Scroll background for walk behavior

[danielw406]

Hello. I'm hoping to have my character stay in the center of the screen, but have the background scroll as he walks. Is this possible in Character Animator?

Thanks for any suggestions you might have. I assume I could do this in After Effects after the recording is made, but would prefer not to have to guess where they would be placed on the background.

[KJerryK]

The easiest way to scroll a background is to drag the image into the scene behind the puppet. Then select the background, arm it to record the transport function, and hit record while dragging the position x behavior. The background, as a separate "puppet" in the scene, will have its own behaviors.

It can also be done in After Effects, with somewhat more precision.

[danielw406]

Thanks for the response KJerryK. It sounds like bringing it into after effects would be the most effective. I was really hoping that the scrolling of the background could be parented to the character's walking. It sounds like the answer to that question is "no."

[DanTull]

This is, for what it's worth, something we considered doing but just haven't yet (a way for walk to direct some or all of movement that would otherwise be applied to the body to some other piece of artwork for a scrolling effect).

DT

[KJerryK]

The last few days I've been playing around with using just the dragger behavior to scroll a background. It's pretty easy and quick. Just tag the bg with draggable, set the end position with transform, pull the bg way beyond the start position, let go and quickly hit record. It's much smoother than changing x position with the mouse. An example:

[Emily_Watts · Accepted solution]

As an update, in case anyone comes upon this old thread looking for info, Okay Samurai featured a hack to create a moving background and foreground within CH, using the Walk behavior.

Here's a link to the video - it's the "Nuketown Camera Hack" segment at 6:33.

Character Animator Tips & Tricks (February 2018) - YouTube

Essentially, you tag your background and foreground as "Hip" body parts. Then you enable the walk behavior with 0% Strength (so it doesn't bob up and down), and you set a negative value for the Body Speed if you have a character walking in the scene and want the background to move in the opposite direction of the character. The video above does a great job of explaining in detail.