How do I make the body structure when I have all the parts as layers

Sorry, the video is behind a login page on Instagram. I don’t have a Facebook account and given their privacy history I am not planning to create one!

AE cannot edit the character. You do all the animation in CH. AE takes the video stream out of CH and can layer it and do other things to it. But not all CH functionality is in AE. For example, you can scale the video, move it around etc in AE. But you cannot move the head in AE and have the hair dangle nicely (I think).

Regarding “draggable sticks” - there are draggers which are a single point that you can move with your mouse and sticks which are lines (not draggable) equivalent to bones in arms and legs to control where bending can occur.

Changing clothes can be done in different ways. One is using swap sets in the one puppet. Personally I create a separate puppet to keep puppet complexity down. Sally With Green Dress, Sally With Polka Dots, Sally with ...  There is a “shared puppet” feature that may be worth reading up on - I have never used it myself.

Prem Pro etc cannot edit a puppet. But you can use “dynamic linking” to drag a scene from the Character Animator window over into Premier Pro. As soon as you edit the puppet in CH, it will be visible in PP. But it can be sluggish, depending on your computer and puppet etc. (I don’t do it often personally - I export video clips from CH and import the video file into PP.)

For Sad, you cannot add new emotions to the Face behavior. You have to use a keyboard (or MIDI) trigger. There are two approaches

#1. If you want a single sad face position, add a new swapset above the mouth section of the existing puppet so you can replace the whole mouth group with the sad mouth.

> Head

> >  Gob Swapset

> > > Sad (triggered)

> > > Quizical (triggered)

> > > Mouth (default for swap set)

> > > > Neutral

> > > > Ah

> > > > Smile (built in expression)

So triggering “sad” or other emotions hides the default mouth group (which you make the default for the swapset). Swapsets hide the other triggers in the group - only one visible at a time. Works best if they are siblings.

#2. If you want a sad face while talking, you can redraw all the mouth positions in a sad form. Swapset picks between default Mouth set and Sad Mouth set.

> Head

> > Gob Swapset

> > > Sad Mouth

> > > > Neutral

> > > > Ah

> > > > Smile (a sad smile???)

> > > Default Mouth (default for swapset)

> > > > Neutral

> > > > Ah

> > > > Smile

You might need to add a Face behavior to “Sad Mouth” and “Default Mouth” - I cannot remember. I don’t remember if the Face behavior will control all mouths or just the first one it finds.

Oh, I don’t call it “Mouth Swapset” because it will tag the swapset layer as a Mouth (and its not). So I use “Gob” or other slang, or “Mth Swapset” or similar. Auto tagging looks for the word “Mouth” and will tag that.

So i cant edit that message on my phone, and i acsid pressed post, so sorry for the typos lol. Anyway ive working on a new design so i can change clothing without changing the body parts, so i can change the clothing on the puppet easy and nice, i will do that for the eyes and the brows and so on. But also, if i want to make a new mouth lets say sad, because it isnt a “Sad” in the mouth section, will the program see me sad or do i need to customate it. Like to work when i press a button or somehow like that. Also when thats said, i also was wondering if i could put the body in to for instant premier pro or after effects and make animations in there with it, where the puppet will keep the same settings for the hair and movements and so on.

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Hii!! I just wanted so tell you that am still here, and tjat ive just been a littlebit inactive because ive been sick!! But an better now, and i am also working on a mew design to put into character animatior. Like a body and with cthe clothing as layers instead of merged onto

Quick questions are fine. They are quick to answer.

Yes, adjust the layers in photoshop without changing nesting depth of anything. Just change the order of siblings.

Clearly you should have got mad with the computer earlier!

I have a deadline for my work this week, but after that if of interest to you happy to grab a copy of your puppet and say record a tutorial I can share on YouTube showing what I do to try and get it going (hopefully useful to others as well). You can then follow along at home. The more advanced you get, the harder it is to diagnose problems via screenshots.

On the rear hair group you probably have a single attach point at the origin, so it does not look natural. I suggest trying two pins on rear hair layer on left and right side half way down head. Try . If no good, undo and try a horizontal stick across head half way down head (in hair layer) - maybe move rear hair origin down a bit so the stick goes thru it. I think the pins should work though.

basically you want the rear hair to swing below the head, not from top of head.

Extra groups do not matter - only when you add independence does it matter. So up to you. I normally keep it flat

Moving the body in a recording from left to right the body will follow the head a bit. Beyond that I would look through tutorials on movement. i can answer specific questions but not going to try and repeat the tutorials all here! ;-)

I notice you have a nose tag near the waste. I would remove excess tags.

Next step is is putting a dragger on the wrists and trying to move the hands do record it. That may be trail and error - see what works that you like.

For the lower arms, you can change the order of siblings to change what appears in front of what. If that is not enough can discuss more.

But yes, the reason the body is moving with the head is you made it a child. Parents tend to control children. (And its the mesh hierarchy that matters here, not the layer hierarchy - CH does not show you the mesh hierarchy - you have to work it out in your head by looking at the independence crowns.)

There are a few other gotchas. But get the body structure right first. The Head is somewhat complex. If you do the wrong thing, the head will get pinned to the background by mistake and not move. But get the body structure and rear hair right first, then move on to the next problem.

From my perspective the puppet is getting closer - meshes are looking better, nesting almost right, etc.

Once you get the structure right, can move on to the rear hair to make it dangle nicer.

Because it is so wide, it probably has more resistance to bending. You may need to put more dangle handles along the bottom of the rear hair group. You might also need to adjust the stiffness setting by adding a new behavior to the rear hair group to change the default physics settings (you probably need different stiffness for the front and rear hair because of the artwork - you can add behaviors to any layer in the tree so those settings only affect that layer and its children.)

You can play with the physics settings already on the root of the puppet just to see what they do. There is gravity strength, stiffness, stretch etc.

I think it is the stiffness setting making the hair stand out, or lack of dangle handles in the right spot. That takes a bit of trial and error Just playing until it “looks good”.

The top level body structure would be:

* +Toma

* * Head (No +)

* * Body (No +)

* * * Neck

* * Read Hair Group (No +)

So Neck is part of the body artwork, but appears behind the head.

The Head and Body and Rear Hair Group are all part of the root puppet mesh.

With the Frontal layer added,

* +Toma

* * Frontal.  (Ummm - I actually don’t remember whether to make this independent!)

* * * Head (No +)

* * * Body (No +)

* * * * Neck

* * * Read Hair Group (No +)

CH supports walking only for left and right profiles, not frontal. So if you don’t have plans to draw them, don’t bother about the walk behavior.