Blue Pencil Layer manager

To open the Blue Pencil Layer manager

• While using the Blue Pencil, double-click the Blue Pencil icon in the Last Used Tool area of the Tool Box, and then scroll down to the Layers section of the Blue Pencil tool settings.

The Blue Pencil Layer manager is where you create, delete, hide, rearrange, and move layers between cameras.

Whenever you draw in the Viewport with Blue Pencil, a frame is created on the current camera view (see Camera Setup for an explanation of how Maya cameras work). But with Blue Pencil you can have multiple layers per camera, which lets you separate different images and stack them.

Note: This topic is about the settings contained in the Blue Pencil Layer Manager. For information on using the Blue Pencil Layer Manager, see Manage Blue Pencil Layers.

Layers

The highlighted layer is the "active" layer, where you can draw. The highlighted layer's Frames display on the Time Slider.

Layers are organized by which camera they are assigned to. The order the layers appear sets what order they are drawn in the Viewport, for example a layer at the top of the Layer manager is the top layer in the Viewport.

Use the Move up/down icons at the top of the Layer manager to reorder the layers.

Icon	Function
Refresh	Clears and rebuilds the camera list and layers.
Move up	Moves up the selected layer in the Blue Pencil Layer manager. See Manage Blue Pencil layers.
Move Down	Moves the selected layers down in the Blue Pencil Layer manager. See Manage Blue Pencil layers.
New Layer	Creates a layer.
Delete	Removes the layer from the table.
Lock Layer	Click to prevent editing on the layer.
Unlock Layer	Click to allow editing on a layer.
Static	Click to set the selected layer as Static. Static layers are unchanged throughout the animation, and are good to use as background panels that persist throughout regardless of the current time. The static state uses a single frame for all strokes If a layer is not set to Static, it is considered Animated. The Animated state is useful for animation-related tasks like blocking and review.
Visible	Click to show or hide drawings in the selected layer in the Viewport.

Layer properties

Right-click a layer in the Layer manager to open the Layer Properties dialog which lets you modify the settings for the selected layer.

If you right-click a layer, you can do the following:

• Rename it
• Reassign it to a new camera
• Lock it from editing
• Set its Visibility
• Change its state from Animated to Static

If you right-click the header for a specific Camera, for example, Front or Persp, you can move all the layers assigned to that camera to another camera.

Deleting Layers

The Layers label

You can also click the Layers label at the top of the table and select from the following options:

Option	Behavior
Delete Active Layer	Removes the highlighted layer and its contents from the Layer manager
Delete Active Camera Layer	Removes all layers assigned to a camera, for example, 'Persp'.
Delete All	Removes all content from the Layer manager.