I’m wondering if someone has an elegant solution to the problem I’m facing. I’m trying to rig a cut out grease pencil character and it mostly works fine while using 3D layering for the shapes. However occasionally if the rig moves in just the right way I end up with a kind of tearing along the line art where the elements are crossing in z space.
Is there a way of utilising both the 2D layering and 3D layering together? Ideally something alongs the lines of if the shape is on the same z space then use 2D layering otherwise use 3D.
Alternatively, is there a way to mask elements across different grease pencil objects? The reason I’m currently needing to keep it as a single object is to have a kind of auto patch for different body parts. So separating into different objects removes this possibility.
Could you share the file? Cutout and Grease Pencil are completely different. If indeed it is a Grease Pencil Character use 2d and arrange your layers accordingly. Of course you can manually keyframe stroke depth as 2d or 3d but you cannot use driver. Masks work only between layers of the same GP object. Say you want a Y layer of other object as mask for X layer. You can copy Y to your primary object (copy to selected), move it behind X and mask X and Y with each other. Now the copied Y acts only as mask (you see only the part of the front layer that is inside the borders of the back layer).
It’s completely grease pencil. But my layers are arranged as a cutout character. Arm separate from body for example.
If I use 2D for stroke depth I can’t animate the stroke order? For example there’s no way (as far as I can see) to animate the arm moving from in front of the body to behind the body within the same grease pencil object when using 2D stroke depth layering. Or am I wrong about that?
Yes and no. If you use arm as inverted mask for the head you will see the arm in front though as a layer it is behind. You can keyframe the eye icon to toggle mask visibility when you need the head to be again in front. Keyframing the stroke order in edit mode can be done but it is a nightmare and complicates any interpolation you want to apply to the layer. More keyframes- more problems.( But what you mean is Layer and not stroke order anyway, no, Layer order cannot be keyframed).