004 Using the Parenting and Puppet Tools Part 1

In this tutorial I will walk you through basic parenting to create an arm for a puppetable character. I also show you a more advance way to use the puppet tool and nulls to create a bone system to aid in animating an arm. To watch this tutorial in high quality please go to www.slipperyrocknyc.com. Thank you for checking out the podcast.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• animation
• after
• effects
• character
• tutorial
• puppet
• tool
• parenting
• slipperyrocknyc
• robert
• powers
• adobe
• aftereffects

[SlipperyRockNYC]

Another way would to not create folders in Photoshop and just have all your layers. Once imported into AE they you can select the layers to precomp. I usually like this way. Either will work. When using the puppet tool with nulls it is ideal to keep the comp that the puppet tool is on at the exact size as the comp where the nulls are. Otherwise you will do all this work and when you start moving the nulls to animate they don't match up with the puppet pins.

[SlipperyRockNYC]

It depends on when you want to do the comping. One way is in photoshop grouping layers into folders. Then when you import the PSD into AE you would import as a layered comp and not footage. Footage flattens the PSD into one layer. The folders come in as comps. This way works but it leaves all comps the size of the PSD file (ex. 1000 px x 1000 px). This is sometimes not helpful if you want to select things in the viewer window. Then you can use the anchor point tool to move the pivot point

[SlipperyRockNYC]

Have you precomped each element? All comps need to be the same size as the composition window. The position information is relative to the element itself. So even thought (200,400) is at one point for one element it might be over somewhere else. Another issue could be that you have a comp collapsed/rasterized (the star button on the layer is clicked). That also creates issues with effects when it is on. That is all I can give without seeing the comp itself.

Best of luck!

Rob

[SlipperyRockNYC]

Thanks for checking it out. I hope to update new tutorials soon. Work has been quite busy. Thanks again.

[TheGarbage1969]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense! I am also curious, can you set up replacement-style animations in some of the separate comps, like for example in the comp Hands_L you could have a series of different hand positions? Is that the way you would set up lipsynch for the head layer? I am trying to figure out ways to introduce more dimension into a puppeted character, like the way AE has been used on Wonder Pets or Little Bill. I'm wowed by that but have a hard time figuring out how they do it.

[TheGarbage1969]

Hi Rob

Have been watching this tutorial over and over and over (there's a lot to absorb).

I have a question: after you create the character on separate layers in Photoshop, how do you import it into AE? Do you bring it in as a single composition, and then precompose all the separate elements (head, torso, hands, etc)? From the video onscreen I can see that you have separate comps for each. If this is your method is this to give each item a single anchor point? Thanks for the help!

[avoorduin]

Man, you rock. Best tutprial i´ve seen in a while. I just have one issue: when placing nulls to each puppet point by typing in the pisition values, the null actually places itself somewhere else. Any ideas? Sorry for bugging you.

[mkozal]

thanks for the tutorial. very professional approach.