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Puppet Tool: Face replacement across multiple shots
Hi, I’m using the face tracker and puppet tool to track old age wrinkles onto a face. I’ve got no problem getting this to work on a single shot, but I have a pretty long edit that I need to do this on. In terms of workflow, I want to only have to track the face in each shot and then copy and paste my ‘old age comp’ into the new shot comp and have everything update.
In theory, this is easy – just have an expression on each of the puppet tool deform points that link to the face tracking points, make sure the layer with the tracking points is named the same and everything updates. And, it does update. However, because the face is larger or smaller in frame from shot to shot, the puppet tool points have to stretch or compress so far that the space in between them becomes extremely distorted and the result is a bit of a mess. (Does that make sense!?)
I think, in essence, I need to change the anchor point of each puppet deform point – but, I’m pretty sure there is no way of doing this.
So, I’m not exactly sure what I need to do and its kinda hard to explain without someone looking at my comp or trying it themselves. Happy to privately share the project/footage with someone who thinks they can help.
Any questions, please let me know.
Best
Dom
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7 Replies
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And it doesn’t do anything if you scale the wrinkles comp down/up?
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Hey Cassius,
Afraid not. The puppet pins just scale with it. I think its one of those problems that’s hard to understand unless you have the project in front of you. I’d be happy for you to take a look if you wanted.
Cheers
Dom
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Another thought – the reason I would love to be able to copy and paste the puppet tool onto new shots is because otherwise I have to add an expression to pin and pick whip it to the corresponding tracking data point from the face tracker.
So, an alternative would be if there were a script that could automatically add an expression to the pins, linking them all to the face tracking data. I think this would be relatively easy to write (not that I could!).
The only thing would be that when adding the pins I would need to do them in a set order so that the script links the correct pin to the correct tracking data.
Any genius scriptwriters out there that could help? Dan Ebberts to the rescue!?
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Its not that hard to understand, no. I can imagine what you’re getting.
If you’re somehow able to make it work with a collapsed composition. The scalling up/down will probably work. But you’ll have to pre-deform the wrinkles to compensate for the ratio difference from your current wrinkle comp to the main comp.
Upload a stripped down version so I can see if I’ll figure something out, other than that…
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Hi – thanks for getting back. No, I cant get it working just by collapsing the comp.
I’ve just reduced the project and replaced the footage with proxies – can I send it to you privately? It’s just it is for a work project and don’t want to put it up for all to see!
Thanks
Dom
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I took a look at the file, unfortunately I didn’t found any way to alleviate the problem. Nor I am able to help with that scripting, Sorry.
For what its worth, you’re already getting a pretty nice result in the first test. I can imagine what you’ll end up with after some final touches. Good luck.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com
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