Can figure out how to work Puppet tool multiple layers. Any tips?

Question

Basically I got 3 layers involving a tree and a bluejay. I want the bluejay to go inside its tree home (its just a nest half way inside the tree). With puppet tools I can get the bluejay to flutter around and hop in. The way its layered, it looks like the bird goes in correctly with a bit of the true hiding the bluejay in front.

I have the tree split into 2 layers, one BEHIND the bluejay, and 1 INFRONT.

So it would be from front to back

- Tree front (hides the nest and bluejay slightly to give appearance of depth)

- Blue Jay (in front of BG but behind tree front)

- Tree Back (background)

Thats how its layered. Now this wasnt a problem but my daughter suggests I should make the tree sway to give it more "aliveness" so I cant say no. Im desperate. Ive been looking up puppet tools but they all describe single character process. I cant find one that shows how to deal with moving intersections.

Ive only ever used AE for compositing and simple work. Ive never had to do this kind of motion work.

To sum it up, I need to make both layers of the tree sway while the bird still looks like it goes into the center of the tree without the tree looking like it has a huge tear in-between. I believe the answer is somewhere in pre-comps but I cannot wrap my head around this. Any help or point in the right direction would be GREATLY appreciated.

Rick Gerard · Accepted Answer

Not recognizing an imgur link was the most surprising thing ive read today. Ive been posting my problem on other forums and using a central link so people can see what im talking about, sorry. From the sound of all this it looks like im going to have to use clever image layering to get this done.

Bird, tree and background on different layers.

I would animate the bird using puppet pin, animate the tree using puppet pin, pre-compose the tree, precompose the bird, duplicate the tree pre comp and draw a mask so you can put the bird between the two copies of the tree and get it to enter the hole.

Nothing magic, just layers.

BTW, it's not that I didn't know what the link to the graphic was it's just a pain to go to it when it takes absolutely no effort to embed an image. Easier then comping and pasting a link. It also did not work on my phone.

Rick Gerard · Answer

You have two options. First puppet pin will not work on layers that have moving areas of transparency. IOW, if you animate the bird so that it appears to go into the tree, then pre-compose the crow and the tree and try to puppet pin both together you'll end up with a problem with the mesh because it is based on the opacity of the layer. When the bird moves outside the mesh created in the first frame it will leave parts behind.

Without seeing your comp with the modified properties of all layers revealed it's pretty hard to visualize exactly what is going on but I suspect that the easiest solution may be to drop a colored solid behind the animation of the bird moving into the tree then precompose all layers and animate the tree swaying using puppet pin, then use Keylight to remove the solid background and insert the background artwork you want in the scene. This is assuming you want the bird to move to the tree, then into the tree and have the tree moving throughout the entire scene.

The only other way I can see to do this is to use a distortion mesh of some kind to move the tree and everything else so you don't have problems with puppet pin mesh.

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