Head Turning on New Puppet getting pretty warped

Report · Feb 06, 2017

Hi All -

I've been running Adobe Character CC Beta 5 (x141) on OS X El Capitan.

I created a puppet in Illustrator (a dude), which I successfully brought into Character and tinkered with over a few days. Everything is going smoothly with the head tracker for that guy. I recently duplicated that Illustrator file, and edited all the layers to create a ballistically similar character, this time a girl. The main difference between them is that she has long hair in the front and the back (around 3 different pieces).

When I brought her into Character, I seemed to duplicate the steps I had followed to get the guy set up (enable Head Turner on the Head layer, add dangles to the necessary elements aka the hair, etc). But her face gets seriously warped, even though the guys face doesn't. Considering they have the _exact_ same face, the only culprit can be the hair, right?

Any help would be appreciated on this one. Thanks xo.

Rigging:

These weird warps!

But then the guy version is totally fine:

Report · Feb 06, 2017

Nice puppets! If you're seeing face warping, you could:

1. Try making each head view independent (if it isn't already).

2. Try making each face element independent and stapling them to the face.

So for example, if my face was really bending in a side view, I might make the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, etc all independent. Then you could select them all and do Puppet > Staple Puppet to Parent to make sure they don't fly off the face.

Basically anytime something warps and you don't want it to, 99% of the time the answer is "make it independent and staple it."

Report · Feb 06, 2017

oksamurai

Thank you! This worked a treat, you're awesome. Love your tutorials too by the way

I have kind of a followup problem: the head is now pretty rogue from the body. What do I do to anchor the head firmly to the neck? It's flying all over the place. Also, I'd love the front strands of hair to sit 'atop' the body, not behind as they are now. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Report · Feb 06, 2017

Did you make the "Head" independent? If so I'd turn that off - that's usually at the root of decapitation issues. Head and Body container groups should never be independent (but the headturn views like frontal are okay).

For hair to show up in front of the body, you'll need to make sure the head group is in front of the body group - right now it looks like you did body first. What you could do is make an extra "front hair" or "hair bg" group outside of the head that basically doubles like a head. See:

How can I add background hair layers?

Report · Feb 07, 2017

oksamurai

Things had actually been getting better! But then I separated the background hair and everything is back to being weird again. She's still decapitated, but now the hair doesn't really stick to her. I tried adding the 'Face' behaviour to the hair, AND without, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Also, the back hair doesn't dangle 😕

Aghhhhh

Here are my layers:

And the weirdness:

Report · Feb 07, 2017

Hmm I'm guessing there's a conflict somewhere (maybe in the groups above your puppet?). If you haven't already, see "Cassandra" here - http://adobe.ly/297v7Wg - she's a working version of the red haired girl with a separate back hair group.

Could you share here or DM me your .puppet file (File > Export > Puppet) via a shared link on Google Drive, Dropbox, or Creative Cloud to take a closer look?

Report · Feb 07, 2017

Sent it to you via DM, thanks!

Report · May 02, 2017

I am having the same issue with my adapted version of the cassandra puppet - any suggestions?

Report · May 02, 2017

Are you using the updated version of Cassandra at http://okaysamurai.com/puppets/ ?

There's also a video about this:

How can I add background hair layers?