Upper torso and shoulders rise when calibrating or recording

Report · Dec 16, 2021

I've five different puppets in a given scene, a number of which are from the Puppet Generator a few weeks ago and to which I've added legs and such. Two of them are displaying odd behavior - manual dragging and testing appears fine, but the moment that I attempt to calibrate with the camera input or record, the upper section of the torso/body rises on either side of the head, along with the shoulder points. I've experimented with deleting each of these components separately, but the behavior is replicated by the remaining section(s). One is a three-quarters view, one is simple frontal. (In attempting to resolve this I think I've mucked other pieces up too! DOH!)

I managed to resolve this with a third puppet by replicating the exact directory structure and rigging of one of the characters that DOES work as designed but I can't figure these two out. No hidden layers, no empty layers, nothing that I can see. Experimeted with setting Gravity to 100, linking the shoulders to the waist, but no luck. Thanks so much!!

Report · Dec 16, 2021

Addendum - so far as I can see, the problem with fp4 lies somehow in the arms. If I delete them in PS and calibrate/record in CA Beta, the torso remains intact and unskewed (although in all fairness, Limb IK doesn't do too well if there are no arms, even if defined as applying only to the legs). Attaching the arms again produces the erroneous behavior. Interestingly enough, I notice a difference between the display in PS and CA - the CA has an increased stretch in the neck, the head is higher from the body, as are the shoulders than in PS.

Report · Dec 16, 2021

Here's another example of the disparity between PS and CA. I'm just playing mix and swap between puppets that work and the ones that don't, looking for data. Note that in PS the arms are level with the torso shoulders, while when opened in CA, the shoulders have risen above the torso.

Report · Dec 16, 2021

Okay - I think I have resolved this. Sorry for using the forum as a real-time problem-solving journal. THis evening was a deadline (I missed it! Dang!) and so I've been a bit... shall we say... motivatde... to fix things. I discovered two points:

1) If a puppet is moved in PS, it is skewed in CA. For example - if I have a puppet with dimensions of 800 x 1400 pixels, on a cnvas of 1000 by 2000 pixels, and I decide to give them a massive fancy hat that requires me to shift the entire puppet down to the bottom of the canvas, if that puppet has been already imported into CA, that move on the canvas will not be properly passed into CA. The figure will move, but the original placement and dimensions in CA will still apply - the yellow outlines will no longer reflect the revised puppet, but the original;

2) UNCHECK the Tracked Handles for Neck, Right Shoulder, Right Hip, Left Shoulder, and Left Hip in the Body behavior dailog. They are still tagged properly in the rigging, but not formally tracked in the Body behavior.

So far, this has resolved the issue in the FP4 puppet. Of course, these solutions may well be because I completely mucked up some element of puppet design or implementation.