Hi Hegartype,
Ah, I think I understand what's happening. OK so with the Z-Fill raised up, there's not enough room around the model. What you can do is set the canvas' Z-Fill to the top of the canvas (instead of the layer's Z-Fill) and then create a new blank raster-layer, size it to be the "buffer" around the model, and set its blend mode to "Minimum". This raster-layer will need to be below the model-layer in the Canvas Layers list, so that it pushes down the canvas' Z-Fill to make a clearing for the model-layer to sit in.
Let me know if that makes sense, or if you need more explanation and detail :]
- Charlie