-
Layer and World Coordinates, ToWorld/FromWorld, Parented Layer, Etc
(I inadvertently posted this in the AE forum, but realized it probably belongs here. Also, I’ve searched and searched, but either haven’t found this question answered or just can’t get my mind around it.)
I’m animating a person’s arm to bend using puppet deform pins. It also rotates, which helps with the natural look of the movement. And it is the parent of the hand for obvious reasons. Additionally, the arm’s parent is the body, so the arm’s anchor point is in the middle of the shoulder (not near the wrist). The hand as the child of the arm moves fine with just arm rotation, but does strange stuff once I animate the arm with puppet pins.
I understand that toWorld/fromWorld should help. I’ve seen many posts with expressions that convert the coordinates to world space, but it doesn’t seem to work. From what I understand, if I want the hand to be “attached” to the wrist, and thus one of the deform pins (which I placed on the wrist), I set the hands position property to the world space coordinates of the arm’s deform pin. Makes sense to me so far.
It just doesn’t want to put the hand in the right place. I’ve tried a variety of expressions using toWorld and/or fromWorld and the hand ends up way below, way above, a bit to the left or right…anywhere but at the wrist. I assume the expression, when I finally get it entered accurately, will handle the position of the hand but it should still be the arm’s child layer for rotation. Is that a bad assumption?
Trying to get my head around the conversion between layer space and world space. And the combination of parenting with puppet deforms. Or is there a totally easier way? (Someone suggest precomping or something similar, right?)
–Dannerino
-
1 Reply
-
No need to use complicated expressions
dont try moving pins + layer position together, it won’t work properly;
you need to pre comp the layer on which you applied puppet tool to move it around. Then create a set of nulls in your final comp that links the effects> Puppet> Mesh 1> Deform> Puppet pin… in the pre comp.
comp("_main").layer("Null 1").transform.positionAdjust the anchor point on the precomposed arm and parent the nulls to it.
You can also get one of the scripts that will automate the setup here:
https://aescripts.com/puppettools/
https://aescripts.com/leemsanimationtools/
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up