Head/Neck Warping While Walking If Not Independent

[andycarpenter]

I'm having an issue in Character Animator whereby the head/neck of my puppet warps when I try to use the walk behavior. If I make the head warp independent, then it stops warping, and the walk behavior works as expected. But when the head is warp independent, it detaches itself from the body whenever I use camera input. Here is a video that demonstrates the issue:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/an4uy6ev1m3dep7/PuppetWalkIssue.mov?dl=0​

Any help resolving this is greatly appreciated!

Thank you

oksamurai​

[TDFAP]

Hello fellow Andy! So, it's hard to be sure from the quick look in the video, but my guess is that your problem has to do with the independence of some of the groups inside your head group. It looks like CH is trying to move the entire head during your walk behavior, but something independent (maybe the nose) isn't allowing the head to move freely and so it causes the warp. Also, on all of your independent layers/groups such as the pupils and eyebrows be sure that the attach style in your properties panel is set to "free."

I'm pretty sure that's why making the whole head group independent fixes the problem, because it overrides the independent group that's causing that facial warp. If you find the independent layer that is "welded" or "hinged" in place (referring to the properties panel) and correct it, CH should let you use the face behavior to warp with the neck and body WITHOUT causing that unwanted warping while walking.

Hope this helps and happy animating!

[andycarpenter]

Thank you for your response!

I tried setting the attach style of all the independent layers/groups in the Head group to "Free", and this produced no change. Just as a test, I tried turning warp independence off for *everything* in the Head group, and this seemed to have only made things worse.

Do you have any other ideas as to what I might try? Or is there any other information I can provide that would help diagnose the problem?

Thanks again!

[oksamurai]

Checking out the rig view at :20, I think you want independence on "Zoe" and "Front Right View". Does that solve it?

[andycarpenter]

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately that did not solve the problem. No change as far as I can tell. Any other thoughts?

[TDFAP]

Sorry, maybe I misspoke, you probably don't want to remove independence for *everything* because CH is looking for things like the eyes and eyebrows that are supposed to be moving. When I encounter an error like this, it's usually because something is independent, but isn't actually moving or being animated. By marking it independent, CH assumes it his movable and allows it to warp things as if it was separate. In your animation, the walk cycle looks like it's pulling the neck and head correctly, but holding something on the face in place, waiting for a separate movement input other than the face behavior/walk behavior. Try turning off independence for JUST the parts of the face that don't move (eyeballs behind the pupils, nose, etc) I know this might not fix it, and there could be something else, I just wanted to better articulate what I have discovered. Try it, and if it still doesn't work, don't worry, we'll figure it out!

[andycarpenter]

I get what you're saying. I wasn't clear about this in my response, but I did try that first. This is what the independence currently looks like for the stuff in the Head group:

Dropbox - Screenshot 2018-01-23 11.04.22.png

Only Mouth, Left Eyebrow, Right Eyebrow, Left Eye, Left Pupil, Right Eye, and Right Pupil are currently independent, and still no luck. I also tried turning off independence for Left Eye and Right Eye, and/or Mouth, and nothing seems to change. Does it look like I'm missing anything from the screenshot?

Thanks

[TDFAP]

Wow! This program is crazy awesome. Cool to see your rigging setup! Looking at your eye and blink setup has given me ideas I want to try out!

So my advice has been coming from one fundamental difference in the way our puppets are arranged/labeled. If it were me, I'd have switched the names on your layers so that "Left Eye" and "Right Eye" (groups) were called something like "Leye" or "Reye" that CH wouldn't recognize and auto tag. Then the layers you've called "Left Eyeball" and "Right Eyeball" within those groups are what I would have wanted to tag "Left Eye" and "Right Eye" (and I probably also would have added the R/L pupil range tag to each one as appropriate.) I would leave the pupils set to independent within the R/L Eye groups, but NOT the groups themselves. Hopefully this will clarify to CH which parts of the face are supposed to move by themselves and which parts move with the walk/face behaviors.

Again, this might not fix it, but it would be my next step to diagnose. It's really tricky, cause sometimes CH needs layers to have an independent setting, but that the setting be turned off to work. I don't understand WHY, but in my experience little tweaks like this can be just what the program needs, to do what we intend.

[andycarpenter]

Once again, thanks for your suggestions. I tried untagging Left Eye and Right Eye, eliminating their independence, and tagging Left Eyeball and Right Eyeball as you suggested (both as right-eye/right-pupil-range and left-eye/left-pupil-range respectively). Unfortunately this didn't change anything with respect to my problem.

For what it's worth, this puppet is based on Wilk, and Wilk's eyes are set up the same way as mine. But then again, Wilk doesn't walk, so I guess that doesn't prove anything.

Any other thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

[TDFAP]

Hmmm... I'll keep thinking about it. I've learned that what I think is happening is sometimes so visually similar to what's actually going on that I miss something really simple. Without being able to play with it and try things, I'm stumped... for the moment. I'll get back to you, unless someone else chimes in with a correct fix first.

[oksamurai]

Could you File > Export > Puppet and share it as a link (Creative Cloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) so we could take a closer look, either here or in a DM to me?

[andycarpenter]

Yes, just sent the link to you via DM. Thank you!

[TDFAP]

Hi guys, so was this issue resolved? I was able to replicate it with a puppet I built from scratch. I experimented for a while, but I can see that it seems like an either/or issue. What ended up being the fix? Or are we still working on it?

[andycarpenter · Accepted solution]

Yes, Dave helped me resolve it. The fix seemed to be tagging the "head" tag ALSO as the "neck" tag, which seemed weird to me, but it works. Also the waist and hip tags needed to be on the Body group rather than on a layer in the Body group as I had it (although I had tried them on the Body group before sending to Dave and had the same issue, so I think the main thing was the head/neck tag).

[TDFAP]

Thanks for sharing, that did indeed fix the puppet I had built to try this with.

[ericc19576445]

This definitely fixes the problem, but the head isnt attached to the neck and if you increase the head tilt passed 80% , the head and neck separate. This makes the standing character a bit lifeless. It also makes choosing a good origin point for the head real challenging.