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Martinnel
Martinnel
Inspiring
February 4, 2018
Question

Walk Forward?

  • February 4, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 1765 views

Can you currently make your puppet walk forward towards the camera? I haven't been able yet to figure this out and wonder if we've only got left and right so far.

Martin

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    5 replies

    J
    Jake_R77
    Participating Frequently
    February 5, 2018

    I don't believe there's a walking towards camera function. But you can frame by frame animate in Photoshop or Illustrator and using a Cycle Layers with a Swap Set.

    Martinnel
    MartinnelAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 5, 2018

    And that may ultimately be what I do, but I'd still love to hear for certain from Adobe. And if anyone here has an example of animating a walk forward in PS or IL, I'd love to see it.

    Thanks,

    Martin

    KJerryK
    KJerryK
    Legend
    February 5, 2018

    Depends how much realism you are looking for and how big a hurry you are in. Here is one quick and dirty example I did in After Effects using the puppet tool. It took about three minutes to animate the arms and legs after I did the rain and skirt/hair motion in Character Animator. With a little more effort they could be disappearing into the night.

      CrossTimber
      CrossTimber
      Participating Frequently
      February 5, 2018

      pretty sure it is not built in, Martin.  But I'll leave that up to the official guys to answer!

        CrossTimber
        CrossTimber
        Participating Frequently
        February 4, 2018

        excellent.   Lots of creative work-arounds when telling stories!  Hope your show turns out well!

        alank99101739
        alank99101739
        Legend
        February 4, 2018

        I ended up cheating myself. I could not get the walk behavior to my liking, so I do waist upwards shots now for walking. That is, you cannot see the legs move. Episode 1 - Friendship - Teaser 1 - YouTube   So maybe use the official walk behavior for side ways walks and a close up for walking towards the camera (you just move the puppet yourself, not the walk motion).  I often blend the Transform/Scale value to make it look like the character is coming closer.

          Martinnel
          MartinnelAuthor
          Inspiring
          February 5, 2018

          Thanks Y'all,

          These are interesting workarounds and I may well try them. But I still would like to know whether a forward walk is built into the software or whether I have to find such a workaround.

          Martin

          CrossTimber
          CrossTimber
          Participating Frequently
          February 4, 2018

          Hi Martin!

          I just started playing with the walk behavior to animate a puppy.  My basic suggestion is just to play with it and experiment.  But here are some details.

          The walk behavior moves various tagged parts of a character in pre-determined movements based on which tag you choose.  You may be able to get the desired effect by tagging the parts differently than their obvious intent.   In my puppy project, I needed the front knees to bend backward and the back knees to bend forward, so I added the walk behavior to each limb, and tagged the knees as ankles for the front limbs.

          Moving the bellybutton & hip tags can also alter the movement of the body.  I suggest starting with that movement, and then add separate tags to the legs using separate walk behaviors, and trying different tags for the legs.  Perhaps the arm swing setting.  Lots of setting tweaking!

          Also, the new CH CC18 lets you drag some controls onto the trigger panel.  So that would let you activate SCALE to make your puppet get larger during recording, and you could combine that with the moverents from the walk behavior.

          Hope this helps!

          John Dee

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