Movement Issues with Puppet in Character Animator

Question

This is my first time making a puppet in character animator based on a design I created in Illustrator (usually I use photoshop but this time I wanted to work with vectors). I followed the sample Illustrator character model and made sure that I didn't have any extra independent layers that were throwing the movement off. Yet I still have two problems...

1. The head tilt doesn't look natural. In the past with similar looking characters that I made in Photoshop, the head tilted without any warping in the neck. I also noticed that when I tilt the head, the body moves slightly... I'm not sure why that is.

2. When I move other parts of the body, the whole character moves. As you can see in this video, when I move the arm, the entire body tilts with it, like it is on a hinge. I tried making the arm independent, but then it wasn't recognized in the mesh (even in contour mode). Then when it isn't independent, as it is now, the draggable is moving the entire body with it.

Here is a screenshot of how I set up my character, in case that might help.

I would appreciate any help, since I hope to make more characters from illustrator and rig them in character animator! Thank you!!

oksamurai · Accepted Answer

Sure, here is the link: Dropbox - BB.puppet

Hopefully that link works

Just a heads up, I tried experimenting with it on my own. I found that adding a fixed point to the center of the chest didn't make the movement as obvious. Now only the top half of his torso moves when his head moves. But feel free to delete the fixed point if you find a better way to solve the issue.

Your solution works pretty well for a more static body I'd say! The only thing I'd change is making the arms independent, since right now when you pull them they pull the whole body with them - but that's more of a minor stylistic choice. Also helpful: you can also tag sticks. So instead of sticks + fixed handles for pinning the body down, you could just do sticks tagged as fixed.

Luka.s · Answer

Hello, I'm having trouble with my character's face. When i move around, only the facial features move, such as the eye, eyebrows etc and not the head itself. It results in the facial features flying out of the head. How can I link the features to the head so they both move?

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