AE CS3

[Steve Roberts]

If it ain’t published by Adobe or repated elsewhere, it can’t be said, since Beta testers are under NDA. Sorry. So check the Adobe site, or search the COW, since some of Adobe’s info has been republished here.

[Anonymous]

There is a quote about it on the after effects page on adobe.com

The Roach
http://www.projectrooster.com

[Mike Clasby]

At the AE-NYC user group meeting last Thursday nite (no non-disclosure statements required), the AE director of development demoed AE CS3 and the puppet tool was gone over quickly. It seems more like a distortion effect, like Liquify on steroids. It is used directly on one 2D photo or image layer, no separate body parts needed. Pins are place where joints are, but Steve said that the fewer number of Pins the better, he used three on a karate kicking man (the one on the Adobe site). The effect seemed very rubbery, good for elastic animations. I did see earlier Dan Ebbert’s said that the Pins could have a rigid relationship via expressions, so hopefully he’s working on a killer Puppet tut now, one can wish anyway.

There was a nice way of sorting depth, telling an arm if it is behind or in front of the Body when it is distorted over the body. That was keyframeable.

I think the jury is out until the AE CS3 demo comes out within a few weeks.

[Andrew Kramer]

Hey,
I’ve seen this in a demonstration by steve kilisky at After Effect New York a couple of days ago. It’s awesome. I hope this will do some justice.

Basically if I take a still picture of say… a cartoon Ninja. I can add Puppet Points to the joints, by clicking in a few key spots, like the wrist and elbow and shoulder etc. Then I can move the points to create flexible organic motion that keyframes automatically overtime. According to Steve Kilisky, the fewer points the better so that the “tool” may generate the movement.

There is also a very easy way to designate if you want, the limbs to go behind or in front of the charchters body during the movement. This feature is also animatable so you can have it both ways on the same sprite, in front then behind.

The “pins” have standard keyframe coordinates that can be linked to tracking data and expressions. It’s quite amazing.

Oh, the things I saw.

Andrew

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

The Puppet tool is nothing short of miraculous, really 🙂
You place a few pins on an image and it creates a vector mesh to distort the source image in a way… that doesn’t look distorted at all. It just feels very organic and natural. It basically converts anything (a shape, a text element, a picture, etc) into a living thing! It has motion sketch functionality built-in, so that you can record motion in RT with your mouse or pen.
You can even drive the pins with audio amplitude!

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Filip Vandueren]

The whole thing reminds me of what Jeff Han did in the demo video of the multitouch technology. (iPhone input avant la lettre)

I saw a Siggraph paper explaining the proces somewhere titled something like ‘graphics deformation without bones’ (but don’t quote me on that)

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

This will change the way character animation is done with AE, or at least it will create an entire new type of easier to do animation. and it will allow people who are not great with expressions (for IK) to do some very complex stuff. From what Steve K showed, It really works, and it works well. Yes it requires fixes from you here and there, but it seems very easy to work with. Entirely keyframeable on multiple levels. Not to mention that it seemed fun. It works in realtime, BTW. ANd you can make several passes for fixes and add-on animation.

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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com

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