Puppet tool – Unpin / move / pin again

[Filip Vandueren]

hi Henry,

I did some more digging, and as far as I can tell, a script can indeed add a puppet pin (by adding a property to the indexed Group “Deform”), but it is always added at position [0,0], and if you then setValue(), you’re moving/distorting the mesh already.

Some more digging, and it turns out each (“ADBE FreePin3 PosPin Atom”) property has a (“ADBE FreePin3 PosPin Vtx Offset”) property, and that’s the one that seems to store the actual original position of the pin… but it’s readonly and doesn’t respond to .setValue()

Maybe some scripting experts now another way to hack into it, but that’s as far as I could get.

[Filip Vandueren]

…and sure enough if you google “ADBE FreePin3 PosPin Vtx Offset”

you wind up in this discussion from 2015, where they are describing exactly the same limitations and use case:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/create-puppet-pin-on-existing-mesh-via-scripting/td-p/6977252

[Stephane Levy]

It looks like there’s an interesting workaround to this: using a precomp and place the pins in their initial positions.

Then, load the footage of the new head shot in a layer below.

Then, set opacity to 20% or so, on the head shot with the pins on it, so that the new head shot appears in transparency.

Move the pins so that they fit on the new head. Of course the head shot with the pins looks distorted but nevermind.

Then, replace the head shot of the precomp with the new head shot: now the pins are placed exactly as wanted.

I’ve tested it, it works.

[Filip Vandueren]

But how would that work if you’ve keyframed the pins? Or would you combine this method with the expressions that then gets their animation from another hidden layer?

[Stephane Levy]

It wouldn’t work with keyframes. But this part, animation, I want to do it manually, it will not be automatic.

The thing I want to avoid is having to create from scratch the 80 pins in the right positions every time I work on a new head shot. With the method cited above, I can even rename the pins “once and for all” on the reference layer.

[Andy Shim]

Hi Stephane, I’m a bit late on this thread, but really intrigued. As far as I understood you found a way to “reset” Puppet Pin distortion without resetting the pins to initial position? I’ve followed your steps, but didn’t get any result.

So you create a precomp, apply Puppet Pin to it, move your pins and then replace the contents of precomp and disotrion somehow goes away? Enlighten me please, I think I’m missing a step or something.

Hope you were successful with this project you described back in 2022!
Thank you,
Andy

[William Varganov]

Did you manage to bypass it in the end?

I can’t believe that there are two ways to reset the pins, both methods are described on forums, both are very vaguely worded, and the authors of both posts simply disappeared and do not appear for years after they found a workaround.

It feels like black magic surrounds resetting the offset of the puppet pins, and people who solve this riddle mysteriously disappear.

I feel like I’m going crazy soon.

Here is the other post I’m talking about. It uses resetting via a plugin https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/create-puppet-pin-programmatically/m-p/7650169