Character Animator Puppet not body tracking legs

[Autumatic]

Hey fellow creators,

I have a puppet that responds to body tracking for my upper body but, for some reason, will not react to my lower body at all. Not even waist and hip movement is fluid enough. I am able to drag the legs, and I have successfully added a walking animation via arrow key triggers. However, when I calibrate and attempt to lift my legs, the puppet does not respond. I have deleted and re-added so many bones and handles. I ensured hip, heel, toe, and ankle tags were indeed tagged. I have changed gravity settings, pin settings, and introduced limb IK and nothing seems to solve the issue. Attached are screenshots of the puppet rig and the Photoshop layers. 

I am so close to closing out this project, if anyone has any ideas other than restarting with a different puppet template, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you all for taking the time to read and help.

Have a wonderful day,

Autumnatic Media

[n. tilcheff]

You've posted in the wrong forum.

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from animate">

[Autumatic]

Thank you for the link and your response.

[TheOriginalGC]

I see a head layer, but no body layer. 

[Autumatic]

So do you mean the "torso" and "left quarter" do not have the correct rigging? Because that is the only body structure that came with the puppet template and within both of those layers are torso, pelvis, both hips, arms etc. Is that incorrect?

[TheOriginalGC]

The program separates the puppet into two parts, the head and the body. The torso, arms, legs and all other non-head parts should be within a body layer. I do not know if the lack of a body layer could be causing any problems or not. 

[Autumatic]

Okay great thank you so much. I will try that, It's possible I may have moved something outside of the original nested layer. 

[Autumatic]

Good evening, I apologize for not responding sooner with this, work has been kicking my butt. I just wanted to say thank you again for everyone's time and input. I was not able to solve the issue even after downloading the original puppet and making sure all my bones were still correct. Is it possible that some puppets do not body track even if you can drag the lower half? At this point I have no idea what to do, if anyone has suggestions as to a third party or someone who can physically work on this file, I would greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, I have no other ideas on how to get the lower body reacting.

[TheOriginalGC]

It's certainly possible, as a lot of the puppets were created before Body Tracking was introduced. Which puppet are you using? Can you share a link?

[Autumatic]

Puppet Maker (adobe.com)

I used Utility Andy as my template and was able to do everything but body tracking pretty much. I was comfortable using this design for this project because I noticed I could see and interact with the whole body before making any edits. The original post did not exclusively mention whether body tracking is or is not available, whereas some puppets do specify what tracking can be used; I assumed this would be okay to start with. I did not mess with bones until recently when troubleshooting for leg tracking began, so one should be able to use this base to work out any potential issues.

[TheOriginalGC]

Opening up the puppet, I noticed that by default, the body tracking is only tracking the wrists and not the heels. This is why the legs aren't moving. To fix that, open up the Body behavior (see below) and in Tracked Handles, put a check mark on the right and left heel. 

[j-saito]

Quickly checked Andy is rigged for full-body motions with the Motion Library (add Motion Library at the Puppet layer, not at the top). This confirms that Andy should work with full-body tracking.

To add a little more to @TheOriginalGC 's post, the body tracking defaults to tracking the upper body only because this is the primary use case for many users sitting relatively close to the webcams.

[ArtGawd]

Sorry stil new to CA, what do you mean by "add Motion Library at the Puppet layer, not at the top" ?

[j-saito]

Is this clear? Do this in the rig mode:

Please keep in mind that this is a specific instruction to make the Motion Library work with Andy.

This is not an instruction to make your puppet work with full-body tracking.

If you need help for that, please make a new thread with a link to your puppet. If you cannot share your puppet publicly, you can DM me the link, or make a post with lots of screenshots showing everything about your puppet, e.g. how layers are structures, where the body handles are placed, where the behaviors are placed, and what parameters are set to the behaviors.

[ArtGawd]

Thanks, dm-ing you the link now! 

[ArtGawd]

Is there any reason this puppet or any puppet would not be compatible with lower body tracing?

In other words, is it possible that it's impossible to give this puppet lower body tracing ability? 

[TheOriginalGC]

See my response above.

[ArtGawd]

We just put the check mark on the heels (and even tried the hips). We're still unable to get the full body tracking

[j-saito]

Your mileage may vary, but in the end, any puppets can be made body-trackable with proper rigging. Whether the animation looks good or not is a different story.

[ArtGawd]

Thanks for clearing that up! With that said, is there anything that stands out in the above screenshots?
Are there any common obstacles when applying full body tracing to puppets?

We've still been unable to solve this one, and I feel like we're so close.

[ArtGawd]

Oh just seeing your responses! Thank you, we'll try this out!