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A
Anonymous
February 14, 2017
Question

To sit down your character

  • February 14, 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 7601 views

Hello. All the tutorials operate with standing characters.

May someone advice me how the chain of independence/attaching/draging handles have to look like to sit down the character on the chair for example?

I was playing enough with standing or walking figure but stuck with realistic sitting movement.

Like if I'd want to put the blue monster from the welcome window on a chair which points and where I have to put on his body? And what the "paranting" order has to be in it? Maybe someone faced such a task and can help me out.

Thank you a lot in advance.

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      6 replies

      scotte57842618
      scotte57842618
      Known Participant
      February 15, 2017

      Those are great, and a great advertisement for the software

        scotte57842618
        scotte57842618
        Known Participant
        February 15, 2017

        So if I understand what you just said correctly, I could have a character in one position, with draggables and sticks, trigger him to another position, and place draggables on the new position, and that wont affect the mesh? I havent even tried draggables in different positions yet, so I have no idea, usually when me and Ant need a character to do something new, we experiment until we get it right....or ask you But from what the person was asking above, triggers seemed a good solution, in fact I think the triggers and cycle layers are one of the most powerful and awesome aspects of Character Animator!

        oksamurai
        oksamurai
        Legend
        February 15, 2017

        Yes. Haven't done it myself but I have seen it out in the wild. The most impressive of these I've seen was done on the Late Show (at around 2:55):

          scotte57842618
          scotte57842618
          Known Participant
          February 15, 2017

          Well start you second puppet in the standing position, but have a cycle layer on everything so it cycles down into the sat position and then holds on that frame, better, make it a trigger action, so you bring in puppet 2, trigger it into sat position, which has all the draggers and sticks in place, and when finished, unlatch so it returns to standing position and then swap back in puppet one with all the draggers and sticks in place for standing.

          As far as I am aware, and I could be wrong, you cant move the draggers and sticks on a puppet, hence the two puppet set up.

          scotte57842618
          scotte57842618
          Known Participant
          February 15, 2017

          You could create a second identical puppet, that starts standing, and then sits down, which can then have all the draggers added. So in your time line you have your normal standing puppet, then you swap it out for your second puppet, which sits down and has all the draggers and sticks in place.

          Does that make sense?

            A
            Anonymous
            February 15, 2017

            Hmm ) I didn't think it this way )

            I'll try, thanks. So, this way I have to create at least one more transitional puppet besides 2 main positions, right? To make it smoother. Otherwise it will jump from standing to sitting as I understand. Or maybe crossfading on the timeline between positions might help?

            oksamurai
            oksamurai
            Legend
            February 15, 2017

            Great advice from Scott here. Key triggered cycle layers can be very powerful when you realize that with checking "hold on last layer" under cycle layers, that last layer can be anything - a layer, a group, or even an entirely different puppet. Draggables and sticks only pertain to what you see on the screen, so you can have them wherever (and in as many places) you want.

            So imagine inside your +Wife group you have a group called "Switch" with cycle layers (+ hold on last layer, forward and reverse, and a latched S key) applied to it. The first group inside could be "Stand", and your existing puppet would go there. Then you could manually make several inbetween layers where you slowly move the head and body more and more towards a sitting position - and to make it faster, remove all the naming/tagging structure - just worry about the transitional forms. So maybe you have 3-5 inbetween layers under your Stand group, and then the last group it lands on is "Sit" - and there you've got the same structure as Stand, but now in a sitting position. If this works like I think it would, then you could press S to move from stand to sit, and then again to return to standing.

            I don't know that we have any examples of puppets doing this yet, but there are quite a few that change their form into something else, like Finn the fish when you press Z: Character Animator Examples

              scotte57842618
              scotte57842618
              Known Participant
              February 15, 2017

              Alternatively could you not create a trigger layer for each of your elements?

              So for example, press s (latch it) and your character animates to a sat position. The legs bend, the body drops, head, eyes, everything animates to that dropped position, and then stays there until you press S again when the animation reverse sequences back up to original position. I suppose this might cause a problem if you have sticks and draggers, I don't know, I've not tried BUT to get around that, instead of having sticks and draggers, if you do what arm motions, just have them as triggers. I made a gamer just this week where I have latch triggers, and then secondary triggers. When I pressed a button, the character went from arms out, to holding a joypad. I had it latched so the action stuck, then I pressed a second latch trigger to make his hands start playing the joypad.

              Does this make sense Feel free to ask questions if not.

              A
              Anonymous
              February 15, 2017

              I thought about triggers but it won't work, unfortunatelly, I need the sitting pose more handable and not just the only sat position but variable poses so she might move within the sat position. Or then I will need to put her on a sofa and another furniture will not fit the previous settings. Just needed to get the general principle and hope I got. Thank you for your help anyway.

              A
              Anonymous
              February 14, 2017

              Or I send here the link too the real puppet which I want to sit down corectly.

              Santa wife.puppet - Google Drive

              oksamurai
              oksamurai
              Legend
              February 14, 2017

              Awesome puppet! Okay, here's how I tried it with your character, by adding sticks, fixed, and draggable handles on the body:

              Which gets you something like:

              So basically the waist stays fixed and you drag the dress and legs wherever you want them.

              If you wanted more control you could:

              • Add way more draggables. See Gene here: Character Animator Examples - he has draggables in most of his joints, which makes him highly poseable.
              • Make the legs independent, give them a little extra length, put them under the dress, make them independent and staple them. This will make them separate parts from the dress, which means the dress bending won't affect/bend them.

              If this was for a recorded performance, you would probably do several dragger takes to get her from A to B. For live this wouldn't work - you would need to do a key triggered body swap or something similar.

              Hope that helps...?

              A
              Anonymous
              February 15, 2017

              Thanks a lot, I'll try to follow this. I supposed that for recording I will need to change draggers between poses and you confirmed. Thanks a lot once again.

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