Thanks Bob, and by your response, I can tell you have understood me completely. And, to add to this thought process, the ONLY way I can counter this IS to make the "empty" Track1 3-D. And again this is counter to what I've learnt and that is one CAN have a 3-D parent control without the need for the Parent itslef to have a 3-D "space".

Going to do some more testing.

Grazie

I duplicated what you described in Vegas & didn't get your results:
track 1 empty, 2d motion
track 2, child of track 1, had something on it
track 3 empty, 2d motion
track 4, child of track 3, is 3d track motion
track 5, child of track 3, is 3d track motion

tracks 4 & 5 can move in 3d space w/o no problems & track 1+2 move in 2d space no problem. I'm getting nothing visually different when I set track 1 to 3d or 2d space. 4 & 5 don't look flat at all.

Are you using the track motion or parent motion on track 1+2 & 3+4+5?

This is what I have:-

T1 Track Motion 2-D Empty; Parent Motion 3-D
„¤ T2 3-D Child; Media

T3 Track Motion 2-D Empty; Parent Motion 3-D
„¤ T4 Track Motion 3-D Child; Media
„¤ T5 Track Motion 3-D Child; Media

Grazie

hmmm.... I e-mailed you my veg file, maybe I'm slightly off from what you're doing. I'm 8c, are you 9c?

Grazie the 3d control aspect is logical but not the composite mode

If I have a 3d parent it should treat all its 3d child tracks in 3d space but as soon as you composite it flattens the tracks so the composite mode has to be in 3d as well. Now if I do the same exercise in Boris it is logical I have a parent 3d bin controlling 3d media in 3d space composite mode effects only composite mode not 3d aspect also, any effects in 3d bin will affect all child media equivalent in Vegas would be to create a nest or slug
This would treat the nested veg as an instance with 3d aspect intact

Vegas is a bit quirky in its 3d aspect but you get used to it

The quirks would seem to come from how Vegas works, how it grew and how its projects are built.
Quite early on one thing that really threw me was 2D track motion, if I deleted all the events from a track I lost all the track motion. The key to understanding why this happens seems to be that Vegas doesn't actually have any concept of tracks at all. It creates tracks for events, the track motion data is stored in the events.
Try saving a project file as text and having a look at what's in it.

Bob.

seems less like it's storing track data with events but they're linked to events. Any track motion key frames directly "under" an event get deleted with the event, but once you move a key frame out from under an event deleting the event leaves the keyframes. IMHO looks more like a grouping thing.

Another interesting thing is that if you move an event with key's under it, the keys that are with it "eat" key's you go over. They don't exist until the event+grouped keys move beyond the "eaten" keys, then they reappear. But if you let go of the mouse button they're "eaten" permanently & gone. :)

Strangely, using CTRL+A to select the events on a track, then adding a new event, then deleting the selected ones (never unselected from CTRL+A) deletes the track motion too. If you unselect & then reselect all but the new one, track motion isn't deleted. Interesting!

I have an VP8c Veg emailing back to you Happy.

Your veg was very welcomed, but as you can see from that VP8c veg, altering from 2-D to 3-D in the Track 1 Composite gets what one would "expect" to happen. Leaving Track 1 in 2-D flattens the lower tracks too.

So, it DOES appear (and is!) 3-D is part of the Composite functionality and therefore HAS to be regarded as a Track "DOWN" influence. And that I find illogical. Why? Because "Composite" is about relating the "other" functions on this Menu which IS about influencing an aggregate of lower tracks. Here 3-D space, surely, is about solely that and that only. My thoughts would be to have a "switch" that when the Parent option would be invoked for 3-D Parent Motion then it would be ring-fenced for its own children - yes? I mean that is WHY we do have a Parent Control? No? However, here we have a conglomeration/aggregation of Motion and Compositing of visual interactions (Dodge, Burn, Darken . . y'know? Layer stuff?) that is at best a "can-do" ( I can CHOOSE to select 3-D) and at worst confusing and misdirecting ( I need to select 3-D for Track one for the lower tracks NOT to be flattened).

Rory "This would treat the nested veg as an instance with 3d aspect intact" ONLY for Previewing, NOT for editing in 3-D space in the Parent Project - sure. To edit it would mean a "right-click" option.


Grazie

Ok, I know what you're getting at now. I had to use parent motion on track 1/2 not 3/4/5. If 1/2 stays how it is then everything reacts "as expected". If you move 1/2 then as you go down in layers it adds all the previous motions to it.

However, it ONLY does that if there's media on the CHILD tracks! On the parent track (ie 1) you can do whatever you want & there's no composting going through so it behaves as expected! If you remove the media from the child track or mute the child track it behaves as expected! Doesn't matter how far down the child is in nesting. PLUS the child track MUST be 3d motion. If it's not it doesn't show this issue.

So, it looks like if you have parent/child with the parent motion being 3d AND the parent track being NOT 3d AND the child being 3d you get this bug. You get the same results with all non-3d track motion setups.

I'm thinking this must be a bug. I'd say it wasn't if you took the 2d track motion of the top parent track & shrank it & you got something different, but it seems only linked to the 2d/3d setup of

When the conversation gets to this level is about when you find the limitation of the paradigm that Vegas uses.
The compositing order is the same as the motion order. That is generally OK but it's not how the real world is built. I've worked around this many times and it can be a lot of fun pondering how to deal with it. Then again using a dedicated compositing app that has both the traditional painterly way of layering the 2D planes and a different mechanism for building the mechanical connections between them does free up the mind to concentrate on the creative aspect.

I read so many talk about the wizz bang fancy plugins that run in AE/Fusion/Nuke and how sad it is that they don't work in Vegas. To me the point is being missed. The real power of those other applications come from the very basic, out of the box functionality. Once you get over the hump of learning how to use them being able to better model the real world and how light and shade move is where the creative potential lies, not the fancy plugins, as nice as they are.

Bob.