• Adobe After Effects

  Parenting puppet pin positions to Nulls

  Posted by Chris Orcfilm on October 14, 2010 at 3:57 am

  May not be specific to the puppet tool but I am still at a loss…

  Goal:
  Take nulls that have been animated by tracking joints of a moving hand and apply them to a still photo of a hand using the puppet tool.

  Challenge:
  Nulls tracked on the hand footage are a bit off from the still photo, so null positions need to be adjusted to match the still before puppet pins can be attached.

  Tried:
  -Create a new null for every joint,
  -move them into respective position on the still photo, then
  -parent them to thier respective animated/tracked null
  -parent the respective still photo puppet pins to the new nulls

  Problem:
  Although the new parented nulls move on the screen as expected, being parented to the animated nulls, their actual position (x,y) array information does not seem to change, therefore the puppet pins also are not changing/moving.

  I’m probably overcomplicating things due to staring at it too long, so if you have any ideas, I’m all ears.

  Thanks for taking the time to read about my problem.

  Chris

  Orchard Film Studios, Canada

  Chris Orcfilm replied 15 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Michael Szalapski

  October 14, 2010 at 1:29 pm

  Keep in mind that a parented null never moves. Look at its position and anchor point parameters. They don’t change. So, while it may be moving to your eyes since it’s attached to a parent, anything that references its position won’t see it moving. Because its position never changes.

  You’ll have to apply an expression to the puppet pin that references the anchor point of your null object to the world. Something like L=thisComp.layer("your null here");
L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint);
  See how that works.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
• 

  Michael Szalapski

  October 14, 2010 at 1:31 pm

  Whoop, I meant to mention that this (very useful) page has a ton of info on Puppet Tools including a link to this on parenting with the puppet tools. I haven’t looked at it yet, but it’s probably useful.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
• 

  Chris Orcfilm

  October 15, 2010 at 1:09 am

  Thank you oh Great Szalam, toWorld(), a new tool for my toolbox and saver of countless hours in my future I’m sure.

  Thanks!!

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