Puppet tool position change

[roxxeanne]

Hey guys!

[I'm fairly new to this program]

I'm trying to create an animation. I've made a character in Character Animator and put the dynamic link into AE. All works, but the legs and arms couldn't be added there, because CA doesn't allow bended limbs the way I want them. Now I've drawn a stick figure limb and tried bending it with the puppet tool. Works fine, but the legs are parented to the character. I'm trying to make the character stand up, and therefor i want the legs to bend straight. But when the parent moves it's position, I can't change the legs anymore. Is there anyone who knows what I'm doing wrong? I've included a screenshot of my animation. 

[roxxeanne]

This is where the character moves, and you can see the yellow dots are not on the leg anymore (ofcourse, because the leg moved). But how can the dots stay attatched to the leg, so that I can bend the legs straight?

[Mrtn Ritter]

As soon as you parent the leg-layer to the character, the position of the leg-layer changes to the relative positon instead of absolute. This messes up puppet pin which works with absolute positioning. In your screenshot, the pins have an offset to the graphic, which is an indicator for messed up.

In order to get this done correctly, you need to parent the pin to the character and leave the layer unparented. You do this with an expression, which should be:

l = CharacterLayer (use pigwhip and link it there);
l.toWorld(l.anchorPoint);

This links the pin to the anchorpoint of the character. If the anchoir point if not at the joint, you can just add an offset. Or a bit more practical: add a null layer at the joint, parent it to the character and insert it in the expression instead of the character-layer. So you have pin -> null -> character.

When your character walks around, it's more practical to precompose it and do all walking motion in the precomp. The character actually walks on spot. In your main comp then, you move the precomp according to the walking. This way, you prevent moving the pinned layer out of it's bounderies or get unwanted dissortions.

*Martin

[roxxeanne]

this absolutely sounds like a way of doing it. But i don't even know where to put that code tbh. Also I have no clue what a null layer is. But maybe that's just a language thing too, since English isn't my first language. Null sounds like an empty layer? Not sure how to make this work with your description, even tho it sounds like logic. Is there maybe a tutorial for this? Idk what to search for to find a tutorial for this.

[Mrtn Ritter]

Regarding the null layer, this tutorial seems pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ei_cj6A2Gg

Regarding the expression, you can ALT+Click nearly all properties in After Effects to add a little code snippet, called Expression. This is a very powerful feature.

This tutorial covers all the basics like adding an expression and using pigwhip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRASEWvhItg

Get into those topics, there are basic animator tools and you'll take advantage of them all the time once you learned them.

*Martin

P.S. I'm really curious about the story of your animation, I like the character 😄

[Mrtn Ritter]

Btw, check you DUIK. It takes away a lot of headache when it comes to character rigging.

*Martin