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gb_1100
Participating Frequently
August 2, 2018
Answered

Changing Artboard Size screws up puppet

  • August 2, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 996 views

I have my puppet art in Illustrator. I added a component to it that took the art outside the bounds of the Illustrator art board. I made the artboard larger to encompass the new addition. The puppet art stayed in the same position. Going back into character animator, everything is all out of sorts.

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    Correct answer alank99101739

    Here was my case and how I solved it in case useful. I had a character:

    I wanted to have him carry something. So I exported the puppet and reimported it (makes a copy of all the artwork automatically!), then edited the copy in Illustrator.

    So he fit nicely into the artboard background. But the new content did not fit! I just drew it outside the artboard without moving the existing puppet.

    This new content is nested in a layer (near hand) so I can attach it to the hand. (I may use a trigger to show/hide this new content.)

    But the origin was different when I saved the file.

    So I had to click on the origin and drag back to the main character's belly button.

    I did not move the character in the Illustrator file, so all the main character rigging was preserved from the original puppet, and I can copy/paste takes between the original puppet and this new puppet. (If I had recentered the character in the Illustrator file, the drag points, sticks etc would not be lined up with the artwork any more)

    Early draft of resultant scene... I just drag the hand around.

    1 reply

    alank99101739
    alank99101739
    Legend
    August 2, 2018

    What can happen is the origin moves. I had a similar problem last night. Its not the art board itself I think, its just that additional artwork is bigger. The origin is computed by default as the centroid of the maximum bounding rectangle. You can click on the root puppet, then the origin dotted circle should appear. If you drag this back to where it was before, that made the puppet and draggers etc recordings all still work again. I try to always put origin on the character’s belly button which makes it easier to remember where it should go (it also helps with rotation etc).

    If you have the “before” puppet, see where the origin is (or just delete the new content and reload), then add your new artwork and manually adjust the origin marker again.

    If you move the artwork in Illustrator I think you will get different problems (e.g. if you try to recenter it) as all the sticks, draggers, and other rigging will not move - so you would have to redo a lot more. To fix that, you would have to drag the artwork back to where it should go. I have not had any problems with artwork extending beyond the art board in Illustrator - I just draw outside the art board to make sure things don’t move.

    alank99101739
    alank99101739Correct answer
    Legend
    August 2, 2018

    Here was my case and how I solved it in case useful. I had a character:

    I wanted to have him carry something. So I exported the puppet and reimported it (makes a copy of all the artwork automatically!), then edited the copy in Illustrator.

    So he fit nicely into the artboard background. But the new content did not fit! I just drew it outside the artboard without moving the existing puppet.

    This new content is nested in a layer (near hand) so I can attach it to the hand. (I may use a trigger to show/hide this new content.)

    But the origin was different when I saved the file.

    So I had to click on the origin and drag back to the main character's belly button.

    I did not move the character in the Illustrator file, so all the main character rigging was preserved from the original puppet, and I can copy/paste takes between the original puppet and this new puppet. (If I had recentered the character in the Illustrator file, the drag points, sticks etc would not be lined up with the artwork any more)

    Early draft of resultant scene... I just drag the hand around.

    G
    gb_1100Author
    Participating Frequently
    August 3, 2018

    Thanks so much for the detailed response!

    Yes, I ended up just moving the items inside Character Animator and left the character in the same position in Illustrator.

    Still figuring things out.

    Thanks again Alan!

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