to put the "real background" back to (say) z = -3 .

Now you can split the bg into layers as in the video - one may be at z = -2; another might be at z = +0.5. Don't forget to stack them in the right order!!!!

slowtiger wrote:Exactly. In fact I recommend to set every items Z value to 0 (zero), because anything else will cause havoc when camera begins to move.

Tip: create a top level group layer (or bone layer) and put everything inside. This way, you can easily scale your whole scene at once and still have all options for camera moves later.

But I'm thinking if I were to have every item's Z value at, say, 3, it wouldn't affect the 'depth' of the animation, but just move everything along as if there was no depth at all. That way, I can see the entire background and characters.

But I understand what you mean about placing everything within a group layer. If I decide to shrink everything, that would work great! I've done that sort of thing in the past, but with a bone layer, since Debut doesn't have come with group layers.

Thanks again!

hayasidist wrote:yes. but if you choose to make a z difference between character and background you'll get a parallax effect if you move the camera. this is often desirable. but you'll need to break the bg into layers at different z - one for where you need character to be grounded; and the rest where you need them. This is the best explanation I can suggest: (yep - it's 60 years old - but it's still **totally** relevant to understanding z!!)

Each of the planes in the multiplane camera has a different z separation between it and camera. It's not important whether the camera has moved or the layer has moved - what we've said up til now is "move the camera to (say) z=+4". You could equally move the layer back to (say) z=-3 (as well as the character(s) - which is why a camera move is often easier in the simple case).

but if you keep the character(s) plus their "grounding" bg at z=0; you can keep the camera at its default BUT now you use the layer translate tool to put the "real background" back to (say) z = -3 .

Now you can split the bg into layers as in the video - one may be at z = -2; another might be at z = +0.5. Don't forget to stack them in the right order!!!!

I'm so glad I watched the video. I know the basics of depth in animation, but I honestly didn't expect to be so entertained by the video. I loved seeing Disney discuss it and presenting the machine, and showing how depth was created. I thank you for that!

As for adding depth in my animation, I don't think I'm looking to do that at all. For the sort of video I'm working on, I'd like to work with everything being 'flat', as in not having any depth at all. So I suppose if I kept every item (background, character, etc.) at a Z value of, say, 3, it wouldn't affect each item's speed differently when the camera moves (because of depth), but instead would move simultaneously. Because there really isn't any depth if every item has the same Z value. Am I correct? Thanks.

Matoran wrote:So I suppose if I kept every item (background, character, etc.) at a Z value of, say, 3, it wouldn't affect each item's speed differently when the camera moves (because of depth), but instead would move simultaneously. Because there really isn't any depth if every item has the same Z value. Am I correct? Thanks.

you'll probably be better off moving the camera to +5 (or whatever) rather than shifting all the layers back to -3 <<note MINUS 3<< (a layer at z = +3 will be behind the default camera).

default set up in ASD8:

z = 1.73: Camera is looking towards to zero
z = 0: layers.

Increasing the separation between camera and layer can be done by making the camera z larger and / or making the layer z smaller. so, e.g., a camera at z = 3.73 and a layer at 2 will mean the layer looks just the same as in the default set-up; but a camera at z = 3.73 and a layer at z = -2 will put a much bigger distance between camera and layer.

and - yes - two layers at the same z won't show any relative (parallax) movement if you move the camera.

hayasidist wrote:

Matoran wrote:So I suppose if I kept every item (background, character, etc.) at a Z value of, say, 3, it wouldn't affect each item's speed differently when the camera moves (because of depth), but instead would move simultaneously. Because there really isn't any depth if every item has the same Z value. Am I correct? Thanks.

you'll probably be better off moving the camera to +5 (or whatever) rather than shifting all the layers back to -3 <<note MINUS 3<< (a layer at z = +3 will be behind the default camera).

default set up in ASD8:

z = 1.73: Camera is looking towards to zero
z = 0: layers.

Increasing the separation between camera and layer can be done by making the camera z larger and / or making the layer z smaller. so, e.g., a camera at z = 3.73 and a layer at 2 will mean the layer looks just the same as in the default set-up; but a camera at z = 3.73 and a layer at z = -2 will put a much bigger distance between camera and layer.

and - yes - two layers at the same z won't show any relative (parallax) movement if you move the camera.

Thanks for the explanation. I believe I get how it works now. It hadn't even occurred to me to change the layers' Z; I had just changed the camera's Z to 3, which worked out, since apparently it's the better choice. When I said 'if I kept every item at a Z value', I meant the camera, not the items. Sorry about that.

And great, thanks. So I guess that would mean there shouldn't be anything weird going on during the animating process, or in the final animation? The only thing I've noticed is that it takes longer to shift the camera from one area of the screen to another. I'm guessing because the camera is handling the items as if they were farther away.