Help with Masking/panning (Sony Vegas Pro 10)

[SonyVegas]

Hi, First post here. I'm currently working on a video project. I need help with something and I hope someone here can help me out. The video I'm trying to do is a picture that I want to be moving within a video. Example: Image of a rabbit, video of the forest. I want to have the image of the rabbit jumping around the (moving) video of the forest BEHIND some of the trees and bushes. Like, I still photo moving behind certain objects that are on the video film. I already know that I have to mask the image which I did, but i'm not sure how to put the image behind some of the trees and bushes and how to make the image move from left to right whilst the video is still continuing and moving a little bit itself. If someone can help me out I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Cornucopia]

To make the rabbit "go in-front" and "behind" the trees, you must make multiple planes.

(Going from TopMost (Nearest) to BottomMost (Farthest):

1. (some) Trees (+Trees Mask) - start with a copy of the background and then add/expand the mask.
2. Bunny (+Bunny Mask)
3. ALL Trees & rest of Background

You can expand this, if need be, to have multiple variations & copies of trees (and multiple masks) +bunnies to have the bunny go through what looks to be a number of depths.

Understand, of course, that your picture is going to look like just that: a "cutout". Think SouthPark or MontyPython animation.
To make things more animated, you'd have to modify the bunny to have different "key" positions or aspects (and then 'tween from key to key).
To make things actually look natural, you would have to have a 3D model, lit to match the background & composited within those various layers.

Scott

edit: Think about how you would do this with real paper cutouts - it's similar.