[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.)