DuIK rig interaction

[Hannah Claire]

Hi Dan

Did you solve this problem? I’m trying to work out something similar myself.

Have two characters, a mother and child, both rigged within precomps with DUIK. The mother picks up the child and I want her arm to be in front of him (the rest of her body all behind.) The only way I can see to do it is do the animation in the two separate precomps, duplicate the mother and put the duplicate version on top of the child, then mask out her arm and move the mask frame by frame.

Feels like a painful way to do it but I can’t work out another way!

[Anthony Tonev]

Hi,

Puppet tool is not ideal for that – once you break the mesh you will get these “black lines”. However the puppet tool has some Overlap options but they apply only on the mesh – you can on theory make the guitar (or what ever) part of the mesh and use the overlap tool (from puppet tool drop menu) to… overlap but there is a better way.

So first – rig the character without the puppet tool (by parenting the layers). Make a duplicate to each limb and parent it them to the layers with the IK expressions (the rigged ones). Put the copies above the body layers and leave the other limb layers under all the layers you want to overlap like the guitar and the body. Then put 3-4 checkboxes on the IK controlers. Then link the opacity properties of the copies above the guitar. Use a simple expression to link the opacity prop to the checkbox. Set it to be 0 when off and 100 when on. That way when you use the controler you can turn the overlapping on and off with just two hold keyframes.

Expression for one of the layers:

aligment = thisComp.layer("L arm Johny controler").effect("Aling Wrist")("Checkbox");
x = 0;
transform.opacity =x;
if(aligment == 1){
x = 100;
}else{
x = 0;
}

Hope I’m clear…
Or you can just use a 3D layer and set its Z pos -1 and 1 for overlapping but that slows your project alot. The checkbox ways is harder to setup but way more elegant in my opinion. I use this trick every day.

PS: I have managed to build a script for automating that process ???? Just selecting the layers and + click and you have the checkboxes working + the Inverse Kinematics on it ! Very sweet.

[Hannah Claire]

Sorry for the delay in replying and thank you so much for this! I’ve used checkboxes for opacity before but not in this way, what a brilliant solution- I’m trying this today!

Thanks again