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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Duik Bones Creating Broken Expression

  • Duik Bones Creating Broken Expression

    Posted by Jimmy Mitchell on September 28, 2016 at 2:27 pm

    I’m new to Duik but wanted to use it for a character rig for a client. I created a character in illustrator and brought it into after effects. I put three pins in my arm (shoulder, elbow, hand) and rename the pins to correspond to the point. When I select the layer and hit the Bones tool in Duik, I get an error on all 3 expressions. This only happens if I rename the pins but it is kind of necessary to keep my project from becoming a total confusing mess.

    Error reads: After Effects warning: Expression Disabled. Error at line 1 in property ‘Position’ of layer 10 (‘Front Arm) in comp ‘Politician’. Unterminated string constant.

    Here’s the expression it created:
    bonePos = thisComp.layer(“B_
    hand L”).toWorld(thisComp.layer(“B_
    hand L”).anchorPoint);
    fromWorld(bonePos)

    Xavier Bonet replied 8 years, 6 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Carrie Hawks

    September 29, 2016 at 3:31 am

    Try renaming the layers inside of Duik. I think there’s an option to do so in the interface. If you rename them yourself manually, this will create an error.

  • Fredrik Åkerlund

    September 29, 2016 at 6:54 pm

    First of all: this

    hand L”).anchorPoint);

    Should be

    hand L”).anchorPoint;

    There shouldn’t be a parenthesis at the end. Right?

  • Xavier Bonet

    October 14, 2017 at 1:06 pm

    I know this is a one-year-old post, and am sure by know you’ve found a solution or have tired and gone on elsewhere. For what it’s worth (and for any others out there that come across similar issues), today I had the exact same problem and couldn’t understand why, as I’ve been using DUIK for years without any issues. After some tinkering I found out that, for some odd, twilight-zoney reason, when I was pressing enter to change the name of my puppet points, instead of just highlighting the name and giving me the option to write over it or add something to it, it was straight off erasing the name, which I found strange but, anyway, thought I was going mad and this was actually the norm! But apparently that’s not the only thing that was happening, as you can see from the following screenshot:

    Notice how the bottom names (“Snout”, “Neck Front”, etc.) all have a space before them as compared to the top names (“ear_tip_left”, etc.). The bottom names are the original names I placed, which produced the error. The top names are the new names I’m placing after realising there’s a space before the other names. The top names don’t give out any errors. (And, no, the error has nothing to do with using spaces as a pose to underscores.)

    So for some weird reason, AE is now erasing the names and placing a white space when I hit enter to rename a layer. If I right-click and choose “rename”, it does what it’s supposed to do: it highlights the name and does nothing else.

    The issue with DUIK in this case is clearly the white space before the name. But how that white space is getting there and why my AE is now just erasing the name and adding that white space when I hit Enter, I don’t know. I’ve tried the preferences to see if I’ve clicked something weird that’s activated this function but there’s nothing there that seems to control what happens when one presses Enter to rename a layer. It’s a twilight-zoney mystery!

  • Xavier Bonet

    October 14, 2017 at 5:42 pm

    P.S. Found the reason for the sudden Enter(Return)/Rename fiasco in this thread:
    https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1116107

    Basically, it’s a bug in Mac OS Sierra: the Return key is both opening up the rename field and, at the same time, inputting a line break (Return), which is what is bugging out the script links.

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