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dianebecerra
New Participant
January 5, 2018
Answered

Is it possible to...?

  • January 5, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 769 views

Hey everyone,

I have a few questions about what can be achieved within Ch or not, as I couldn't find any direct search result to answer my queries. I'm not new to animation itself, I've been doing it for almost 16 years now, but in other softwares mainly. So my questions are as follows:

1. When making a puppet, is it possible to set up a full 360 rotation of said puppet? I understand how to set up the head structure and use the Head Turner Behavior to get the main frontal 180 degree head turn. I would like to be able to do that same head turn using the camera even when the puppet is facing (body & head) in a side profile,3/4 (front and back) profile, and Back profile,

2. Is it possible to create Tags in order to make more complex rigs that may not be of human anatomical proportions? Example: 4 legged animals, fantasy creatures, articulated hands, etc.

3. Can Ch also motion capture a puppet's body rig using the camera? As an alternative to only using drag handler's/triggers, etc.

4. Is there any way to optimize performance within Ch? For me it seems to lag quit a bit (RAM/CPU spike), at 24 fps, regardless of settings I apply, I get variable fps rates (4-24fps). yet I can run several of the other (Adobe/Autodesk) programs no problem. I use video editing/3D softwares/Game Engines no problem.

These are my specs:

Win 10 x64

Gigabite Tech. mobo model: GA-78LMT-USB3

AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core Processor 3.60 GHz

32 GB DDR3

Nvidia GeForce GT 640

MIDI KB

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (AT&T) tablet via USB3 for Wacom simulation w/ pressure sensitivity via "VirtualTablet" Server software

USB webcam (this is possibly the issue as it is an old webcam prior to HD). Will be substituting it for a GoPro soon.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer TDFAP

    Hello Dianebecerra, I've been seeing your posts and responses to posts, and you seem to always give the advice I was going to give!

    I can't speak to all of your questions, but there are a couple I have worked through before:

    1.Yes! To set up a 360 degree puppet, I simply added the head turner behavior to the entire puppet group (that contained frontal, 3/4 r or l, profiles and back versions of puppet) Once the puppet responded to the head turner behavior, and rotated the whole puppet body correctly, I added the head turner behavior to the head group inside those puppet groups. (So for instance the Frontal puppet contained within it, a head group with applied head turner behavior that also contained a (frontal/neutral head, 3/4 r or l, profiles and back)

    Here's where it gets tricky - EACH puppet (frontal, etc) needs to have its own head group with variations, and a separate HT behavior. HOWEVER when you tag them, be sure that the neutral/forward tagged head matches the angle state of the body. IE on a 3/4 Right facing puppet, tag the 3/4 Right Head as "frontal" in order to tell CH that when the puppet is facing that direction, that particular head matches that body. Then (for this example) the Right Profile head would be tagged as "3/4 Right" and so on.

    Obviously, you would need to record separate takes of the body turn and the (head turn within the body turn), so CH knows what to apply the captured behavior data to.

    I hope this explanation makes sense... I know it works, but I don't know if I described it accurately...

    2. Yes! You can change any behavior title by pressing enter and re-labeling to something like "Right-Rear leg" so that you can use a dragger behavior without having multiple labels that say "Right Arm dragger" or something like that. I have a puppet whose entire head is an articulated hand, where each finger can be moved independently or (by arming multiple finger draggers at once) at the same time to make a fist, say.  This same character has multiple tentacles, some which move autonomously with the physics behavior, and several that I can articulate myself with a dragger. He also has flapping wings that activate on a cycle layers trigger, so really ANYTHING you can image is possible. The sky's the limit.

    I don't know if that responded to your question about changing tags, but I have definitely found some creative way to USE the tags.

    3. Not yet, but Adobe has been teasing this as a major upgrade in the works for a while now.  Guess we will have to wait and see...

    4. I will someone else with better computer optimization knowledge field this one, but I hope my other responses help with the actual animating!

    -AP

    1 reply

    TDFAP
    TDFAPCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    January 6, 2018

    Hello Dianebecerra, I've been seeing your posts and responses to posts, and you seem to always give the advice I was going to give!

    I can't speak to all of your questions, but there are a couple I have worked through before:

    1.Yes! To set up a 360 degree puppet, I simply added the head turner behavior to the entire puppet group (that contained frontal, 3/4 r or l, profiles and back versions of puppet) Once the puppet responded to the head turner behavior, and rotated the whole puppet body correctly, I added the head turner behavior to the head group inside those puppet groups. (So for instance the Frontal puppet contained within it, a head group with applied head turner behavior that also contained a (frontal/neutral head, 3/4 r or l, profiles and back)

    Here's where it gets tricky - EACH puppet (frontal, etc) needs to have its own head group with variations, and a separate HT behavior. HOWEVER when you tag them, be sure that the neutral/forward tagged head matches the angle state of the body. IE on a 3/4 Right facing puppet, tag the 3/4 Right Head as "frontal" in order to tell CH that when the puppet is facing that direction, that particular head matches that body. Then (for this example) the Right Profile head would be tagged as "3/4 Right" and so on.

    Obviously, you would need to record separate takes of the body turn and the (head turn within the body turn), so CH knows what to apply the captured behavior data to.

    I hope this explanation makes sense... I know it works, but I don't know if I described it accurately...

    2. Yes! You can change any behavior title by pressing enter and re-labeling to something like "Right-Rear leg" so that you can use a dragger behavior without having multiple labels that say "Right Arm dragger" or something like that. I have a puppet whose entire head is an articulated hand, where each finger can be moved independently or (by arming multiple finger draggers at once) at the same time to make a fist, say.  This same character has multiple tentacles, some which move autonomously with the physics behavior, and several that I can articulate myself with a dragger. He also has flapping wings that activate on a cycle layers trigger, so really ANYTHING you can image is possible. The sky's the limit.

    I don't know if that responded to your question about changing tags, but I have definitely found some creative way to USE the tags.

    3. Not yet, but Adobe has been teasing this as a major upgrade in the works for a while now.  Guess we will have to wait and see...

    4. I will someone else with better computer optimization knowledge field this one, but I hope my other responses help with the actual animating!

    -AP

      D
      dianebecerraAuthor
      New Participant
      January 9, 2018

      Hey TDFAP,

      Thank you very much for answering my questions so thoroughly. You definitely cleared up a lot of unknowns I had as a new user to Ch. Your answer to my 1st question actually came in sync 100% to the conclusion I too came to on my own while working further on a puppet I'm assembling at the moment. Main reason I had to ask about that is because I'll be having to teach a few other animators on my team how to use these puppets and I may have to assemble a video tutorial afterwards about this little process which seems to be a bit complicated, yet a huge time saver if you really sort out your grouping and layering arrangements beforehand before you get too deep into rigging/recording. I came to see that keeping a very simple and niche naming structure will also help automate rigging detection from the moment you launch Ch.

      To my 2nd question, I see what you're saying for sure about renaming Tags, but I was more curious if one can make NEW tags that would appear within the "Body" panel on the right side which would let you make rigs for 4 legged animals, human torso/horse body type characters, etc. I'll definitely keep your info in mind though for many other rigging purposes I'm sure i'll come to need. Thank you.

      I'll definitely be looking forward to that update to CH for the motion capture function for the body of a "human" puppet.

      Hope the developers of Ch see this post in regards to my last question about the optimization. I did notice that psd files in excess of 50mb do take a bit to update or respond to clicking on the layers and software menus. My original PSD file was created in a really large resolution beyond 1920x1080 so I was looking at a 600+mb PSD (resolution was 6249x6249). To resolve issue this, I just optimized the file by reducing the file itself to be as close as possible to 1920x1080 since the proportion in the file were that of a perfect square workspace. I ended up with 2083x2083 (175mb), which gave me a much more manageable and responsive file within Ch.

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