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waltz123
waltz123
Participant
July 14, 2017
Answered

Puppet pin tool and precomps

  • July 14, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 16048 views

Hey,

I'm trying to animate a simple 2D-person in After Effects CS6. I therefore use the puppet pin tool but experienced some issues. When I put the puppet pins onto the single layers (which are made in Illustrator) everything works well. But when I want to use a precomposition, wherein those layers are, and then try to resize the precomp, it shows nothing - except if I turn off this "fold composition" - box. The problem is, when I turn this box off, the precomp isn't sharp anymore, so this is no option (even trying to use a source image with higher res didn't work at all).

In my case I'd like to show a scenery with a house in the background and a person standing in front of it. I then want to zoom in - so the background and the person get bigger. But as soon as I do it, I can't use the puppet pin properly anymore.

So my question is: Is it somehow possible to use a resizable precomp or is there any work-around for my individual case?

Thank you!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Roei Tzoref
    BUT in the end I have to check all "fold composition"-boxes to make the image sharp

    Don't. puppet and collapse (what you call "fold") don't work well together. you should work your way around it by bringing big enough layers so you won't need to continuously rasetrize/collapse them (what you call "make them sharp"). or you could press the collapse switch, make them large enough, then precompose, don't press the collapse - and use puppet.

    In Short: whatever you do, don't press the sunburst icon (collapse switch) on a layer or precomp that is using the puppet effect if you intend to move or animate afterwards using the transform properties (scale, rotation, position)

    1 reply

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 14, 2017

    When you apply puppet pin to a layer it cannot have any animated transformations applied to the layer. No Scale, rotation, position changes. Puppet pin works on the pixels in an image or on the underlying area under the points of a vector path. A straight vector path - a line with just 2 points will not work directly with puppet pin because there are no pixels to manipulate under the path.

    The workflow is to line up your character. If the character has multiple elements on separate layers that you want to move as one you need to pre-compose those elements. For example, you put the arms and the hands layers in a group - pre-compose them, then apply puppet pin to the pre-comp. The same thing for eyes, nose, mouth - They either need to be on one layer or pre-composed so you can use puppet pin.

    The second step is to animate the movement of each of the layers in your puppet. Something like a walk cycle would be animated so the legs were moving but the rest of the puppet would not be moving. Once you get the movement down for your puppet you pre-compose that movement or nest the comp in a main comp and animate the position scale and rotation of the puppet so that it works in the scene. You cannot do it in any other way because as soon as you move a layer that has a puppet pin effect applied you break the relationship between the distortion mesh and the underlying pixels and things get fouled up.

    I hope this helps.

    waltz123
    waltz123Author
    Participant
    July 14, 2017

    Hey,

    thank you for your answer!

    Unfortunately this doesn't work for me. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, so I describe what I'm doing:

    I have an Illustrator File of a person with one layer for the body and one for the left arm (since only the left arm should do some movement).

    Now I put this file into After Effects. My Illustrator file is a composition now and when I double-click on it, it opens and shows the two layers I made in Illustrator (body and arm). Now I choose the arm file, make a right-click and choose "pre-comp" (don't know the exact name since I'm using After Effects in a different language). Now I'm putting the puppet pins onto this pre-composition (not the layer inside this pre-comp I just created). So I have now:

    Main Comp -> Arm Comp (with puppet pins) -> Arm File

    BUT in the end I have to check all "fold composition"-boxes to make the image sharp - and that causes the animated files to not show up in the main comp anymore.

    Do you discover any mistake I'm doing?

    EDIT:

    It's like this: Main comp -> person comp -> arm comp -> arm file

    The one from above is wrong!

    I forgot to mention that I had to scale the person to fit into the comp size. When I set the scale back to 100%, the movement is shown right. But I need to resize the person - I could reduce the persons size in Illustrator for now, but it won't solve future problems or enable a good workflow...

    Roei Tzoref
    Roei TzorefCorrect answer
    Legend
    July 14, 2017
    BUT in the end I have to check all "fold composition"-boxes to make the image sharp

    Don't. puppet and collapse (what you call "fold") don't work well together. you should work your way around it by bringing big enough layers so you won't need to continuously rasetrize/collapse them (what you call "make them sharp"). or you could press the collapse switch, make them large enough, then precompose, don't press the collapse - and use puppet.

    In Short: whatever you do, don't press the sunburst icon (collapse switch) on a layer or precomp that is using the puppet effect if you intend to move or animate afterwards using the transform properties (scale, rotation, position)

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