Cesar Siena
Forum Replies Created
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Christoph, in my case, it’s not feasible importing it as MOV file.
Purging the disk cache works only a few times, but not in others.
I didn’t try yet the option of preserving the frame rate of nested comps, but I suspect that it solves only a few instances of the problem, because it has occurred also in projects where the entire puppet wasn’t a nested comp, but the main comp.
Again, I think it seems a random problem and should deserve more attention from Adobe. I know that Ae isn’t made specifically to animate puppets, but this is a exponential growing use, since the inverse kinematics eased by Duik Tools.
Thanks for the help, although the problem continues. -
Hi, Isabelle, thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I’ve tried this already (transferring to a null), but didn’t work in my case. It’s sort of a random bug, occurring in some systems but not in others. The number of the repliers of this thread shows that this is a growing problem in after effects, although infrequent.
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I agree, it isn’t consistent and more and more people are reporting this problem, which could receive some attention from Adobe, because it’s such a useful tool. The RAM, though, doesn’t matter. I have plenty of RAM and the problem is the same. A friend suggested cleaning the cache everytime it happens; it works for her, but not for me. Why don’t you give it a try?
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Hi Bruna! Unfortunately, I still didn’t find a solution. It seems that only a few have this problem. One suggestion is giving up the time remapping in this particular case, replacing it by several checkbox opacity controllers. If you want the layer to appear, click the checkbox and unclick the others. It’s a fast process, simpler than the previous one. The only issue is the bigger number of controllers in your panel. I hope this is useful!
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Hi Darby, thank you for mentioning this expression! If you allow me, there are some considerations about this topic:
1) In the first post, I’ve mentioned that I used the Dan Gies’ trick of letting the keyframes as linear and dividing the slider value by the number of frames/second of the comp, trick that avoids (and replaces) this elegant expression mentioned by you, also turning seconds of the slider to frames. It works for him, but didn’t work for me, in this specific case.
2) I’ve been doing this for some time now and rigged a lot of other puppets simply by turning the keyframes hold. Instead of sliding the values of the controller, I click on the value and type whole numbers. In other projects, it worked, mirroring the slider value to the time remapp property. It’s like not having the slider controller, only the time remapped stretched layer, and typing over the time remapp property whole numbers. But it didn’t work in this specific case.
It’s why I think that this is a bug (maybe a rare one, because only 3 other guys mentioned it in the net). It only happens when there’s a lot of keyframing in the time remapp line and only happens in some periods of it.
But thank you again for the elegant expression! I’ll keep it!
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No, the numbers on the time remap property do not change, although the head changes very fast in the RAM preview or in the final render.
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Yes, Dave, it is! (CS6 updated)
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If Adobe allowed keyframing the layer control, it would add a lot of spice to the juice.
I’ll take some pictures of the project and copy the simple expressions so far to give you a better idea of the whole. Thank you, anyway; it has been very interesting discussing this!
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Hum, that sounds a bright idea, even allowing automation of the process! Nevertheless, it would need establishing a very high number of markers (think about the number of notes in a symphony score) and writing instructions or programming code for each one of them. Considering that the aim is reducing the work load, maybe this route would consume the same or even more time than the previous one (although it is definitively creative).
I was thinking about a master slider for each finger (a slider “level C”) that, when slided would slide all fingers (one, for the same side, all others for the opposite side). As previously said, I’ve made only one of it, but couldn’t be able to make others, because of the parenting limitation.
A new idea occurred to me: wouldn’t it be possible to take this “level C” slider already made, put a LAYER control on it (expression control: layer control) and just manage this control to point the finger that would flex at that moment?
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Hi Dan, if you allow me a dummy description, only for the sake of didatics, I’ll try to put a very objective description of the slider controllers set up until now:
— In each hand with 5 fingers:
Slider 1 “level B” controls the flexion (and extension) of finger 1
Slider 2 “level B” controls the flexion (and extension) of finger 2
Slider 3 “level B” controls the flexion (and extension) of finger 3
… and so on to slider 5 “level B”.
Total: 5 sliders for a hand. Each one controls one finger.These “level B” sliders, when slided, cause an empirical flexion (or extension) of the respective finger, that is, the simultaneous rotation of all three layers that compose that finger (layer a, b, c, or, at real, proximal phalanx, medial phalanx and distal phalanx, where their anchor point is, naturally, their joints, as in a real hand).
Each finger’s layer’s rotation (the rotation property of the layers a, b, c of each finger) is pickwhipped to a slider control, called slider “level A”. If you slide a “level A” controller of layer “a”, only layer “a” rotates.
Every three sliders “level A” (three for each finger) are pickwhipped to be controlled simultaneously by a slider “level B”. If you slide a “level B”, an entire finger responds (very basic until here).
Now, the only place I could get until now alone is ONLY ONE basic “level C” controller by doing this:
Function wanted for a “level C” controller: when slided (or checked, if it will be a checkbox, who knows), it causes the flexion of one finger and the extension of all others, that is, one finger press the piano key, all other do not press the piano key (as in real life).A “level C” controller makes the musician play one key of the piano (arranging all fingers at once).
To rig a “Level C” controller that makes finger 1 press the piano key:
Pickwhip sliders “level B” of the fingers 2, 3, 4, 5 to the level C and multiply by -1.
Pickwhip slider “level B” of the finger 1 to the same “level C” controller (and don’t multiply by -1).PROBLEM: Now that I want to build the other 4 “level C” controllers I can’t, because all of them are already parented to that first one. But I have a remote idea that it can be done with expressions, although I don’t know how. The cavemen knew more javascript than me.
How can it be done?
Which exact expression should I use with valueAtTime()?Thank you very much!