Puppet pin positions automated along a motion path

[Dan Ebberts]

This solution makes some assumptions. One is that the pins are numbered such that Pin 1 is the leader(head), Pin 2 is behind that, etc. It also assumes that you haven’t renamed the pins. Before you start and after you stop animating the lead pin, all the pins will of course be in the same location.


delayFrames = 4;
p = effect("Puppet").arap.mesh("Mesh 1").deform("Puppet Pin 1").position;
idx = parseInt(thisProperty.propertyGroup(1).name.split(" ")[2],10)-1;
delay = idx*framesToTime(delayFrames);
p.valueAtTime(time-delay)


Dan

[Luke Galiazzo]

Thank you so much for the quick reply. If I’m understanding right, I should keep that code as is and use the exact same code for each puppet pin? If that’s the case, despite the head pin (pin #1 as you assumed) being animated via keyframes along the motion path, the other pins don’t follow along at a distance, rather they all bunch on the one position throughout the sequence.

So, they all stay on pin 1’s position the entire time, all 8 pins move across the screen at the Pin #1 position.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the code (I’m extremely new to expressions)?

[Dan Ebberts]

Yes, all the pins except #1 get the expression, pin #1 gets the keyframed animation. Does it move pretty slow? Maybe you need to increase the delay. I set it up for each pin to be 4 frames behind the previous one.

Dan

[Luke Galiazzo]

I tried and again and technically it works but I’ll still need to tweak some things. Despite the puppet pins traveling along the same path and being on what could be considered the ‘spine’ of the image, there’s a lot of deformation in the mesh. I’m guessing I’ll have to sort out a way of compensating for that…

Thank you so much though. This code is exactly what I was trying to come up with, if you have any thoughts on the mesh deformation issue I’d love to hear them.

[Nick Fox-gieg]

Neat! I put a version of this in a UI panel to automatically apply the script to any number of pins:
https://github.com/N1ckFG/AEToolbox

…any thoughts on how you’d modify the script to anchor the last pin–a tentacle, instead of a snake?

Thanks!
Nick

[Graham Thorne]

Any ideas?

[Nick Fox-gieg]

You mean the UI panel isn’t compiling? Haven’t tested it on older than CS5.5, unfortunately.

[Graham Thorne]

Nope. Im on CS6. New to all this so not sure how to resolve it.

I would like to do exactly what is mentioned above but I have no clue where to past the:

delayFrames = 4;
p = effect(“Puppet”).arap.mesh(“Mesh 1”).deform(“Puppet Pin 1″).position;
idx = parseInt(thisProperty.propertyGroup(1).name.split(” “)[2],10)-1;
delay = idx*framesToTime(delayFrames);
p.valueAtTime(time-delay)

Bit.

[Xavier Gomez]

@Graham Thorne: the script doesnt have 2001 lines. If you copied it in the navigator and pasted it in a new jsx in ExtendScript, you might have copied more than the script code. For me it works fine.

@Nick: Thank you for posting this.

Regarding the snake/tentacle thing, it is not a straightforward modification…

For a “snake”, there is only one motion path that is common to all elements in the trail. All elements follow that same path, but at different times.

For a “tentacle”, if you want to do something interesting with it (ie animate it) you’ll need to animate the underlying curve itself, and there can be as many different curves as they are frames in the animation. It’s a lot more complicated (animation work). You can’t do this with an expression.

Xavier.

[Ginger O’toole]

This has probably been solved eons ago however I will paste my system here in case anyone else looks it up. I was doing something very much the same last night in my old version of After Effects CS5.5

If you have a snake or similar image and apply puppet pins and want it to move along a motion path and to warp along with the path this is how I did it;

Draw a motion path, say a long wavy line or a spiral, place your snake or image at the start of the motion path lining up your leading puppet pin on the first point of the path. Now copy and paste the motion path (motion path 2) – this will be for the next puppet pin (puppet pin 2) to follow – using the pen tool click the second motion path and add a new point to the path before the first point in line with your image’s second puppet pin (you might have to do this by eye or maybe the snapshot button will work to show exactly where the pin is?).. … and do this for each puppet pin – basically give each puppet pin its own motion path that is extended back from its starting point to line up with each pin.

Now you can copy the “path” value of each motion path layer and paste onto the “position” value of each puppet pin. So number your motion path layers and puppet pins accordingly – motion path 1, motion path 2… puppet pin 1, puppet pin 2 … etc

HOWEVER! Before you paste your motion path values onto any puppet pins… using a copy of your snake or image, place it with the first puppet pin at the ending point of the path, now position the other pins to line up on the path where you would like them to finish. You can use the pins now as a guide to add an extra anchor point on each pin’s motion path and snip the end off so now each pin has its own start point, end point and their own motion path. I forgot the end point at first and you can imagine what happens, every pin ends on the same position which crumples up the image towards the last frame.

Now you can copy each motion path’s “path” value onto their relevant puppet pin’s “position” value for your original snake/ image and it will now move and warp perfectly along the path, (which is now actually several motion paths on top of eachother). (NOTE: if your puppet pin and image path jump way off position after you paste the values ( which mine always do and i dont know why), in the comp window simply drag it back into position lining it back up with the motion paths you originally drew. These path layers can then be deleted.)