I can't get the hinge working is a nutctracker bird beak

[christopherb24509435]

Hi,

I am attempting to create a bird beak style mouth using nutcracker, I can not seem to get the hinge factor to work.

Nutcracker is working but I can't seem to activate the hinge.

Help would be welcome.

Thanks

[John T Smith]

The Forum Lounge is not for technical help, please provide the name of the program you are using so your message may be moved to the correct program forum... A program would be Photoshop or Dreamweaver or Muse or Animate or ???

[christopherb24509435]

HI, Adobe Character Animator.

[jane-e]

Moved from The Non-Technical Lounge to Character Animator forum by moderator

[oksamurai]

I've never tried this if I'm understanding it correctly - having a nutcracker jaw pivot from a stapled attach handle set to hinge? Unfortunately I don't think that's possible (yet). Jaw is just and up and down movement currently. There are some other options, like adding a draggable to a stapled hinged jaw and doing a manual up and down drag, or making the mouth shapes all different open/closed beaks.

If this is something you'd like in the future, feel free to suggest it here! Ideas for Character Animator

[christopherb24509435]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I enjoy your videos and instruction, thank you.

I fixed it (the beak hinge mouth) and if you'd like I can tell you how I made the beak hinge.

Since I have your attention I have another question.

This bird (owl) also has wings/arms. I placed them behind the body layer ( and  in there own group titled "wings")

Because they sit behind the body layer the arms don't reach in front of the character rather they function behind, which I don't want.

The reason the sit behind the body layer is because it just looks better, more realistic. I have the wings trigger ( hide groups) to switch between the arm/wings and the motion (cycle layers) wing sets.

Is there a way to get the arms to reach  around in front of the body without putting that layer in front of the body layer?

I understand you mentioned perhaps masking was coming in a future version.

I also viewed you "guitar example" which touch's on some of these issues.

If you have any ideas on this issue please forward them.

Thanks again!!!

Chris

[VacFink]

I haven't tried this but imagine you could fake it with a body swap that includes arms, and animate front movements with layers (or switch static or rear arms to the body, if you want more active front arms. Untested and not an expert but did have the same problem and this is the direction I was going to try.  I was likely to have several optional body swaps with layer animations to solve that kind of problem.

My method maybe not the best way, but hoping Oksamurai or someone else can comment with a better direction and/or confirm my plan would work.

[oksamurai]

Sure I'd love to know how you got the hinge jaw to work! I tried to figure it out this morning with a simple test puppet and couldn't.

Yeah, that guitar example is probably the closest I can think of for what you might want. But there really isn't a great fix for this currently - if you want something to show up in front, putting it higher in the layer order is your best bet.

Depending on the puppet, you can sometimes make it look like something is behind when it's really in front if it's welded. You staple it and then add a bunch of fixed handles and sticks next to it, essentially trying to make that joint as static as possible. So even if there's the illusion of something being behind the body, it can still show up front. But for a bird's pivoting-style wings I'd imagine this might not be the way to go...

[Tripps777]

I have been searching for how to get a hinged "beak" style nutcracker jaw. Can you please explain how you did this?

[TheOriginalGC]

@Tripps777,  I have not tried it, but I would suggest using the Layer Picker behavior instead. Create several positions for the jaw from fully opened to close and then assign the Layer Picker behavior. It will assign the open positions for the loudest speaking and in between positions for moderate volumes. Like I said I've not used it in this manner, but I've used it for flashing lights for a robot voice. It should work the same.

[alank99101739]

Someone must have asked a similar question around Jan 7th because I found a high quality puppet (blush) from back then. So there might be another thread with more details. Here is the puppet I found in my drive folder: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11TJMotZHhY-Kjl0m7ThaFqgqcPXXR_CW/view?usp=sharing - it is a crocodile with long jaw, with hinge and nutcracker jaw behavior.

[EuanWilliamson]

This sounded such fun that I surfaced an image of a Toucan I had to play with

Hope you like it @christopherb24509435 @alank99101739 @oksamurai 

ps. your croc was an inspiration 🙂

[TheOriginalGC]

I love it!