Unsure how to approach a prop that needs to be behind and in front of a puppet at the same time.

Question

I'm working on a college project that involves streamlining existing characters for quick animation purposes, such as music visualisers.

The difficulty I'm having is that I need my character's legs obscured by the keyboard, but the hands need to be above the keyboard in order to play the keyboard prop itself.

The only idea I had was to chop the keyboard in half, but when the character is playing lower chords this still wouldn't be a viable solution.

Another idea I had was to have the arms on their own layer, but this always broke the puppet's rigging as it was no longer attached to the original body layers.

Does anyone have a workaround I could try that wouldn't involve a complete re-rig? Rigging this correctly took a week of pain haha.

Thank you so much for any ideas you may have!

alank99101739 · Accepted Answer

My best advice is to think of the keyboard like the characters trousers/clothes. Include it in the Body layer of the character. You can make it independent so it does not warp as the body moves. You can set the origin near the character's feet (so it does not move with the body leaning backwards and forwards).

You should be able to have the arms independent, but it does not really solve the problem. The problem is the top-to-bottom order of layers in the character hierarchy. You need the keyboard lower than the arms, but higher than the body, so the arms are in front of the keyboard and the keyboard is in front of the body.

As soon as you start thinking of the keyboard is clothes, I think it starts to make more sense how to get the layers correct.

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