In Lightwave Layers offer a useful for mechanism for creating objects which are made up of a number of distinct parts. When a Lightwave object is brought into Layout (Lightwave's rendering and animation application) the different layers of an object can be moved, scaled, rotated and otherwise manipulated independently.
Since it is not always desirable to have all the different layers move independently from each other Lightwave also allows the layers to be Parented to each other, other objects, lights, cameras, and null objects.
In Modeler different parts of a model can be placed into different layers. Which
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| Background |
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Layers can be selected in two main ways, the first is to click on the layer button in the top righthand corner of the screen. When selecting a layer in this way it can be selected as either a foreground or background layer depending on which half is clicked. Multiple layers can be in the foreground or background at any one time, to add an unselected layer to the selection hold the Shift key whilst clicking. Currently selected layers may also be deselected in this way.
The Second way to select layers is using the Layer Browser, which behaves similarly to the Point/Polygon selection statistics window, allowing layers to be placed in the Foreground and background. The Layer Browser can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+F5 or from the Windows sub-section of the Modeler drop down menu in the top left of the screen.
There are two main settings that apply to individual layers, their name, and the layer which
is their parent. These settings can be altered by using the Layer Settings requester, the
requester can be opened from under the Detail tab or by double clicking on a layer in the
Layer Browser.