Puppet tool help

[Simon Bonner]

Hi Steve,

I think this previous post by Dan Ebberts will help you.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysFX

[Stephen Curtis]

That’s confused me.

I have a person on a transparent BG.. ie Trevor.png. with a puppet pin attached to his right hand moving as though he is playing. (I used the over lap pin so his hand comes across the front of his body). I have a Bow.png that i would like to attach to his moving right hand?

Expressions are quite new to me. Any further advice will be very welcoming.

Thanks in advance.

Steve

[Simon Bonner]

Ok, I’ll try to go through it step by step.

1: Put your puppet points into the man, including one where you want the violin to be attached to the hand.
2: Add the violin layer to the comp. Use the pan behind tool (hit Y to select this tool. V will get you back to the selection tool later) to move the anchor point of the violin to the point where you want it to be attached to the hand. The neck? Rotate the violin so it is orientated how you want it.
3: Hit P with the violin layer selected to show the position property of the violin. Hold down Alt and click on the stopwatch next to the position property. Paste the code below into the box which opens in the timeline panel.

L = thisComp.layer(“puppet layer”);
L.toWorld(L.effect(“Puppet”).arap.mesh(“Mesh 1”).deform(“Puppet Pin 1”).position)

4: Replace “puppet layer” with the name of the man layer: the layer you’ve used the puppet tool on.
5: Make sure the code refers to the correct mesh and puppet pin number.
6: Hit enter on the numpad to confirm the expression. The violin should now be attached to the pin, and will move when the pin moves.

Simon Bonner

youtube.com/simonsaysfx

[Cesar Siena]

. Simon, this is the most didactic step by step post and clarifies minor, but fundamental doubts, that weren’t well explained in any other post for beginners in the internet, congratulations and thank you!
. If you allow me to go a little further, I’d like to ask the following: You’ve parented the violin to the hand’s puppet pin, ok? So:
. A) If I choose to control the puppet pin with a null object, would you parent the violin to the hand’s puppet pin and this to the Null? how would you do?
. B) Could I simply parent everything to the Null? That is, could I parent the violin to the Position property of the Null and also parent the hand’s puppet pin to it’s position and rotation and add a Slider Control to the Null?
. Thank you very much.