Animate using Puppet tool and rotation. Continually rasterize messes it up.

[StephanieK8172]

In After Effects CC....Trying to animate a vector arm using rotation and the puppet tool. The animation looks good until I hit the continuously rasterize button on that layer. Then it gets distorted and chopped up. I need it to be continually rasterized so that it is not pixelated.  Any suggestions on how to fix this would be awesome.

[Mylenium]

It works as it is designed to work. There is no magic "fix". Puppet Warp is a normal distortion effect that operates on raster data, not the native vectors. Short of working with a bigger source layer, there is no way to improve quality post facto.

Mylenium

[ahain]

I am having the following issue:  I imported an Ai file into after effects as composition - retain layer sizes.  Then I copied the individual layers into my main comp.  Then I turned on continuously rasterize for all layers.  After that the puppet pin tool will not select the layers.  I'm able to add the puppet effect to them but not add pins.  I just get the white arrow w/ the small square, suggesting I'm outside of the outline.  If I turn continuously rasterize back off, things work normally.  It's not a huge deal since I made my image big enough, but I prefer to work with it on when using vectors.  Does this have to do with the pin outlines referencing bitmap information as mentioned above?

[Dave_LaRonde]

Yes.

[Rick Gerard]

As Mylenium said, make a bigger layer. Try putting your puppet pin in a separate large comp, do the animatiion, then nest the animated comp inside a production sized composition and scale to fit. That is the only way around it.

[Todd_Kopriva]

You should not be doing effect work (like with Puppet tools) and animations and then later enabling continuous rasterization. Enabling continuous rasterization changes the rendering order. You should enable continuous rasterization as soon as you add the layer to the composition, and then work with transformations and effects after that.

[SiliconPixel]

I get soooo frustrated with the puppet pin effect!

I import an illustrator file, select the continuously rasterise switch and apply the puppet pin effect.

I find that AE just doesn't like AI files with the puppet pin - mesh seems to get all screwed up. If you apply any scale to that AI layer, it's even worse. REALLY difficult to work with and to me, it seems like there are some bugs when the source is an AI file - am I wrong?

[Szalam]

SiliconPixel wrote:

I get soooo frustrated with the puppet pin effect!

I import an illustrator file, select the continuously rasterise switch and apply the puppet pin effect.

I find that AE just doesn't like AI files with the puppet pin - mesh seems to get all screwed up. If you apply any scale to that AI layer, it's even worse. REALLY difficult to work with and to me, it seems like there are some bugs when the source is an AI file - am I wrong?

Your issues are probably occuring because you're not using the puppet pins correctly. This page in the AE help should help explain things. Here's a relevant portion:

Note: Don’t animate the position or scale of a continuously rasterized layer with layer transformations if you are also animating the layer with the Puppet tools. The render order for continuously rasterized layers—such as shape layers and text layers—is different from the render order for raster layers. You can precompose the shape layer and use the Puppet tools on the precomposition layer, or you can use the Puppet tools to transform the shapes within the layer. (See Render order and collapsing transformations and Continuously rasterize a layer containing vector graphics.)

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

Simply stated the pupet pin effect uses the Composition space and an alpha chanel from the first frame to deform any pixels on the screen. Therefore if you move or change the position or scale of the pixels after the first frame using any transform or effect you have now moved the original source of the pixels and puppet pin breaks. This is the way the effect is designed and it's the only way that it works.

There is only one proper workflow. Setup a comp that is big enough to include all of the image you want to animate when viewed at 100% scale or a distance from the camera equal to the zoom value of the camera if used in a 3D comp. IOW, if you scale your puppet pin layer more than 100% in the final comp your comp is not big enough, or in a 3D comp, if you want to move the camera to 1/4 the distance of the Zoom value of the camera to the puppet pin layer your puppet pin comp must be 4 times bigger.

Animate the puppet pin effect

Bring the puppet pin composition into yoiur main composition and apply any other effects, transformations or any other manipulations you need to perform to achieve your desired results.

Puppet pin is designed for this workflow and when used properly it is a very handy tool.

[SiliconPixel]

Thanks all,

I understand - it is a very counter-intuitive tool though - so used to being able to apply an effect etc and then not worry about transforming. I see why it works that way though.

Cheers.

[Zorasgar]

Thanks dude. Really helpful

[TalkMotion]

Sarcasm?

[Roei Tzoref]

I Believe not.

[TalkMotion]

touche!

[Zorasgar]

Not at all my man

[TalkMotion]

A seemingly decent work-around would be to make an adjustment layer at the top of your layer order and slap a sharpen effect on it