Thanks John! However, I must let you know that video shows up as private.

I am playing around with the other puppet pin tool options now. I wasn’t even aware of those options before! They seem to be making my work more manageable, I just need to practice with them. Thank you.

As far as Duik goes, isn’t that just taking parenting, and allowing to manipulate the appendage from the end, rather than its base?

I don’t need the line to completely untangle. This character model is actually temporary, when he is in a “crushed” state, and he uses his arm to claw the floor to help him move.

The blue point should be the only normal anchor point that freely rotates. The purple points would be where some degree of bending is allowed. The rest would just stretch…

Read more

My apologies, I highlighted the arm in red!

This character is designed with a twisted arm. I’d like to make it move fluidly as an actual line. Exporting from Illustrator creates it as a shape, so using puppet pin doesn’t work. I could import into AE as separate sections and use parenting as a last resort, but that’s not what I’m going for. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

I figured it out. Toggle mask and shape path visibility was turned off somehow for that comp.

I have one composition where none of the handles show up. I have no idea why after a ton of troubleshooting. The first picture is of the problem composition. The second is of all of my other many compositions which show handles fine. Thank you for any help.

I kept trying exporting from AE and it finally worked with the mask…I didn’t change anything or close the programs, I have no idea what was going on. If anyone might know I’d appreciate it, it’d be nice to be aware of what to avoid going forward.

I am trying to export this image from AE (uploaded picture) as it slowly zooms in. I used motion tracking to get the precise zoom effect (reference image not shown or included in export). I got it exported and uploaded into Premiere without a problem. But then I realized it needed a mask before export, so I went back to AE and put a mild mask…

Read more

Thanks, I’ll try these things and see what happens. Appreciate the help.

I have a strange thing happening in Premiere. I’m working with nested sequences. At random times, certain clips (nested sequences) will act strangely: for any amount of time, maybe a few frames, the clip (not the entire layer) will act as if it’s invisible, revealing the layer(s) below it. The only way to fix this is by deleting the clip from the…

Read more

I figured it out. Essentially all those tools are brushes; you need to double click the layer you want to apply the brush to so that it opens in its own layer panel. For all others who run into this brain fart problem.

Hi, I’m trying to use the Roto Brush tool, but when I have it selected and try to use it, all it does is drag the object in question around, as if the selection tool is active. I’ve tried different things, like adjusting the resolution and restarting the software. One thing I noticed while troubleshooting is that the same exact problem also…

Read more

Thanks guys. This was really helpful. I’ll see what option works best.

I am trying to paste a complicated mask from one layer to another. My problem is that the layer I am pasting the mask to has been transformed, so when I paste it, the mask conforms to this transformation which I don’t want. I’d like to know how to basically “paste in place” this mask on another layer.

Thanks, Matt

Hi, I have an issue with the puppet pin tool. Perhaps I don’t quite understand how it works. I want to manipulate this character’s eyebrow using this tool. As shown by the photos, I pin the eyebrow three times, one on either end and one in the middle. This lets me reshape it exactly how I intended, so no problem so far. However, as soon as I try…

Read more

I’m trying to smooth out a corner as illustrated in the screenshot. This is a simple triangle, but that one corner came out way too sharp. I haven’t been able to find a clear answer for this; one tool that was brought to my attention is the smooth tool, but that doesn’t seem to be the right solution for this. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Alright, all of these options sound great to choose from. Thank you Walter and Terry for your help.

I am animating a show in After Effects with basic puppet characters using parenting. I also use background elements within the same comp as the characters. For many scenes, I need the characters to interact with certain background elements, and also with other characters. Specifically, when the order of these layers change within a scene, like a…

Read more