Positioning two puppets in the timeline?

[StanWelks]

I imported two puppets designed in Illustrator and I dragged my first one from the Project Panel into the Timeline. I recorded a short clip of it while using my webcam. I now want to drag the second puppet into the Timeline and do the same thing.

1.) Is the best way to do this to just drag the second puppet to a place after the first one ends and record the new one and than to just move the start of the second puppet to the right spots? OR is there a different way to record two puppets and place them into the timeline?

2.) I want my puppets on screen at the same time, I try to drag the clip representing the second puppet back to the beginning of the timeline so it starts at the same time as the other, though it does not let me.

Thanks.

[alank99101739]

1) I pull the playhead (the blue line) back to the start of the scene and record from there. In the timeline, over on the left is the puppet name and track names etc. If you untick the red dot, that puppet will no longer record values. So you can select the puppet you are working on. Its much easier to get both puppets interacting having them lined up on the timeline, getting the positions correct relative to each other in the same scene etc.

If you don’t want the two puppets interacting, I would personally create a new scene for the second puppet so the scenes don’t get too large And complicated. But that is personal preference.

2) Hmm, yes. What the top level bar for the puppet allows you to do is to trim where the puppet is active. I have never tried “moving” it. I normally just leave it active for the whole scene, using the Opacity Transform behavior to make puppets appear and disappear. So just grab the edge and drag it back to the start.

To move all the recordings back,  you can drag out a selection rectangle for all the recorded takes for the puppet and drag them back together. They all do support dragging.

Feel free to make a feature suggestion to allow dragging of the whole puppet. (There are links at the top of the forum.) I think most people don’t adjust that bar and just disable or even hide (the eyeball) the puppets they are not working on, rather than moving them out to the end like you describe. So it probably has not come up often.

[DanTull]

Strange, it is definitely possible to have 2 different puppets in the same scene with recordings overlapping in time. A screenshot or screen capture (video) might help me understand the problem you're hitting.

Thanks,

Dan Tull