Puppet Pin Tool After Effects Cs6
When you move one or more Deform pins, the mesh changes shape to accommodate this movement, while keeping the overall mesh as rigid as possible. The result is that a movement in one part of the image causes natural, life-like movement in other parts of the image. For example, if you place Deform pins in a person’s feet and hands and then move one of the hands to make it wave, the motion in the attached arm is large, but the motion in the waist is small, just as in the real world.
Puppet tool won't work - Creative COW's user support and discussion forum for users of Adobe After Effects. Adobe After Effects Forum. The Puppet Pin Tool in After Effects CC allows for the creation of bone-like structures for full-body character animation. This course shows you how to open up a whole new world of possibilities using the Puppet Pin Tool's features in countless ways. Software Required: After Effects CC. Add subtle animation and bring your designs to life with the Puppet tool in After Effects. Here’s everything you need to know. When working with image assets (especially vector designs), subtle application of the Puppet tool in After Effects can add life to your animation. In this example, I’m animating a background design of a bird and other design elements scaling up.
If a single animated Deform pin is selected, its Position keyframes are visible in the Composition panel and Layer panel as a motion path. You can work with these motion paths as you work with other motion paths, including setting keyframes to rove across time. (See.) You can have multiple meshes on one layer. Having multiple meshes on one layer is useful for deforming several parts of an image individually—such as text characters—as well as for deforming multiple instances of the same part of an image, each with a different deformation. The original, undistorted mesh is calculated at the current frame at the time at which you apply the effect. The mesh does not change to accommodate motion in a layer based on motion footage, nor does the mesh update if you replace a layer’s source footage item. Robert Powers provides a video tutorial on the that demonstrates the use of parenting and the Puppet tools to animate a character.
Dave Scotland provides a video tutorial on the that demonstrates how to create a looping character animation using the Puppet tools. Kert Gartner provides a video tutorial on the that shows how to add organic motion to images using the wiggle expression method on Puppet pins. Daniel Gies provides in which he demonstrates the use of inverse kinematics and the Puppet tools to rig and animate a character.
The stopwatch switch is automatically set for the Position property of a Deform pin as soon as the pin is created. Therefore, a keyframe is set or modified each time that you change the position of a Deform pin. This auto-keyframing is unlike most properties in After Effects, for which you must explicitly set the stopwatch switch by adding a keyframe or an expression to animate each property. The auto-animation of Deform pins makes it convenient to add them and animate them in the Composition panel or Layer panel, without manipulating the properties in the Timeline panel.
Click any nontransparent pixel of a raster layer to apply the Puppet effect and create a mesh for the outline created by auto-tracing the alpha channel of a layer. Click within a closed path on a vector layer to apply the Puppet effect and create a mesh for the outline defined by that path.
Click within a closed, unlocked mask to apply the Puppet effect and create a mesh for the outline defined by the mask path. Click outside all closed paths on a vector layer to apply the Puppet effect without creating a mesh. Outlines are created for paths on the layer, though an outline is only visible when a Puppet tool pointer is over the area that the outline defines.
Place the pointer over the area enclosed by a path to see the outline in which a mesh will be created if you click that point. (See.) Click within an outline to create a mesh.
If a layer has no unlocked masks, shapes, or text characters on it when you apply the Puppet effect, it uses Auto-trace to create paths from the alpha channel. These paths are only used by the Puppet effect in the determination of outlines and do not appear as masks on the layer. If the layer is a raster layer with no alpha channel, the result is a single rectangular path around the bounds of the layer.
For a complex image, or to configure Auto-trace settings, use Auto-trace before using the Puppet tools. (See.) A text character that consists of multiple disjoint closed paths (such as the letter i) is treated as multiple separate paths. The stroke of a shape or text character is not used in the determination of outlines; only the path is used.
To encompass a stroke within a mesh created from such items, increase the Expansion value. The default value of 3 pixels for Expansion encompasses a stroke that extends 3 pixels or less from its path. If the Puppet effect has already been applied to a layer, outlines appear with a yellow highlight as you move a Puppet tool pointer over them. You can choose the outline in which to place an initial pin to create a mesh. A mesh is created each time that you click within an outline with a Puppet tool.
If the Puppet effect has not already been applied to a layer, outlines for that layer have not yet been calculated. When you click, the Puppet effect calculates outlines and determines whether you have clicked within an outline. If so, it creates a mesh defined by the outline in which you clicked. Otherwise, you can move the pointer around in the layer to select the outline in which to place a pin and create a mesh. Moving the pointer around in the layer is useful for seeing the outlines of various objects and choosing which outlines to use to create a mesh. To show the mesh for the Puppet effect, select Show in the options section of the Tools panel.
To select or move a pin, click or drag it with the Move tool. To activate the Move tool, place the pointer on a pin while either the Selection tool or the corresponding Puppet tool is active. To select multiple pins, Shift-click them, or use the marquee-selection tool to drag a marquee-selection box around them. To activate the marquee-selection tool, place the pointer for a Puppet tool outside all meshes and outlines or hold the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key. To select all pins of one kind (Deform, Starch, or Overlap), select one pin of that kind and press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS). To delete selected pins, press the Delete key. If the pin has multiple keyframes, and only the keyframe at the current time is selected, pressing Delete deletes only that keyframe; pressing Delete again deletes the pin.
To reset Deform pins to their original locations at the current time, click Reset for the Puppet effect in the Timeline panel or Effect Controls panel. To remove all pins and meshes from an instance of the Puppet effect, click Reset again. To increase or decrease the number of triangles used in a mesh, modify the Triangle value in the options section of the Tools panel or in the Timeline panel.
Modifying the Triangle value sets the value for a selected mesh or, if no mesh is selected, sets the value for meshes created later. A higher number of triangles gives smoother results but takes longer to render. Small objects, like text characters, usually distort well with only 50 triangles, whereas a large figure may require 500. The number of triangles used may not match the Triangle value exactly; this value is a target only. To expand the mesh beyond the original outline, increase the Expansion property in the options section of the Tools panel or in the Timeline panel. Modifying the Expansion property sets the value for a selected mesh or, if no mesh is selected, sets the value for meshes created later.
Expanding the mesh is useful for encompassing a stroke. To duplicate an object using Puppet Pin tool, click within the original outline.
Clicking within the original outline creates a new mesh, with its own copy of the pixels from within the original outline. You can also duplicate a Mesh group in the Timeline panel to achieve the same result, which is sometimes easier than clicking within the original outline without clicking the mesh to create a pin.
The pointer icon that you describe is the one that appears when the pointer is outside of the outline/mesh that contains the Puppet pins. (It's the one in the third list item on.) Does the pointer change to a different icon when you put it inside of an outline?
If you need some help learning the basics of using the Puppet tools, I recommend watching the videos linked to from the page. Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated putting the 'T' back in 'RTFM': - If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share-or if there is something that you'd like to see added or improved-please leave a comment.
Hi, I had a similar problem. When I clicked on the object with the puppet pin tool the cursor changed to white with a small white square by it and no puppet mesh showed up on the image. When I checked under effects puppet was listed but none of the options with it showed up and also I wasn't able to add any more pins.
The layer I was trying this on had a mask, apparently the puppet tool doesn't work with masked layers since as soon as I deleted the mask the puppet tool then worked. Check your layers to make sure there are no masks. If there are any effects or anything on the layer I'd turn them off and try the tool, do a little experimenting since something similar may be not allowing the puppet pin tool to work. Describes how the Puppet tool interacts with paths already on a layer. Basically, if you already have masks on a layer, the Puppet effect is expecting you to click within one of them to define a mesh within that outline. Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated putting the 'T' back in 'RTFM': - If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share-or if there is something that you'd like to see added or improved-please leave a comment.
Luke, your post here was VERY helpful. Though it didn't solve my problem immediately. I wish I could say that Todd's (Adobe) post was helpful at all, but it really wasn't addressing this specific problem. Anyway, I had the same issue both you and Leah were having. I was trying to apply pins to a photoshop image sequence with an alpha channel. In theory, I should have no problem doing this. But all I would get is the white arrow with a square next to it, the 'Puppet' effect applied to the layer, but no pins.
The problem seems to be that the auto-trace wasn't working to allow Puppet to define the edge of the image. So what I did was actually draw a rough mask shape around my object (which was the PSD sequence) and then applying the Puppet tool worked as it should. Luke, you said the tool wasn't working when you had a mask applied.
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So perhaps trying it both ways will resolve some issues people are having. I hope these posts help someone else in the future. Thanks for this post, Robert. I was having some frustrating issues with an image and the puppet pin tool with it only outlining areas surrounding a white section of the image even with a defined alpha channel. I drew a mask around the whole image and this allowed me to put a pin in the white problem area which defined a mesh as drawn by the mask shape. I have my suspicions that there is some underlying issue with the puppet pin tool and the way a rasterized image is layered before flattening.
In any case your method works! Regards, Andrew. I´ve to problems with puppet pins. First, in a null object, crating a chain of null objects I need to set a pin in each top left corner of the dummy.I don´t know why it doesn´t add more than 2 pins.sometimes three in my working layer (a video layer) but I want to reference to some coordinate of the border of the null objects (repeat: standing in my video layer) If I try the same over a null object, then I can add as many pins as I want.what may be happening? And after that.when trying to parent the position of my pin to the position of the null object, I don´t see the properties that should appear after clicking the stop clock in the pin layer.clicking the clock only adds or remove keyframe, but doesnt display the parenting tools.
Some suggestion? I am having this issue. I can't figure out why! I have a photoshop image of a skeleton that I cut out and it now has an alpha channel. I imported the PSD file into AE CS6 and dropped it into my comp.
I go to the Puppet pin tool and then I click on the skeleton, I immediately hear the Windows 7 error 'bing' and then the arrow with a square icon shows up as my tooltip (instead of the pin), and I'm unable to place pins, but the effect shows up under my layer in the timeline. I even tried masking off the image to see if that would help, and nothing!
Thanks all My portfolio can be seen at My personal website is. Well, I had got this situation too, and well the mask layer solution is basically helped place my pins, but after that, when i want to use my duik plugin, it messed up the whole comp.
So I given it the old way solution. CLOSE THAT THING, and start a new project. Not to restart the program, but create a whole new project.
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And now its working. Just the way it should be. So, I know its a bit COMPlicated (sorry for that 😃 ), but its working, and after that you can also import the working project back to your old project, and continue your work. I hope it helps!