Help with layers, stacking order, and master slides

Aug 08, 2012

I was doing this tutorial: https://player.vimeo.com/video/145579482

And noticed that items placed on the base layer of the master slide appear below all content placed on the slides' base layers in the scenes (as it should).

I was a little surprised that layers placed in the master slide appear above the regular slides' content. At first I was wondering how SL "knew" to put some content below and some above, but after noticing the layers I figured it out.

But in the arms race here, I was wondering what happens if I then put additional layers on the slides. And those things appear above the master slides' layers. So here are my questions:

Is there a way to make something on a master slide which will be on top of all possible layers that come after it?

The default property for a layer seems to be that it should turn off all other layers. Is there a way to have that not be the default?

Or is there a way to make a layer that says, "Never turn me off."

7 Replies
Phil Mayor

A layer will always load above another layer, whether it is a master slide layer or a slide layer.  You can load a layer above another layer easily by adding a timeline start trigger to load a layer so it will always look like that layer is on the top.

At the moment you cannot change the default behavior of layers, nice feauture request though.  also you cannot set a layer to not turned off (again a nice idea)

R Rothrock

So the stacking is (from bottom to top):

Content slide additional layers

Layout additional layers

Master slide additional layers

Content slide base layer

Layout base layer

Master slide base layer

So if there is something that I want to be sure is above everything else on every slide I need to put it on a layer on every content slide.

It doesn't have anything to do with the order they are created, right?

R Rothrock

I agree that there are many times when this behavior is useful and expected.

In this case I came about it from that tutorial at the top. I was trying to rework it a little so that the hotspot at the bottom of the screen would always have a little bit of a visible hit area—without anything ever going over the top of that visible hit area.

There still may be some way to do that, but I'm not seeing it..

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