Hi! I'm wondering if there is an easy way to mask a part of the character's body during a phase of the animation when it needs to be blocked by a prop. Example: I have a dog character that I want to look like it steps through a picture frame. Meaning it starts the movement from behind the frame, where its feet and/or bottom part of the body are blocked by the frame, then steps over the bottom part of the frame and moves to the front, one paw at a time, until it becomes fully visible (think front facing for simplicity sake). Is it something that can be done in CTA3?

Never mind. It doesn't look like there is a direct way to do it in CTA3. However it seems like sometimes it is possible to find a workaround to create the illusion of the character stepping over something - in certain situations and with enough ingenuity. Here are my findings.

I ended up making the dog jump and when all four legs were up in the air (and no longer blocked by the frame) I used transform in 3D view to move the character to the front so it landed in front of the frame. It worked quite nicely and without much tinkering (my dog is a G3 character based off the side facing template; actually more of a 45 degree facing). Now making the dog step over the frame one leg at a time would have required a lot more effort. This is because in order to do that you would have to be able to insert a prop (or another character`s) layer between the character`s body part layers which I don`t think the software has the capability to do. You would have to fake it by duplicating the character and masking out certain body parts in each of the copies depending on the phase of the motion until the character clears the obstacle completely. Which is a bit of effort although it seems doable, in some cases anyway.

This method is demonstrated in a nice video on how to make two characters hug in CTA3. The narrator does a nice job explaining the layering technique while constructing the poses. Even so it will likely be only good for a static pose (i.e. the scene starts with characters already in the hugging position). Making them move into the hug or break out of the hug would be a lot more difficult to do if at all possible.

 

this is a great idea! This way you can use the prop (window) as one of the layers and adjust its relative position depending on the phase of the movement, which is what I was looking for. Having said that, I am not sure if this will work just as nicely with the dog jumping through the window, instead of stepping over as the linking will force the window prop to move along with the body (unless you adjust the position of the prop frame by frame) but this is an excellent method to keep in mind.
Thanks!