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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Animating a Puppet Tool layer

  • Animating a Puppet Tool layer

    Posted by Matthew Beall on April 6, 2010 at 2:14 am

    I have a 3D comp with several AI shapes.. Once is a silouhette of a bird.. I want the bird to flap it’s wings while it moves across the sky..

    I precomp the bird layer and add a puppet tool to animate the wings.. When I go back to my main comp, I animate the tranform of the bird precomp, but then the bird goes crazy.. It deforms in strange ways and sometimes dissapears..

    What is the proper way to animate a puppet tool layer?

    -Matthew

    Matthew Beall replied 16 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Todd Kopriva

    April 6, 2010 at 4:05 am

    There’s a mote on this page that addresses your question:

    “Note: Don’t animate the position or scale of a continuously rasterized layer with layer transformations if you are also animating the layer with the Puppet tools. The render order for continuously rasterized layers—such as shape layers and text layers—is different from the render order for raster layers. You can precompose the shape layer and use the Puppet tools on the precomposition layer, or you can use the Puppet tools to transform the shapes within the layer.”

    ———————————————————————————————————
    Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
    putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
    ———————————————————————————————————
    If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

  • Matthew Beall

    April 6, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    Arg, that is aggravating..

    So what is the solution? Link the puppet-layer to a null and animate the null?

    -Matthew

  • Matthew Beall

    April 6, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    Nothing works, I guess it is a 3Dcomp/camera problem.. I can’t get it to both animate via puppet tool AND continuously rasterize the vector..

    I guess I can convert everything to a shape layer and just animate the shape..

    -Matthew

  • Todd Kopriva

    April 6, 2010 at 2:42 pm

    Do your puppet animation. Precompose that layer. Then animate the position of the new precomposition layer.

    ———————————————————————————————————
    Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
    putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
    ———————————————————————————————————
    If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

  • Matthew Beall

    April 6, 2010 at 9:21 pm

    This works until I turn on the 3D layer option.. Then the layer only puppets when it is within the mesh range.. outside of that, it either doesn’t puppet or goes crazy..

    -Matthew

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