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The way I am doing this is so time consuming and clunky that it just can't be the right way. Hoping someone can point me in the right direction with this. I have a BG which is bigger than the camera area as I need to use the BG for various scenes at different fields. The BG is made up of a few layers which need to be in amongst the animation. Let's say the BG is 12 field. I have a scene with many layers which goes on top of it, but that scene is 10 field. I need to place the entire scene on the BG in the correct place, or I could bring the BG into the scene. Either way.

So I copy and paste all the layers onto the BG, but it is not aligned and I need it to be exactly in the right place, so I select all the layers and use the transform tool to align them perfectly, but it does not do it to all the layers, only the one layer. So I select each layer, select all instances, hit the Return key (or Enter) and it calculates the move and moves them, but then I have to use the Recompute Instances to fix it from being all on singles. Then I have to select the next layer and do it all again and so on and so on. It takes a long time to do this, just to align the layers on the BG. I was expecting to bring the layers in by pasting and then move them all at once in one movement, hit Return and they all move all at once, and without recomputing. How can this be done?

By the way, I did inquire before on the forum about a similar question. In that case, it was explained to use the Keyframer to use the BG file as a source in the animated scene. In this case, this does not work as the BG has a few layers which need to be at various layer positions in the scene and Keyframer is only bringing in one of the layers, so that's not working for me in this instance. If the BG was one single layer, I guess it would work.

As far as I have tested the keyframer brings in a whole scene with all layers if I choose "project" in the source tab.

I will try to take a moment this afternoon to record a fast tutorial that will explain how to use the keyframer in this peculiar case.

You can use the keyframer with an open project (your multiple layer bg for exemple).

Using Keyframer seems to be working this morning, for some reason. I'm not sure what was going on before, but now it is showing the BG project as intended. The only issue is that the BG has layers which need to be at different levels in the animation so that a character walks in front of one part, but behind another. How can I bring in the layers of the BG into the scene at the points I need? Right now, that appears to be the only issue as the idea of using Keyframer and referring to the project is working for me as intended otherwise.

By the way, once it is rendered in the new scene using Keyframer, is that embedded in the scene so that the scene is now independent of the BG scene, or does the BG scene need to remain where it was in order for the animation scene to work with it in the future?

You use the same keyframer settings but you do it in two steps : you activate only the layers you need then you use the keyframer on one layer, above or behind your character. Then you activate the other layers you want and desactivate the first ones, and keyframe again on another layer with the new layer setup

It's embedded in the scene as basic instances, so I advise you to save your keyframer settings on the bin to be able to find them again if you change something on your bg

The other option is to render your bg with movement as a sequence somewhere, one for the front and one for the back. Then you import the sequence above and under your character layer without preload, it will update each time you export the sequence again. But there is a bug in tvpaint with the first frame that never updates so you have to update it manually (or begin at frame 2).

As it happens, I came to figure out pretty much what you describe in the first part of your message, Nathan. That makes sense. Good to know that the rendered image is a real image that is stored in the project. The second part you describe confuses me, but I think it seems I don't need to go that route really if this is working. Thank you!

They, that does'nt fully work anyway... Nice to know I helped you