Adobe After Effects Cs6 Adobe After Effects Tutorials Cinema 4d Tutorial Animation Tutorial Film Effect Photoshop Design Photoshop Actions After Effect Tutorial Pin Tool Stefano Virgilli from VOXLAB shows here how to animate an object in Adobe After Effects CS6 using the Puppet Pin Tool. Animating Characters with the Puppet Tool. By Shutterstock May 7, 2013. Share this: Facebook; Twitter. Create a new Illustrator file using the same settings you plan to use in your After Effects file. Select the Puppet Tool from your tool bar (it looks like a push pin). Now, select one of your leg layers and click on the joints of the.

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  Adobe After Effects CC 2020 17.0.0.557 LATEST

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Using the Puppet tool

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Puppet tool in Adobe After Effects to use pins to animate a character. You’ll also learn how to control how parts of an image overlap other parts and even animate this behavior.

Requirements

To follow along with this article, you need this software:

• After Effects CS3
• Sample File

Watch this tutorial in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Video Workshop.

Using the Puppet tool

1. In After Effects, choose File > Open Project and open PuppetTool.aep.
2. Double-click the Puppet Animation render.mov footage to open it in a separate window.
3. Press the Play button <<icon>> to preview the animation. The Puppet tool is used in this example to animate the figure on the stage, including the way his arms and legs move over each other. Close the window when you are finished.

Figure 1: An example of a completed puppet animation

1. The Puppet Animation composition should already be open. Select the puppet_precomp layer from the Timeline.
2. Choose the Puppet Pin tool <<icon>> from the Tools panel. The Puppet Pin tool is the last tool on the right.

Figure 2: Choose the Puppet Pin tool from the Tools panel.

1. Choose the Composition panel and click on each of the character’s hands to add new Deform pins. Notice that as soon as you create the first pin, the Puppet effect is added to the Timeline.

Figure 3: Click the character’s hands to add two new pins.

1. Drag the pin on the left hand of the character up. Notice that the entire figure pivots around the pin on the right hand as you move the left. Drag the pin on the right hand and the same pivot action occurs, centered on the left hand.
2. To keep the character from floating in the air as you move the hand pins, add two more pins to the character’s ankles.
3. Drag the pin on the left hand of the character up and down again. Notice that the entire movement is a little more natural and that the character’s feet stayed pinned to the stage. Move the left hand pin from left to right to watch the character swivel left to right from the pins on his ankles.

Figure 4: When you move a pin, the entire figure pivots around the other pins.

1. You may notice that some stray pixels are left over as you move the character. This is because the first time you use the Puppet tool, it creates a mesh over the selected image, and in this case the mesh does not include the full shape of the hand. Show the mesh by selecting the Mesh option in the Tools panel.
2. To pick up any stray pixels not included in the mesh, expand the mesh by increasing the Expansion field in the Tools panel. Increase the Expansion to 5 to pick up any stray pixels in the composition.

Figure 5: Expand the mesh to make sure the entire character is selected.

1. Deselect Mesh so that you can see the character and Deform pins more clearly. In the next few steps, you’ll learn how to animate the pins.
2. Make sure the puppet_precomp layer is still selected and press the U key. This displays the Mesh property along with the four existing Deform pins and their position values. Notice that the stopwatch is automatically selected for each of these pins and a keyframe is added at the beginning of each layer. This is different from other properties in After Effects where you have to click the stopwatch to add a keyframe.

Figure 6: The Deform pins appear in the Timeline as Puppet Pins 1 to 4.

1. Drag the current-time indicator (CTI) across the Timeline. Choose the Composition panel and drag the pin on the left hand of the character up and the pin of the right hand down. You’ll see the motion paths appear between the start and end points of the pins, and After Effects automatically adds keyframes to the Timeline.

Figure 7: Move the CTI and drag the pins again to create two more keyframes.

1. Move the CTI further across the Timeline and drag the pins again to create two more keyframes. To move multiple pins at once, click one pin and then Shift-click the others and then they can be moved as a grouped.
2. Click the Ram Preview button in the Time Controls panel to preview your work so far.
3. Move the CTI to the beginning of the Timeline. Select the pin on the character’s left ankle and move it to the right. Notice that the character’s left leg moves behind his right leg. Move the pin higher to watch his left leg move in front of the right leg. When you’re animating shapes, it’s important to be able to control whether they move behind or in front of other objects. You can control this with the Puppet Overlap tool <<icon>>.

Figure 8: The left leg moves in front of the right leg as it is raised and moves behind the right leg as it is lowered.

1. Choose the Puppet Overlap tool from the Puppet Pin tool pop-up menu.
2. Click to add two Overlap pins, one on each ankle, directly over the original Deform pins.

Figure 9: Add two Overlap pins directly over the Deform pins.

1. Press the Shift key, and click both Overlap pins, and change the Extent value in the Tools panel to 160 to extend the Overlap mesh up each leg. Now you can control how the legs overlap one another.

Figure 10: Increase the Extent property to extend the Overlap mesh up each leg.

1. The two Overlap pins appear in the Timeline as well, below the Deform pins. Click the triangle next to each pin to display its properties. The In Front value controls the overlap. Change the In Front value of the first overlap pin to 110%.

Figure 11: Increase the In Front property of an Overlap pin to keep that part of the character in front of other areas as it moves.

1. Choose the Puppet Pin tool from the Tools panel. Move the pin on the character’s left ankle up and to the right. Notice that no matter how you move the pin, the left leg always overlaps the right leg.
2. Return to the Timeline and change the In Front value of the first overlap pin to a value less than 50. Move the left ankle pin again and notice how the left leg stays behind the right leg.
3. You can keyframe the In Front value if you need to animate the way that shapes cross over one another, for example, if you wanted the left leg to cross behind and then in front of the right.
4. Another feature of the Puppet tool is the ability to record pin movements, rather than having to set keyframes for every movement. To record a pin movement, hover your mouse over the left ankle pin and press Control (Windows) or Command (Mac OS). Wait for the stopwatch cursor to appear before you move the Puppet Pin. After Effects records the animation, adding keyframes to the Timeline at regular intervals. After you release the mouse, the keyframes appear as well as the motion path in the Composition window.

Figure 12: Press Control (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) while you hold the mouse over a Deform pin and wait for the stopwatch icon to start recording the pin movement.

1. Select the right-ankle pin and click Record Options in the Tools panel to open the Puppet Record Options dialog box.
2. Reduce the Speed to 50% and increase Smoothing to 25 so that you have fewer keyframes in the recording. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Figure 13: The Puppet Record Options dialog box allows you to decrease the speed of the recording and increase the smoothness of the movements, which results in fewer keyframes.

1. Click Control (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) and hover your mouse over the right ankle pin. When the stopwatch icon appears, move the pin. When you release your mouse, After Effects has recorded the animation in the Timeline at half speed and used fewer keyframes because of the Smoothness setting.
2. Click the left-hand pin and move it to the far left of the stage. Move the right hand pin to the far right. Now the character appears as though he’s been stretched, which isn’t bad, but there is some artifacting around the right side of his face and his chest. This is where the Puppet Starch tool can become useful.

Figure 14: When you move Puppet pins, you may introduce some artifacting and distortion into your image.

1. Choose the Puppet Starch tool <<icon>> from the Tools panel. The Puppet Starch tool makes portions of your image less flexible. When you select it, you see an outline view of the original character.
2. Place a Starch pin on the left side of the head in the outline, because the character’s head is becoming slightly square when the image is stretched. Increase the Extent to 25 and the Amount to 20% in the Tools panel. Notice that the left side of the character’s face starts to round off nicely.

Figure 15: Add Starch pins and increase the Extent and Amount settings to keep the wrong parts of the character from distorting.

1. Click the left side of the face to place another Starch pin. Click and drag the pin to adjust its location if necessary.
2. Choose the Puppet Pin tool and move the hands back to their original locations.
3. Before your final render, you might want to increase the triangles of the mesh to make the animation more accurate. Select Mesh and scrub the Triangles value in the Tools panel to 390. Note that increasing the triangles also increases the render time.
4. To further improve your puppet animation, you may want to turn on Motion Blur for the layer. Click the Motion Blur icon next to the puppet_precomp layer and click the Enable Motion Blur button above the Timeline to enable motion blur for the composition. Move the CTI to a frame where one of the legs is moving behind the other to see the effect of the motion blur.

Figure 16: To add motion blur to your animation, select Motion Blur next to the layer and click the Enable Motion Blur button above the Timeline.Windows xp familiale isopropyl.

Figure 17: Move the CTI to a point where one of the legs is in motion to see the motion blur effect.