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Martinnel
Martinnel
Inspiring
January 24, 2018
Answered

Clipping Mask on Eyes as Explained in Character Animator New Features Pt.2

  • January 24, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 8824 views

This is a great new feature, but what if blink is larger than the eye aperture? I tried this out as explained in the tutorial and I essentially see the blink layer through the mask. I've attached the layer hierarchy.

Martin

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer oksamurai

OK, I just tried putting each blink in its own folder (see image) and then I confirmed they were tagged. With that setup, neither blinked. And if I put them both in the Eyes folder then I'm back where I started with the blinking being cropped by the mask.

You're right, looks like I need a samurai.

Martin


Remove all mentions / tags of "blink" except for the ones inside the groups and you should be set.

1. Select the "Blinks" group and make sure it doesn't have any tags associated with it.

2. Select the "left blink" and "right blink" groups inside "Blinks" and remove any tags from them. (This is why I named my groups a throwaway term like "go" instead).

3. Select the "left blink" layer and make sure it's tagged as "Left Blink." Do the same with the "right blink" layer and "Right Blink" tag.

1 reply

alank99101739
alank99101739
Legend
January 25, 2018

I think the blink replaces the other things in the same group. The following pattern is what I tend to follow these days. (I am not an expert however! I got something to work then just repeat it.)

I also use keyboard triggers to select all the Surprised and Angry subgroups, to get expression on the face. (I adjust the eye dimensions.)

  • +Left Eye
    • Left Blink (I hide this, it contains blink image, this replaces all the following when a blink occurs)
    • Left Pupil Range (I hide this, but it allows me to use a bigger range than the eyeball)
    • Left Eyelid Top
      • Neutral
      • Surprised (hidden by default)
      • Angry (hidden by default)
    • Left Closed Happy (hidden by default, with a keyboard trigger to block everything following - just showing the upper eyelid often looks like the person has eye closed and happy for my characters)
    • Left Eyelid Bottom
      • Neutral
      • Surprised (hidden)
      • Angry (hidden)
    • +Left Pupil  [CLIPPING MASK ADDED BY HAND]
    • Left Eyeball
      • Neutral
      • Surprised (hidden)
      • Angry (hidden)

I then set "Clipping Mask" on "+Left Pupil" which makes the eyeball clipped by the whites of the eyeball, plus the eyelids are in front.  I also check "Left Pupil Range" to remove the automatically added "Left Pupil Size" (which means the eye size is the same as the range - so nothing moves!) and there was another autotag that it gets wrong (forgot what it is just now).

The difference from what you are doing is the mask only applies to the pupil with the above arrangement, not the blink. So its just a matter of getting the grouping right so the blink is not covered by the mask (I think!).

In illustrator it looks a bit funny because the pupil is bigger than the eye ball...

But in character animator, it comes out nicely.

Oh, the "Left Closed Happy" look I tie to a keyboard trigger blocks the lower eyelid, ending up with the following. Err, well if there is a smile on the face it looks happy... ;-)  I splice the artwork around the eye into upper and lower eyelids.

(hmmm, if you look closely above you can see I have the mask not quite right still - it cut off some of the blush on the cheek. I need to tighten up the mask.

Showing the hierarchy in Character Animator...

(This one is still a work in progress - I have not done the mouth group yet.)

I hope this helps!

Z
Zugz64
Participating Frequently
June 7, 2018

This was very helpful but I can't get my pupil clipped in Ch. My puppet is in Ai (which I am new at) and I see a clipped pupil there (see attachment), but its not clipped in Ch. Can't figure out why.

Is your image above from a Ps or Ai puppet? It seems that Ps puppets have a down-arrow to indicate clipping masks but Ai puppets don't show that way in Ch?

Also, I've tried endless variations and sometimes the eyes move in opposite directions, not sure what causes that. 

And, am I right that Ai puppets need to be rendered as vector?

Any help or tips would be most welcome. Thank you, Chris

alank99101739
alank99101739
Legend
June 7, 2018

CH ignores AI clipping, so nice try - but that won't work. CH needs to move the pupil around, so it wants to do the clipping. What you want in AI is to have the eye unclipped then you use the menu item "Create Clipping Mask" on the right pupil so the following layer (the right eyeball in your puppet) clips it. So it looks ugly in AI, but correct in CH. But you need to get rid of the extra "go2" layer you introduced. +Right Pupil should be directly under Right Eye, and immediately before Right eyeball.

See Debugging Adobe Character Animator Eyes – Extra Ordinary, the Series for a longer explanation. (It gets asked so much I created a blog post on it. That is, you are not alone!!! Its a bit tricky to get right.)

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