CG TOOLS

  CGT - HARDWARE

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  CGT - GRAPHICS FILES

  CGT - File Attributes

   CGT - Layers

Layers are essentially sections within a CG file that overlay one graphic onto another much like acetate cells. Typically the background layer will be opaque and the layers above it will be transparent. Each layer can be displayed independant of the others and may be edited, copied, or deleted seperately.

Layers are an extremely valuable CG tool and can be used to set selection masks, gradients, filter effects, and animation frames. Layers can be translated by rotation or movement, scaled, and distored without effecting the rest of the drawing. They behave as if they were seperate drawings overlayed in the same image. Layers display ordinaly... They display according to where they are in the stack just as animation cells do. The top most layer is foreground and all other layers below it will be obscured or affected by the layer above it.

A layer can be duplicated before editing to allow for experimentation with editing without risking portions of the work that are already finished. Simple 3D text effects can be created by duplicating text layers and moving and shading each lower layer slightly.