Cartoon Animation in After Effects The Puppet Pin Tool After Effects. If youve checked out my Cartoon Animation Basics series or my MPV Hub article on Monty Python Mouth Animation in After Effects, youve seen some examples of jointed animation where the character is broken up into the sections usually at the joints, the joints are pinned together with anchor points, and you animate the character by rotating or re positioning the limbs or jaws around those anchor points. Its a simple and effective animation technique, but tends to create rigid characters that look like marionettes on strings. However, theres another technique available to us in After Effects that lets us create much more organic, spontaneous squash and stretch animation. Squash and stretch was a fluid, rubbery animation style dating back to the 1. Betty Boop animations, where the squash and stretch style is taken to surreal extremes Using After Effects Puppet Pin Tool, we can animate our own characters in a highly organic, natural squash and stretch style, and even record our characters movements in realtime while syncing the movements to a soundtrack, all in After Effects. Puppet Pin Tool After Effects' title='Puppet Pin Tool After Effects' />And in this feature tutorial, Ill show you the basics of how to do just that. My new series More Cartoon Animation Basics covers the Puppet Pin Tool in detail. Lets get started. Step 1 Prepare the Character in Photoshop. Now, unlike the characters you need to create for jointed animation, where you have to break the character up into separate layers in Photoshop before importing it into After Effects, your Puppet Pin character should be all one piece on a single layer. In fact, all your character needs is an alpha channel outline, which will define the characters edges when you rig it with the Puppet Pin Tool this will make more sense in a bit. For this tutorial, Im just going to use a very simple outline of a generic exercise figure, white on black You can use whatever image you like, of course, but its essential that the image has an alpha channel that outlines its shape. If it doesnt have one of its own, youll need to mask the outline of the image manually. Fortunately, my image is an easy one to mask, which is one of the reasons I chose it. If you have a similar image, heres one method for quickly masking an image. Grab the Magic Wand Tool W Then click with it in the larger white area of the image to select all the white pixels We also want the characters head to be part of the Puppet Pin animation, so we need to add that to the alpha channel. Join Chris Meyer for an indepth discussion in this video Overview of the Puppet Pin tool, part of After Effects Apprentice. After Effects CS6. So, Shift click with the Magic Wand in the head area to add its pixels to the selection Now choose Select Save Selection. New Channel to create an alpha channel We now have an alpha channel that exactly duplicates the image. However, we need to connect the head part of the alpha channel to the body, or else the Puppet Pin Tool will see them as two separate objects and wont connect them into a single character. At the same time, we dont want to create an artificial neck for the figure that is, we want the head to appear detached. We solve that problem by painting directly into the alpha channel, not the RGB channels. So, in Photoshop, click the Channels tab to show the channels, turn off the visibility for the RGB channels, turn on the visibility for the Alpha channel, and select it for editing Next set your background color to white and use the Rectangular Marquee tool to make a selection between the head and neck, then delete the selection to white We still have black in the RGB channels, so the head will appear to be detached when composited against black, but the alpha channel connects the two sections together for the Puppet Pin. Just save the image as a Photoshop file to preserve the alpha channel, and were ready to start working in After Effects. Creative COWs user support and discussion forum for users of Adobe After Effects. Adobe After Effects Forum. Free After Effects Cs6 Including settings such as the puppet pin tool, puppet overlap tool. After Effects Puppet Tool Tutorial. Adobe After Effects CS6 Animating. Free script for parenting puppet tool pins to Null objects. Start the After Effects and search for puppet. Parenting puppet pins to null. Rigging with the Puppet tool in After Effects. For those of you using After Effects, theres a really great tool that allowsyou to puppet a character and thats. Fdtd Simulation Software. After Effect Cs6 Serial NumberStep 2 Set Up the After Effects Project. The music excerpt Im going to use here is 2. And Im going to work at 6. Also note that my comp background color is black Import your music and image files, add them to your comp, and were ready to rig the character. Step 3 Start Rigging the Character. The next step is to rig the character with the Puppet Pin Tool, which means to set the deformation points that well be animating. The way that Puppet Pin works is that setting an initial Pin point with the tool divides the entire characterbased on its alpha channel into a fine mesh of triangles. You can then add additional Pin points to define joints and deformation centers. After that, you can move those Pins around including keyframing them, and the pixels underneath the mesh will warp and bend with the mesh, almost as if your image has been printed onto a sheet of rubber, and youre stretching and pulling the sheet. Its a cool effect, but you need to rig the character first. So, to start, grab the Puppet Pin Tool from the toolbar, leaving its settings at their defaults for now Click with it in the foot region of the figure youll see the figure covered with the mesh Step 4 Add More Control Points. Next we want to add some additional Pin points. These points serve as animation control points and set limits for the influence of other points on the mesh. However, you dont need very many points for a simple animation. Win Xp Pro Wga Crack on this page. In my case, Im just going to have the figure swaying its hips to the music while waving its arms overhead, but keeping its feet in place. So, I really only need Pins in both feet to keep them in place, one at the hips which will be our main animation point, and one on the head near the neck, which will let the head move along with the body but also help keep it in place, so it isnt completely in sync with the body Experimentation will, of course, help you understand how the Pins affect each other, but for now, we only need a couple. Now that you have a couple of Pins in place, you can just position your cursor on one of the points and drag it around to see what happens youll see that the mesh, and the character, deform to follow the point Step 5 Dance Now comes the fun part making the character dance. Lego Star Wars 2 Ps2 Iso Espanol Ingles. We could do this by keyframing the character over time in the usual way, but its much more entertaining to record an animation in realtime while listening to a soundtrack. This is one of the Puppet Pins coolest features. To start with, we need a soundtrack, of course Im using an excerpt of one of my old scores. Just add that to the characters comp and position it in time where youd like it to start. Then, with the Puppet Pin Tool selected, hold down the Command key and position the tool over one of your Pin points youll see the cursor add a small clock icon. As soon as you click with that Record cursor on the Pin, the recording will start, so be prepared for that. You might need some practice to get a feel for how the recording begins, but you can always undo any false starts you make. So, click and start dancingHeres a screen capture of one of my own efforts, something like what youll see when you do it yourself And heres the result And basically, thats what you need to know to get started with the Puppet Pin Tool, a wonderful but lesser known feature in After Effects. And as always, experiment, and have fun. After Effects Puppet Tool Adobe Education Exchange. This teaching material has been flagged as violating the Terms of Use. Posted on Jan 1. 0, 2. Jamie Leduc. Last updated on Jun 8, 2. Intent In this tutorial we will cover how to use the puppet tool in After Effects. One of the most fun areas to explore in After Effects is using the Puppet tools. These provide a new way to warp layers, including shape and text layers created inside After Effects. Applications include creating character animation or just imparting fun movement to otherwise inanimate objects. Puppeting takes a clever approach. Rather than working with a rigid bone analogy, puppeting is more akin to working with a sheet of rubber. You place pins in this sheet where you want sections to stay put or at points where you want to pull and deform the rubber. All the pixels in between flex as needed to accommodate your movements. There are optional tools for setting stiffness as well as making sections of a layer pass in front of or behind others. Puppet tools overview and resources Use the Puppet tools to quickly add natural motion to raster images and vector graphics, including still images, shapes, and text characters. Note Though the Puppet tools work within an effect the Puppet effect, you dont apply the effect using the Effect menu or the Effects Presets panel. Use the Puppet tools in the Tools panel to directly apply and work with the effect in the Layer panel or Composition panel. The Puppet effect works by deforming part of an image according to the positions of pins that you place and move. These pins define what parts of the image should move, what parts should remain rigid, and what parts should be in front when parts overlap. Task Part 1. 1. Students are to take a picture of someone in the class in a position similar to the monster in the above image or find a character image online png file format. Go online and find a png image of a posed character and a backgound. Create a 1. 0 second puppet video using your image on a background of your choice. Prepare your file using photoshop or fireworks and save as. Unit 1Activity 1. Import into your AE composition. Add pint tool point and starch to pin locations. To do so, select one or more Deform pins. Your video composition should be atleast 1. Feel free to move the background and character position. Go to the time at which to begin recording motion. In the Composition panel or Layer panel, hold the Ctrl Windows or Command Mac OS key to activate the Puppet Sketch tool. Ctrl drag Windows or Command drag Mac OS the pins to animate. Recording of motion begins when you click to begin the drag. Recording ends when you release the mouse button. The colour of the outline for the mesh for which motion is being sketched is the same as the color of the pin yellow. Reference outlines, for other meshes on the same layer, match the label colour of the layer. The current time indicator returns to the time at which recording began, so that you can repeat the recording operation with more Deform pins or redo the recording operation with the same pins. You can modify the motion paths of the Deform pins using the same techniques that you use to modify any other motion paths. The motion path for a pin is shown only if it is the only pin selected. Try creating several duplicate meshes and sketching motion for each mesh. When you have multiple meshes in the same instance of the Puppet effect, you can sketch motion for one mesh while seeing the reference outlines of the others, allowing you to follow their movements, either roughly or precisely. Upload both to Behance. Now create a Puppet video in Adobe After Effects. Export videos as firstlastnameactivity. Unit 1Activity 1. E Drive. 5. Upload your video to your vimeo channel. Add title Unit 1, Activity 1. Use the Intent as your decription when you upload your videos to vimeo. Add 5 1. 0 tags. Add your video file to your Be. Hance portfolio from vimeo using the embed option on the left. Hints from the teacher Please review this page for help http helpx.