Hands in front of face?

[ScooterD76]

Is there any way to set up a puppet who's arms and hands can pass over the face?

Naturally, my puppet's arms are attached to the body group, which is underneath his head. Reversing that order would cause all sorts of problems.

Can the arms be attached to the body if they are not part of the same group? Is there something else i'm missing?

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

One approach is not to have an independent head, then you can do anything you like with the layers and get it all right.

But if you need the head independent, you can do it, but what you have to do is have an independent layer for say the arms and hands which is in front of the face layer. You can then attach those independent arms to the shoulders. Anchoring independent layers does not care the depth order— only that they overlap. However, depending on your artwork, putting the arms in front of the body can be a pain as well. For example, it works well if your arms are flat colors. If you have texture on the arms (e.g. a patterned shirt), its more problematic.

On another scene I introduced a second puppet for arms and hands and did a close up on the face so you could not see that the arms where actually not a part of the same puppet! (They went out of shot to the sides.) Sometimes its easier to be “creative” about camera placement than fix the puppet. (I know that is not always an option, but worth considering!)

The hard ones are where you want the arms *sometimes* in front and *sometimes* behind. That can also be done using two sets of arms and triggers (you hide one set of arms or the other). You make both sets of arms Independent. Its a pain however as you have to duplicate any hand positions, draggers etc. So its possible, but more painful.

Oh, my other favorite trick sometimes is to create two versions of the same puppet with different layers or different indepedence, then flip between the puppets at particular times (just hide one and reveal the other). E.g. does the head have to be independent at the same time as the hands go in front of the face? Can you cheat and have two puppets - one with head independent but hands go behind head, and the other where the head is dependent and the hands go in front of the face?

For your particular issue I think you need to pick the least painful approach for your artwork, is it for live streaming where some of the tricks won’t work, etc. But hopefully this gives you a few ideas (and hopefully has not made it even more confusing rather than helping!!!)

[ScooterD76]

I was under the impression the head needed to be independent to work properly... that being said...

what you've said makes perfect sense. I've been working in animation for a long time ( but new to this method) and have seen many situations where you need camera tricks and jump cuts to achieve certain things. For the most part I plan on just avoiding it, and just use a swap trick or a second puppet for any shots i might happen to need it.

LOL I kinda wish you could just use these puppet rigs and keyframe them in AE

Thanks for the help, Ill probably be back

[alank99101739]

It is common for the head to be independent, but it’s not mandatory. It depends on the puppet Artwork. I normally make them independent, with one exception where the character had a tallish neck, so it looked okay just curving the neck For head movements. I had to do this as the simplest way to have hair dangling behind the body and part of the head. (If Head was in front of body I could not have hair appear behind body!)

[ScooterD76]

LOL Animation ( and effects animation ) is full of " well, thats not gonna work, how am i going to fake it?"

Reminds me of once I had to get a character through a door that A) the character would not physically fit through and B) the character could not actually touch the doorknob in a natural-looking fasion...

[SharonfromMD]

I'm new to animation. I loved your statement "Well, that's not gonna work, how am I going to fake it?"  This has been the story of my life these past three months!

[katias93604566]

After dealing with the same issue for a while, the best approach for me would be duplicating the arms in the character animator itself using the "make artwork shareable" feature. This way you can have two sets of arms and no extra work (since all the artwork, rigs and triggers are only done once for the set of arms you make shareable). I described the process in details here: https://www.animationguides.com/make-arms-front-behind-face-adobe-character-animator/ 

[PuppetGuy]

I seem to be stuck at thr 'drag shareable arm into Upper folder'. It doesn;t llow me to drag the shareable arm into any other ayer.

Did this feature change?

[TheOriginalGC]

Are you dragging it from the project panel? 

[PuppetGuy]

Yes

[TheOriginalGC]

I don't understand what's going on, it works fine for me.

[PuppetGuy]

Hi @katias93604566 

I followed the steps on your site but the Upper arm is stationary and the draggable function does not work for it.

I was thinking the Upper arm would follow the 'drag' of the original arm. Is there something I'm missing?