• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  rig characters with expressions?

  Posted by Stephen Neary on September 5, 2006 at 7:28 pm

  Howdy everyone,

  I was wondering if anyone knew how to rig layered 2-D puppets with expressions in AE 7. In the past I’ve just been parenting layers to form crude character models (parent finger to hand, hand to arm, arm to torso, etc). This works fine, but it’s time consuming.

  Is there any way to make IK handles on hands or feet, allowing the arm or leg to pivot at joints and follow the position of the hand/foot? A couple people have told me to just use Maya, but I don’t like using a separate program for compositing (and tell the truth, my Maya kung fu is minimal). Any suggestions? If not, could anybody reccommend any solid websites or resources for expressions in 7?

  Thank you,
  stephen

  Mike Clasby replied 19 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Lars Bunch

  September 5, 2006 at 8:00 pm

  Hi,

  Here’s Dan Ebbert’s material on the subject…

  https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/ik.html
• 

  Mike Clasby

  September 5, 2006 at 8:37 pm

  Dan’s IK expressions work but can be a little twitchy at times, just be sure and setup PERFECTLY horizontally (or vertically with corrected expression as per page). Then it behaves nicely. An alternative to AE IK is this earlier post:

  Barend Onneweer
  Date: Jul 26, 2006 at 6:40:30 am
  Subject: Re: Advanced Parent/Child Properties Question

  On another note:

  For 2D cut-out character animation have a look at Moho:
  https://www.lostmarble.com/

  It’s 90 bucks, but features everything I hope AE will one day do in terms of bone skeletons with
  inverse kinematics, and bend deforms based on the bone skeleton…

  Bar3nd

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