- After Effects Puppet Pin Tool Not Working
- Ah Ic, So Theres No Other Way Than Pre-compose Thank You
- After Effects Cs4 Puppet Pin Tool
- Duik After Effects Pin Tool
Momentarily activate Eraser Tool with Last Stroke Only option. Alt + Shift +Drag with Clone Stamp Tool. Show and move overlay. Activate a specific Clone Stamp Tool preset. Alt +Click the button for the preset. Duplicate a Clone Stamp Tool preset in Paint Panel. 1 9 on numeric keypad. Set opacity for Paint Tool to 1 0% thru 9 0%. The first step to using the Puppet tool After Effects is to place the pins. Once you have an image you want to animate, click on the Puppet “Pin” icon. Then, you must click on each point of the image you want to add movement to. Every time you click on a part of your image, a pin will be set down. สวัสดีครับชาว mesise วันนี้เราจะมาเรียนรู้การใช้โปรแกรม after effect กันนะครับ.
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There’s more than one way to pull off motion tracking in After Effects. Here’s a few of them!
After Effects is a fantastic tool for VFX work. This is especially true for motion tracking. However, the tracker you use to motion track your footage might not be the best choice depending on your specific clip. Let’s take a look at six different ways to execute motion tracking in After Effects and discuss when certain tracking features should and shouldn’t be used.
1. One Point Track
When to Use It: Very quick 2D tracking situations centered around a single point with no warping.
The single-point tracker built into After Effects has long been a go-to tool for motion artists, but you need to be careful with single-point tracks because footage doesn’t normally shake in 2D space only. After Effects uses contrast to find track points, so you’ll need to make sure you set your tracker on a well-defined point. If you’re in a rush, one-point tracking will work, but for most professional circumstances, you’ll want to at least use two-point tracking.
In this tutorial from Live Tech Australia, we take a look at how to use the single-point tracker in After Effects.
2. Two Point Track
When to Use It: On footage with mild to moderate levels of camera shake.
Two-point tracking is fantastic for simple camera movements, as long as there are a few contrasted elements for the tracker to track. Two-point tracking is notably superior to single-point tracking because it can track rotation and scale, not just position.
This video from Robert’s Productions shows us how to use two-point tracking to add text to a scene.
3. Corner Pin Track
When to Use It: Basic screen replacement.
If you do a lot of commercial or sci-fi work, then you probably do a lot of screen replacements. In order to help make screen replacements easier, After Effects has a built-in corner pin tracker that is designed to work with any four point surface. While it’s designed to work with screens, it can also work with picture frames, signs, and simple surfaces. In this video tutorial from LinkTCOne, we take a look at how to use the corner pin tracker to replace a picture frame in After Effects.
4. 3D Camera Tracking
When to Use It: Matte painting, set extensions, and compositing.
One of the most powerful features to hit After Effects in recent years is the 3D camera-tracking tool. The tool essentially automatically creates dozens of track points in your footage and allows you to select which ones to use after the computer processes the footage. This is your best tracking option directly in After Effects. However, the 3D camera tracker can take quite a while if you have a long clip.
This tutorial from thevfxbro shows us how to use the 3D camera tracker to ‘composite’ a Christmas tree into a shot.
5. Planar Tracking Using Mocha
When to Use It: Advanced tracking on flat surfaces.
If you have a very difficult-to-track flat surface, then the planar tracking feature in mocha Pro is the way to go. Unlike After Effects, mocha Pro will use predictive tracking to track the position of an object even if a portion of the tracked object is offscreen. Tracking data can then be exported from mocha into After Effects.
This quick video tutorial from short-form video shows us how to planar track in mocha.
6. Spline Tracking
When to Use It: Complex camera tracking jobs.
If you’ve exhausted all of the other options on this list, or simply want the most accurate track possible, then spline tracking in mocha Pro is the way to go. Spline tracking can track any type of shape because you custom create the tracking plane. Essentially, you trace around the object you want to track and mocha will try its best to keep track of the object. Data can then be exported to After Effects.
This tutorial from mocha planar tracking & vfx tools shows us how to use spline trackers to do beauty retouching in After Effects.
Have any other tips for motion tracking in After Effects? Share them in the comments below!
After Effects Puppet Pin Tool Not Working
Character Rigging in Adobe After Effects
Originally, Adobe After Effects was not designed for animating characters. Usually those tools are found in programs like Adobe Flash, or 3D packages such as Cinema 4D, 3Ds Max, Maya, etc. But thankfully, the genius Duduf created an amazing and free script which he posted on his website, allowing us to now use After Effects for character rigging.
I used this technique in a video created for Zion & Zion client, Century 21 Northwest. You can view the video here, or download the full rig.
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If you’re reading this article, I’m going to hope that you have a fairly good knowledge of After Effects, as I will be jumping into somewhat advanced how-tos in order to explain how to rig characters in After Effects. If you are not familiar with this program, I would recommend visiting the Adobe Classroom to learn some of the basics first.
Download and Install the Tools
Ah Ic, So Theres No Other Way Than Pre-compose Thank You
First, you are going to want to download and install Duduf’s IK Tools. To install, simply download, unzip the file, and then copy and paste over the three files. I work on a Mac so it might look a little different for you if you work on a pc, but it’s still the same process. Once you have your three files, you will want to place them into your scripts UI folder within your After Effects application folder. My path looks like this: Application/Adobe After Effects CC/ Scripts/ ScriptsUI Panels. Again, yours might look a little bit different.
Test the Tools
Dock Of Auto-Rig Icons
Cool, so now you have the tools installed. Let’s just make sure everything is working as it should be, before jumping too far into things. Go to your window tab and look for “duik.jsx.” If you have that, boom! Go ahead and click it. Next, it will most likely ask you to enable “Allow Scripts to Write files and Access Network.” Enable it, and you’re ready to go. You should get a dock of icons that look like the image to the right. If you do, then you are good to go.
Rigging a Character
So once we have all of that taken care of, we are ready to go and rig. I will be working with a very simple character that I created in AE (After Effects), but this technique works just as well with characters created in Illustrator; you just have to make sure you have broken that character up, and make sure that it is AE ready. If you’re not totally sure how to go about breaking your character up further, it’s basically breaking apart your character, and then placing its individual components into their own separate layer so that when you import that AI (Adobe Illustrator) file, you have several different layers, instead of just one. The scope of this article won’t go into this in any more detail, but there are several tutorials and blogs on how to do this. Here are two of my favorites:
Precomp the Limbs of Your Character
This is the simple character I created in AE; you will notice the left side of his body is red. That’s just to help me to differentiate what body part is what. If you want to do something similar, you could simply throw a fill effect on top of your limb, and then disable it when you’re ready to render. You can find the fill effect in “effect/generate/fill.” In this rig, I’ll be using the puppet tool, as well as the Duik script. Together, they will create the rig. On each of your limbs, you will want to precomp them into their own comps to allow the puppet tool to work correctly.
Precomp Groups for the Puppet
Add Deformation Points
Now that you have each limb precomped, you will need to add deformation points—let’s start on the right leg.
This is what my leg looks like with puppet pin points. Select the puppet tool, and add three points in the leg, starting at the bottom and working your way up. Next, add the deformation points in the following order: foot, knee, hip.
Animation Timeline for Puppet Leg
Now that you have three points, let’s bone it and add the IK chain. After doing this, you want to twirl down the puppet effect in the timeline, and click on each puppet pin, and add a bone using Duik. First, select pin one, add bone, pin two, and then add a bone, and finally pin three, add a bone.
Next, we have to change the names of our bones. If we don’t, it won’t work properly in the later stages. Change the bone names to “right foot,” “right knee,” and “right hip.” Now you have all of the bones you need. You can now add a controller to the bones, selecting the bottom foot bone and clicking the controller button on the Duik panel. Your comp should look something like this. Finally, all you have to do is parent two bones together to allow the IK chain to work. Start with the right foot, grab the pick whip icon, and parent that to right knee. Then parent the right knee to the right hip.
After Effects Cs4 Puppet Pin Tool
Create IK Chain for Animation
d’IK Options Panel
This is it! Now we are ready to do the final step in creating our IK chain for animation. Select the right foot bone, right knee bone, right hip bone, and finally your controller, in that order. Click the IK button on the Duik panel. You will then see this new panel. It will ask you what orientation of the knee joint you will want. Think of the point on the > as what direction you want it to go, and click “ok.” If you want to change it for whatever reason, you can easily do so in your effects panel. Under IK orientation, there is a check box you can check to flip the direction. Boom! Your controller should be working, and you now have a complete IK chain. This is what a complete IK chain should look like in the timeline.
Prepare for Animation
Final Timeline
Duik After Effects Pin Tool
This is the process you’ll need to follow in order to get the main chunk of what needs to be done, allowing you to prepare for animation. Once you have each limb, let’s focus on the body and the head, and finally, connect them all together. Use the pin tool like before and place three pins, one at the pelvic area, chest area, and shoulder area. Next, add bones for those areas as well.
Now you should have three extra bones on the body. Take your left and right shoulder bones and parent them to the shoulder bone in the body, and take your left and right hip bones and parent them to the pelvic bone. Leave the chest alone. Now you will have to add two null objects (go to layer/New/Null). Name one “Head” control, and one “Main” control. You’ll want to place one somewhere near where the head meets the neck and body. This will be your head control parent, your head graphic to the head control null, and then the main controller null. What I like to do is make it slightly bigger, and place it somewhere around the pelvic area. Now all you have to do is parent all of your controls to this null.
So shoulder, chest, pelvis, left foot controller, right foot right foot controller, right hand controller, left hand controller, and head controller to main controller. Your full rig should look something like this in the timeline, and this in your comp viewer.
Conclusion
There you go—now you have a character rigged and you’re ready to go. If you want help cleaning up your timeline, shy guy (i.e. turn off the visibility of your layers) your layers that don’t need to be directly controlled, and give your controllers different colors in the timeline to help differentiate what is supposed to do what.