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Participant
October 5, 2021
Question

Copying Rigging to New Puppet.

  • October 5, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 918 views

I need help! I have a puppet with 5 sets of clothing. They are identical in their Photoshop layer setup. And the rigging in Character Animator is also going to be identical. I rigged the first puppet in Character Animator. Since the rigging is going to be identical for the remaining puppets, is there any way to copy the rigging into the other four puppets? It will save me a lot of time! I was looking for a tutorial to show me how to do it. Keep in mind that these are 5 different puppets.

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2 replies

tailedstories
Known Participant
October 11, 2021

The way I do it is nested layers. For example, You have the layer structure like this:

-- Head_Behavior

------Head

----------Mouth

----------Eyebrows

----------.....

 

If we add rig behaviors in the Head_Behavior layer and replace the head or anything nested, the rigging will stay. If we add behavior to the head and replace the art, we will lose what we rigged. So if you add the extra empty layer for rigging behaviors, you can optimize the process

alank99101739
Legend
October 5, 2021

I don't know of a tutorial, but if the layer structure is IDENTICAL, I would try the following. Export the first puppet with rigging (see 'export puppet" in the menus). Import the puppet back into the project. If you single click in the project panel on the imported puppet the first property should be "Path". The original and imported puppets shoudl have different paths (when you imported the puppet, it should have made a copy of the artwork). Click on the path of the second puppet and point it to the alternative artwork. Cross fingers and see if it worked!

 

(Variation. After importing the puppet, use 'edit original' from menu and copy the new artwork into it. Importing the artwork should have created a copy of the artwork fiel, so you will be editing the copy.)

 

I would not duplicate the puppet inside ch and edit that. Duplicating a puppet (rather than export and import) shares the artwork file, so i worry you might break it. (It might be safe to duplicate the puppet then edit the Path property of the duplicate - but export and import i just find safer, less likely to make a mistake.)

TheOriginalGC
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 5, 2021

I don't know if this will help, but it's discussed in this video beginning at 13:00 - (12) Character Animator New Features (April 2018) - YouTube