Arm Distortion While Walking

[Martinnel]

There is always one thing or another to trip me up while rigging.

I'm trying to teach my puppet to walk. I've been working from Okay Samurai's excellent new Walking tutorial. I've got all the Walk Properties set to default, but for some reason, the arms tend to distort upward as if my puppet's angrily walking with his elbows up — see pic. NOTE: the uppermost part of the arm in the first image is not the top part of the arm. It corresponds the the purple arrow in the second image. The arm is distorting rather than simply rising up too high.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Happy to provide additional images.

Martin

[alank99101739]

Sometimes things like the position of neck head, and waist tags impact the result as well. The other thing to try is turning on the yellow mesh icon (bottom left corner) to see if there is a part that is clearly not moving - sometimes that identifies the specific handle playing up.

[alank99101739]

Sharing an animated gif can help as well - it can make it easier to work out what is happening. Or share a puppet (you can replace the artwork with rectangles if its copyright etc).

[Martinnel]

alank99101739  wrote

Sharing an animated gif can help as well - it can make it easier to work out what is happening.

Attached. (Took me a while because with the current versions—Ch, v. 2.0, Media Encoder, v. 13.01, Mac OS 10.12.6—Encoder would not directly produce a GIF. I had to produce an mp4 and then put that into Encoder to make the GIF. Ah well, done now)

alank99101739  wrote

Or share a puppet (you can replace the artwork with rectangles if its copyright etc).

I'd be happy to share with you directly Alan, but I'm hesitant to post it in so public a forum. Plus, I don't know the size limits here.

Martin

[Martinnel · Accepted solution]

Yay, I seem to have fixed the problem. I was, as I mentioned above, following Okay Samurai's excellent new Walking tutorial. Foolishly perhaps, I was making his suggested changes as I went along. At around 4:30, Dave says to move the character's main origin and then top character group origin down to the feet. When I did this it shoved the character off the top of the screen. I then adjusted his position to get him back on the screen and that distorted everything. Putting those origins back in the middle of his torso seemed to address this problem.

Now on to the next.

Martin

[alank99101739]

Glad you got it going.

FYI: adobe media encoder can generate animated gifs directly - that is how I normally create them. If you type "GIF" into the search box, you should see Animated GIF as one of the options. I normally adjust the dimensions smaller and save that as a preset.

Also I noticed you legs include the "bottom" and waist area I think, and you have Fixed pins there. I think that stops the middle of the character having a more normal movement. You might like to include the bottom/waist area in the torso layer, and legs tapered a bit at the top and overlap that area. Then you should be able to remove those "fixed" pins and get the whole body moving more naturally.

[alank99101739]

Here is your left leg - that looks pretty normal.

Here is the right leg

See how the top includes more of the waist area?  I would try to eliminate the "Fixed" pins and shape the top more like the left leg (curved on top) by moving more of the top of the artwork to the "torso" layer.

[Martinnel]

I did have both legs like the left currently is. My distortion issues caused me to switch the right leg to its current design. I'll probably try to take it back tomorrow.

Martin

[alank99101739]

Oh, there were some hidden layers at the top level not being used. Just be aware this can mess things up at times as the contour for a layer comes out bigger because it includes the hidden parts as well. So you might want to delete that “extra leg” etc.

[Martinnel]

alank99101739  wrote

Oh, there were some hidden layers at the top level not being used. Just be aware this can mess things up at times as the contour for a layer comes out bigger because it includes the hidden parts as well. So you might want to delete that “extra leg” etc.

Yeah, I tend to hold onto some elements until I know I don't need them. I've cleaned all that up now.

Again, as always, thanks so much for your help Alan. My golem is now menacing the countryside.

Martin

[Martinnel]

alank99101739  wrote

Glad you got it going.

FYI: adobe media encoder can generate animated gifs directly - that is how I normally create them. If you type "GIF" into the search box, you should see Animated GIF as one of the options. I normally adjust the dimensions smaller and save that as a preset.

Yeah, but Media Encoder kept locking up then crashing when I tried to make one directly. I've found the latest version of Media Encoder to be a little troublesome.

[Martinnel]

alank99101739  wrote

Sometimes things like the position of neck head, and waist tags impact the result as well.

I've moved those tags around some, but nothing seems to improve the situation.

alank99101739  wrote

The other thing to try is turning on the yellow mesh icon (bottom left corner) to see if there is a part that is clearly not moving - sometimes that identifies the specific handle playing up.

I never noticed the mesh tool was available in Record mode, cool! But no, everything seems to be moving.

Martin

[SharonfromMD]

All I can do is emphasize. I've been dealing with this for months. In fact, I just spent the better part of three days dealing with it with a normal looking character. I tried using putting more dragger points in the wrist, elbow, etc. I sort of got mine to work by giving up and having him raise his arms.

Bottom line-this is a known problem in a very new program. I'm disappointed it hasn't been fixed yet. Your two pictures don't look that bad to me. In an animation, it goes by quickly.

-Sharon Cheek

[Martinnel]

Thanks Sharon. One of the challenges with new, complex software is it's hard to know whether it's you or the program that's messing up. I feel a little more competent with the possibility it isn't me.

Still, I'm determined to get this to work. I wonder if the problem lies in my puppet's head being so embedded in its torso.

Martin