Completely broke my puppet's face adding Quarter Angles

[brianfrenzy]

I built a puppet downloading the "Blank" character and replacing parts with my own artwork. Everything worked fine, then I decided to start adding Head Turns.I watched some videos, I'm pretty sure I followed the correct heiarchy, but afterward, the head would float off the neck. I looked up some tutorials and followed a few suggestions here, and things just got worse. 

Current issues:
  - Pupils spin when I turn or tilt my head

 - Mouth, eyes, and bottom of the face warps on certain head movements

 - "Smile" layer no longer shows white teeth on frontal view, only skin tone.

 -Pins not holding bottom of the puppet down

 -Original head sticking to neck problem

I tried to get all parts marked to the correct Independent toggle, double checked my handles and tags, I can't tell what I've done (it's only my second day messing with it), but I am sure my fixing was actually my breaking.

[alank99101739]

Head turns often requires introducing a new level of nesting into the puppet structure, which causes manual rigging to be lost. So you probably need to fix various triggers, cycle layer behaviors, and more. You just managed to hit them all at once!!

Can you share a screenshot of the rigging hierarchy? let's make sure you have that right, then can step through the problems one at a time.

[brianfrenzy]

Thanks for the quick response!

I tried to redo all the triggers the best I could, though I am sure I missed one or twelve.

There are some issues I already knew about, like the mouth wouldn't hit all the lip sync shapes, but I figured I could tackle that after I get this guy moving the right way.

[brianfrenzy]

Ok I clicked the mesh button, and it looks like every layer of the eyes and the mouth are somehow linked to the body, even though they are under the head section in the hierarchy. Does that make sense, is that something you can accidentally do?

I guess that would make some of the issues make sense, if they are somehow linked to the body, the movements would see to go along with the body moving.

Still no luck getting it pinned down, though. I even deleted the old pins and added new ones. No change.

[alank99101739]

For the mouth, see the layers that have groups like Ah? it has child layers called 1 and 2. These generally should have a cycle layers behavior added with a hold on last frame.

I normally make the +Left Eye and +Right Eye independent. https://extra-ordinary.tv/2018/04/21/debugging-character-animator-eyess/ - i find it gives less problems, and would explain the mesh issue you noted.

Which layer did you put the pins on? I noticed in an announcement for the next Ch release looks like there is a "pin standing only" mode, which should help. Not sure when it's coming. I keep forgetting to check if using mode 'position' for walking effectively pins the character or not. You can use a dragger to record the position, but the new pin-standing sounds like the right solution to me.

[brianfrenzy]

Ok, I added the Cycle Layers with Hold on Last Layer for all the mouth groups. It's hard to see if everything is hitting because the mouth is still warping with movement (along with the bottom of the head).

And I made the Left Eye and Right Eye independent, but they are still sliding around on the face with head tilts.

On the plus side, I did get the pins to work, so now the body isn't wiggling around when I move!

I also went back into the PSD, copied deleted the SMILE on the frontal view, the copy+paste the smile from one of the other views and saved. When I go back to the scene, the white of the teeth show on every other view except smile. It still shows the color of the face. It is activating the smile, though, because it shows the blackoutline of the smile. Just not the white color.

(side note, I have been to your site before via a google search. I should have recognized your avatar!)

[alank99101739]

Do you want the head to pivot (usually at the neck) or do you want it to stay connected with the rest of the body and "bend"? if the head does not move much, bending can be fine. You can use sticks to limit bending where you don't want (e.g. along the edge of the chin). But if you want a pivot, then the Head (or the profiles under it) will need to be independent. There is not a right and wrong here - it jus changes how the puppet feels and moves. I *tend* to use independent heads for shorter necks - longer necks are easier to bend, and if your head is not going to move much that also reduce the need for independence of the head.

I ask because there are different solutions to the problems you describe depending which way you go.

[brianfrenzy]

I'd rather have it pivot than bend. Bending is making the head and body do weird, unnatural things.

[alank99101739]

If you go with pivot, that means I would make each head profile independent. (Hmmmmm. Not sure if it matters if Head is independent or the profiles under it are independent - but DO NOT make them both independent. If one does not work, try the other, but my gut feel is to make each profile independent so they don't mess with each other.) Once you do that, the head (once all is fixed) should not bend or warp at all, so the mouth problems will probably go away. You can however make the Mouth layer independent as well to be safe if you wish. That will guarantee to warping of the mouth. (That is what independence is for - when you want a layer not modified with the artwork in the parent mesh. But DO NOT turn independence on blindly. Too much independence can result in meshes containing no artwork, which you cannot then attach to.)

Not exactly sure what you mean by head tilting and eyes - could you provide a screenshot?

I noticed there might be a layer with "Head" in its name inside the face background layer. Beware of "Head" (tag names in general) in layers - they get autotagged which can cause problems.

[brianfrenzy]

Ok, Great! So I tested tagging different different parts independent. First I tried the head background. That stopped the warping on the face but not the mouth, and severely limited the head movement. Then I tried it on the head, and just made it back to where I was before I started changing them. Finally, I changed Frontal. That fixed the chin and mouth warping, and the eyes sliding when I tilted the head (I'll unclick it and take a quick picture of what I meant by that, though). That must have been changed at some point when I added the two other head positions in PS.

Now I am back to where I was originally before I broke everything else. The head can go really high up on the neck, sometimes even off the neck (probablt good to mention I don't have anything tagged as "Neck", since the hoverover said it used in ARM IK and Walk behaviors, neither of which this puppet will be used for).

I'd also like to limit how much warp the shoulders and chest are doing now. Again, something that wasn't happening before I started adding head turns.

[alank99101739]

Okay, that eye sliding is probably a side effect of the warp on the face - the eyes attach to where they are on the face, but as the face warps, the position will go with that warping. If you have the head independent, that should not occur any more.

No, you don't want head background independent - it would either be Head or the profile directly under it - nothing lower. If you have it working, you have it right ... lol!

Head drifting away is normally the "Head Position Strength" setting of the Face behavior. Set it to zero (or 5% - something small). It defaults to 100% which is rarely what you want.

I normally tag the middle of the shoulders as "neck" (at the base of the neck) using a handle, but it can be a bit of trial and error. Neck only really matters for the walk behavior though (I think).

Hmmmm. Not sure I am understanding 100%. If the head was independent, you should not see the warping in that image. Could you please screenshot the rigging hierarchy? You should not see the body (and neck) or face warp at all if the head/face is independent. The head does need to be attached to the neck (drag head origin over neck artwork). I normally draw the neck up behind the head a distance to control the overlap.

[brianfrenzy]

Ok, it's almost fixed, between you're great advice and me paying attention to what I am clicking to test out this time, 

I fixed the teeth turning skin toned (or invisible) by chaning the Blending Options. Somehow, it got changed, but it's back on normal and is fine again.

I changed the Head Postion Strength, it doesn't fly away. I had to redraw the neck, making it shorter and rounding it off at the top (I had it way too tall in anticipation of the head moving up too much). You still see a nub on a few movements, but it doesn't look like a tall tower now.

I thought I read that the neck isn't important if you aren't doing a walk cycle or arm movements, thanks for the confirmation!

The body isn't warping anymore, so that's good too. I'm not 100% sure what I did to make it stop, but I suspect it was moving a "Head" handle that was too low and overlapped with the body.

Looks like everything is where I want it except the Left Quarter view eyebrows not having a lot of movement. But that should be a lot easier to figure out.

Thanks for your help! I would have got way too frustrated and started all over with out it!