IntroductionWelcome | 00:04 | Hi, I am George Maestri, and welcome to
Creating Animated Characters in After Effects.
| | 00:09 | In this course, we are going to show
you how to build and rig characters for
| | 00:14 | professional animation.
| | 00:16 | So we are going to first start off with how
to design characters; how to build them
| | 00:19 | in Photoshop, Illustrator, as well as how to draw
characters and character parts in After Effects.
| | 00:26 | After that we are going to start tying
the characters together using hierarchies.
| | 00:30 | Then we are going to get into After
Effects Puppet tool, which allows you to
| | 00:34 | deform a character realistically.
| | 00:37 | We are going to get into things like
replacement animation for lip sync and
| | 00:41 | blinks, and then we are going to
get pretty deep into head turns.
| | 00:45 | After that we are going to
automate our rigs with expressions.
| | 00:50 | We are going to learn how to
move mouths with the head turn.
| | 00:55 | We are also going to do same thing for blinks.
| | 00:57 | We are also going to do this null objects
combined with expressions to create a bone
| | 01:01 | system that works with the Puppet tool,
and finally we are going to do a little
| | 01:05 | bit of animation just to make
sure that our deluxe rig works.
| | 01:10 | So I hope you enjoy this course, and
let's get started with Creating Animated
| | 01:14 | Characters in After Effects.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a lynda.com Premium
subscriber, I want you to go ahead and download
| | 00:06 | the exercise files from the Web site,
then go ahead and place that Exercise File
| | 00:12 | folder on to your Desktop.
| | 00:15 | Now if I double-click on this, you will
see that I have got a number of chapters,
| | 00:20 | and each chapter has the exercise
files for that particular chapter.
| | 00:26 | So once you have that on your Desktop,
let's go ahead and move on to the
| | 00:30 | actual course.
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1. Designing Characters Creating characters in Illustrator| 00:00 | When you create characters for use in
animation, typically what you will do
| | 00:05 | is do some conceptual drawings;
either these will be pencil sketches or
| | 00:10 | digital drawings, but eventually you'll
refine down a look, or a design, for your character.
| | 00:17 | Now, once you have a design for your
character, you need to draw what's called a model, and
| | 00:22 | that's your character in a neutral
pose, and this is what we have here: just a
| | 00:27 | basic sketch with the
character, and his arms outstretched.
| | 00:31 | Now, having this neutral pose will
make it much easier to rig and set up the
| | 00:36 | character for animation later.
| | 00:38 | So just make sure that you have a
design that is in a fairly neutral pose.
| | 00:44 | Now once you do that, you need to bring
it in to either Photoshop, Illustrator,
| | 00:49 | or maybe even another drawing package,
to actually draw your character and get
| | 00:55 | him ready for animation.
| | 00:57 | Now in this case, we're going to look at
how to set a character up in Illustrator.
| | 01:01 | Now basically what you need to do
is get your sketch in, and then just
| | 01:06 | start tracing over it.
| | 01:08 | But as we trace over it, we need to
make sure that we create layers that we can
| | 01:13 | use in After Effects later.
| | 01:15 | Now the first thing I want to do is I
want to select the sketch and lock it,
| | 01:18 | so I am just going to go Object > Lock > Selection,
and make sure that I can't select this.
| | 01:26 | So this makes it much easier to draw
over. And then I am going to zoom in.
| | 01:31 | So let's go ahead and start with the
character's face, and one of the things I
| | 01:34 | want to do is I want to make sure
that I know how to use my layers palette,
| | 01:38 | because as we start drawing we are
going to want to take our outlines and put
| | 01:44 | them on separate layers.
| | 01:46 | So right now I am just going to do a
new layer, let's just call this Head, and
| | 01:51 | now I am going to draw the character's head.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to go into my Pen tool
here, make sure I have color set that I
| | 01:59 | like, and then let's just start tracing.
So I am going to go ahead and select
| | 02:03 | this corner here, trace, and then just
start tracing and drawing out what I want.
| | 02:10 | In this particular character, each
corner of his head is going to be basically a
| | 02:15 | corner, so he is kind of got a
squarish head with rounded off faces here.
| | 02:21 | So once I have that, I can certainly
tweak it, make it how I want, and then once I
| | 02:27 | have that layer, I can
start creating a new layer.
| | 02:30 | So in this case, I am going to go
ahead and toggle that layer off, and then
| | 02:35 | create a New layer. And let's go ahead
and go over to his eye, so we're going to
| | 02:38 | create the right eye.
| | 02:40 | Now as we do this, we want to make sure that
we start creating a naming scheme that works.
| | 02:47 | So you want to name the eyes, the
head, hands; everything should have
| | 02:53 | a descriptive name.
| | 02:54 | That way, when you go into After
Effects, it's much easier to see in the
| | 02:58 | layers what you're doing.
| | 03:00 | So in this case, the eye
| | 03:01 | is not going to be a skin color;
| | 03:04 | it's going to be white, so I am going
to go ahead and change my colors here.
| | 03:07 | Let's go ahead and change that to white
with a black outline, and then all we need
| | 03:12 | to do is just use the Ellipse tool, and
go ahead and drag, and create that eye.
| | 03:19 | Okay, so now this is
just the outline of the eye.
| | 03:23 | We want to make sure that we also have a pupil.
| | 03:26 | So for the pupil, again, I just want
to keep layering this, so I am going to
| | 03:30 | create Right Pupil, and let's go
ahead and change our color here.
| | 03:38 | I want it to be -- go ahead and deselect
this, and then I want to select black,
| | 03:45 | and let's go ahead and draw the pupil.
| | 03:48 | Now, I am actually going to draw the
pupil on this side, because I can see it, and
| | 03:52 | then just go ahead and move
it over onto the other eye.
| | 03:56 | So now, as I start drawing this, you can
see how I'm starting to build my character.
| | 04:02 | So if I want, I could take both
of these layers, and then do a
| | 04:06 | Duplicate Selection.
| | 04:08 | So now I've got two more layers, and
I can just move those over, and so on.
| | 04:14 | Obviously, you will need to draw a lot
of different parts for the character.
| | 04:18 | Now, we're not going to go through that
whole process, because it will take you
| | 04:22 | about an hour or so.
| | 04:23 | So let's go through and just show
you what a complete version of the
| | 04:27 | character looks like.
| | 04:28 | Now this guy is a little bit different;
| | 04:30 | I've modified him after I
drew him from the sketch,
| | 04:34 | but he's basically that same character.
| | 04:36 | Now let's take a look at the layering here.
| | 04:39 | He's got a lot of different layers.
| | 04:41 | So we've got a lot of
different parts for this character;
| | 04:44 | we've got a torso right here,
| | 04:48 | we've got each shoe is separate, we've got
the neck is separate, the collar and the
| | 04:53 | tie are separate, and so on.
| | 04:56 | So what I'm trying to do here is get
each individual part of the character that
| | 05:02 | I want to animate separate.
| | 05:05 | Now there are a couple of
decisions you need to make.
| | 05:07 | For example, do you want the arms to be
part of the torso, do you want this to
| | 05:11 | be one flat character that we animate
with the Puppet tool, or do we want it to
| | 05:16 | be separate parts that rotate?
| | 05:19 | Now, some of this is going to depend
on the look and style that you want
| | 05:22 | for your character.
| | 05:24 | If you have individual parts, you are
going to get much tighter joint movement,
| | 05:30 | but you won't get the fluidity that
you'll have when using the Puppet tool.
| | 05:35 | So just remember, as you design your
characters in Illustrator, be sure to
| | 05:40 | layer them as you draw.
| | 05:42 | That will make it much easier to import
them into After Effects later, and also
| | 05:47 | use descriptive names for your layers as well.
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| Creating characters in Photoshop| 00:00 | Creating a character in Photoshop
is similar to how you would do it in
| | 00:05 | Illustrator, but of course
we'll be using bitmap tools.
| | 00:08 | Now, when we use a bitmap, we need to
be cognizant of how big we want that
| | 00:14 | bitmap to be. Unlike an Illustrator
file, which can scale however you want
| | 00:19 | because it's vectors, bitmap has to be
at least big enough to fill the screen.
| | 00:25 | So what we need to do is make sure that
we understand how big our final output
| | 00:30 | will be; if it's HD, standard def, Web,
whatever, and then make sure that we have
| | 00:36 | enough pixels in our basic
character to fill that screen.
| | 00:42 | So you need to think about, okay,
what's the biggest close up we are going to
| | 00:45 | do on our character.
| | 00:46 | So, for example, are we going to do a
close up of the character's head? Then
| | 00:49 | we need to make sure that we scale the
bitmap so that when the head fits in the
| | 00:54 | screen we have enough pixels.
| | 00:56 | So we can do this under Image > Image
Size, and just make sure that we have a
| | 01:01 | width and a height that works.
| | 01:05 | Now, again, with Photoshop you can
start with a sketch, and either paint over or
| | 01:10 | draw over the sketch, or you can
even just create it from scratch.
| | 01:15 | Now I am not going to draw over the
sketch here, because I've got another sketch
| | 01:18 | that I've created and just done in
Illustrator, and then imported into Photoshop,
| | 01:23 | and modified it a little bit.
| | 01:24 | But this is a bitmap image.
| | 01:27 | So, when you start with a bitmap image,
typically you'll just paint the whole
| | 01:31 | character, or create the whole character,
and then you'll start segmenting that
| | 01:35 | character as needed.
| | 01:37 | So let me show you a
little bit about that process.
| | 01:41 | So let's go ahead and start segmenting the
parts of the character that we want here.
| | 01:45 | I am going to go into the head, and
let's go ahead and just start breaking this
| | 01:51 | character apart into layers.
| | 01:53 | Now, very similar to Illustrator, we
want to separate this character out into
| | 01:59 | layers so that we can
animate it more efficiently.
| | 02:02 | So if we take a look at this head, one
of the things we can do is just use a
| | 02:06 | Lasso tool. So, for example, the
Magnetic Lasso should work pretty well for
| | 02:10 | this, and I just want to select out his
head, and then I'm going to just cut and
| | 02:20 | paste that head back on.
| | 02:21 | Now when I do that, you'll notice that
there's a big gap where the neck used to be.
| | 02:28 | I've got the head, but if I'm going to
actually animate this head, I'll need
| | 02:33 | more room on the character's neck.
| | 02:35 | So I need to start drawing the
overlap between the parts of the character,
| | 02:42 | and this is probably one of the
more important thing that we have when
| | 02:45 | drawing in Photoshop.
| | 02:47 | So here, for example, I could select my
neck here, and just create an Elliptical
| | 02:53 | Marquee or something that gives me the
shape that I need for the top of that
| | 02:58 | neck, and then just select my
Paintbrush, and just fill that in.
| | 03:03 | Okay, now what I'm looking for here is
just a little bit more neck so that when
| | 03:10 | this character's head starts animating,
that I have something behind there. And
| | 03:16 | then we are going to start
doing this for the entire character.
| | 03:19 | We're going to start doing it
for the arms, the hands, and so on.
| | 03:24 | Let's continue to focus a
little bit on the face here.
| | 03:27 | Let's go ahead and do the eyes.
| | 03:32 | So I am going to go ahead and
just select out these eyes here.
| | 03:36 | In fact, I am just going to
draw an outline around there.
| | 03:38 | We're actually going to over-select them;
make sure that this head layer is selected here.
| | 03:43 | And then again, this time
we're just going to copy and paste.
| | 03:49 | So now I've got an eye; again I've got a
little bit of a ring around that, but I
| | 03:55 | can just use my Magic Wand tool here
to select that ring, and delete it.
| | 03:59 | Now I should have a pretty good eye here.
| | 04:02 | Now, what happens, though, is
that I still have this eye here;
| | 04:10 | I still have the eye behind that.
| | 04:11 | I need to fill in behind here.
| | 04:14 | I am going to go ahead and select my
Paintbrush, eyedropper this, make sure I'm
| | 04:20 | on that Head layer, and
then just paint this out.
| | 04:24 | Now, once I have that painted out, I can go
back to my eye layer, and just drop that back in.
| | 04:35 | Now again, just like what we did with
Illustrator, we need to make sure that we
| | 04:39 | have descriptive names for all of
our layers as we start creating them.
| | 04:44 | So again, I am going to call this
one Head, call this one the Left Eye.
| | 04:50 | Now we're going to do another one for the pupil.
| | 04:54 | So again, I am just going to Copy,
Paste. And I've got another layer here;
| | 04:58 | let's call that Left Pupil, and again I
want to paint in behind there. So I've
| | 05:07 | got this left eye, and it
still has that old pupil in there.
| | 05:10 | So again, select my Paintbrush, go to
my Eye layer, paint that out, and then
| | 05:19 | turn on my Pupil layer here.
| | 05:21 | So now I've got a separate
eye and a separate pupil.
| | 05:25 | We can do the same for pretty much
every part of the face, and then we can work
| | 05:30 | our way down to other parts of the
character that we may want to animate.
| | 05:34 | So, for example, you probably
would want to separate out the neck,
| | 05:38 | you may want to separate out the tie,
the hands should probably be separate,
| | 05:42 | you may separate out the shoulders.
| | 05:45 | So every part of this character, you
want to separate out just depending on how
| | 05:49 | you want to animate it.
| | 05:51 | Now, I have a complete version of this
character, so you can kind of get an idea
| | 05:55 | as to how segmented we want it to be.
| | 05:58 | Now, in addition to all of the parts
on the face, and the hands, and everything,
| | 06:05 | I've actually included several different
arms, several different legs, as well as
| | 06:10 | hands, mouths, and eyelids. And we're
going to get into how to create some of
| | 06:16 | these a little bit later, but just
notice that we've got a very, very complete
| | 06:21 | list of parts for my character.
| | 06:23 | So if you go down here, for example,
I've got a separate layer for the shoes.
| | 06:28 | Each leg is a separate layer.
| | 06:32 | I've got separate hand. If you look at
the sleeve, I've got a separate sleeve.
| | 06:36 | But I also have separate forearms and biceps.
| | 06:40 | It just depends on how I
want to animate the character.
| | 06:44 | So, if I want to bend the arm using
the Puppet tool, I can use this Sleeve
| | 06:49 | character, or I can have
separate parts for each part of the arm.
| | 06:54 | So if you want, take a look at this file
for reference, but the basic notion here
| | 06:58 | is that we do want to layer our
characters with descriptive names, and make sure
| | 07:04 | that we have layers for everything
that we want to animate in After Effects.
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| Designing joints| 00:00 | As you start layering your characters,
you want to make sure that your joints
| | 00:05 | have the proper overlap
so that they animate well.
| | 00:09 | Now, this is most important in the
elbows, and the knees, but also the shoulders
| | 00:14 | and hips can be important as well. But
let's take a look at this character's
| | 00:18 | elbows, and let's make sure that we have
the right overlap so that this animates well.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in a
little bit here to his arm so that we can see it.
| | 00:33 | Right now, it's all in one piece, but we
want to cut out this forearm so that we
| | 00:37 | can bend it at the elbow.
| | 00:39 | Now imagine what an elbow does:
| | 00:41 | it rotates, so a rotation is
basically a movement around a circle.
| | 00:47 | So we want these joints to
overlap with a circular outline.
| | 00:52 | So the easiest way to do this is to
select our Elliptical Marquee tool, and if
| | 00:57 | want, we can do a fixed ratio of 1:1,
and that will force it to be a circle.
| | 01:03 | So then what we can do is just draw a
circle that's the width of the arm, and
| | 01:08 | make sure that we position it
right where we want the elbow to be.
| | 01:12 | Now once we do that, we have
the overlap; we have the outline,
| | 01:18 | so all we need to do is just select
the rest of the arm and go from there.
| | 01:22 | So I'm just going to select my Polygonal
Lasso tool, or Lasso tool, hold down the
| | 01:26 | Shift key, and I just want to make sure
I intersect right there at the tangent,
| | 01:33 | and then just select the
rest of my arm, and there we go.
| | 01:38 | Now once I have this, all I have to do
now is just do a Cut and a Paste, and now
| | 01:47 | I've got this arm in the right place.
| | 01:49 | Now notice how I've got kind of a
divot here, but we can fix that later.
| | 01:52 | So all I want to do is make sure that
this fits, basically, into that little
| | 01:56 | divot. And the reason we have a
circular outline is because when we start to
| | 02:02 | animate this, you want to make sure
that that is rotating around that
| | 02:08 | circular outline, and if we have that right,
you'll see how it makes a much better animation.
| | 02:17 | So once I have this, I can now
basically fill in the difference there.
| | 02:22 | So I'm just going to zoom in a little
bit more so I can see, and again, just
| | 02:26 | create a circular outline here.
| | 02:28 | I use my Elliptical
Marquee; make sure that fits.
| | 02:35 | Let's do this, draw this one more time.
There we go. And I'm just going to use my
| | 02:39 | arrow keys to kind of fill in there.
| | 02:41 | And once I have that, then all I have to
do is make sure I'm on the proper layer,
| | 02:47 | select my Paintbrush, and then -- or my Fill
tool -- and I can just fill that in. Okay.
| | 02:53 | So now that I have both of these, I can
move this into place here, and I should
| | 03:02 | have pretty good joint action.
| | 03:05 | So now let's go ahead and just hit
Transform, move my pivot point to the
| | 03:10 | center of that elbow, and now when I rotate
you'll see how I have a pretty good animation.
| | 03:19 | So we can do this for all joints in
the character, and again, this is very
| | 03:23 | similar to what we did
with the head and the neck.
| | 03:26 | You want some pixels behind what you
are animating so that we don't get any
| | 03:29 | holes in the character.
| | 03:32 | Now, this works the same for Illustrator.
All you have to do is make sure that
| | 03:35 | your shapes have a circular overlap as well.
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| Drawing mouths| 00:00 | If your character does any sort of
lip sync, or mouth movement, you will
| | 00:05 | probably want to draw
separate mouths for your characters.
| | 00:10 | Now, for lip sync, you need a
number of different mouth shapes.
| | 00:15 | It depends on the style of lip sync
that you want to do, but here are some
| | 00:18 | of the basic shapes.
| | 00:20 | Now, in here I've got about 12 mouths,
and these are just representative of some
| | 00:25 | of the types of the mouths you want to do.
| | 00:27 | So I have these numbered from Mouth 1 to
Mouth 2, and all of these are on separate layers.
| | 00:32 | So I am going to select Mouth 1 here,
and just kind of move it over so that we
| | 00:36 | can see all of the different
mouth shapes that we want to create.
| | 00:39 | In fact, I am going to
go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 00:43 | So the first one here is basically
just the A, I, or E sound; it's basically
| | 00:49 | just an open mouth.
| | 00:51 | The next one is basically derived from
that mouth. In fact, you can see it's
| | 00:55 | almost a same shape, and I have just got a
little bit of tongue in there, and that's
| | 00:59 | just to provide some variety.
| | 01:01 | We have a wider mouth with an open
bottom, and that's for the short vowels, such
| | 01:07 | as ah, or eh; that sort of vowel.
| | 01:10 | We have the closed mouth with the teeth
showing, and that's for consonants. And
| | 01:15 | then I just have a couple of
variations here of those mouths, in case you
| | 01:19 | want to have a different change of emotion.
| | 01:21 | Now these two are very important:
| | 01:23 | these are the oh, or the uh, sound,
and the ooh; the pursed lips shape.
| | 01:29 | This one here has the tongue on the
teeth, and that's for ones such as L, or T.
| | 01:37 | This one has the bottom lip underneath
the teeth, and that's for F, or V. And then
| | 01:42 | we have just a couple of closed mouth shapes.
| | 01:45 | Now, these are just some representative
types of mouths. You can certainly create
| | 01:51 | as many or as few mouths
as your animation requires.
| | 01:56 | But the most important thing is to have
each mouth on a separate layer, and to
| | 02:03 | name them descriptively.
| | 02:04 | In this case, I've just
named them 1 through 12.
| | 02:07 | You may also want to name them with
the type of phoneme that you want.
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| Drawing hands and eyelids| 00:00 | Other important character parts
to focus on are hands, and eyelids.
| | 00:05 | Let's take a look at hands.
| | 00:07 | Now, there are several ways to animate hands.
| | 00:09 | In this case, I have
chosen to do replacement hands.
| | 00:13 | We could also do hands with separate
joints, but a lot of times replacement
| | 00:17 | hands can be drawn much more fluidly
than having a hand with separate joints.
| | 00:23 | So in this case, I have 5 different
hands, and I have a couple of hands facing
| | 00:29 | the camera, so such as this one with
a finger straight out, and this one
| | 00:33 | little bit more relaxed. And then I
have a few more with the back of the hand
| | 00:37 | to the camera, which is basically this one, a
fist, and then one with an index finger pointing.
| | 00:44 | Now, when you draw hands, one of the
most important things is to make sure that
| | 00:49 | they have pretty good overlap, and this
is true for anything that we're going to
| | 00:53 | do with replacement animations. So, for
example, if I select Right Hand O3, and
| | 00:59 | lay it over, you can see how I've got it
pretty much lined up along the back here.
| | 01:07 | So I've got enough wrist, in this case,
to tuck behind the cuff, and then I want
| | 01:13 | to make sure that the back of the hand
is pretty much the same shape. In terms of
| | 01:18 | the hand with the back of
the hand facing the camera,
| | 01:21 | I want those to be pretty much the same,
and then for the other hands where the
| | 01:26 | front of the hand faces the camera,
again, I want that to kind of match up.
| | 01:31 | So just like with mouths, you
can draw as many as you want.
| | 01:34 | Now the other part that we want to
use for replacement animation would be
| | 01:39 | eyelids, and with eyelids you just want
to make sure that we have enough eyelids
| | 01:44 | to animate the expressions that you want.
| | 01:47 | So, for example, here I have Left
Lid 01, and that's the eyelid that
| | 01:52 | completely covers the eye.
| | 01:54 | Now, make sure that it does cover the eye,
and that basically we can just lay this
| | 02:00 | over to make the eye blink. So, for
example, if I did visibility, we can kind of see
| | 02:05 | how we can almost animate a
blink just by popping it on and off.
| | 02:11 | Now, in this case, I do
have several other eyelids.
| | 02:14 | I have one that's one-third closed,
one that's two-thirds closed, and one that
| | 02:19 | is completely closed.
| | 02:21 | I can also add in lower lids if I want.
| | 02:25 | And again, you can draw as many eyelids
as you think you might need for animation.
| | 02:30 | And again, just preparation; making
sure you have what you need can be very
| | 02:35 | important before you rig a character.
| | 02:38 | So again, try and imagine all the
different scenarios a character will be, and
| | 02:42 | try and draw the body parts
that will address those situations.
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| Importing Illustrator files into After Effects| 00:00 | Once you have your character drawn,
either in Illustrator or Photoshop, you can
| | 00:05 | then save it out, and
bring it into After Effects.
| | 00:09 | So let's take a look at the
workflow for Illustrator first.
| | 00:13 | Now, I have my file here, and before I
do any exporting here, I want to make
| | 00:17 | sure I go into Edit > Preferences,
and go up to File Handling & Clipboard.
| | 00:24 | Just make sure that Preserve Paths is turned on.
| | 00:28 | This can help later on if we want to create
paths that we can animate in After Effects.
| | 00:35 | Then once you do that, you can
go ahead and do a File > Save As.
| | 00:39 | Now in this case, I am just going to
save over my old file, which is called
| | 00:44 | Gus_Complete, and hit Save;
| | 00:48 | yes, I want to replace it.
| | 00:50 | The reason I did this is I want to
make sure I bring up this menu here for
| | 00:53 | Illustrator Options.
| | 00:54 | Obviously, we can save it in a number of
different formats, which is a nice thing
| | 00:59 | that Illustrator does,
| | 01:00 | but I am going to leave this at CS5.
And then we want to make sure that we have
| | 01:04 | Create a PDF Compatible File checked.
| | 01:08 | Once we do that, we hit OK, the file
saves out, and we can go into After Effects.
| | 01:14 | Now, we can import the file either
through the File menu, File > Import, or we
| | 01:19 | can just double-click on the Project menu.
| | 01:23 | Again, our file is called Gus_Complete.
| | 01:25 | Now, before we import it, we want
to make sure that we import this as
| | 01:29 | Composition-Retain layer Sizes.
| | 01:32 | That will make sure that it shrinks the
bounding boxes to the size of the layers,
| | 01:37 | and that's kind of important.
| | 01:39 | Once we do that, we hit Open, and
it brings it into After Effects.
| | 01:45 | So I can just double-click on the Gus_
Complete layer here, and you can see we
| | 01:49 | have the character, and all the parts, and
each part is a separate layer in the composition.
| | 01:56 | This is why we want to make sure
that our layers are named properly in
| | 02:01 | Illustrator, because they
flow through to After Effects.
| | 02:04 | So if I have descriptive names here, it
makes it much easier to animate once you
| | 02:08 | get into After Effects.
| | 02:10 | Now, if you are working with
Illustrator files, typically you'll have vectors,
| | 02:15 | and this is nice because this way
they're kind of resolution independent.
| | 02:20 | Now, for example, let's say I
select this hand, and I scale it up.
| | 02:28 | Typically, in After Effects,
this will go ahead and scale evenly.
| | 02:33 | The way we want to make sure that this
happens is we want to make sure that we
| | 02:36 | have this column turned on, which
basically is called Continuous Rasterize.
| | 02:42 | Now, typically what I do is I just go
ahead and select all of my layers, and make
| | 02:48 | sure I click Continuously
Rasterize for all of them.
| | 02:51 | Now, notice how when I click it off it
gets kind of fuzzy, and that's because
| | 02:56 | it's just using a low res version of the object.
| | 03:01 | But once I do this, it rasterizes, so
if I scale, or if I shrink or scale it, it
| | 03:08 | will go ahead and rasterize it, so I
always have smooth edges, and that's one of
| | 03:12 | the nice things to do when
you're using Illustrator files.
| | 03:16 | Now, once you have all of your parts in
place, you're pretty much ready to start
| | 03:22 | assembling your character in After Effects.
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| Importing Photoshop files into After Effects| 00:00 | Importing a Photoshop-based character into After Effects
is pretty much the same as Illustrator;
| | 00:07 | in fact, it's a little bit simpler.
So let's just take a look at how to do that.
| | 00:10 | All you want to do is make sure
that you have your character set up
| | 00:13 | with all of the layers in
the way that you want.
| | 00:16 | Then just go ahead and just do a File > Save or Save As.
In this case, I am going to save over my original file.
| | 00:23 | And in terms options, you want to just use the default
options. There's really nothing that we have to do special.
| | 00:30 | And just go ahead and save it out.
| | 00:33 | And then let's go into After
Effects. Again, just double-click
| | 00:38 | in the Project window,
| | 00:40 | and we're going to select to our file; in
this case it's going to be called Gus_Complete.
| | 00:44 | And again, just like we did with
Illustrator, you want to make sure that you
| | 00:49 | retain layer sizes. So I'm going to select Composition-
Retain Layer sizes, and that makes sure that the bounding boxes
| | 00:56 | just snap to the outside of
| | 00:59 | each layer, so we don't
get giant layers. And then
| | 01:03 | just go ahead and hit open.
| | 01:06 | Now, when we import a Photoshop
file, we're going to have one more dialog box,
| | 01:11 | and that is, do we want to retain
our Editable Layer Styles?
| | 01:15 | A lot of times this can slow things down,
| | 01:17 | but I don't have them in my original
files, so this is not going to be a problem for me.
| | 01:22 | I'm just going to go ahead
and hit okay,
| | 01:25 | and then I'm just going to double-click
on Gus_Complete, and there's my file.
| | 01:29 | Now, because is a bitmap file, it comes
in a lot bigger than the Illustrator file.
| | 01:35 | So I'm just going to
go ahead and zoom to fit,
| | 01:37 | and then maybe even just zoom in a little
bit so I can see what I'm doing here. And
| | 01:42 | this is basically the file. So again, notice how the layers
all come in named properly. These layers are going to
| | 01:51 | match the names of the
layers in your Photoshop file.
| | 01:54 | So if your Photoshop file
is labeled properly,
| | 01:59 | everything should flow through
into After Effects.
| | 02:03 | And once you have everything into After Effects.
| | 02:07 | we're ready to begin rigging.
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|
|
2. Drawing Characters in After EffectsDrawing in After Effects| 00:00 | If you want, you can also draw your
character in After Effects directly.
| | 00:06 | Now, this has some advantages in that
it allows you to actually animate the
| | 00:11 | shapes of your character's
body parts; that sort of thing.
| | 00:14 | There are some limitations in terms of
layering, texturing; that sort of thing.
| | 00:19 | You will get better results in
Illustrator or Photoshop, but there are some places
| | 00:24 | where drawing in After
Effects can be advantageous.
| | 00:29 | So let's just take a look at some of the
process of drawing character parts in After Effects.
| | 00:35 | So I have a file here, and one of the
things I have is just a reference of my
| | 00:39 | character, and we are going
to use that to draw over.
| | 00:43 | So I have a composition here called
Comp 1, and I am just going to double-click
| | 00:47 | on that to bring it up, and then select
this file Gus_Reference.jpg, and then just
| | 00:53 | drag it into my Timeline.
| | 00:56 | And I want to make sure I lock this layer,
because I am going to start drawing over it.
| | 01:02 | So let's take a look at how to use
the Shape tools in After Effects.
| | 01:05 | I am going to zoom in, and in order to
draw a shape we need to create a shape
| | 01:12 | layer, so I am going to go
into Layer > New > Shape layer.
| | 01:16 | And that just creates an empty Shape layer.
| | 01:20 | Then I am going to select my Pen tool,
and make sure my Fill and Stroke are what
| | 01:25 | I want, and I can start drawing.
| | 01:27 | So let's say I want to
draw this character's head.
| | 01:30 | So again, I can just --
very similar to Illustrator --
| | 01:32 | I can lay down, basically, points. So if
I click and drag, I get a Bezier handle.
| | 01:37 | If I just click once, I get a corner.
| | 01:40 | So I am going to go ahead and click and
drag, click once, click and drag, click
| | 01:47 | once, click and drag, and
then just click again to close.
| | 01:52 | Now once I have done that, I am going
to go ahead over to my Selection tool
| | 01:55 | here, and you can see
under Contents I have a shape.
| | 02:00 | Now this shape can be used, basically,
just like any other part of my character.
| | 02:07 | So if I want, I can just use the shape
as is, or I can animate that shape, which
| | 02:13 | can be a very handy thing to do.
| | 02:16 | So let's say I also wanted to
draw some additional shapes.
| | 02:19 | Let's say I wanted to draw the character's hair.
| | 02:21 | So if I want, I can hide this shape, just
like I did when drawing in Illustrator.
| | 02:26 | And again, I am just going to create
another Shape layer, and this time I am
| | 02:31 | going to select the Pen tool, but my
hair is black, so I am going to select my
| | 02:35 | Fill as Black, and my Stroke as Black as well.
| | 02:41 | And again, I am just going to go ahead and
click for corner, click and drag, and so on.
| | 02:48 | Click for corner, corner, click and
drag, click and drag, and then maybe a
| | 02:55 | corner here, and then close.
| | 02:57 | So as you can see, I've got a very
easy way to draw shapes, and these can
| | 03:04 | certainly be used for
character parts in After Effects.
| | 03:09 | Now once you have a shape,
you can also change its color.
| | 03:15 | You can either do that by selecting
the shape here, and just selecting the
| | 03:19 | Fill color, so if I want to change
that color I can certainly do that. Or I
| | 03:24 | can go into my Shape layer here, into
my Shape, and you can see we have some
| | 03:28 | options here as well.
| | 03:30 | So we have, for example, Stroke.
| | 03:33 | We can actually have Layer Effects if we want,
and we can also do that with Fill as well.
| | 03:40 | We can also transform shapes individually,
or we can use a master transform as well.
| | 03:48 | So these are just some of the basics of
how to draw shapes in After Effects to
| | 03:53 | create characters directly in After Effects.
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| Copying paths from Illustrator| 00:00 | Another way to get shapes into After
Effects is to cut and paste them from Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | Now, if you've imported your character
from Illustrator, all you're going to get
| | 00:13 | is the rasterizing; you're not going
to get the actual shapes themselves.
| | 00:16 | For example, I have this file here where
the character was imported from After Effects.
| | 00:22 | So if I zoom into the character's hair
and select it, you can see that while
| | 00:27 | the hair is rasterizing, it
understands the curves are there, but I can't get
| | 00:32 | to the shapes themselves.
| | 00:34 | Well, I can actually fix this by going
into Illustrator, and actually cutting and
| | 00:40 | pasting the shape itself.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to go into
Illustrator here, and we're going to select the
| | 00:45 | character's hair, and then I'm just
going to do an Edit > Copy, and go back
| | 00:50 | into After Effects.
| | 00:52 | Now, before I paste, I need to
create a Shape layer to paste it into.
| | 00:58 | So, for example, if I wanted to paste,
I actually couldn't, because there's no
| | 01:01 | place to paste a shape.
| | 01:04 | So I need to do Layer > New > Shape layer,
and then there is one more thing I need to do.
| | 01:10 | I need to draw a dummy
shape that I'm going to replace.
| | 01:14 | If I pasted what I brought over from
Illustrator right now, it would paste it as
| | 01:19 | a mask, not a shape.
| | 01:20 | So I'm just going to go ahead and
select my Pen tool and draw a placeholder. So
| | 01:26 | I'm just going to draw a big rectangle
right here over the center of the screen.
| | 01:31 | And now once I have that, I can go
into Contents in my Shape layer, go into
| | 01:36 | Shape 1, and select Path 1.
| | 01:38 | Now once I do that, now I can do a paste,
and when I do that, it pastes that over
| | 01:46 | it, and it replaces it, and now I have my shape.
| | 01:50 | So I just select my Shape layer, and
let's go ahead and just bring it up
| | 01:54 | towards the head here, and zoom in. And
now that I have it, I can go ahead and
| | 02:01 | start modifying it.
| | 02:02 | So all I have to do is select Path 1,
and I can actually reshape this, and I have
| | 02:08 | total control over my shape.
| | 02:11 | So this is just one more way to get
shapes into After Effects, and that's
| | 02:16 | bringing them in from Illustrator.
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| Animating shapes| 00:00 | Now, once you have a shape in After
Effects, either drawn directly in After
| | 00:04 | Effects, or brought over from Illustrator,
there are some nice things you can do with it.
| | 00:08 | One of the most important ones
is that you can animate this.
| | 00:12 | Now, this is kind of important for
characters that need some sort of shape animation,
| | 00:16 | so hairstyle that changes shape, hands
that move back and forth, a belly that
| | 00:22 | jiggles; that sort of thing.
| | 00:24 | So let's take a look at this character's hair.
| | 00:26 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in. So the
very top layer in this is called Hair_Top, and
| | 00:33 | this is that Shape layer that we created.
| | 00:36 | So if I want, I can actually start
animating the path of this character's hair.
| | 00:41 | So all I have to do is just set a
keyframe here by clicking the stopwatch, and
| | 00:47 | then just moving my timeframe forward a
few frames, and then all I have to do is
| | 00:52 | use my Select tool to
reshape the character's hair.
| | 00:59 | Once I do that, it's actually animating.
| | 01:02 | So if you want his
hairstyle to grow, you can do that.
| | 01:06 | If you want a belly to jiggle, you can do that.
| | 01:09 | So it just sets keyframes for both
of those, and now I'm animating both.
| | 01:14 | This can come in very, very handy.
| | 01:17 | We use it later in the course to
actually change the shape of the character's
| | 01:21 | hair as he does a head turn.
| | 01:23 | You can also use this for the
character's face, to change the shape of
| | 01:26 | character's nose; many, many different
ways to use this feature in animation, and
| | 01:32 | in rigging a character.
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|
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3. Assembling Characters Using HierarchiesUnderstanding how layer hierarchies work| 00:00 | Once you've imported your character in
from Photoshop, or Illustrator, you need
| | 00:05 | to tie all the parts together,
and this is called hierarchies.
| | 00:10 | Now, you may be familiar with them from
your previous work in After Effects, but
| | 00:14 | let's go over some of the
basics as they apply to characters.
| | 00:18 | Now, I have two compositions in this file:
one is called Gus_00; the other one is Gus_01.
| | 00:25 | So I am going to double-click on Gus_
00, and this is pretty much how it would
| | 00:30 | come in from Photoshop, or whatever.
| | 00:34 | It comes in kind of as a flat file;
nothing is connected together.
| | 00:38 | So, for example, if I were to select
the Torso and move it, nothing else would
| | 00:44 | move with it. Or I could do
the same for any other part.
| | 00:47 | For example, the hair, or maybe more
importantly, something like the face.
| | 00:52 | You'd want all of the facial
features to move along with that part.
| | 00:57 | Now, we can do that by
creating what are called hierarchies.
| | 01:02 | If we double-click on Gus_01, that will
bring up a composition that is tied together.
| | 01:09 | So let's just take a look at how this works.
| | 01:11 | If I select the Torso, and move it,
everything moves along with it.
| | 01:16 | If I were to select, for example, the
Bicep of this character, and move it, you
| | 01:21 | can see that just the arm moves together.
| | 01:24 | Now, if I select the Rotate tool, and
rotate that upper arm, you can see how the
| | 01:30 | hand moves, and this actually
gives more of a realistic look.
| | 01:34 | You could even do the same for the head.
| | 01:36 | Now, the way this works is by tying these
together using hierarchies or parenting.
| | 01:43 | So in the Composition window, each one of
these parts is connected to another part.
| | 01:49 | Let me show you how this works in Gus_00.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to go ahead and double-
click on this again, and you can see that
| | 01:56 | if we scroll down, all of
these Parents are listed as None.
| | 02:02 | In other words, nothing is
connected to anything else.
| | 02:05 | There are no parents and children.
| | 02:09 | So if we wanted to create something
like this, we could do that very easily
| | 02:13 | using some simple After Effects tools.
| | 02:16 | So what I am going to do is select my
Zoom tool, and let's just go ahead and
| | 02:19 | connect up his arm, and see how that works.
| | 02:22 | So I am going to go ahead and drag, and
just kind of zoom in so we can take a
| | 02:26 | closer look at it, and then I'm
going to select the different parts.
| | 02:32 | So, for example, let's say I wanted
the forearm to move with the bicep.
| | 02:38 | This is the left side of the character.
| | 02:40 | So I scroll down until I find
Left Forearm and Left Bicep.
| | 02:45 | I want the Bicep to be the master,
so I want the Forearm to be connected.
| | 02:51 | So I can do this in one of two ways.
| | 02:53 | I can select this little Pick Whip, and
just go ahead and drag that to Bicep, and
| | 02:59 | notice how this changes in
this little pulldown menu.
| | 03:03 | The other way is to simply just select it
from the pulldown menu, which it already is.
| | 03:09 | Now, once I have that selected, when
I go ahead and rotate that Bicep, the
| | 03:15 | Forearm is now connected to it.
| | 03:17 | It's parented to the Bicep,
and it all works together.
| | 03:22 | We can do this for the rest of the parts.
| | 03:24 | So, for example, if I select the Cuff,
I could link the Cuff to the Forearm, and
| | 03:31 | if I select the Hand, I can also link
the Hand to the Cuff. And again, I'm just
| | 03:36 | doing this using the pulldown menu;
| | 03:38 | you can do it either way.
| | 03:40 | Once I have this all together, I can
move that part of the character all at once.
| | 03:47 | So as you can see, parenting and
hierarchies are very important.
| | 03:51 | So let's go ahead and take a step back,
and actually set this up from scratch
| | 03:55 | starting in the next lesson.
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| Understanding the importance of the pivot point| 00:00 | When you start animating a character in
After Effects, you want the body parts
| | 00:04 | to move realistically, and part of
this means that you need the joints to
| | 00:09 | rotate realistically.
| | 00:11 | In order to do this, we need to adjust the
pivot points of all the joints in the character.
| | 00:17 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:19 | I've got a basic character
here, and it's completely flat.
| | 00:22 | There are no hierarchies, and this is
pretty much how it would come in from
| | 00:27 | Photoshop, or Illustrator.
| | 00:29 | So I am just going to go ahead and zoom
into the arm so we can take a look at this.
| | 00:34 | If I select, say for example, the
upper arm here, and rotate it, you will
| | 00:39 | notice that, A. The hierarchies aren't there,
but B. It's rotating around the wrong place.
| | 00:45 | We really want it to rotate around the
shoulder; not the middle of the arm.
| | 00:50 | Now, we can change this pivot point
just by using the Pan Behind tool; the
| | 00:55 | keyboard shortcut is Y. So I am going
to go ahead and select that, and you can
| | 00:58 | see the pivot point here;
| | 01:00 | We can just move that.
| | 01:01 | So all I need to do is move that over
to where the shoulder would be, and then
| | 01:07 | that's basically it.
| | 01:08 | So all I have to do now is, once I
rotate it, now you can see it rotates a
| | 01:12 | lot more realistically.
| | 01:15 | So now that we have done the shoulder,
let's go ahead and work our way down the arm.
| | 01:19 | Now I can select the Left Forearm, and again, you
can see how the pivot point is in the middle.
| | 01:24 | Now, one of the things I like to do is
when I have this selected, sometimes I
| | 01:29 | like to see what the shape of this is.
| | 01:31 | So I am going to go ahead and turn
off the Left Bicep here in the layers, and
| | 01:36 | now you can see exactly where that is. In fact,
I can zoom in even a little bit closer here.
| | 01:42 | You can see how this is kind of a semicircle.
| | 01:46 | If I take this and position it in
the center, or near the center, of that
| | 01:51 | semicircle, I should get a good rotation.
| | 01:56 | So I am going to go ahead and zoom out
a little bit here, and turn on the Bicep,
| | 02:01 | and then just select my Rotation tool here.
| | 02:03 | And one of things we are looking for
in this rotation is we want to make sure
| | 02:07 | that this rotates evenly.
| | 02:10 | So if this is off, for some reason,
you'll see it will rotate kind of incorrectly.
| | 02:14 | In fact, let's go ahead
and do something like that.
| | 02:16 | So, for example, if this was way over
on the side, here, when I rotate this, you
| | 02:22 | will see that I get this kind of bump
here. And so what you need to do is make
| | 02:27 | sure that the pivot point is kind
of at the center of that rotation.
| | 02:32 | Now we can work our way
through the rest of the arm.
| | 02:35 | For example, if I select this Cuff, well,
the Cuff really doesn't rotate too much, so
| | 02:39 | I don't have to worry about that.
| | 02:40 | I can keep that centered.
| | 02:42 | If I select the hand, again, you don't
want the hand to rotate around the palm;
| | 02:47 | you want it to rotate around the wrist.
| | 02:48 | So I am going to go ahead, again, and
select my Pan Behind tool, and then just move
| | 02:53 | that over towards the bottom of the wrist here.
| | 02:56 | So when we rotate this, we
get a fairly smooth rotation.
| | 03:02 | Now, we can do this for
other parts of the body as well.
| | 03:05 | So, for example, let's take a look at the head.
| | 03:07 | If I select this, you'll see that,
again, we don't want to rotate around
| | 03:11 | the center of the eyes.
| | 03:13 | The head usually rotates around the
bottom where it connects to the neck.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to go ahead and
select this, and move that down.
| | 03:20 | Now the parts of the body that are on the
face actually don't really rotate all that much,
| | 03:26 | so we can keep those centered.
| | 03:28 | For example, the brows; they move and
they rotate, but it's not really an
| | 03:33 | anatomical joint where we need that
to be exactly at the right place.
| | 03:38 | Now, let's go ahead and move a
little bit further down here.
| | 03:40 | I am going to go ahead and just drag
this, and let's select the Torso. And again,
| | 03:45 | the torso has its center of gravity
somewhere around here, which is basically
| | 03:49 | the center of the object.
| | 03:51 | But again, we want to
move that pivot point lower.
| | 03:53 | Remember, we can basically pivot around
the hips is probably the best place to
| | 03:57 | place a pivot point there.
| | 04:00 | And then let's go ahead and just work
our way through the legs and the shoes.
| | 04:05 | So I am going to go ahead and
take a look at this leg here.
| | 04:09 | Now again, I want to see
how this joint is shaped.
| | 04:12 | So I am going to actually scroll down
in my composition here, and I am going to
| | 04:17 | find Torso layer, and I'm going to select that, and
| | 04:22 | I am going to hide it, and so now
you can see how the legs are shaped.
| | 04:26 | So I'm going to, again, position this
pivot point somewhere in the center of that
| | 04:33 | circular shape there. And we
can do the same for the shin.
| | 04:37 | So I am going to go ahead and select the
Shin, but again, I am going to turn off
| | 04:40 | the Left Thigh so I can see where it is,
and again, try and position that in the
| | 04:46 | center of that object.
| | 04:48 | And let's go ahead to the shoe. And
again, the pivot point of the shoe, or the
| | 04:52 | foot, is around the ankle,
| | 04:54 | so I want to go ahead and
put that right about there.
| | 04:56 | So now, once I have those, I can go ahead
and just turn on all the body parts, and
| | 05:01 | let's do some test rotations here.
| | 05:03 | So, for example, this rotates around the knee.
| | 05:05 | Well actually, I could probably
bring that down just a little bit.
| | 05:09 | So let me go ahead and just nudge that
down, and now let's see how that works.
| | 05:13 | Okay, that works a little bit better.
| | 05:16 | And we can do the leg around the hip.
| | 05:18 | That looks pretty good.
| | 05:20 | And let's take a look at the foot,
and that works pretty good as well.
| | 05:26 | So as you can see, I have
worked on one side of the character.
| | 05:28 | I have done the left arm, and the left leg.
| | 05:30 | You can use the same techniques for
the right side of the character as well.
| | 05:35 | And just remember to try and position
that pivot point so that the joint moves
| | 05:40 | smoothly.
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| Assembling the upper body| 00:00 | So now let's go ahead and
assemble our character into a hierarchy.
| | 00:03 | We're going to do that using the
parenting feature of After Effects.
| | 00:07 | Now before we do this, we want to
make sure that all of our joints have
| | 00:11 | the right pivot points.
| | 00:12 | If I select, for example, the upper arm
here, the bicep goes ahead and rotates
| | 00:17 | around the shoulder, and the forearm
rotates around the elbow, and so on.
| | 00:22 | Once we have those pivot points in
place, we can stitch together the
| | 00:27 | character into a hierarchy.
| | 00:29 | Now this is done using the parenting
feature, which is right along here.
| | 00:34 | Now let's go ahead and
start with the upper body.
| | 00:37 | I'm going to go ahead and just zoom
in to this left arm. And let's go ahead
| | 00:44 | and pick the Left Bicep; in fact, I'm
going to go ahead and scroll down, so we
| | 00:48 | can see that layer. There it is.
| | 00:49 | So now, once I have the Left Bicep selected,
I want to make sure that I connect it
| | 00:54 | to its parent, and in this
case, that would be the Torso.
| | 00:59 | So let's go ahead and
connect those two together.
| | 01:01 | We can do that in two ways.
| | 01:03 | One is to use what's called a Pick
Whip, and that just allows you to
| | 01:07 | left-click, and drag to
the layer that you want.
| | 01:11 | So, for example, in this case we're
going to do Torso, and when I do that you
| | 01:16 | notice how it shows up in this pulldown menu.
| | 01:19 | The other way to do it is just to use
the pulldown menu. I can just select by
| | 01:23 | name, and just select Torso, and there we go.
| | 01:26 | Now notice how when I select the Torso,
the Left Bicep actually moves along with it.
| | 01:33 | So we can do the same for the other
sides, so I can select the Right Bicep, and
| | 01:38 | again, I can just click
and drag it to the Torso.
| | 01:42 | We can do the same for other parts of
the character. So, for example, we have
| | 01:46 | this Tie, we have the Neck, so
let's go ahead and select both of those.
| | 01:50 | I'm just going to Shift+Select those.
| | 01:52 | And you can see we have Tie, and Neck
selected, and I can just use this pulldown
| | 01:55 | menu here, again, to select Torso.
| | 01:59 | Once I've done that, now I've got all of
this part of the character moving together.
| | 02:06 | Now, of course, we have other parts of
the character, and we don't want to connect
| | 02:09 | everything to the Torso, because, for
example, if I want to move this arm, I
| | 02:13 | want the forearm to move along with it.
| | 02:16 | So let's go ahead down to that Left
Forearm and select it, and we want that
| | 02:21 | connected to the bicep.
| | 02:23 | So all we have to do, again, is just select this,
connect it to the bicep, and it should work.
| | 02:28 | So, for example, if I rotate this, now
the forearm moves along with it. But we
| | 02:34 | still have to do the Cuff, and the Hand.
| | 02:37 | So let's go ahead and select the Hand,
and we're going to link that to the Cuff,
| | 02:41 | and I'm going to select the Cuff, and
we're going to link that to the Forearm.
| | 02:46 | So hopefully now
everything should rotate together.
| | 02:49 | So when I rotate the shoulder,
the whole arm moves along.
| | 02:53 | If I rotate it at the elbow,
the hand, and the cuff move along.
| | 02:57 | So let's go ahead and use
that for the other side as well.
| | 03:00 | Let's go ahead and select this
forearm here; so Right Forearm to Right Bicep, Right Cuff
| | 03:10 | to Right Forearm, Right Hand to Right Cuff.
| | 03:15 | Now if I select this, it should pretty
much move in unison, and if I select the
| | 03:20 | Torso, all of that moves together.
| | 03:25 | So let's go ahead and move up to the head.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to go ahead and select the
Head node here, and the Head really needs
| | 03:34 | to be connected to the Neck.
| | 03:35 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the Neck.
| | 03:39 | Now the Head is going to move with
everything, but again, we still need that
| | 03:43 | face to move along with it.
| | 03:45 | So everything on the Face up to the
Hair: we can just select all of that and,
| | 03:50 | again, just drag those to the Head.
| | 03:53 | So now all of those are connected
to the Head. So when I move the Head,
| | 03:57 | everything should move with it.
| | 03:58 | Okay, I missed the mouth here.
| | 04:01 | Let's go ahead and select the Mouth, and
get that to the Head, so now everything
| | 04:05 | should move with the Head.
| | 04:07 | And the only thing left are the ears,
so let's go ahead and get Left Ear and Right Ear,
| | 04:12 | and connect those to the Head, and we
should have everything working. Great!
| | 04:17 | So now all of the facial
features are connected to the Head,
| | 04:20 | the Head is connected to the Neck, the
Neck is connected to the Torso, and we
| | 04:24 | should pretty much have our upper body in place.
| | 04:28 | So now I should be
able to move that upper body.
| | 04:30 | Now, I'm going to skip the legs at this
point, and we're going to do that in the
| | 04:34 | next lesson, because there's
different strategies we can use to help the
| | 04:38 | character do things such as walk, and
run, and those sorts of things, and those
| | 04:42 | require different types of parenting.
| | 04:44 | So let's get to that in the next lesson.
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| Creating leg hierarchies for efficient walks| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the lower body, and
how to set up the legs and feet in a hierarchy.
| | 00:05 | Now, the legs and feet are a little bit
different, because the character does
| | 00:08 | need to keep his feet on the ground,
and if we link everything together, that
| | 00:13 | might not be so easy.
| | 00:14 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:16 | Here we have our character, and
we've got separate joints for the thigh,
| | 00:20 | the shin, and the foot.
| | 00:22 | Now let me go ahead and scroll down
here so we can see these in the layers.
| | 00:27 | So, for example, if I take my Left and
Right Thigh, link them to the Torso, and
| | 00:32 | take my Right Shin, link it to the
Thigh, Right Shoe to the Shin, and do the
| | 00:38 | same on the other side.
| | 00:39 | Let's just take the Left Shin, link
it to the Left Thigh, and take the Left
| | 00:45 | Shoe, and parent it to the Left Shin.
| | 00:49 | Now I have everything together, and the
character moves together. But here's the
| | 00:54 | problem is that if you want to move the
body, then the feet will also move with
| | 01:00 | it, so it's going to make it very hard for
the character to keep his feet on the ground.
| | 01:06 | Now, one easy way to get past this is to
just select Left and Right thigh, and unlink
| | 01:10 | them, so that way when I rotate the body,
the legs stay still, and I can still
| | 01:18 | rotate the legs and have those all together.
| | 01:21 | Now, this is one way for keeping the feet
on the ground, but the big problem with
| | 01:26 | this is that when you go to actually
animate that foot in a walk, you're going
| | 01:32 | to be starting with the upper thigh.
| | 01:34 | So in other words, the top of the
hierarchy is going to be at the hip, and
| | 01:39 | that's going to make it hard to keep
the feet, which are at the other end of
| | 01:42 | that chain, on the ground.
| | 01:44 | So another way to do this is to --
let's go ahead and zoom in here, so we can
| | 01:48 | see this a little bit better --
is to reverse the hierarchy.
| | 01:51 | So right now I have this as the top of
the chain; so the foot is connected to
| | 01:58 | the shin, the shin is connected to the thigh.
| | 02:01 | If we do this differently, we can
actually reverse this, and that means making
| | 02:05 | the foot the master, and then the shin
and the thigh the children of the feet,
| | 02:12 | and that allows you to keep the
feet exactly where you want them.
| | 02:17 | One way to do this is to
basically flip everything on its head.
| | 02:21 | If I want to, I can take the shin, and
I would actually go ahead and move the
| | 02:26 | pivot point down to the ankle.
| | 02:29 | So I'm going to be pivoting this at
the other side, and I'm going to do the
| | 02:33 | same for the thigh.
| | 02:36 | So I'm going to go ahead
and just do this roughly here.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to position
this pivot point at the knee
| | 02:41 | rather than at the hip.
| | 02:44 | Then I'm going to go ahead and select
the Left Thigh and parent it to the Shin.
| | 02:52 | Now, it's not going to allow me to do
that, because I've already got this
| | 02:55 | parented, so you can't have a
circular sort of parenting here.
| | 02:58 | So now, once I have the pivot points
arranged, I need to unlink everything.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to go to the Shin and
select its parent as None, and go to the Shoe
| | 03:08 | and do the same thing.
| | 03:10 | So now everything is free, and
I can recreate this hierarchy.
| | 03:14 | So I'm going to take the Left
Shin; drag it to the Left Shoe.
| | 03:18 | So, now when I move the
shoe, the shin moves with it.
| | 03:22 | And we can do the same with the thigh.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to take that Left
Thigh and link it to the Shin.
| | 03:28 | So now, instead of going top-down,
we're going to go bottom-up.
| | 03:33 | So now I can move this and
my feet will stay in place.
| | 03:37 | When I go to animate this character --
I'm going to zoom out a little bit here --
| | 03:44 | I can, for example, position the body;
| | 03:47 | let's say I wanted to move the body
down and bend the knees, then all I have to
| | 03:52 | do here is select these, and
just rotate them to match.
| | 03:58 | Now, some of this is dependent upon
how you design the character, but for this
| | 04:02 | particular character, it's not bad,
and in this case, the foot actually is
| | 04:07 | staying on the ground.
| | 04:09 | So it really depends on how you want
to animate your scene, and what your
| | 04:12 | requirements are for each individual scene,
| | 04:15 | but just know that you don't have to
stick with the top-down hierarchy. You
| | 04:20 | can rearrange and recreate your
hierarchies to make animation a little bit
| | 04:25 | more efficient.
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| Organizing scenes with null layers| 00:00 | Another way to further organize
your character is to use null objects.
| | 00:05 | Now a null object is
basically just an empty layer.
| | 00:08 | It doesn't render, but you can use it
as connect points; in other words, a way
| | 00:12 | to parent different parts of your
character together to an object that doesn't
| | 00:17 | render, but you can still move around.
| | 00:19 | So let's go ahead and
use that on this character.
| | 00:22 | Now, if you do the type of layer
hierarchy where you have the legs separate,
| | 00:26 | you're going to run into a problem.
| | 00:28 | So, for example, if I move this foot,
it doesn't move the entire character.
| | 00:33 | If I move the upper body,
again, the legs don't follow.
| | 00:36 | Now, this is handy for when you're
animating a walk, but it might not be well
| | 00:41 | organized for when you want to move
the entire character around, because you
| | 00:45 | have to select three objects, but
we can fix that by using a null.
| | 00:49 | We can go into a layer > New > Null
Object, and when you do, it creates a layer
| | 00:55 | called Null, and also notice how
you have an object in the scene.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in
here a little bit so we can see it.
| | 01:03 | Now a null object has a number of
points along the outside, but the most
| | 01:08 | important point is the top left corner, and
that is where the pivot point of that null is.
| | 01:15 | And what we can do is we can actually
move that null down between the feet, and
| | 01:19 | we can use this as the master
control node of the character.
| | 01:23 | So all I have to do is select the
Torso, and I can parent that to the Null.
| | 01:29 | So now the Null will move the Torso.
| | 01:32 | So when I move this Null around, the top
of the body moves with it, and I can do
| | 01:37 | the same for Left and Right Shoe.
| | 01:40 | Now remember, these are the top
of the hierarchy, not the hips.
| | 01:44 | So when I do that, I can just select
Null as the top of the hierarchy, and then
| | 01:49 | when I select that object and move
it, I'm moving my entire character.
| | 01:55 | This acts great as a
placement device for your character.
| | 01:59 | Now you can use nulls and other places as well.
| | 02:02 | Later in the course, we'll see how we
can use nulls as a bone system for the
| | 02:06 | Puppet tool, for example.
| | 02:08 | So just be aware that nulls can be
used as a way to organize your character a
| | 02:12 | little bit more efficiently.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Working with the Puppet ToolAdding puppet pins to a character| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the Puppet tool,
which is another way to manipulate your character.
| | 00:06 | The Puppet tool kind of gives
more of an organic manipulation;
| | 00:09 | it allows you to have more flowing types of
animation, and let me show you how this works.
| | 00:15 | Now, the Puppet tool does not
require that you break your character up
| | 00:20 | into individual parts;
| | 00:21 | you can use it that way, but for this example,
we're going to use this entire character.
| | 00:26 | Now what I did was I took the same
character we had in Photoshop, and basically
| | 00:29 | I just flattened him.
| | 00:30 | So we have just one layer, and
that layer has the entire character,
| | 00:35 | so there are no individual parts.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to go into After Effects,
here, and into our project file where
| | 00:42 | I've already loaded that
Photoshop file into After Effects.
| | 00:47 | Now as you can see, we have just one layer.
| | 00:49 | It's called Gus_Solid, and it's
basically the entire character.
| | 00:54 | Now, if we want to deform him, we
can use what's called the Puppet tool.
| | 00:59 | So again, I am just going to use this on
the upper arm first, and then we'll use
| | 01:03 | it for the entire character.
| | 01:04 | Now, you can find the Puppet tool up
here along the toolbar, and its right here;
| | 01:10 | it's called the Puppet Pin tool, the
Puppet Overlap tool, and the Puppet Starch tool.
| | 01:16 | Now in this lesson, we're going to be
using mostly the Puppet Pin tool, which
| | 01:19 | gives you the ability to deform the character.
| | 01:22 | So I am just going to go
ahead and select that tool.
| | 01:25 | Now if I want, I can turn on Show Mesh,
and what that does is it just shows me
| | 01:30 | how this Puppet Pin works.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to go ahead and click
that on, and then I am going to click
| | 01:35 | somewhere around the shoulder.
| | 01:36 | Notice how we have a little Pin icon
here for the cursor, and when I click on
| | 01:41 | that, what it does is it shows, me by
showing Mesh, it shows me exactly how it's
| | 01:47 | breaking that character up.
| | 01:49 | Now what this does is it
actually creates a polygonal mesh.
| | 01:53 | If anybody is familiar with 3D
animation, such as Maya, you would understand
| | 01:58 | how this is working.
| | 01:59 | So what I am doing is I am
laying down what are called Pins.
| | 02:03 | Each pin gives me a place
to deform that character.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to lay one down at the
shoulder, one down at the elbow, and the
| | 02:12 | last one down at the wrist.
| | 02:14 | In fact, I am going to turn off this
Show Mesh, because we really don't need it.
| | 02:18 | And once I have laid down a couple of
puppet points, I am going to go back to my
| | 02:22 | Selection tool, and I'll show you how this works.
| | 02:25 | So if I select any one of
these puppet pins, I can move them.
| | 02:30 | You can see how I can actually
deform that character very easily.
| | 02:34 | Let me go ahead and undo this.
| | 02:36 | So let's take a look at how this works.
| | 02:38 | I am going to go down to my layer
called Gus_Solid, which is my character, and
| | 02:42 | you'll notice that when I created this
puppet pin, it created a puppet effect on
| | 02:48 | the character. And if I scroll
down here so I can see this,
| | 02:52 | you'll see that it's got a number of
different options here, but the ones that I
| | 02:56 | want to look at here are the
ones under Mesh, and Deform.
| | 03:01 | Every time you lay down one of these
puppet pins, it creates an object here
| | 03:07 | called Puppet Pin 1, 2, 3, and they are
just numbered sequentially as you create them.
| | 03:13 | So if I take any one of these,
I can just manipulate them.
| | 03:17 | Now, each one of these also has its own position;
| | 03:23 | I can also animate them.
| | 03:25 | So if I wanted to animate this, all I
would have to do is select Puppet Pin 3,
| | 03:30 | and then just move my Timeline somewhere,
say, out to 10 seconds, and then just
| | 03:36 | move him, and you can see how
I can actually animate that.
| | 03:41 | But I really don't want to do that
right now, so I am going to go ahead and
| | 03:43 | delete this keyframe.
| | 03:44 | In fact, I am going to delete the entire effect.
| | 03:46 | I am going to go into Gus_Solid,
select the Puppet effect, and delete it, and
| | 03:53 | then reselect Gus_Solid. And I am
going to go ahead and fit him to my window
| | 03:58 | here, so I can see what I am doing, and I
am going to go ahead and add Puppet Pins
| | 04:04 | for the entire character
just to see how this works.
| | 04:07 | So again, I am going to
go to the Puppet Pin tool.
| | 04:11 | I want to add one, say, around his hips,
around his beltline; somewhere in that range.
| | 04:16 | I am going to add another one somewhere
around the neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist;
| | 04:23 | on the left side, and again on the right side.
| | 04:29 | And let's go ahead to the legs.
| | 04:30 | We'll do hip, knee, and ankle,
and let's go ahead again;
| | 04:36 | hip, knee, ankle, and then
let's do one here for the head.
| | 04:43 | Now once I have all these, I can
start manipulating my character.
| | 04:48 | So all I have to do is go to my
Selection tool, and grab one of these Puppet Pins,
| | 04:52 | and I can start moving them.
| | 04:54 | So you can see how I can start moving
my character around, and I can actually
| | 04:58 | start deforming him.
| | 05:00 | Now one of the things I am noticing here
is that when I move certain parts like,
| | 05:05 | say, for example, his head,
it's not very controllable.
| | 05:10 | So what I can do is I can add additional
puppet pins to give myself more control.
| | 05:14 | Now we're going to do this
for the feet and the head.
| | 05:17 | So let me show you what I can do,
first of all, with the head.
| | 05:20 | So I am going to go ahead to Puppet Pin tool;
| | 05:22 | I have one here, right around the neck, but I
am going to add one towards the top of his head.
| | 05:27 | Now what that does is it gives me kind
of almost like an angle control, so if I
| | 05:32 | move this left and right, I can have
kind of like a rocking of his head. Or if I
| | 05:39 | select both of them, if I can Shift+
select these, I can actually move the head
| | 05:43 | around without too much distortion.
| | 05:46 | I can do the same for the feet as well.
| | 05:49 | So I have one at the ankle, but
I can also add one at the toe.
| | 05:54 | So I am going to add one at this toe,
and at this toe, and now when I move my
| | 06:00 | foot, if I select both of these, I can
kind of control the angle of that foot.
| | 06:06 | If I select this toe here, then I
can kind of bend the foot as well.
| | 06:11 | So those are some basic
strategies for creating puppet pins.
| | 06:15 | Now, there are additional things that
we can do with the Puppet tool. One is
| | 06:20 | called Starch, and that
kind of stiffens up joints;
| | 06:23 | another one allows you to overlap.
| | 06:25 | So, for example, if I have this arm,
and move it here, right now it passes in
| | 06:32 | front of the character, but if I
wanted it to pass behind, I would use the
| | 06:35 | Overlap tool, and we're going to go
through those in the following lessons.
| | 06:39 | But before we do that, just remember,
the Puppet Pin tool allows you to
| | 06:43 | deform your character.
| | 06:45 | Now, remember to place the pins
towards the joints of your characters to get
| | 06:50 | the best effect.
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| Controlling mesh density| 00:00 | When using the Puppet tool, there are
times when you need to control the quality
| | 00:05 | of the character's deformation,
| | 00:07 | and we can do that by using the Mesh.
| | 00:10 | So let me show you what I mean here.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom in to this
character, and let's go ahead and select him.
| | 00:17 | You'll notice we have a
number of different puppet pins.
| | 00:20 | If I select the Puppet
Effect, I can get to those.
| | 00:23 | Let's go ahead and move his arm all
the way down here, and when we do that
| | 00:28 | you'll notice there's a bit of a stair-
step kind of effect there, and that's
| | 00:33 | because of how After Effects
calculates the deformation.
| | 00:38 | So if I go over here and just click on
the Puppet tool, and make sure I have Show
| | 00:44 | Mesh, what happens is you can see how
it's triangulating this mesh, and how it's
| | 00:51 | creating that stair-step effect.
| | 00:55 | What we have, basically, is
we have too few triangles.
| | 00:59 | We need more detail in order to
have less of that stair-step effect.
| | 01:05 | So we can do that in one of two ways.
| | 01:07 | One is when you initially create your
Puppet Effect, you can actually type in
| | 01:13 | the number of triangles, but because
I've already applied that, I can change it
| | 01:18 | down here in the Effect.
| | 01:19 | So I'm going to go into my Puppet Effect
here, open up Mesh 1, and you'll see we
| | 01:25 | have number of triangles; right now it's 350.
| | 01:28 | Let's go ahead and, say, make it 900.
So I'm going to hit 900; hit Enter.
| | 01:33 | It may take a little bit to recalculate,
and once it does, it should show up again.
| | 01:40 | If you increase this by a lot,
and the character is deforming,
| | 01:43 | it may take a little while for this to take
effect, depending on the speed of your computer.
| | 01:49 | Don't bail out; give it time to calculate, but
once it's calculated, it should be fairly quick.
| | 01:55 | So now, once I have this, you can see
I've got a much smoother deformation.
| | 02:01 | Once I move my character, you'll see my
deformations move a lot more smoothly.
| | 02:06 | When you create the Puppet Effect, or
even afterwards, pay attention to your
| | 02:11 | Mesh Density to get the best effect.
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| Creating overlap pins| 00:00 | When using the Puppet tool, there are
times when you may want to have one part of
| | 00:04 | the character move in front of, or
behind, other parts of the character, and this
| | 00:10 | is where the Overlap tool comes in handy.
| | 00:14 | Now we've got our basic character, and I
have the Puppet tool already assigned.
| | 00:20 | Now before we actually get into the
Overlap tool, let me just show you a little
| | 00:23 | bit about how this is working here.
| | 00:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in
to the foot, because that's actually a
| | 00:29 | really good place to demonstrate this.
| | 00:31 | So I'm going to take my Selection tool,
and I'm going to just go ahead and grab
| | 00:37 | the Ankle, so I will Shift
select, and grab the Toe as well.
| | 00:40 | So I want these two Puppet pins
selected, and then I'm just going to go
| | 00:44 | ahead and move this.
| | 00:46 | Notice how when it moves in front of this
other leg, it actually is moving in front of it.
| | 00:52 | Now, what if we wanted that foot to pass behind?
| | 00:56 | We can do that by using the Overlap pin.
| | 00:59 | We can find it here:
| | 01:00 | we can see Puppet Pin tool, Puppet
Overlap tool, and that's what we want.
| | 01:06 | Now when you select this, a Puppet pin
tool comes up with a little bit of extra,
| | 01:11 | just to tell you it's the Overlap tool.
| | 01:13 | Those are supposed to be layers.
| | 01:15 | And so let's go ahead and just
click on this foot to give it the pin.
| | 01:20 | Now when you actually add the pin in,
you'll notice that in the Puppet Effect, it
| | 01:25 | actually adds in another category.
| | 01:28 | So we have Deform, which are all the
regular pins, but now we've also added in
| | 01:34 | one called Overlap, and
those are for the Overlap pins.
| | 01:38 | So in this case we've created one
Overlap pin called Overlap 1, and there are
| | 01:42 | three variables that we can use.
| | 01:45 | One is the actual position of the pin.
| | 01:47 | The next one is whether it's
in front or behind. So this is a
| | 01:51 | percentage, basically.
| | 01:53 | So 0 is kind of flat, and anything that
is negative is behind, and anything that's
| | 01:59 | positive is in front.
| | 02:01 | Now, these are just relative numbers;
just as long as one part of the character's
| | 02:05 | value is in front or behind, it'll work.
| | 02:08 | And the next one is very important:
it's called the Extent. It's how much does
| | 02:12 | this pin affect the mesh, and right now
you can see that it's just this little
| | 02:17 | white area is effected.
| | 02:19 | So if we want, we actually want to
probably get the entire shoe, so I'm going to
| | 02:23 | go ahead and start expanding this to a
much bigger number, and what I want to do
| | 02:27 | is get the entire lower leg.
| | 02:30 | The number that probably will work
will be somewhere above 200; let's just go
| | 02:34 | ahead and type in 250 just to be sure,
and what that does is it gets the entire
| | 02:39 | foot, and most of the lower leg.
| | 02:43 | Once we have this, we can go to our
Selection tool, and just select the actual
| | 02:48 | Puppet pins to deform.
| | 02:50 | Now these are actually Deform
Puppet pins, here in this category here.
| | 02:54 | So let's go ahead and move these so
that this foot is over the opposite leg,
| | 02:59 | and how we control whether it's in front of
or behind is by using this In Front command.
| | 03:04 | You can see as soon as soon as
it gets below 0, it pops behind.
| | 03:09 | That's because by default any pixel
in the object is going to be at 0.
| | 03:14 | Go ahead and just put this
at a negative number, say -15.
| | 03:18 | It's not really important what the number is;
| | 03:21 | it just has to be less than
the pixels in front of it.
| | 03:25 | Now any time this moves
| | 03:27 | it will move behind.
| | 03:32 | If we want, we can also animate this. So,
for example, if I wanted to, I could
| | 03:36 | animate this foot so that it goes
behind at this point, and then move that foot
| | 03:44 | back out, and then if I wanted to I could
move it again and make it go in front,
| | 03:51 | but I need to animate the In Front variable.
| | 03:55 | So what I want to do here is when it's
behind, I want to make sure that I add a
| | 04:00 | keyframe for In Front, and then maybe
even move that out a little bit here, so
| | 04:06 | that it's in front all the way to the
point where it moves away from that foot.
| | 04:11 | And then here I want to
actually bring that variable forward.
| | 04:17 | So just as long as it is in front, say
here, just give it a number, say even
| | 04:20 | positive 15 would be a good number.
| | 04:23 | Now what we've got is it's moving
behind, and now it's moving in front.
| | 04:30 | You can do that for any part of your
character's body, but the Puppet Overlap
| | 04:36 | tool can be very handy, particularly
when you're rigging a character using a lot
| | 04:41 | of different Puppet pins.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating starch pins| 00:00 | When using the Puppet tool, there may
be times when you'll need to control the
| | 00:04 | shape of the character's body parts.
| | 00:07 | Typically, when you move a Puppet pin,
it will just in-between everything; a lot
| | 00:12 | of times you will get very flowing shapes.
| | 00:15 | Now, there are times when you want the
character shapes to be a little bit more
| | 00:18 | rigid, and that's where
we can use the Starch tool.
| | 00:23 | So let's take a look at this character here.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to go ahead and select his
layer, and go into that Puppet tool, and
| | 00:30 | let's go ahead and take a look at the arm.
| | 00:32 | So I am going to zoom in to the left arm.
| | 00:34 | I am just going to select this Puppet pin
at the left wrist, and go ahead and move it.
| | 00:40 | When you move it, you notice
how the in-between is very curvy.
| | 00:45 | It's almost like rubber hose animation.
| | 00:47 | It's not like a real joint, which
bends very sharply at the elbow.
| | 00:52 | Well, we can correct this using the Starch tool.
| | 00:56 | So let's go ahead and undo this,
and put that wrist back to normal.
| | 01:01 | Let's go ahead and find the Starch tool here.
| | 01:04 | So we've got Puppet Starch tool.
| | 01:07 | Let's go ahead and select that, and
it's kind of like a little spray can.
| | 01:10 | So I am going to go ahead and add that
Puppet pin somewhere towards the base of the hand.
| | 01:17 | Now, once I have that, you'll notice
how in the Mesh, we have our Deform pins,
| | 01:22 | but we also now have a category for Stiffness.
| | 01:26 | This is very similar to the
Overlap pins that we have.
| | 01:29 | So we have an additional Starch pin.
| | 01:32 | Now, notice how that Starch pin is Red.
| | 01:34 | The important thing about this
is the Amount, and the Extent.
| | 01:39 | Again, we can change the position of
this, but we also can change the Amount,
| | 01:44 | which is how much does this affect
surrounding triangles, or surrounding parts of
| | 01:50 | the character, and the Extent to which it works.
| | 01:54 | The big number here is the Extent.
| | 01:56 | So if I increase this -- let's go ahead
and just type in 100 -- notice how now this
| | 02:01 | Puppet pin is affecting this area.
| | 02:04 | Well, we actually want it to affect
almost to the elbow, so let's go ahead and
| | 02:09 | type in a bigger number.
| | 02:10 | Let's say type in, say, 250.
| | 02:11 | Now, what this does is it covers
the entire hand, and most of the forearm,
| | 02:17 | but it leaves a little bit of area
around the elbow, so that it can bend.
| | 02:23 | Now once we have that, we can start
working with it, so all I have to do is
| | 02:28 | select this pin, and now when you move,
notice how this is a much sharper joint.
| | 02:34 | That's because all this upper
part of the forearm is starched.
| | 02:40 | In other words, it's very stiff.
| | 02:42 | It doesn't bend, and it won't
give you that rubber hose effect.
| | 02:45 | So as you can see, the Starch tool is
very good for making more realistic joints,
| | 02:50 | particularly ones that are controlled by bones.
| | 02:53 | So you'll probably be using these most in
the arms and legs; also the head is a
| | 02:58 | very good place to be using the Starch tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Puppet tool with hierarchies| 00:01 | Now there may come a time when you'll
want to mix and match animation methods.
| | 00:05 | You'll want some parts of the
character to be animated using the Puppet tool,
| | 00:09 | and other parts to be animated using
hierarchies, and separate objects; that sort of thing.
| | 00:15 | So let's go ahead and take a look at how to
mix and match hierarchies with the Puppet tool.
| | 00:21 | In this case, I've got this character,
and I'm going to replace his left leg
| | 00:25 | with a puppeted leg.
| | 00:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in so
we can get little bit of a closer look here,
| | 00:32 | and let's just take a look at what we have.
| | 00:34 | I am going to scroll down to the bottom
of my layers here, and you'll see that I
| | 00:38 | have a Left Thigh, a Left Shin, and a Left Shoe.
| | 00:43 | So those are the three objects that I
normally have, but I'm going to replace
| | 00:47 | the shin and the thigh with this
one object, which is called Leg.
| | 00:51 | First thing I want to do is just go
ahead and move that leg into place, so
| | 00:56 | kind of just match it up to where the
old leg is, and then I'm going to take
| | 01:00 | this Left Shin and Thigh, and let's just go
ahead and hide those, so we don't see them.
| | 01:05 | Now the only thing there is my Left Leg.
| | 01:09 | Now this doesn't have any sort of
hierarchy on it right now, but as you can see
| | 01:14 | with the other leg, the right leg,
I've got the shoe as the master.
| | 01:19 | This is so that the feet can stay in place.
| | 01:21 | So I'm going to do the same thing here.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to select my Left Leg,
and make the Left Shoe its parent.
| | 01:30 | Now I can move the leg, but I can't
bend the knee at all, because there is
| | 01:35 | really no deformation.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to actually have to add the
Puppet tool to create that deformation.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to select the Leg, hit the
Puppet tool, place one pin at the hip, one
| | 01:48 | pin at the knee, and then that
last pin somewhere around the ankle.
| | 01:53 | And once I do that, now I
have the ability to puppet it.
| | 02:01 | So all I have to do is go into my Puppet
Effects, select the Puppet tool, and I can move that.
| | 02:07 | This is kind of cool, because now I can
move my foot all the way over here, and
| | 02:12 | just using my Puppet pins, I
can connect it in that way.
| | 02:18 | One of the things, though, you have to be
aware of is that when you start moving
| | 02:23 | the character like this -- and actually
let's go ahead and zoom out here, so you
| | 02:27 | can kind of see this --
| | 02:27 | so you can actually get kind of some
nice posing by doing this sort of method.
| | 02:32 | You get a nice squashy,
stretchy type of animation.
| | 02:35 | But when you start doing this, what
happens is that you're actually starting
| | 02:40 | to move the actual leg outside of the
bounding box that creates the character,
| | 02:46 | so you have to be very careful to kind
of keep one point kind of anchored to the
| | 02:53 | rest of the character.
| | 02:54 | So, for example, if I were to move this,
then I'm actually moving all of these
| | 02:58 | Puppet points here, and so I could
easily get this moved off of the original
| | 03:05 | positioning that it was at.
| | 03:07 | So this is just something that you
need to be aware of: that these Puppet pins
| | 03:11 | can actually move things off of the hierarchy.
| | 03:14 | Another way you can do it is by
using what's called a precomposition.
| | 03:16 | So we're going to do this other leg very
quickly using what's called a precomposition.
| | 03:21 | I am going to select my Right Leg and
Right Shin, and I want to do the same thing
| | 03:28 | for this leg that I have for the other one.
| | 03:30 | On this other one, I took a whole separate
layer, and replaced the original shin and thigh.
| | 03:37 | In this case, I'm just going to use what I have.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to use the Right Thigh, and
the Right Shin, and I'm just going to
| | 03:42 | combine them into what's called the
precomposition, and use that for the Puppet tool.
| | 03:48 | I'm going to select both of them, go
into Layer, and we're going to do what's
| | 03:51 | called a Precompose.
| | 03:53 | Now when I do that, what happens is
it creates a separate composition.
| | 03:58 | And in this case I'm just going to call
that RIGHT LEG, and I use all caps just so
| | 04:03 | that I mentally know that it's a precomposition.
| | 04:07 | And what it does is it takes both of
those layers, shuttles them off into
| | 04:12 | another composition called RIGHT LEG, and so
I have these two parts here, but in the
| | 04:18 | main composition I've got
just this one RIGHT LEG.
| | 04:23 | Now I can still use the Puppet tool on that.
| | 04:26 | I am going to just go ahead and select
my Puppet Pin tool, and let's go ahead and
| | 04:31 | put one at the hip, one at the
knee, and another one at the ankle.
| | 04:37 | And when I do that, I've
got the exact same effect.
| | 04:42 | And this is actually on two separate objects.
| | 04:45 | When you are doing precompositions like
this, it actually has this one leg, but
| | 04:49 | notice how it precomps to the
size of the original composition.
| | 04:54 | So sometimes this can make
selecting more difficult.
| | 04:57 | So, for example, I want to select
the torso, or the arm, or the leg,
| | 05:02 | that's easy, but once I get into selecting
down here, I'm selecting that whole composition.
| | 05:09 | Now one way to get around this is
by shrinking down the size of that
| | 05:12 | original precomposition.
| | 05:13 | If I want to -- you can see, when I Fit
this, you've got all this white space --
| | 05:17 | if I want to, I can scale down my
composition, so that it just fits that. Or
| | 05:23 | the other way is to just draw a new leg,
which I think is a little bit more efficient.
| | 05:28 | But in any event, this is a great
way to use the Puppet tool along with a
| | 05:33 | parented type of character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Replacement AnimationReplacement animation using time remapping| 00:00 | Replacement animation is one of the more
common ways to animate, and the way you
| | 00:05 | do it is you basically take one
image, and you swap it out for another.
| | 00:09 | This is particularly useful for
things like mouth, blinks, and in this case
| | 00:14 | we're going to use it for hands.
| | 00:16 | So let me show you some of the basic
techniques of creating a simple and
| | 00:20 | efficient method for doing
replacement animation in After Effects.
| | 00:25 | So we're going to first start with the
left hand, and if you notice here I've
| | 00:29 | got five hands, and all I need to do is
Shift+Select those, and you can see we
| | 00:34 | have them here in the Timeline
here, Hand 1 through Hand 5.
| | 00:40 | So with all of my hands selected,
I just go Layer > Precompose.
| | 00:46 | Once I do that, it gives me a menu here.
| | 00:48 | It says, "what's the name
of your new composition?"
| | 00:51 | And in this case I am going to go LEFT
HAND, and I like typing everything in
| | 00:56 | caps so that way I know it's another
composition, and then just click OK.
| | 01:01 | It gives me a composition called LEFT
HAND, and puts that into my main Timeline.
| | 01:07 | If I double-click on this, you'll see
that all of those layers are now in this
| | 01:13 | subcomposition, so I
have Hand 1 through Hand 5.
| | 01:18 | Now, in order to animate the replacement,
I do need to get these kind of aligned.
| | 01:22 | So I am just going to select all of
these and move them over the initial hand
| | 01:27 | here, and then I am going
to zoom in a little bit.
| | 01:32 | And I want to do a real close fine-tuning.
| | 01:36 | The easiest way to do that is just to
turn off layers and select each one, one
| | 01:41 | at a time, and make sure that
everything is pretty much lined up, because what
| | 01:45 | we are going to be doing is swapping from
one to the other, so we don't want any jumps.
| | 01:50 | So I want to get this as close as I can.
| | 01:54 | Now, once I have them all aligned, I
can now trim my composition to match.
| | 01:59 | Now, the reason I trim my composition
is, if I zoom all the way out you'll
| | 02:03 | realize that I've got all of this
blank space around here, and my hands are
| | 02:07 | really just kind of occupying this small area.
| | 02:10 | And more importantly is, when I go over
to my main composition, you'll see that,
| | 02:15 | because I have this kind of big layer,
it consumes the entire workspace here in
| | 02:22 | my actual composition.
| | 02:23 | So if I am trying to select something,
a lot of times I inadvertently select the
| | 02:28 | hands, because it has that big of an area.
| | 02:30 | So I kind of want to just tighten it up a bit.
| | 02:32 | So if I go over to LEFT HAND -- and let me
just go ahead and zoom in just a little bit here --
| | 02:37 | I can go ahead and trim my composition
using what's called region of interest.
| | 02:42 | So all I need to do is select this
button here, and then just draw a little
| | 02:46 | box around my hands.
| | 02:49 | And I can go ahead and adjust that box;
| | 02:51 | in fact, I can zoom in here and
get it really tight if I want to.
| | 02:54 | I just want to make sure that every bit
of those hands are within that box, so I
| | 03:00 | am going to give it a little bit of
space on the top and bottom, and so on.
| | 03:03 | So now, once I have that region of
interest set, I can do Composition > Crop
| | 03:09 | Comp to Region of Interest, and all
that does is it shrinks down my composition
| | 03:14 | so that it matches the size of my hands.
| | 03:17 | And now when I go over
into my main composition,
| | 03:21 | you can see now I've just got
a little bit of selection here,
| | 03:24 | so it's not taking up the whole screen.
| | 03:27 | Now that we have everything arranged,
let's go ahead and set up the actual
| | 03:30 | animation that we are going to
use to create replacement animation.
| | 03:35 | So what I need to do is animate these
hands one hand per frame, so just turn
| | 03:41 | them on and off one frame at a time.
| | 03:44 | I need to shrink down my Timeline
so that it is only 5 frames long;
| | 03:48 | I need to make my composition 5 frames.
| | 03:51 | So let's go into Composition Settings.
| | 03:54 | I have five hands, so I need 5 frames.
| | 03:57 | So instead of 900 frames,
I am going to do 5 frames.
| | 03:59 | So now that I have that, all I need to do
now is sequence them one hand per frame.
| | 04:06 | So the easiest way to do that is to
select them all, and then just grab the edge
| | 04:10 | of them on the Timeline, and shrink
each one down to one frame. So now I have
| | 04:15 | them basically all on one frame, and
then I can just sequence the layers.
| | 04:19 | So all I have to do is right-
click over this, Keyframe Assistant >
| | 04:24 | Sequence layers, click OK.
| | 04:29 | This is my first frame,
second frame, third, fourth, fifth;
| | 04:33 | so five frames, five hands.
| | 04:35 | Now when I go into my main
composition here -- let's go ahead and zoom in here
| | 04:41 | so we can see this.
| | 04:41 | I am going to zoom in on the Timeline as well.
| | 04:46 | You'll see that I have got an
animation where I have one per frame,
| | 04:51 | but that's not really what I want, is I
actually want to be able to control which
| | 04:56 | hand turns on at any given frame.
| | 04:59 | So I can do that by using a
feature called time remapping.
| | 05:03 | So all I do is select the layer, right-click
over it, under Time > Enable Time Remapping.
| | 05:11 | When you click on that, things change,
and you get this little entry here that
| | 05:15 | says Time Remap with a number and two keyframes.
| | 05:19 | So if I slide over here, you notice that
it's still animating between hands, but
| | 05:23 | this number is increasing.
| | 05:26 | And basically what it's telling us is that
this number is telling which frame to display.
| | 05:31 | So if I can delete these keyframes,
at least delete this first keyframe,
| | 05:35 | you can now use this number and just
slide through and animate the hand.
| | 05:41 | So if I wanted to have this hand on Frame 1, or
Frame 0, this hand on Frame 3, I can do that.
| | 05:50 | Now, the one problem with this is
that it will continue in-between these.
| | 05:55 | So when you animate these using time
remapping, you do have to change the
| | 05:59 | interpolation from Linear to Hold.
| | 06:03 | So when you animate using Hold, notice
how the shape of the keyframes change,
| | 06:08 | and now it will hold this
until it gets to the next frame.
| | 06:12 | So all you have to do is animate with Hold,
and you can just switch whatever one you want.
| | 06:17 | So if I want to go over here and
dial in a different hand, I can do that.
| | 06:24 | So those are some of the basics
for animating replacement objects.
| | 06:28 | Now, I did this just for hands, but you can
do it for a lot of other types of objects.
| | 06:33 | You can do it for blinks, mouths;
| | 06:35 | a lot of people use it
for feet and shoes as well.
| | 06:39 | Practice this on the other hand and
get some familiarity with this process,
| | 06:45 | because it's very important.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mouth replacement| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to do
replacement animation for mouths.
| | 00:04 | Now, the actual process is almost
identical to how we would work with hands, but
| | 00:09 | let's take a look at how to align the
mouths properly, and make sure that the
| | 00:12 | animation flows smoothly.
| | 00:15 | The hands are already done, and now I have
all of the mouths brought into the Timeline.
| | 00:21 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this mouth that is on his face, and just
| | 00:24 | kind of drag that in with all the rest.
| | 00:27 | Just like with the hands, we need to
select all of the mouths and do a precomp.
| | 00:33 | I am just going to go ahead and
select them here, and just select all the
| | 00:36 | layers, Mouth 1 through 12, Layer > Precompose.
| | 00:43 | Now we need to give it a name.
| | 00:47 | I'll call it MOUTHS. Make sure this is checked,
| | 00:50 | Hit OK, and now I have a subcomp called MOUTHS.
| | 00:56 | So double-click on that, and here we are.
| | 00:59 | Let's go ahead and get these things centered.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to go ahead and select all of
the mouths, and move them kind of towards
| | 01:05 | the center here, and then just kind of zoom in.
| | 01:09 | And now I am going to align them.
| | 01:12 | So this is going to be my main mouth.
| | 01:14 | This is the one I am going to use for reference.
| | 01:17 | Let's go ahead and just start aligning the
other mouth, so that they pretty much line up here.
| | 01:23 | Now, the thing I'm looking for when I
line up a mouth like this is I want to make
| | 01:29 | sure that top tooth kind of overlaps.
| | 01:37 | What I'm doing here is I am just
flipping the visibility of the layers on and
| | 01:41 | off, and I want to just make sure
that I get a pretty seamless transition.
| | 01:48 | Now the thing you want to make sure you
connect is that top mouth, because the
| | 01:52 | jaw and the lower part of
the mouth is what's moving.
| | 01:54 | The top of the mouth is connected to
the head, and that's a lot more stable,
| | 01:58 | so usually that's the part that moves the least.
| | 02:01 | So let's go ahead and zoom out here,
and I am going to select this mouth here,
| | 02:06 | and again, I want to try and align
it at the top. Same for this one.
| | 02:12 | I am just going to start
grabbing them at random here.
| | 02:18 | Let's go ahead and do this one,
because each one of these kind of has almost
| | 02:21 | the same top shape.
| | 02:22 | Now these are all a little bit
different, so let's go ahead and just move
| | 02:25 | these into place here.
| | 02:27 | And let's get these aligned.
| | 02:30 | The oh sound, again, I want to kind of
get that top part lined up a little bit,
| | 02:36 | and the ooh is actually going to be
almost centered here. So again, I am just
| | 02:41 | using the outline, these kind of grab
points here, as kind of a reference. And
| | 02:45 | then I need to select these smiles, and
this is a little too far away for me to
| | 02:51 | see here, so I am going to zoom in.
| | 02:55 | Again, you want to try and bias it a
little bit towards the top. And with a smile
| | 03:00 | like this, again, think about where
the teeth are, and center the smile around
| | 03:06 | the bottom of the top teeth.
| | 03:08 | Now with the mouth like this, again, I'm
just going to use the top teeth as kind
| | 03:13 | of the reference, and
the same for this one here.
| | 03:16 | So now that I have all of these in
place, I can go through my process to
| | 03:20 | actually get these to do replacement animation.
| | 03:23 | So some of this will be refresher, but
let's go through it again so that we can
| | 03:27 | get it down really well.
| | 03:28 | First thing we want to do is we
want to crop the region of interest.
| | 03:32 | So let's go ahead and select Region of
Interest, and I want to make sure that
| | 03:35 | I get to all of the mouths within that
region of interest, and I can go ahead
| | 03:40 | and just tweak this.
| | 03:41 | I want to make sure that
I get this fairly tight.
| | 03:46 | Once I do that, Composition > Crop.
| | 03:50 | Now I need to create my actual animation.
| | 03:54 | In this case I have 12 mouths, so I
want to create an animation with 12 frames.
| | 03:59 | So I'll go Composition > Comp
Settings, type in the number 12, hit OK.
| | 04:04 | So now I have got 12 frames, and let's
go ahead and select all of the layers.
| | 04:12 | And again, I am just going to
grab the edge there, drag it down
| | 04:14 | so it's one frame long, and then right-
click, Keyframe Assistant > Sequence layers.
| | 04:22 | That's fine, hit OK.
| | 04:25 | Now I should be able see
what my animation looks like.
| | 04:30 | Now at this point, if there is a jump,
or you don't like the way the mouths are
| | 04:34 | positioned, you can go ahead
and change them if you want.
| | 04:38 | In this case, I'm actually just going
to go over to my main composition, and
| | 04:41 | let's go ahead and position the mouths.
| | 04:44 | So I am going to zoom in here, and then
just grab those mouths and put them over.
| | 04:48 | I'll go ahead and zoom in a little bit
on the Timeline, and so you can see how
| | 04:54 | it works on his face.
| | 04:55 | Well, maybe I need to drop
that down just a little bit.
| | 04:57 | I am just using my arrow keys to kind
of nudge this into place. Here we go.
| | 05:06 | So that smile mouth right there is a
little low, so I am actually going to go
| | 05:09 | back over to mouths, find that
smile mouth, and raise it up.
| | 05:15 | So if raise it up in my
composition, it raises up here.
| | 05:20 | So now that feels a little bit better.
| | 05:23 | Okay, so now that I have this in
place, all I need to do is add my time
| | 05:27 | remapping, and I am ready to
go for replacement animation.
| | 05:31 | So all I have to do is highlight this
layer, MOUTHS, right-click Time > Enable
| | 05:37 | Time Remapping, switch this to keyframes,
delete the last keyframe, and I am set.
| | 05:43 | So now I can just dial in whichever mouth I
want here, just by running this slider here.
| | 05:51 | Now, when you animate mouths, make sure
that you have good mouths to start with,
| | 05:55 | so be sure you draw good mouth shapes.
| | 05:58 | And once you do, make sure that those
shapes align pretty much along the top
| | 06:02 | teeth, because that's the part of
the mouth that doesn't really move.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating blinks| 00:00 | Blinks are another place where
replacement animation comes in handy,
| | 00:04 | so let me show you some of the
techniques for animating blinks.
| | 00:08 | Now, when you animate blinks, you need
to decide whether you're going to do them
| | 00:12 | one eye at a time, or both eyes at a time.
| | 00:14 | So do you want a separate slider for the
left and the right side, or do you want
| | 00:18 | just one slider that blinks both eyes?
| | 00:20 | Since both eyes are a little more
complex, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:25 | So we're going to actually animate this
so that one slider controls both eyes.
| | 00:29 | And you can apply the same process for
left and right if you want to do it that way.
| | 00:34 | The big thing with doing blinks on the
left and right side is that you need to
| | 00:40 | make sure that the blinks line up.
| | 00:44 | So I have closed, two-thirds
open, one-third open, and so on.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to take each of these, and
I'm going to go ahead and lay it over the
| | 00:54 | eye; make sure that I have that
completely over, because really what you
| | 00:58 | want to do is you need to
match that spacing of the eye here.
| | 01:03 | And in fact, I may zoom in a little bit more
here, just to make sure; yeah, that's fine.
| | 01:10 | And then I'm going to make sure I
have everything lined up here as well.
| | 01:15 | I'm actually going to go ahead and
turn off the Lid 1s, which are the
| | 01:21 | completely closed shapes.
| | 01:22 | So I'm going to go here
in Left Lid 1, Right Lid 1, and
| | 01:24 | I'm just going to turn those off,
| | 01:26 | so that way I have better room to adjust these.
| | 01:30 | So what I'm doing here is I'm actually
adjusting the positioning before I go
| | 01:35 | into the precomp, which is a little
bit different than how we did it with
| | 01:38 | these other techniques.
| | 01:40 | So I'm going to go ahead and take the
two-thirds eye close, and make sure that I
| | 01:44 | have each one of these
aligned pretty closely here.
| | 01:49 | And then I'm going to turn off my Lid 2s,
and then grab each of my Lid 3s, which
| | 01:57 | are the one-third open, and make
sure I have those in place as well.
| | 02:05 | So if I use my visibility here,
I can turn them on and off.
| | 02:08 | You can actually almost animate the blink here.
| | 02:10 | And so, for each one of these, I'm
making sure that it's aligned perfectly.
| | 02:20 | Now once it is, I can select all six
of these, and then create my precomp.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to go into layer > Pre-compose.
| | 02:29 | Let's call this BLINKS, hit OK.
| | 02:34 | And then we have the composition here;
| | 02:37 | double-click on it to go into
it, and these are my blinks.
| | 02:40 | Now, they're already aligned correctly,
so I don't need to change the positioning.
| | 02:46 | All I need to do in this case is
just crop down, and create the animation.
| | 02:52 | So I'm going to crop it down by using
region of interest, and again, just draw a
| | 02:56 | little box around each of these;
Composition > Crop Comp to Region of Interest.
| | 03:02 | In this case, I don't have six shapes;
| | 03:04 | I actually have three.
| | 03:06 | So it's basically, we're going
to have two lids on each frame.
| | 03:10 | For my composition length, I'm
going to do Composition Settings,
| | 03:14 | I'm going to do 3, plus 1 for no eye at all,
so I'm going to actually do 4 frames.
| | 03:21 | Then select all of these and scale them down.
| | 03:27 | Now when I sequence layers, I have to
sequence them three at a time for this.
| | 03:32 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
Lid 1 through Lid 3, right-click over these,
| | 03:37 | Keyframe Assistant > Sequence layers. Hit OK.
| | 03:40 | Now what this does is it creates the open
eye shape, and then it creates a blank one.
| | 03:47 | And then I'm going to do
the same for the right side.
| | 03:50 | So again, right-click, Keyframe
Assistant > Sequence layers, hit OK.
| | 03:54 | We have closed, two-thirds,
one-third, completely open.
| | 03:59 | Now if I want, I can flop that around.
| | 04:03 | Sometimes you want it to be
open first, and then close.
| | 04:06 | In that case, we can
just manually arrange these.
| | 04:09 | I'm going to Control+Select Left Lid 01 and Right
Lid 01, and move those to the back; to Frame 3.
| | 04:18 | Then select Lid 01, Control+Select 02,
or Alt+Select 02; move those back.
| | 04:25 | And the same for 03, and
| | 04:26 | I'm actually going to move those forward.
| | 04:28 | So what I did was I just reversed the order.
| | 04:30 | So we're going to start off
with the blank eye, and then blank.
| | 04:34 | So that might make more sense in
terms of how you want to order those.
| | 04:39 | But regardless, when I go back over
here and I zoom out, you can see that I've
| | 04:44 | got my blinks right here.
| | 04:47 | Now all I have to do is just move
those into position and zoom in.
| | 04:52 | Let's make sure I get that
closed blink in position here.
| | 04:56 | Now I'm just moving my Timeline here,
and let's make sure I get my blink there.
| | 05:00 | I'm just kind of moving my time
slider just to make sure I get those closed
| | 05:04 | eyes, and those are all
in position. That's great!
| | 05:07 | Now all I have to do in order to
actually animate this is to right-click, Time >
| | 05:13 | Enable Time Remapping.
| | 05:15 | And then all I have to do is delete
this frame here, and now I have blinks.
| | 05:21 | This is actually kind of sensitive, but
all you have to do is type in the number
| | 05:25 | and you have your blink.
| | 05:26 | Now with this, I've pretty much
rigged this character in a very basic way.
| | 05:31 | Now I have the ability to
move and rotate the arms.
| | 05:37 | I have the head all aligned.
| | 05:39 | Now the one thing that we don't have is
we don't have the MOUTHS and the BLINKS
| | 05:43 | linked to the head, but that's easy.
| | 05:45 | All we have to do is select both of
these, and then just select the Head here.
| | 05:49 | So now I've got my head ready to go, and the
character is pretty much ready to animate.
| | 05:57 | We can go a lot deeper and a lot more
customized with rigging, but if all you did
| | 06:03 | was go this far, you could
pretty much animate most characters.
| | 06:08 | But we are going to go into a lot
more advanced techniques in the next
| | 06:12 | few chapters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Automating Head TurnsCreating a head turn: Head shape| 00:00 | One of the ways you can add more life
to your character is to create a more
| | 00:05 | realistic head turn.
| | 00:06 | So in this chapter, I am going to show
you how to create a dimensional head turn
| | 00:10 | where the features of the character's
face actually move across the face and
| | 00:15 | give you the impression that
the character has more volume.
| | 00:18 | Let me show you this head turn that we
are going to do in this chapter, so that
| | 00:21 | way we have a little bit of reference.
| | 00:23 | So I've just basically added this head turn.
| | 00:27 | So now you can see the eyes, the nose,
the mouth all move across the face, and
| | 00:31 | the face itself actually changes shape.
| | 00:34 | So now that we understand where we're
going, let's go ahead and get started.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to go ahead and just open
a project, and in this case we are going
| | 00:43 | to open the first one in this chapter,
which is 06_01. And this is basically the
| | 00:49 | same character we had before with a few changes;
| | 00:52 | I deleted the blinks and the mouths,
and we are going to add those in just a
| | 00:57 | little bit later, because when you
do a head turn like this, the standard
| | 01:01 | replacement mouths don't quite work, so
we are going to have to do another method
| | 01:05 | if we are going to use this sort of head turn.
| | 01:07 | But let's go ahead and start.
| | 01:09 | Now the easiest way to do it is to
use time remapping, and we can use time
| | 01:13 | remapping for things other
than replacement animation.
| | 01:17 | So in this case, we can use it to smoothly
animate between a left, a center, and a right head turn.
| | 01:26 | So let's go through and select
everything that we have on the head.
| | 01:30 | So here, I have Mouth 01, and I scroll
down, and basically the head goes all the
| | 01:35 | way down to Left and Right Ear.
| | 01:38 | So basically all of these top layers,
from Left and Right Ear, through Head, all
| | 01:43 | the way up to the Mouth, and
this selects everything on the head.
| | 01:46 | Now, just like when we do replacement
animation, we're going to create a precomp.
| | 01:51 | I am going to go into Layer > Precompose,
and let's just call this HEAD; hit OK.
| | 02:00 | So now I have a composition called HEAD.
| | 02:03 | We can double-click on i, and
you can see if I Fit to this,
| | 02:07 | we've got a lot of extra space around it.
| | 02:09 | So let's go ahead and trim this down.
| | 02:11 | We are going to use Region of Interest,
and just draw a box around the character,
| | 02:17 | and maybe zoom in here, and let's
go ahead and fine tune this box.
| | 02:20 | I want to make sure I have enough
room, not just for the character, but also
| | 02:24 | for the head turn. So maybe give him a
little bit of room on the sides, but not
| | 02:29 | too much; just enough.
| | 02:31 | So that should be good, and once I have
that all blocked out, all I have to do
| | 02:36 | is Composition > Crop
Comp to Region of Interest.
| | 02:39 | So now I am going to create
the head turn within this.
| | 02:42 | Now, the first thing we need to do is
decide how many frames are we going to
| | 02:46 | create this head turn over. In other
words, how many steps are we going to give
| | 02:51 | the animator in this head turn.
| | 02:53 | I think a good value is somewhere
around 20, and so let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:58 | So I am going to go into my
Composition Settings, and I am going to make my
| | 03:02 | Duration not 20, but 21, and let me
show you why: because what that does is it makes
| | 03:09 | that last frame that we can scroll to
20, then we have 21 at the end there.
| | 03:14 | So now that I have the proper number of
frames, let's go ahead and just animate
| | 03:20 | the shape of the head.
| | 03:22 | So the first thing I want to do is
select all of my parts, and hide them.
| | 03:26 | So I am just going to go and hide all
of these layers, and I also want to hide
| | 03:30 | the Left and Right Ear.
| | 03:32 | So I just want to keep the Head, and we're
just going to animate the shape of the head.
| | 03:37 | So we can do that by just
using a simple distortion.
| | 03:40 | We can actually put an effect on the head;
| | 03:42 | we are going to go Effect > Distort, and
I think Bezier Warp is actually a really
| | 03:48 | good one to use for this, because all it
does is just put a little box around it
| | 03:52 | that we can reshape and kind of morph the head.
| | 03:55 | So the first thing I want to do is make
sure that I have a position for the center.
| | 04:01 | So I am going to go to Frame 10, which
is the center of my animation, and under
| | 04:04 | Bezier Warp, I am going to select all
of the controls here, and then just set a
| | 04:12 | keyframe for everything.
| | 04:13 | So now I've got this locked
down in a center position.
| | 04:17 | Now all I need to do is create
my left and right head shape.
| | 04:22 | So I am going to go all the way down
to Frame 0, and let's go ahead into our
| | 04:25 | Bezier Warp, and we are
just going to alter the shape.
| | 04:29 | So I am going to take this corner here,
and if you think about it, when the head
| | 04:32 | turns, the chin kind of
moves from one side to the other.
| | 04:37 | So I am going to bring the chin out a
little bit here, and again, this is just
| | 04:42 | the shape of the head.
| | 04:43 | We're going to worry
about facial features later.
| | 04:46 | So when you take a look at this, you
can see how now it's going from the jaw
| | 04:51 | straight at you, to maybe the jaw over here.
| | 04:55 | And let's do the same for the other side.
| | 04:57 | I am going to select that Bezier Warp
again, and again I am going to push it in
| | 05:01 | here to kind of round out where that
jaw was, and then just pull out the jaw a
| | 05:07 | little bit on this side here.
| | 05:09 | And again, I want to make
this pretty symmetrical.
| | 05:12 | So now I've got this.
| | 05:14 | Now this is just a very smooth shape
transition, but if I go into my master
| | 05:21 | composition -- let's go ahead and fit
this here -- you'll see that my head
| | 05:26 | shape is already there, and I can
take this, and just like with replacement
| | 05:33 | animation, I can do right-click over it,
Time > Enable Time Remapping. And when I
| | 05:39 | do that, all I have to do, again, is just
delete that last key, and now what I can
| | 05:44 | do is I can go from Frame 0 to Frame
20, and you can see how it changes shape.
| | 05:53 | So I am getting a smooth in-between.
| | 05:56 | Now one of the things I am noticing
here is that when I get to the very last
| | 05:59 | frame, it disappears. And we can fix
that, because what happens here is when we
| | 06:05 | shrink it down to 21 frames, this is the
21st frame, and there's no bitmap over it.
| | 06:11 | So all I have to do is right-click
and drag this over, and we go here;
| | 06:17 | now that last frame won't disappear.
| | 06:21 | In fact, I need to do this for
everything in the composition, so in fact, I
| | 06:24 | should probably select everything and
then just make sure that it's one frame
| | 06:29 | over that end, and that way we
won't run into this problem later.
| | 06:33 | So now we have the basic head shape,
but now let's go ahead and go through the
| | 06:40 | rest of the head, and start adding in
the other components of the head turn.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a head turn: Ears| 00:00 | At this point in the process we have the
shape of the head animating, but nothing else.
| | 00:06 | So let's go ahead and move on
to some other parts of the head.
| | 00:09 | In this case, we're going to do the ears.
| | 00:11 | So I'm going to go over to my Head
composition, and make sure I select my Left Ear
| | 00:16 | and Right Ear, and make sure I turn them on; okay.
| | 00:20 | So now, when I have this, you'll see how
the head is changing in terms of shape,
| | 00:26 | but the ears aren't following along.
| | 00:28 | Now when the head turns, what's going
to happen is one ear is going to come
| | 00:32 | in front of the head, in other words,
towards the viewer, and the other one
| | 00:37 | is going to go behind.
| | 00:39 | So what we need to do is animate these,
so that they basically look like they're
| | 00:43 | coming in front of and behind the head.
| | 00:45 | Now right now I have these on layers
that are behind the head, and that's
| | 00:51 | because when I drew this, it was just
face forward, but let's go ahead and
| | 00:56 | actually move these layers up.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to move these above
Head, so now that they're on top.
| | 01:03 | And then we'll use masking to make them
appear like they're moving in front of
| | 01:08 | and behind the head.
| | 01:10 | So the first thing I want to do is go
to Frame 10, which is my center position.
| | 01:15 | And let's go ahead and start with the Left
Ear, and I want to make sure that I have
| | 01:21 | keyframes for that on Frame 10.
| | 01:24 | So I want to select Position, Scale,
Rotation, and make sure I have a keyframe for that.
| | 01:30 | Now I need to animate, going
in front of and behind the head.
| | 01:36 | So let's go ahead and start right here
at the middle, because at this point it's
| | 01:40 | supposed to be slightly behind the head.
| | 01:43 | So I'm going to zoom in a little bit
here, and in this case in order to do
| | 01:48 | this I want to select the ear, and then
select my Pen tool, and we're going to draw a mask.
| | 01:54 | So I'm just going to click once here,
and that sets a corner, click and drag to
| | 02:00 | set a Bezier handle, click again just
once to set a corner, corner, corner, and
| | 02:07 | then I'm going to close that mask.
| | 02:12 | Now, when I drew this mask, it's
actually in the opposite position that I want,
| | 02:16 | so I'm going to go ahead and go into
this mask, and instead of Add, I'm going to
| | 02:20 | make it a Subtract mask.
| | 02:23 | And when I do that, you can see how now it
makes the ear look like it's behind the head.
| | 02:28 | In fact, let's compare this to the other ear.
| | 02:31 | Now with the mask, it looks like, you know,
basically the head is in front of that, and
| | 02:36 | that's simply because we've masked it out.
| | 02:37 | So let's go back in and let's
adjust that mask a little bit.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to go ahead and adjust my Mask Shape.
| | 02:45 | In fact, right now the best thing to
do is to add a keyframe at this point,
| | 02:50 | because we do want to animate the
shape of this mask, but I want to make sure
| | 02:54 | I get it right, so I'm just going to go
ahead and adjust it just a little bit here.
| | 02:59 | And now I need to animate this mask.
| | 03:03 | So the first thing we want to do is
probably animate it as the ear comes
| | 03:06 | in front of the head.
| | 03:09 | Now when that happens, the ear itself is
going to move, but right now let's just
| | 03:14 | worry about the mask.
| | 03:15 | So I'm going to select my Mask and I'm
just going to move it away from the ear.
| | 03:22 | So right now it's just revealing the ear.
| | 03:24 | So right now it looks
like it's doing this; okay.
| | 03:28 | But if we look at the whole
head -- I'm going to hit Fit here --
| | 03:32 | you'll see that well, this ear
actually needs to be somewhere around here.
| | 03:36 | It needs to kind of move a
little bit more to the left.
| | 03:39 | So we can do that just by basically
selecting that ear and moving it, and we can
| | 03:45 | also rotate it maybe a little bit, and
because it's coming towards the viewer,
| | 03:49 | we could scale up a little bit.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to scale it up to about 108,
maybe 110; somewhere in that range.
| | 03:55 | Now it looks like it's going behind the head.
| | 03:59 | So as the head turns, the ear
looks like it's going behind the head.
| | 04:04 | Now the next thing we need to do is to
make it kind of rotate back the other
| | 04:08 | way; in other words, we need
to make it kind of disappear.
| | 04:11 | So the first thing I want to do is let's
just worry about the position of this ear.
| | 04:16 | So I'm going to select the ear and let's
just move this back so it's just behind
| | 04:26 | that cheek, or whatever that's supposed
to be, and then shrink it down just a
| | 04:29 | little bit, maybe shrink it down
to about 90; somewhere around there.
| | 04:33 | So now what's happening is the ear is
coming around, and then it's going the
| | 04:38 | other way, but when it does that,
again, it's in front of the head, so we
| | 04:43 | need to mask this out. So that's easy.
| | 04:46 | We can just go to our Mask Path, zoom
in here a little bit, and let's go ahead
| | 04:50 | and just tweak this path.
| | 04:52 | So I'm going to select these Bezier
handles, and just set that so it's right on
| | 05:00 | the edge of the face.
| | 05:02 | So now as he moves around, okay, we may
have to tweak this just a little bit here.
| | 05:07 | Go ahead and bring this a
little bit back. There we go.
| | 05:13 | Okay, so now I've got it looking
like the ear is moving behind the head.
| | 05:17 | So let's go ahead and take a look at this.
| | 05:19 | So now this ear looks like it makes
the head actually turn, if you look at
| | 05:25 | just that one side.
| | 05:26 | So let's go ahead and do the
same thing for the other ear.
| | 05:30 | I'm going to go to the Right Ear, select it.
| | 05:35 | Let's go to the middle frame, Frame 10.
| | 05:37 | Position, Scale, Rotation; we just
want to lock down some keyframes here.
| | 05:41 | And in this case, it's going the
opposite direction, so it will be closest to
| | 05:46 | the viewer at Frame 20.
| | 05:49 | So again, I'm going to scale it up to about 108.
| | 05:52 | I think that's what I did before.
| | 05:55 | So now, you can even see how this is
giving more of the illusion of his head
| | 06:00 | turning, and now what we
need to do is add in that mask.
| | 06:05 | So let's go -- keep this selected, zoom in.
| | 06:11 | Select the Pen tool, and again, I'm
just going to set a corner here, a
| | 06:15 | Bezier handle here.
| | 06:18 | Another corner, corner, corner,
and I'm going to close the path.
| | 06:23 | And again, just like we had before,
this just defaults to Add, so we're going to
| | 06:26 | change it to Subtract, and then I
need to tweak these handles here.
| | 06:30 | So let's go ahead and get this
aligned with the side of his face.
| | 06:34 | It should be pretty close. There we go.
| | 06:39 | And now let's do some animation.
| | 06:40 | So the first thing I want to do is make
sure I set a key for the Mask Path,
| | 06:45 | and then as it goes to Frame 20,
this is going to move away.
| | 06:49 | So I'll move this away.
| | 06:50 | So now the first part is done, and now
what we need to do again is shrink down
| | 06:58 | that ear a little bit.
| | 06:59 | I'm going to shrink it down to 90, and then
move it over so it's just behind the head.
| | 07:11 | Now we need to adjust the mask to fit.
| | 07:13 | So I'm going to back up to the Mask,
select it, and move it so it's right at the
| | 07:20 | edge of the face there.
| | 07:22 | We need to expand this a little bit, make it a
little bit bigger, and that looks pretty good.
| | 07:28 | Okay, this is close enough.
| | 07:30 | We could tweak this a little bit more,
but let's just, for the sake of time, just
| | 07:34 | see what we've got here.
| | 07:36 | So now we've got this.
| | 07:39 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 07:40 | That looks like his head is turning.
| | 07:42 | Those ears really do add in a lot, and
if we go to our main composition, this
| | 07:47 | just flows through naturally.
| | 07:48 | So I've got my composition
going through just like that.
| | 07:53 | So now, anything I add to this will just
naturally flow through to my main character.
| | 08:00 | So now we've got the ears, and let's go
ahead and move on to the other facial
| | 08:04 | features in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a head turn: Facial features| 00:00 | At this point, we have the head turning with,
basically, the shape of the face and the ears.
| | 00:06 | So let's add in the other facial features.
| | 00:10 | So I am going to go to my Head subcomposition,
and let's start working on
| | 00:14 | these one at a time.
| | 00:15 | First one I want to start with is the nose.
| | 00:17 | So I am going to select the Nose layer,
and make sure I turn it on so it's visible.
| | 00:22 | Then I am going to go to Frame 10 and
make sure that everything is centered.
| | 00:26 | Then I am going to expand this and set
a key for Position, Scale, and Rotation.
| | 00:31 | Now, as the head turns, the nose is going to
move sideways and a little bit up actually.
| | 00:39 | So I am just going to go ahead and
move this, and position this nose where it
| | 00:43 | needs to be, and also as it moves,
it's going to rotate just a bit.
| | 00:48 | So I think a good number here is
somewhere around 9 or 10 degrees.
| | 00:51 | So let's go ahead and make this 9
degrees, and now, you can see how this just
| | 00:57 | kind of gives it a little bit more sense of life.
| | 01:02 | In fact, we can probably put this over
just a little bit more. So there we go!
| | 01:06 | So now it looks pretty good.
| | 01:09 | Okay, so now we have to do
the same on the other side.
| | 01:12 | So I am going to go ahead and move this
over, select this Nose, and again, I am
| | 01:18 | just going to see if I can make this
about the same distance, and then I am
| | 01:22 | going to rotate again.
| | 01:23 | In this case, I rotated at
9 the other time; this is -9.
| | 01:26 | So let's see how this works.
| | 01:29 | You know, I really need that nose to
come up a little bit on each side,
| | 01:36 | so I am going to go ahead and move it up
| | 01:38 | so that way it moves a
little bit more on an arc.
| | 01:42 | Now remember, when heads turn, they tend
to turn a little bit on an arc, so this
| | 01:47 | will kind of help sell that.
| | 01:48 | Maybe even bring it
down just a little bit here.
| | 01:52 | So now, once I have this nose, I am
going to use this as the reference.
| | 01:58 | I spent a lot of time on this because I
wanted to make sure that this is right,
| | 02:02 | because now I have a center line
with which to align everything else.
| | 02:07 | Now, let's go ahead and move on to the
Mouth, which is the top layer here. And
| | 02:11 | again, I am just going to turn this
on, and let's go ahead and open this up,
| | 02:14 | and make sure I am at Frame 10, and have a
keyframe for Position, Rotation, and Scale.
| | 02:20 | In fact, if I want, I can
align this a little bit.
| | 02:24 | Again, we're going to do same thing here.
| | 02:26 | We are going to just keep it centered
under the nose, maybe have to rotate it,
| | 02:30 | maybe scale it just a little bit.
| | 02:32 | But again, that nose is my guide.
| | 02:35 | So in fact, I can even use this little
dot here, and kind of center that to the
| | 02:39 | nose, and then rotate this, so that it
kind of rotates with my character. And
| | 02:45 | maybe even scale it down just a little
bit, because as the character turns, the
| | 02:49 | mouth is going to move away
from the camera just a little bit.
| | 02:53 | So now that looks pretty good.
| | 02:56 | So let's do that on the other side.
| | 02:58 | So I am going to go ahead and move
this over, make sure that I've got that
| | 03:03 | centered under the nose,
| | 03:04 | then rotate it in the other direction.
| | 03:10 | Let's go ahead and scale
this down just a little bit.
| | 03:13 | So now, okay, so this one is a little bit off;
| | 03:17 | you can see it's touching the side of the face,
| | 03:18 | so let's not do it so much.
| | 03:21 | So now that looks pretty good.
| | 03:25 | So again, this gives it a lot more dimension.
| | 03:30 | So let's go ahead and move
on to the rest of the face.
| | 03:33 | Let's go ahead to the brows,
the eyes, and everything else.
| | 03:36 | So I am going to go ahead and select all of
these, except for the hair, and turn them all on.
| | 03:42 | So let's go ahead and set
keyframes for all of these at 10.
| | 03:44 | So I am just going to open up
one of them and we are going to set
| | 03:48 | Position, Rotation, and Scale.
| | 03:53 | So now we have that locked down.
| | 03:55 | Let's go ahead and, again, we are
going to use the nose as the guide.
| | 03:59 | So first thing I want to do is just
make sure I have all of these selected, and
| | 04:05 | let's go to the beginning,
Frame 0, and move these over.
| | 04:10 | Now, one of the things you are going
to realize is that as the character
| | 04:14 | turns, one eye is actually going to
come closer to the camera, the other eye
| | 04:18 | is going to move away.
| | 04:19 | So we're going to have a little bit of a
scale issue that we are going to work with.
| | 04:23 | So first thing I am going to do is
work on the eyes on the far side, which in
| | 04:27 | this case is the right one;
| | 04:29 | so Right Brow, Right Pupil, Right Eye.
| | 04:32 | I'm going to go ahead and
scale those down to about 90%.
| | 04:40 | And Again, I want to use the edge of the nose
as my guide for where these are located.
| | 04:46 | So I need to move that out just a little bit.
| | 04:53 | That's okay if this brow goes a little
bit beyond the side of the head, because
| | 04:57 | it's kind of a cartoony character.
| | 04:59 | So I want to make sure that this
distance between here and here looks like it's
| | 05:03 | not changing too much as
it goes from here to here.
| | 05:06 | So now, let's go ahead and work
on the other eye, the Left Eye.
| | 05:10 | So I am going to select the pupil, the
eye, and the brow, and again, let's go
| | 05:16 | ahead and set keyframes here for
Position, Rotation, and Scale, and let's go
| | 05:23 | ahead and move those down.
| | 05:25 | In this case, this one is coming closer to
the camera, so I am going to make it bigger.
| | 05:31 | In this case I am going to
bring it up to about 108%.
| | 05:33 | Again, I want to make sure that we've
got the same distance between these as
| | 05:40 | the character goes.
| | 05:41 | So his eyes are a little closer together here.
| | 05:43 | That looks pretty good.
| | 05:49 | Then we can do the same on the opposite side.
| | 05:52 | So again, I am going to move these over,
and before I scaled those down to 90, so
| | 05:57 | let's just type that in, and again,
let's get that arranged. And then let's
| | 06:02 | select the other eye.
| | 06:03 | Let's go ahead and do that,
and again, let's bring those up.
| | 06:08 | I think I brought that up to 108%,
| | 06:10 | so let's copy that. And again, I'm
aligning these to the nose, and also maybe
| | 06:16 | even the edge of the mouth.
| | 06:21 | So that's pretty good.
| | 06:23 | So again, so now we've got all
of our facial features animating.
| | 06:27 | So all I have to do is turn the slider,
and I can turn this character's head, and
| | 06:30 | it looks a lot more realistic as it turns.
| | 06:34 | So now we pretty much have this head
turning except for the hair, and we'll do
| | 06:39 | that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a head turn: Hair shape| 00:00 | At this point, we have the head pretty
much turning, with the exception of the
| | 00:05 | hair, so we are going to do that in this lesson.
| | 00:07 | So if we take a look at this, you can
see that this head is working pretty well,
| | 00:12 | but we still need to add in the hair.
| | 00:14 | So let's go ahead over to our Head
composition here, and you can see we've got
| | 00:19 | the nice head turn, and now
let's go ahead and turn on the Hair.
| | 00:23 | Now you will notice here that, well you know,
it kind of fits, but it doesn't really
| | 00:29 | turn, so we want this kind of duck tail
that he has here to go from this side
| | 00:36 | over to this side as he turns his head.
| | 00:40 | Now the easiest way to do that is to
create a whole new set of hair using a
| | 00:43 | shape, and so we're actually going
to draw a new hair object, and just
| | 00:48 | animate this shape.
| | 00:49 | So the first thing we want to do is go
ahead and position this over Frame 20, which
| | 00:53 | is really where this is going to start. And now
we have the Hair object, which is just a bitmap,
| | 00:59 | and I need to go ahead and set Position,
Scale, and Rotation keys here, and now we are
| | 01:05 | going to flip the hair
over on the other extreme.
| | 01:09 | So that means I am going to have to
unlock my scale, and type in -100, and what
| | 01:16 | that does is it just mirrors that, or it
flops it around. And then I'm going to
| | 01:21 | position this where it needs to go.
| | 01:24 | In fact, I need to maybe rotate that
little bit. And I just want to make sure
| | 01:28 | this is positioned fairly well,
because what I am going to do is just use
| | 01:31 | this as a template.
| | 01:33 | This is not really going to be
the hair that's going to be final;
| | 01:36 | it's just a template.
| | 01:37 | I just want to make sure I have this
pose, and this pose; everything in between
| | 01:41 | doesn't really matter.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead to Frame 20, and we
are going to create a Shape layer. So at
| | 01:48 | this point I am going to lock my
Hair layer, and make sure everything is
| | 01:54 | deselected, and then I am
going to select my Pen tool.
| | 01:57 | Now at this point, it's going to
tell me what my fill and my stroke is.
| | 02:01 | Even though I have my Fill set at Black,
which is the same color as the hair, I
| | 02:05 | am going to set it to a different color.
In fact, I am going to set it to red,
| | 02:09 | that way I know exactly where my new hair is
versus the hair that I am using as the template.
| | 02:15 | We can always change this color later,
but I am going to draw it in red, so I
| | 02:19 | can see it very clearly.
| | 02:20 | So I am going to go ahead and lay down
a single point here, then I am going to
| | 02:25 | click and drag. Again, I am trying to follow
the curve of this; click and drag again, and
| | 02:34 | this time, I am going to lay down a
single point, a single point here. Then I am
| | 02:39 | going to go ahead and click and drag to
create that duck tail, another click and drag
| | 02:45 | here, and then another single point here, and
then I want to make sure I close this.
| | 02:50 | And so that's pretty close, and we can
always modify that. In fact, if I want, I
| | 02:56 | can go in to my Shape layer here, which
is new, and go into my Contents, into my
| | 03:01 | Shape, and I can change and affect my Path.
| | 03:04 | The easiest way to do this is to go
into Transform, and drop down the Opacity
| | 03:09 | just a bit, so what I can do now is I can
see where I am overlapping and where I am not.
| | 03:14 | And that's going to help me draw
my shape accurately to the original.
| | 03:19 | So let's go back up here and click on
Shape > Path 1 here, and then I am just
| | 03:26 | going to arrange this so that it's
pretty close to this hair do here.
| | 03:31 | So again, I just want to make sure that
I get a reasonably close shape here. And
| | 03:37 | as I do that, you can see how
| | 03:39 | if I go way too far over, the
Opacity is going to tell me where I am over
| | 03:44 | and where I am under.
| | 03:45 | So looks like I am pretty
close, and so there we go.
| | 03:49 | So now for this path here, I want to
make sure I open this up and set a keyframe
| | 03:54 | at the last frame, which was Frame 20 here.
| | 03:57 | So now I am going to go over to
Frame 0, and we are going to redraw that.
| | 04:02 | So I am just going to select each point
here, and just reshape it. And again, this
| | 04:09 | Opacity and the red layer really helps
me see what I'm doing, and I am really
| | 04:14 | just doing this as a guide.
| | 04:16 | So I want to go ahead and lengthen
that out little bit here, and again we are
| | 04:20 | just trying to make this work
pretty well, and there we go.
| | 04:27 | Okay, so now I have this; you can see
I have two keyframes, one for each side,
| | 04:32 | and this will now automatically in-between.
| | 04:35 | So let's see this a little bit better.
| | 04:38 | I am going to hide my original Hair
layer, and now I am going to take my Shape
| | 04:42 | layer, and you notice how I still have
that color here. I am going to go ahead
| | 04:46 | and turn my color to black, and then
open this up, and scroll down, and turn off
| | 04:53 | all my Opacity; make sure it's at 100%.
And now you can see how the hair is
| | 04:58 | actually following the head.
| | 04:59 | So now I have the hair
and everything else turning.
| | 05:03 | When I go back over to my main
Composition, you can see how I've got a good head
| | 05:09 | turn. If you notice -- I go to the
very end here, I will go to Frame 21,
| | 05:12 | you'll notice how it disappears. And
so what I'm going to do here is go back over
| | 05:18 | here, and we have that
same problem we had before:
| | 05:22 | this ends at 20, but my
slider is going up to 21.
| | 05:25 | So I just need to grab the end of this, and
bring it up by one frame, and we are there.
| | 05:30 | So now I've got a good
head turn. So there we go.
| | 05:37 | So what we did here was we traced
over the original hair with an After
| | 05:42 | Effects shape, and because we can
animate shapes, we can animate the shape of
| | 05:47 | the character's hair.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Automating Character Rigs with ExpressionsThe basics of expressions: Controlling the wrist| 00:00 | The next step in automating your
character rig is to use expressions.
| | 00:04 | Now, expressions are basically
a way to program After Effects.
| | 00:08 | It uses JavaScript, and let's just get
our feet wet in expression, so I can show
| | 00:13 | you how to create them, and
how to do some basic tasks.
| | 00:17 | In this case, we're going to
animate the cuff of the character.
| | 00:21 | Let me show you what I mean here.
| | 00:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom into
his hand, and I'm just going to select
| | 00:27 | my Rotate tool here.
| | 00:29 | You notice when I rotate this hand,
right here, once it hits the cuff, it kind
| | 00:34 | of gets it to a condition
where it doesn't look quite right.
| | 00:37 | The cuff is basically cutting into the
hand, both on this side and on that side.
| | 00:42 | Now in the real world,
that cuff would kind of flex;
| | 00:46 | it would tend to move along with the wrist.
| | 00:49 | Now we can do that easily just by
animating the hand, and then grabbing the
| | 00:54 | wrist and animating that.
| | 00:56 | Basically, what you want to do is
rotate the wrist here, then rotate the hand,
| | 01:01 | and as you can see, it gets very,
very, very complicated, and it's not an
| | 01:05 | easy way to animate.
| | 01:07 | So the better way to do this is to
automate the cuff so it matches the
| | 01:11 | rotation of the hand.
| | 01:12 | That way you don't have to
animate two things, and it's automated.
| | 01:16 | So the first thing we want to do is
create what's called an expression.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my
Left Cuff and open that up, and you'll
| | 01:25 | notice we have a Rotation field here.
| | 01:28 | And what I want to do is
insert what's called an expression.
| | 01:31 | So I'm going to highlight Rotation, and
then under Animation > Add Expression.
| | 01:38 | What this does is it creates
an Expression for Rotation.
| | 01:44 | And we have a couple of buttons here;
| | 01:45 | one is to enable or disable the
expression; obviously we want to enable it.
| | 01:50 | We can also show a graph.
| | 01:52 | This here is basically a Pick Whip, it's
very similar to the Pick Whip you use with
| | 01:56 | hierarchies, and we actually
are going to be using this.
| | 01:59 | And then over here, we
actually have an expression.
| | 02:02 | So the expression is basically text, and
we'll get into syntax a little bit, but
| | 02:08 | let's just do a very, very
simple expression at first.
| | 02:12 | What I want to do is tie the rotation of
this, the Cuff, to the rotation of the Hand.
| | 02:17 | So let's go ahead and open up the Hand here,
and you'll see that we have a Rotation field.
| | 02:23 | I am going to go ahead and give
myself a little more room here.
| | 02:26 | So you'll see that the rotation here on
the Cuff is controlled by an expression,
| | 02:30 | and the rotation on the Hand is actually
animated, or controlled by the animator.
| | 02:36 | So what I'm going to do is select the
Pick Whip on the Cuff, and you can see I
| | 02:40 | can drag that to any value, but I
want to drag it to the Hand Rotation value.
| | 02:45 | And watch what happens when I do that;
| | 02:48 | this value changes.
| | 02:50 | So let me read you what this says, and I'll
give you a little bit of insight into
| | 02:53 | what's going on here.
| | 02:54 | First of all, it says thisComp, which is
this composition, so we're using Gus_All,
| | 03:01 | and then the layer called LEFT HAND, which
is this layer, and then we want to look
| | 03:06 | at transform.rotation, which means Rotation.
| | 03:08 | So basically, I'm taking rotation from
the Hand layer in this composition, and
| | 03:14 | using that to create this rotation.
| | 03:17 | So if I go into the rotation of this
Hand, you'll see that now what happens
| | 03:24 | is this follows along.
| | 03:27 | So if I rotate the Hand, say, 10
degrees, you'll notice here Rotation in the
| | 03:33 | Cuff is also at 10 degrees.
| | 03:35 | You notice how it's also in red, and
that just tells you that it's being
| | 03:38 | driven by something else.
| | 03:40 | As you can see, I can rotate my wrist
up or down without the cuff cutting into
| | 03:45 | the hand, and this can be very, very handy.
| | 03:48 | Now another thing we can do is we can
take this value here, and we can change it.
| | 03:53 | So right now, I have
this working at a 1:1 ratio.
| | 03:57 | If I rotate this 10 degrees, or 11
degrees, the cuff will also rotate at 11
| | 04:03 | degrees, but maybe I don't want
it to rotate exactly with the hand;
| | 04:07 | maybe I only want it to rotate half as fast.
| | 04:11 | So I can change that simply by
taking this expression and adding a
| | 04:16 | mathematical term to that.
| | 04:18 | Now don't get scared;
| | 04:19 | all I'm going to do is divide by 2.
| | 04:21 | So I'm just going to hit the slash and 2.
| | 04:25 | So basically the value that we have
here is going to be this value over 2; in
| | 04:30 | other words, half of
whatever the hand is giving it.
| | 04:33 | If I rotate the Hand to 10 degrees,
let's just type in the number 10 here,
| | 04:38 | you'll see that the rotation
of the cuff is only 5 degrees.
| | 04:43 | So now it's rotating a little bit less,
so that's actually just a gentle rotation.
| | 04:49 | So I'm basically kind of reducing
the effect of the hand rotation.
| | 04:53 | If I want, I can divide by a larger
number to get less of an effect, or I can go
| | 04:58 | the opposite way, and multiply.
| | 05:01 | So if I multiply by 2, it will rotate
twice as fast as the hand is moving.
| | 05:06 | These are some of the basics of just
setting up an expression, and you can start
| | 05:10 | to see how this can be very valuable.
| | 05:13 | Once you really get into it, it can
really help to automate, and make your
| | 05:17 | characters much easier to animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving hands from front to back with expressions| 00:00 | There are many times when you will want one
part of your character to pass in front
| | 00:03 | of, or behind, another part of your character.
| | 00:07 | A good example of this is the hands.
| | 00:10 | A lot of times you'll want your hands in
front of your torso, or behind, and so what
| | 00:14 | we're going to do is use expressions
to allow you to switch between hands in
| | 00:19 | front, and hands in back.
| | 00:21 | So let's take a look at the
character that we have right now.
| | 00:24 | If I select this Left Bicep, and rotate
it, you can see that right now this arm
| | 00:30 | and the hand is passing in front of the
body, and the reason it's doing that is
| | 00:35 | because, well, it's just a layering issue.
| | 00:38 | The Left Hand, and the Forearm, and the
Bicep are all in front of the Torso.
| | 00:44 | So if we want this hand to be behind
the torso, we need to make a copy of it
| | 00:49 | and place it behind.
| | 00:50 | So I am going to go ahead and select my Left
Hand, and then I'm going to do an
| | 00:56 | Edit > Copy, and Edit > Paste.
| | 00:57 | So, basically I've just duplicated
that hand, and you will see that that layer
| | 01:02 | comes in right on top of the first one.
And the reason it's different; you can
| | 01:06 | see that this one is not linked to anything.
| | 01:09 | But let's go ahead and just right-click
over this, and Rename that Left Hand to LEFT HAND 2.
| | 01:14 | Now, once we've renamed it, let's go
ahead and link this hand to the original.
| | 01:20 | So I want to make sure that LEFT HAND 2
follows along with the original Left Hand.
| | 01:26 | And then I am going to grab this layer and
just drop it right to the bottom of the stack.
| | 01:33 | So now what I have is I have one
hand in front, and one hand behind.
| | 01:37 | So if I rotate that bicep and bring
that hand in front of the body, you can see
| | 01:43 | that right now it's in front, but if I
turn off this Left Hand layer, it reveals
| | 01:48 | the layer behind, and it looks like it's behind.
| | 01:51 | But we really can't just be
turning layers on and off.
| | 01:55 | That's something we really can't
animate, but we can animate opacity.
| | 01:59 | So all I have to do is drop the Opacity
to 0, and it reveals that hand, but if
| | 02:05 | we zoom in really close, you will see
that, well, it only changes this part.
| | 02:10 | We still have three other parts of
this arm that need to be placed behind.
| | 02:15 | So we have the Cuff, the Forearm, and
the Bicep, and all of those need to go
| | 02:19 | behind the body when we do this switch.
| | 02:22 | So let's create some additional copies
so we can do the same thing with these
| | 02:27 | other parts of the arm.
| | 02:28 | So I am going to go to my Bicep, and I
am just going to change my Rotation back
| | 02:32 | to 0, and get it back to my neutral position.
| | 02:36 | So let's go ahead and do some copies.
| | 02:37 | So I am going to go ahead and select
my Bicep, do Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste.
| | 02:43 | It's renamed it to Bicep 2, so I am
just going to go ahead and do the link.
| | 02:47 | Now I am going to do the Left Forearm, and
this time I am just going to use Control+C
| | 02:51 | or Command+C, Control+V or Command
+V, and then link it in again.
| | 02:56 | So I have got Bicep 2, Forearm 2, Copy,
Paste, Cuff 2, and again, just link it.
| | 03:02 | So now that I have all of these,
select each one of these; Cuff, Forearm, and
| | 03:08 | Bicep, and again, just drag
those to the bottom of the stack.
| | 03:12 | I want to make sure that Left
HAND 2 is at the very bottom.
| | 03:16 | So now that I have this, I can go ahead
and select my Left Bicep and rotate it, and
| | 03:25 | now we can start working with the opacity.
| | 03:27 | So if I want to take the
Opacity of my Left Hand down, I can.
| | 03:33 | I can also do the same with my Left Cuff.
| | 03:36 | But if you notice, now I have got four
opacities to manage, and that's starting
| | 03:40 | to get a little bit complex.
| | 03:42 | So what we can do is we can use
expressions to help tie it all together.
| | 03:46 | Easiest thing to do is to just
add an expression to opacity.
| | 03:50 | So I am going to start with the Left Cuff, select
Opacity, and we are going to add an expression.
| | 03:55 | So we are going to do Animation > Add
Expression, and then I am just going to
| | 03:59 | use this Pick Whip here to drag
it over the Opacity of he Left Hand.
| | 04:05 | Here we have the Opacity of the Cuff is
equal to the Opacity of the Left Hand.
| | 04:10 | So now when I take the Opacity of that
Left Hand and bring it down, you will see
| | 04:14 | that the Cuff follows along; very nice!
| | 04:18 | So let's do the same thing for
the Left Forearm and the Bicep.
| | 04:22 | So I am going to go ahead into
Transform > Opacity > Add Expression, Pick Whip
| | 04:30 | to the Opacity of the Left Hand, and do
the exact same thing for the Left Bicep.
| | 04:38 | Add Expression, and then just
connect it all together. There it is.
| | 04:44 | Okay.
| | 04:44 | So now when I take this Opacity of the
Left Hand down, the whole arm goes behind.
| | 04:54 | That's wonderful!
| | 04:55 | But we can actually make this a little
bit easier, because we can get stuck at
| | 04:59 | a point where it's at halfway between
front and back, and we really don't want that.
| | 05:04 | So let's go ahead and make it so it's
either one or the other, and we can do
| | 05:09 | that by adding in what's
called an expression control.
| | 05:13 | So I am going to select my Left Hand,
and under Effect go to Expression Controls,
| | 05:18 | and here we have a bunch
of controls that we can use.
| | 05:22 | In this case, we want to use what's
called the Checkbox Control, and basically
| | 05:26 | all that does is it adds an effect here.
| | 05:30 | If we open that up, you will see we have
Checkbox Control, and there's really only
| | 05:34 | two values for this check box: On, and Off.
| | 05:38 | Okay, so before we actually do
anything, let's go ahead and rename this.
| | 05:41 | I am going to right-click over Checkbox
Control, hit Rename, and I am just going
| | 05:46 | to call it Front/Back, and that
gives me an idea as to what it does.
| | 05:52 | And then all we have to do is connect the
Opacity of my Left Hand to this checkbox.
| | 05:58 | So again, I'm going to select my Left
Hand Opacity, Add an Expression, and then
| | 06:05 | use my Pick Whip to bring it up to the checkbox.
| | 06:10 | When I do, that you will see that when
it's off, the hand is behind, but when I
| | 06:15 | turn it on, it seems like nothing happens.
| | 06:18 | That's because we have a
little bit of a disparity here;
| | 06:20 | the checkbox gives you a value of 1 or 0.
| | 06:24 | Opacity goes between 0 and 100.
| | 06:27 | So if you take a look at this checkbox,
when it's On, my Opacity is at 1%.
| | 06:33 | When it's Off, it's at 0%.
| | 06:35 | So it's working, but we need to
multiply it in order to get it to bring
| | 06:39 | the Opacity up to 100.
| | 06:41 | So in order to get 1 up to 100,
you have to multiply it by 100.
| | 06:44 | So I am going to go into the
Expression here, under Opacity, and just go to the
| | 06:49 | very end of that, and hit the
asterisk, which means times 100.
| | 06:54 | So everything there, times 100, and then
just click off of that, and it should work.
| | 07:00 | So now we have got it on, and off.
| | 07:03 | So now when this checkbox is On,
that means the hand is in front;
| | 07:07 | when it's Off, the hand is in back.
| | 07:10 | But we still have one more problem,
and that's which hand we are using.
| | 07:14 | You can see that this Left
Hand has a time remap on it.
| | 07:17 | So when I change it, the hand
behind doesn't change along with it.
| | 07:24 | We still need to use one more expression
to connect the second hand to the original.
| | 07:29 | So I am going down to the very bottom
of the stack, go into LEFT HAND 2, and you
| | 07:33 | will see we have the Time
Remap; it's just not connected.
| | 07:38 | So I am going to select my Time Remap,
add an Expression, and again, just use
| | 07:43 | this Pick Whip and drag it up.
| | 07:47 | Find the Left Hand Time
Remap, and just click there.
| | 07:51 | So now LEFT HAND 2 is
following the original Left Hand.
| | 07:55 | So when I do my hand, it all follows
along, and then when I go behind and in
| | 08:02 | front, I have the exact same hand.
| | 08:05 | So now all I need to do is to lock my
copies, because they are aligned exactly
| | 08:11 | with my original layers, and
I don't want to mess that up.
| | 08:13 | So I am going to go down and select
Cuff 2, Forearm, Bicep, and LEFT HAND 2,
| | 08:18 | and make sure that those are locked,
and now I should have an arm that
| | 08:22 | rotates fairly well.
| | 08:24 | So I can go in front of the body, and if I
turn this off, I can go behind the body as well.
| | 08:36 | So as you can see, we've used
expressions to create a hand that goes in front of,
| | 08:40 | and behind, the body.
| | 08:42 | The way that we did this was we made
copies of the hand, put them behind the
| | 08:46 | body, and then used expressions to
tie together the opacity, as well as the
| | 08:51 | time remap on the hands.
| | 08:53 | So you can start to see how even with
simple expressions like this we can get a
| | 08:58 | lot more functionality to our characters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using expressions to control pupils| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to use
expressions to animate things like the
| | 00:04 | pupils of a character.
| | 00:06 | Now, in this case, I have this
character here, and we set him up in the previous
| | 00:11 | chapter with a head turn. In fact, let
me go ahead and zoom in, so we can see his
| | 00:15 | head. And let's go ahead and select his
head, and you'll see there's a layer here
| | 00:19 | in the Gus_All composition.
| | 00:22 | And if we open up that layer,
you will see we have a time remap.
| | 00:26 | So if we dial this left and right, you
will see we have a very nice head turn.
| | 00:31 | But let's say we wanted to change
his eye direction and move his pupils.
| | 00:35 | Well, we can't do that, because
there are no pupils in this composition.
| | 00:41 | The pupils we have here are
actually in the other composition; the head
| | 00:45 | composition. And this is what we used
with the time remap to create the head turn.
| | 00:51 | So if I select this pupil, you
will see that it's already animated.
| | 00:55 | It's animating along that arc, and it's
moving along with the head, and that's
| | 01:00 | all fine and dandy, but because it's
already animated, we can't really do much with it.
| | 01:05 | So let me show you a way to take
that pupil, and actually bring it into
| | 01:09 | composition so that we can move it around.
| | 01:12 | So first thing we want to do is we want
to take this composition called HEAD, and
| | 01:16 | just do Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste, and
that should give me a HEAD 2 composition.
| | 01:23 | So I am going to double-click
on that, and go into it.
| | 01:26 | You'll see that, well, it's exactly the same
as the other composition, because we copied it.
| | 01:31 | But what we can do is we can
actually lift out this pupil, and use it in
| | 01:37 | our master composition.
| | 01:38 | The way we do it is just
by deleting everything else.
| | 01:41 | So we're going to start with the
Left Pupil, and I am going to select
| | 01:44 | everything above it, hit the Delete key,
select everything below it, and again,
| | 01:49 | hit the Delete key.
| | 01:50 | So all I have in here is the Left Pupil,
and if I move my Timeline, you'll see
| | 01:56 | that it's still animating
along with the head turn.
| | 01:59 | It's animating exactly the same that
this pupil is animating, except there's
| | 02:04 | nothing else behind it.
| | 02:06 | So let's go to our HEAD composition here,
and let's go ahead and turn off this pupil;
| | 02:10 | let's take that out of the equation.
And then go into our master composition,
| | 02:14 | Gus All, and you'll see that he is now
missing his eye, but we can bring that
| | 02:19 | back in, because we have it
here in the HEAD 2 composition.
| | 02:23 | In fact, let's go head and rename
that to something more descriptive.
| | 02:27 | I am going to right-click over here,
hit Rename, and let's just call this LEFT
| | 02:31 | PUPIL, and now left-click and drag
that in to the layer right above HEAD.
| | 02:37 | So now that we have that -- we have to zoom
out here to see where it is. There it is.
| | 02:42 | So I am going to go ahead and bring this up,
and you can see that right now it's animating.
| | 02:48 | But what we want to do is to time remap
it, just the same way we did with the head.
| | 02:53 | So all we have to do is select LEFT
PUPIL, right-click, Time > Enable Time
| | 02:58 | Remapping, and now this gives me a
little slider that I can use to animate this.
| | 03:04 | But -- hang on just a second. There we go!
| | 03:07 | But what I really want to do is take
this Time Remap of the LEFT PUPIL, and tie
| | 03:12 | it to the HEAD Time Remap, so that
way I only have to animate one thing.
| | 03:17 | For example, when this HEAD Time Remap
is 10, I want to make sure that my PUPIL
| | 03:23 | Time Remap is also at 10 --
| | 03:25 | Let me go ahead and just center this -- and the
way that we do that is by using an expression.
| | 03:32 | So I am going to go ahead and select
Time Remap, go into Animation > Add
| | 03:37 | Expression, and then go ahead and click
on here so we can see what we're doing,
| | 03:42 | and you'll see that now we have an
expression in the Time Remap of the LEFT PUPIL.
| | 03:47 | So all we have to do is select the
Pick Whip, drag it to the HEAD Time Remap,
| | 03:52 | and you can see it
| | 03:54 | lays it in right here, and
now they should just sync up.
| | 03:57 | So now I've got a left and right head turn.
| | 04:02 | So this is really great.
| | 04:03 | So let's go through this again for
the Right Pupil, and just go through the
| | 04:08 | process one more time.
| | 04:09 | I am going to select my HEAD
composition and do the same thing;
| | 04:12 | Copy, Paste, double-click on the
second composition, and in this case, we're
| | 04:17 | going to delete everything, but
the Right Pupil. So there it is.
| | 04:27 | Let's go into the HEAD composition,
take out the Right Pupil, go into Gus All,
| | 04:33 | which is our master composition, and
again, let's go ahead and rename HEAD 2;
| | 04:38 | make it more descriptive.
| | 04:39 | So let's just call it RIGHT PUPIL, and
then again, just drag that in above the
| | 04:44 | HEAD, and again right-click, Time >
Time Remapping, select the Time Remap,
| | 04:53 | Animation > Add Expression,
Pick Whip, and there we go.
| | 05:00 | So now I still need to move this into place.
| | 05:03 | So let's go ahead and find that RIGHT PUPIL.
| | 05:07 | You can see that it's all working;
| | 05:09 | it's just that the pupil is in the wrong place.
| | 05:11 | So let's go ahead and move
that into place, and there we go.
| | 05:17 | So now I've got a head turn with
pupils that I can select and move.
| | 05:23 | So if I wanted to, I could select, for
example, LEFT and RIGHT PUPIL, and then I
| | 05:28 | can move them to give myself some eye direction.
| | 05:31 | So I am going to go ahead and center
this, put this to 10, and let's make sure
| | 05:35 | I've got both of these eye;
| | 05:37 | I am going to use my
arrow keys a little bit here,
| | 05:39 | and let's just make sure that we have
the left and right pupil centered.
| | 05:43 | Now, one of the things that may be
problematic is going into the HEAD
| | 05:49 | and selecting these,
| | 05:51 | so one of the things I like to do is create
an external control to select those pupils.
| | 05:56 | It makes it easier when you actually
go to animate, and you can do this for a
| | 06:00 | number of different variables.
| | 06:01 | Now, I already have part of
this set up in my composition.
| | 06:05 | So if we go to the very top of our
layers, you'll see I have four layers here;
| | 06:09 | Eye Control, Left and Right, Pupil
Control, again, Left and Right.
| | 06:13 | So let's go ahead and just turn those
on, and what they are is really just a
| | 06:16 | symbolic representation of the eyes.
| | 06:20 | And so all we have to do is
basically just do some parenting.
| | 06:24 | So I am going to select my LEFT PUPIL,
the one I just created, and then just
| | 06:28 | parent that to the Left Pupil Control.
| | 06:30 | I am going to do the same for my RIGHT PUPIL;
select the Pick Whip, drag to the Right Pupil Control.
| | 06:36 | Now, if I zoom in, all you have to do to
animate these is just select these and move them.
| | 06:44 | So now I have control over my eyes in
an external way, and if I go down to my
| | 06:52 | head here, I can also Time Remap, and
that eye direction will stay the same.
| | 07:01 | So this is a very nice way
to animate character's eyes.
| | 07:05 | You start setting up these external
controls, and that way you don't have to
| | 07:09 | really go into the HEAD composition.
| | 07:12 | You can also start to lock off, and
make shy, all of these layers that we're not
| | 07:17 | using, and that will clean up the actual
composition and what we're seeing on the screen.
| | 07:22 | So let's just refresh what we've done here.
| | 07:24 | We've created separate compositions for
both the left and right pupil that have
| | 07:29 | animation in them, and using
time remapping and an expression,
| | 07:33 | we've timed these to the
master control on the head.
| | 07:37 | Then we used an external eye
control just to control the positioning of
| | 07:42 | those pupils.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a master control node with Expression Controls| 00:00 | As you start adding more and more
expressions, and more and more controls to
| | 00:04 | your character, you are going to need to
consolidate those to make it easy to animate.
| | 00:10 | So in this case, for example, if I
wanted to animate the head, I have to dig
| | 00:13 | through a lot of layers, find the head,
open that up, find the time remap, and
| | 00:19 | then that just animates the head turn.
| | 00:21 | If I want to go to blink, I
may have to go some place else.
| | 00:24 | So let's go ahead and create something
that we can position, say at the top of
| | 00:28 | the layers stack, that contains all of that.
| | 00:31 | So in fact, let's go up to the top
of our layer stack, and add in a null
| | 00:35 | object that we can use.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to go into Layer, create a
Null Object, make sure that it's at the
| | 00:42 | top of the stack, and then let's go
ahead and right-click that, and type Rename.
| | 00:46 | I am going to rename it HEAD CONTROL,
and in this I am going to put a lot
| | 00:53 | of different controls.
| | 00:55 | So into this, we are going to
put a lot of different controls.
| | 00:57 | The first one we are going to
put is a control for head turn.
| | 01:01 | So if we go all the way down to HEAD,
you'll see that we have Time Remap here.
| | 01:06 | First off, let's go ahead
and make some shy layers here.
| | 01:08 | I am going to take everything between
that Head Control and HEAD, I am going to
| | 01:13 | make those shy, and just hit my Shy
layer so that they collapse, and they are
| | 01:17 | right next to each other.
| | 01:18 | It will make it easier to see what I am doing.
| | 01:21 | So the first thing that I am going
to do is to put what's called a slider
| | 01:26 | into my HEAD CONTROL layer.
| | 01:27 | Now this is actually an effect.
| | 01:31 | So if I select my HEAD CONTROL layer, go up
to Effect, you'll notice we have these
| | 01:34 | things called Expression Controls,
and these are just different types of
| | 01:38 | controls we can add so that
we can tie expressions to them.
| | 01:42 | So we have one that will give you an
angle, one that will give you checkbox,
| | 01:47 | color RGB, layers, point control: that's X, Y.
We just want one dimension, because
| | 01:53 | we are just dealing with one number,
the time remap number, so we are going to
| | 01:57 | put in what's called Slider Control.
| | 01:59 | Now when you put that in, if you open
up your Effects panel, you'll see we
| | 02:03 | have something called slider Control, and
under that is actually what's called a slider.
| | 02:08 | And that slider is just an empty container;
| | 02:10 | it just contains a number, and we can tie
something to that to have it control something.
| | 02:17 | So the first thing we want to do is
let's give this a more descriptive name.
| | 02:20 | So I am going to go ahead and select
Slider Control, right-click over it, hit
| | 02:24 | Rename, and let's just call this HEAD TURN.
| | 02:29 | So now I have HEAD TURN
with a slider underneath it.
| | 02:31 | Now the first thing you would think
logically is, let's go ahead and just tie
| | 02:35 | Time Remap to this slider, and that
way this number will go into here.
| | 02:40 | Well, that actually won't work.
| | 02:43 | Let me just show you what it'll do.
| | 02:44 | Let's go ahead and Add Expression, and
if I use my Pick Whip and just drag it
| | 02:49 | over to that slider, his head
immediately turns all the way to zero.
| | 02:54 | If I start moving this, though,
you'll see that it's just snapping.
| | 02:59 | It's not going from 1 through 20;
| | 03:02 | it's just snapping left and right.
| | 03:04 | I don't have any discrete control over
his head turn, and that's because of a
| | 03:12 | little known secret to the
way the time remap works.
| | 03:15 | Even though this number is a frame number,
it is actually measured internally in
| | 03:22 | After Effects as time; in other
words, it's measured in seconds.
| | 03:26 | So we have to do frames to seconds in
order to get this to work. In other words,
| | 03:32 | we need to do a number conversion, and
we can do this by just adding a little
| | 03:37 | bit to our expression.
| | 03:39 | So if I click on this line right below
the expression here, you can see I can
| | 03:44 | drag that up so we have a little more
room to type, and we are going to actually
| | 03:48 | type a little more into this expression.
| | 03:50 | First thing I am going to do is
I am going to create a variable.
| | 03:52 | I am just going to type the letter a, and then
the Equals sign. And what this does is it creates a
| | 03:58 | variable called a, and it's
equal to HEAD CONTROL, HEAD TURN, Slider.
| | 04:05 | So it's equal to this;
whatever is coming out of that slider.
| | 04:09 | So now I have that stored in a
variable called a, but I want to type
| | 04:13 | another command after that.
| | 04:15 | So what I have to do -- and this is just
a standard JavaScript syntax -- I have to
| | 04:20 | add a semicolon at the end of the line,
and then just hit the Enter key so I can
| | 04:24 | get into a new line.
| | 04:26 | Then all I have to do is type
my conversion function, and that's
| | 04:31 | called framesToTime;
| | 04:36 | lowercase f frames, uppercase T, To,
uppercase, T, Time, and then a parenthesis,
| | 04:44 | and that variable, a, that we created.
| | 04:48 | So, a= the value of that slider,
and then we are just going to do a
| | 04:53 | framesToTime(a), and that's all I need to do.
| | 04:56 | Just click outside of this, and it should work.
| | 05:01 | So now if I take my slider and I slide it,
you'll see that pretty much a 1:1 ratio here.
| | 05:08 | So it goes from 0 to 20, and there we go.
| | 05:14 | So now all I have to do is set that
slider to the number I want of my time
| | 05:18 | remap, and I am all set.
| | 05:20 | So now I have this HEAD CONTROL, and
I am going to start adding more and
| | 05:24 | more sliders to it.
| | 05:25 | But I want it in a place where
I can get to it fairly easily.
| | 05:29 | So the next thing I am going to do is
take that HEAD CONTROL and just drag it
| | 05:33 | underneath the chin of the character,
| | 05:35 | so that way I can also use it
to move the character's head.
| | 05:39 | So in other words, I am going to
select the HEAD layer here, and I am going to
| | 05:44 | link it to HEAD CONTROL.
| | 05:47 | So now when I select HEAD CONTROL, I can
move that head up and down, and so on.
| | 05:53 | So now I have got not only
positional control of the head, but also
| | 05:57 | character's head turn.
| | 06:00 | Now I just have to take this and then
link it to my character's neck, so that way
| | 06:05 | it's linked into the character's body as well.
| | 06:08 | So let's go ahead and
refresh what we've done here.
| | 06:10 | We've created a null object, added a
slider to it, and then tied the head
| | 06:16 | control's time remap to that slider,
but we had to use a little bit of a time
| | 06:20 | conversion in order to make it work.
| | 06:23 | And now that we have this, we
have a great container into which to
| | 06:27 | put additional sliders.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating blinks that move with a head turn| 00:00 | Now we are going to create some
blinks that not only blink, but also move
| | 00:05 | along with the head turn.
| | 00:07 | Now, this is going to be a two step process.
| | 00:09 | The first step, and this is what we
are going to do here, is just to get the
| | 00:13 | blinks moving with the head turn.
| | 00:15 | The second step is to use expressions to
tie the opacity of those blinks to a slider.
| | 00:21 | So, setting up the blinks to move along
with the head turn is very similar to how
| | 00:26 | we animated the pupils.
| | 00:29 | So let's take a look at
how we are going to do this.
| | 00:31 | I am actually going to zoom in here, so
we can see what we are doing, and then in
| | 00:36 | our Gus All layer here, we have our
HEAD layer, and that's what we are going to
| | 00:40 | be using as our master.
| | 00:42 | So if we go over here, and just make
sure we get into our HEAD subcomposition
| | 00:47 | here, and let's make sure
that this is in the middle.
| | 00:50 | I want to make sure this is on
Frame 10, and then we are going to start
| | 00:54 | positioning our eyelids.
| | 00:56 | Now if we go into Gus All layers, you
will see we have a bunch of different
| | 01:03 | layers here, but some of
these are actually lids.
| | 01:06 | So, for example, we have Right Lid 03,
which is a third closed, Right Lid 02, which is
| | 01:13 | two-thirds closed, Right Lid 01, which is
completely closed. And the same for the left side;
| | 01:20 | we have a Left Lid 03, 02, and 01.
| | 01:23 | So let's go ahead and position these on
the character, and then we will go ahead
| | 01:27 | and I get them to move.
| | 01:29 | So let's go ahead and start with Right Lid 03.
| | 01:31 | This is the one-third open eyelid, and
I am going to start with this, because
| | 01:35 | once we lay the other ones
over it, they will obscure it.
| | 01:38 | So I just want to make sure I get this
positioned over the right eye, and then
| | 01:42 | once I have that, I'm going to
actually turn off Visibility for that layer, so
| | 01:47 | that way I can position the
second one, which is Left Lid 02.
| | 01:51 | Let's make sure we get that positioned properly.
| | 01:55 | Turn that off, Left Lid 01, which is the
completely closed, and maybe even use my
| | 02:01 | arrow keys just a little
bit to get that all aligned.
| | 02:05 | So now, once I have those all aligned,
I want to make sure that I get them all
| | 02:09 | visible, and then just select them
all, and we are going to link these
| | 02:15 | hierarchically to the right eye,
because the right eye is already animating.
| | 02:21 | So if I do that you will notice
that they all move with that head turn.
| | 02:25 | So I don't even have to animate them,
because each eye is already animating.
| | 02:30 | So let's do the same for the left side.
| | 02:32 | So again, position my cursor at 10,
in the middle; 03, position that,
| | 02:42 | looks good; turn it off.
| | 02:44 | Select 02, position it,
looks good, turn it off.
| | 02:51 | 01, position it, and this one does need
to be fine-tuned since it covers the
| | 02:59 | whole eye, and that should be good.
| | 03:01 | Turn them all on; link them to the left eye.
| | 03:07 | So now I have both of these animating.
| | 03:10 | So now, all we have to do is a very similar
process to what we did with the pupils before.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to select my HEAD layer, copy and
paste it, and then just delete what I don't want.
| | 03:21 | So I am going to go ahead and do an
Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste, and this should
| | 03:26 | give me a HEAD 2 layer.
| | 03:29 | So if I double-click on this, you will
see it comes up here, and you see I have
| | 03:33 | all of my lids right here.
| | 03:35 | Well, I want to keep those;
| | 03:37 | I also want to keep my Left and Right
Eye, because those are the ones that are
| | 03:42 | actually controlling the animation.
| | 03:44 | So let's go below the Right Eye, select
everything below that, delete it. Select the
| | 03:50 | Pupil that's right above the Right Eye,
and select the Pupil that's above
| | 03:55 | the Left Eye, and just
everything between that and the Lids.
| | 04:00 | So now all I should have
are the Lids and the Eyes.
| | 04:05 | So if I turn off Visibility on all of this,
you can see I have the Eyes as well as the Lids.
| | 04:11 | Now that I have this, I can rename it.
| | 04:13 | So I am going to go ahead and select
HEAD 2 in my project window, and just do a
| | 04:18 | Rename, and let's call these LIDS_01.
| | 04:23 | And let's go ahead and make sure that
LID 01 on all of these is turned on.
| | 04:28 | So I am just going to go ahead and
turn off everything but the LID 01 layer.
| | 04:35 | So I am only going to keep two layers on:
Left Lid 01, and Right Lid 1, and there we go.
| | 04:41 | So now that have this, I
can just copy and paste it.
| | 04:44 | Again, I am just going to use keyboard
shortcuts: Command+C or Control+C, Control+V or
| | 04:46 | Command+V. And then now that I have this
LIDS 02, I am going to turn off LID 01,
| | 04:56 | turn on LID 02, both right and left,
and again, they are animating just fine.
| | 05:03 | And let's go ahead and do this again.
| | 05:06 | Copy, Paste with keyboard
shortcuts, double-click on it.
| | 05:11 | We have got LIDS 03.
| | 05:13 | So again, I am just going to go ahead
and turn off LIDS 02 and keep LIDS 03.
| | 05:19 | So now I have three compositions:
LIDS 01 has the close lids, two-thirds
| | 05:24 | closed, one-third closed; Great!
| | 05:27 | Now all we have to do is go into our
master composition, Gus All, and drag them in.
| | 05:33 | So I am going to go ahead and select LIDS
01, 02, and 03, and just drag them below
| | 05:40 | that HEAD CONTROL, and above the Pupils,
because we do want these to actually be on
| | 05:46 | top of the Pupils. And then let's go
ahead and zoom out here a little bit.
| | 05:52 | And we need to go ahead and just position these.
| | 05:55 | But if you notice, here in HEAD I still
have all of these old ones that I had
| | 06:01 | originally dragged on there.
| | 06:02 | So let's go ahead into the HEAD
subcomposition, select those lids, delete them,
| | 06:08 | then go back into my Gus All, and there we go!
| | 06:11 | Now I can position my lids.
| | 06:12 | So again, I am going to zoom in here, and
just get those positioned right over that head.
| | 06:19 | So let's see if I got this right.
| | 06:23 | Okay, so that should get
them pretty much positioned.
| | 06:26 | So if we want, we can turn them all off,
then we can see if we have everything on.
| | 06:32 | Great!
| | 06:33 | Now, we still need to connect the motion.
| | 06:37 | If I actually take my HEAD CONTROL here,
and I turn my head, you will see that the
| | 06:44 | lids aren't animating yet.
| | 06:46 | So we still need to create a
time remap and tie it all together.
| | 06:52 | So I am actually going to take this time remap --
| | 06:54 | it's kind of the easiest actually just
to tie it to the original HEAD Time Remap.
| | 06:59 | So let's go ahead and actually hide
everything between here and the HEAD so we
| | 07:05 | can see what we are doing a little bit more.
| | 07:06 | I am going to unlock these layers here,
and select all the layers between the
| | 07:10 | LIDS, and the HEAD, and shy them.
| | 07:14 | So now I have got HEAD, LIDS, LIDS, and so on.
| | 07:18 | So let's go ahead and start with LIDS
01, and I'm going to open up LIDS 01 in
| | 07:25 | HEAD, and under LIDS 01, I am just
going to right-click -- we have done this
| | 07:29 | before -- Enable Time Remapping, then
select the Time Remap, Add Expression, Pick
| | 07:38 | Whip that to the Time Remap of the HEAD.
| | 07:42 | Click on this, and if we go up to my
HEAD CONTROL here, you can see now that my
| | 07:50 | closed eyes are turning, but I am getting
a little bit of an opening at the end here.
| | 07:54 | And let's go over to LIDS 01 here, and
you will see that it's happening because
| | 08:00 | I've got a space here in that composition.
| | 08:02 | So let's go ahead and fix that for LIDS 01.
| | 08:05 | Select all of these, and again, grab the
end, and just pull it beyond the end of that.
| | 08:10 | That's where I am getting
that one to disappear there.
| | 08:13 | Okay, pull it beyond the end of that.
| | 08:16 | So now, when I get my HEAD
TURN, those eyes work. Great!
| | 08:21 | Okay, I'm going to put my HEAD TURN back to the
middle, to 10, and let's do the same for
| | 08:26 | LIDS 02, and LIDS 03.
| | 08:29 | So LIDS 02, select it, right-click, Time
> Enable Time Remapping, select the Time
| | 08:37 | Remapping > Add Expression, and Pick
Whip that down to the HEAD Time Remap.
| | 08:45 | Now, another way to do this is just to
copy the expression, because we are linking
| | 08:48 | all of them to the HEAD Time Remap.
| | 08:50 | I can just select this expression, and copy
and paste it, instead of using the Pick Whip.
| | 08:55 | So I just right-click, Copy, go to LIDS
03, right-click, Enable Time Remapping,
| | 09:03 | select the Time Remap, Add Expression,
and now just make sure this is selected,
| | 09:10 | and then just hit Paste,
and that should work as well.
| | 09:13 | So now all of these should
move with the head. Great!
| | 09:19 | Now that we've got everything moving
with the head, we still need to get the
| | 09:23 | character blinking, so we are
going to do that in the next video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling blinks using opacity| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and finish our blinks.
| | 00:03 | At this point, we have the
blinks moving with the head turn.
| | 00:08 | So I have three sets of lids here.
| | 00:11 | Let's go ahead and zoom
in, and see where we are at.
| | 00:14 | I have got three sets of lids.
| | 00:16 | So let's turn these all off.
| | 00:17 | I have LIDS 03, which is one-third
closed; LIDS 02, two-thirds closed;
| | 00:25 | LIDS 01, completely closed.
| | 00:28 | Now, I want to control these with a
slider, so that they turn on and off.
| | 00:33 | For now, let's just work with LIDS 03,
and then we will come back to these.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to go ahead and turn these
off, and let's just play with this lid.
| | 00:41 | Now, the easiest way to turn these
on and off is to play with opacity.
| | 00:46 | If I open up the LIDS 03 layer,
you'll see I have an Opacity control.
| | 00:51 | Now, if I turn that
completely off, it disappears;
| | 00:54 | turn it completely on, it's there.
| | 00:57 | So let's go ahead and
tie this value to a slider.
| | 00:59 | I am going to scroll up here to my HEAD
CONTROL layer, and let's add in that slider.
| | 01:04 | So I am going to go Effect > Expression
Controls > Slider Control, and it adds a
| | 01:11 | new slider under our HEAD TURN slider.
| | 01:13 | So just go ahead and right-click, rename
this, and we are going to call it BLINK.
| | 01:18 | You'll see we have a slider for that.
| | 01:20 | Now if I scroll down here, we also
need to add an expression to Opacity.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to select
Opacity on LIDS 03, Add Expression.
| | 01:32 | Now, what is this expression?
| | 01:36 | Well, we need to set a range on this BLINK
slider for the opacity to turn on and off.
| | 01:42 | So what I am going to do here is that when
this BLINK slider is at 0, everything is off.
| | 01:48 | The eyes are wide open.
| | 01:50 | When the slider is anywhere
from 1 to 10, the first lid is on.
| | 01:56 | When it's anywhere from 11 to 20,
the second lid is on, and so on.
| | 02:00 | So every 10 units, a successive
lid turns on. So we can do this --
| | 02:07 | first thing we need to do is we need
to get the value of that slider into
| | 02:10 | our Opacity channel.
| | 02:11 | So I am just going to use my Pick
Whip, drag up to the top here, and just
| | 02:15 | highlight my BLINK slider.
| | 02:18 | When I do that, it just adds that slider in.
| | 02:21 | If I run the slider, you can see I can
actually use that as an Opacity control.
| | 02:25 | But that's not really what I want to do.
| | 02:27 | We'll make sure this is at 0 here, and
let's go ahead and add in the rest of
| | 02:33 | expression to make this conditional.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to go ahead and open up this
window, so I have room to type, click in there.
| | 02:41 | So first thing we need to do is we need to
place the value of that slider into a variable.
| | 02:45 | I am just going to use the
letter a for my variable.
| | 02:48 | You can use any variable name you want.
| | 02:51 | So a is going to equal the value of that
slider, which is really what all of this means.
| | 02:56 | Then at the end of that, I am going to
put a semicolon, which again just says
| | 03:00 | this is the end of a command,
and we have a new command coming.
| | 03:04 | At this point I need to enter the test.
| | 03:07 | In other words, I need to test what a
is equal to in order to determine whether
| | 03:12 | or not I want to turn on
my opacity, or keep it off.
| | 03:16 | So I am going to use
what's called an if Statement.
| | 03:20 | So I am going to type "if", and
then I need to add in a condition.
| | 03:24 | Well, what is the condition?
| | 03:25 | Well, I want a to be greater than 0, because 0
is off, and a to be less than or equal to 10.
| | 03:34 | So I have two conditions that need to be met.
| | 03:36 | So I'm going to add in two parentheses,
because I am going to have a double
| | 03:41 | condition here, so I need two parentheses.
| | 03:43 | The first one is, is a greater than 0?
| | 03:47 | So, if a is greater than 0, and, so two
ampersands, another parenthesis, a is
| | 03:55 | less than or equal to 10, and then
close all of my parentheses, so that would
| | 03:59 | be two parentheses.
| | 04:01 | So if a is greater than 0 and a is less than 10,
then the value is 100. Anything else, type in the word
| | 04:08 | else, 0.
| | 04:11 | So let's go through this one more time.
| | 04:13 | If a is greater than 0, and a is less than
or equal to 10, then opacity is 100.
| | 04:19 | If not, opacity is 0.
| | 04:22 | So click outside of this, hopefully
you won't get an error, and now we should
| | 04:26 | have a slider that turns it on and off.
| | 04:28 | So if I turn this above 1,
there we go! It turns on.
| | 04:32 | Once it goes above 10, it turns off again.
| | 04:35 | So now we have the magic expression
that we can use for all the other lids.
| | 04:42 |
| | 04:43 | So I am going to go ahead and turn on
LIDS 02, and instead of doing all of this
| | 04:47 | typing, let's go ahead and select this
expression, right-click, Copy, and then
| | 04:52 | I'm going to open up LIDS 02, open up
Transform > Opacity, make sure Opacity is
| | 04:59 | selected, Add Expression, and then all
you have to do is right-click and Paste.
| | 05:05 | Now, if I open this up you will see
it's added in the exact same expression.
| | 05:09 | But this is the second one in the sequence,
so I don't want it to go from 0 to 10;
| | 05:14 | I want it to go from 10 to 20.
| | 05:16 | So all I have to do is just type in a is greater than 10
and less than or equal to 20 and that should work.
| | 05:25 | Let's try this.
Scroll up to my BLINK slider. There we go!
| | 05:31 | Off between 1 and 10, 10 to 20; perfect!
| | 05:35 | We can do the same thing for the last one.
| | 05:38 | Scroll down to LIDS 01;
| | 05:40 | make sure that's visible, go down
to Opacity, add in the expression,
| | 05:48 | right-click, Paste. Okay, for
this one -- last one was 10 to 20.
| | 05:55 | This one would be 20 to 30.
| | 05:58 | Now, you can use this for lids, but
you can use this for almost any sort of
| | 06:04 | replacement animation.
| | 06:06 | So now I've got a slider that blinks
my eyes, and eyes that can turn with the
| | 06:13 | head while blinking.
| | 06:15 | Really all we have done is just animated
the opacity, and just did a test on that
| | 06:20 | slider using an if statement.
| | 06:22 | So you can use this for anything.
| | 06:25 | You can also use this for mouths.
| | 06:26 | You would have more expressions, but it
would work pretty much the same for any
| | 06:32 | sort of replacement animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Attaching mouth shapes to a slider| 00:00 | Now we're going to set up the mouths
so that they not only animate, and do
| | 00:05 | replacement animation, but
they also move with the head turn.
| | 00:09 | Now, we're going to kind of do this
the opposite way that we did the blinks.
| | 00:12 | With the blinks, what we did was we
animated the shape of the blink, and put
| | 00:18 | that on a time remap, and then animated the
replacement animation using if-then statement.
| | 00:23 | In this case, we're going to animate
the replacement animation with the time
| | 00:28 | remap, and use the expression to keep the
mouth locked with the head, so this way
| | 00:34 | you'll get a taste of both methods.
| | 00:37 | The first thing we need to do is to
place some mouths into the scene, and get them
| | 00:42 | attached to a slider.
| | 00:44 | So I already have some mouths set up, and
this is pretty much the way that we set
| | 00:48 | them up back in Chapter 5.
| | 00:50 | So I'm going to take this MOUTHS
composition, and let's just go ahead and drag it
| | 00:56 | right underneath the HEAD CONTROL here.
| | 00:59 | Let's just take a look at this to refresh.
| | 01:01 | What this is is one mouth per
frame over the course of 12 frames.
| | 01:07 | So when I put that in, you'll see it's
only a 12-frame long animation here, but
| | 01:12 | we can put on a time remap, so if I
right-click over this Time > Enable Time
| | 01:17 | Remapping, then I can go ahead and just
stretch this, so that it's length of our
| | 01:22 | composition, and delete this last keyframe here.
| | 01:25 | Now you'll see that the MOUTHS are right
here, and just by scrolling through here
| | 01:30 | I can animate through the MOUTHS.
| | 01:31 | But I want to attach this to a slider,
| | 01:35 | so I need to go into my HEAD CONTROL,
which is where I'm going to keep all my
| | 01:39 | sliders, and we're just
going to add another one in.
| | 01:42 | So in this case, I already have my HEAD
TURN slider, my BLINK slider, I am going
| | 01:46 | to add one more for the MOUTHS, so
we're going to keep a HEAD CONTROL selected,
| | 01:51 | Effect > Expression Controls > Slider
Control, and it just drops another one down
| | 01:56 | in there. So we right-click over this,
rename it, let's just rename it MOUTH, and
| | 02:01 | now we need to attach our time remap
to this slider here under the MOUTH.
| | 02:07 | So let's go ahead and do that by
adding an expression: Animation > Add
| | 02:11 | Expression, and then we can Pick Whip
this to the slider. But just like what
| | 02:17 | happened with the HEAD TURN, this isn't
going to work, because we still need to
| | 02:22 | convert the time back to frames.
| | 02:26 | So if you don't remember what we did
here, if you look at the HEAD slider here,
| | 02:30 | we could see in this expression here
what we did was we created a variable
| | 02:34 | called a, and then after that we just
converted frames to time, so that the time remap works.
| | 02:42 | What we can do is we just copy out
the last part of this expression, and
| | 02:46 | just paste that in.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going back up to my MOUTHS,
Expression, and we're going basically
| | 02:52 | input that same equation.
| | 02:54 | So what we can do here is we can
say, a equals HEAD CONTROL, MOUTH, Slider,
| | 03:00 | semicolon, and then let's type in that
expression, or just paste it in, framesToTime
| | 03:05 | of a. So what we're going to do is
we're going to set a equal to the value
| | 03:09 | of the slider, and then change that into time.
| | 03:13 | Once we do that, we should have this
working, so now my slider should step
| | 03:17 | through all the mouths. There we go.
| | 03:20 | Okay, so now we have the mouths
animating, but the next step is to get those
| | 03:25 | mouths to move with the head turn itself.
So as this head turn goes left and right,
| | 03:32 | I want these mouths to kind of stick to
the face, and move left and right as well,
| | 03:36 | and we're going to do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating mouths that move with a head turn| 00:00 | So now, at this point we have the
mouth connected to a slider, and everything
| | 00:04 | attached to the head.
| | 00:05 | So let's go ahead and add in the
expressions that are going to allow those
| | 00:08 | mouths to move with the head turn.
| | 00:11 | So the first thing I want
to do is create an animation.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom in to
my head here so we can see what we're
| | 00:16 | doing, and I want to create an
animation of my head turning.
| | 00:21 | And I'm going to match my new
mouths to the old mouths of that head,
| | 00:25 | and that way I'll have some numbers that I can
work with to actually create the expressions.
| | 00:31 | The first thing I'm going to do is go
ahead and zoom in on my Timeline, make
| | 00:34 | sure I'm at 0 here, and I want to zoom
in enough so I can get to Frame 10 and
| | 00:39 | Frame 20 pretty easily.
| | 00:41 | So now we're going to
animate a HEAD TURN of this HEAD
| | 00:44 | So I'm going to set my slider to 0,
move to Frame 0, and set a keyframe.
| | 00:50 | Go to Frame 10, set that
slider to 10, set another keyframe.
| | 00:56 | And we're going to do same for Frame 20.
| | 00:58 | So now you can see what we've done here;
| | 01:00 | we've just created --
| | 01:01 | it moves one increment per frame.
| | 01:03 | So let's go ahead and move down to
Frame 10, and we're going to start matching
| | 01:09 | the animation of mouths
to this underlying guide.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to take my new
MOUTHS, make sure I've it selected.
| | 01:18 | Select the key for Position, Scale, Rotation.
| | 01:21 | Then I'm going to move to the extreme at
Frame 0, and let's go ahead and move this over.
| | 01:29 | Now remember, in the original
animation we scaled this down and rotated it.
| | 01:35 | So to make things easier I'm just
going to type in the numbers here.
| | 01:38 | I remember I scaled it down to
90% and I rotated it by 8 degrees.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead and fine-tune that
positioning here; and there we go.
| | 01:47 | So now we've got the first half.
| | 01:50 | So let's go ahead and do the
second half, and again, let's just start
| | 01:54 | with Rotation and Scale.
| | 01:55 | So we rotat it the opposite direction, -8,
and 90% again, and then let's just go
| | 02:02 | ahead and position this. There we go.
| | 02:04 | So now I should have a pretty good animation.
| | 02:09 | Now I want to use this as reference, okay.
| | 02:12 | So the only reason I animated
that was to get some numbers.
| | 02:16 | Now let's just start from the bottom here;
| | 02:18 | rotation goes from 8, through 0, to -8.
| | 02:24 | Scale goes from 90, up to
100, and then back down to 90.
| | 02:30 | So remember these numbers here.
| | 02:32 | Now the other one is
Position. We have two values;
| | 02:36 | one for X, and one for Y. X is left
to right, so from left to right it's
| | 02:43 | moving from -119 to 169.
| | 02:48 | On the Y side, it's moving from
46 down to 58 --
| | 02:53 | now remember in Y, higher numbers are lower
on the screen -- and then back up to 46 again.
| | 03:01 | So let's go ahead and use
these numbers to do some animation.
| | 03:05 | Now I want to start with the X position.
| | 03:08 | Now, because this just moves linearly,
you can just figure out what each
| | 03:14 | increment is, and it makes it pretty simple.
| | 03:17 | So here at Frame 10, you can see I've
it at 40, and at Frame 11 it's at 53.
| | 03:23 | So it's moving somewhere
around 13 units per frame.
| | 03:28 | So let's go ahead and add in the expression.
| | 03:31 | So the first thing I want to do is
just delete the animation, because we're
| | 03:33 | going to replace it with expressions.
| | 03:36 | So the first thing we need to do is
separate out X and Y, because we're going to
| | 03:40 | be using different expressions for each.
| | 03:42 | So I'm going to select Position, right-
click over it, and do Separate Dimensions.
| | 03:47 | And what that does is it
separates out each X and Y,
| | 03:51 | so now I can put separate expressions on each.
| | 03:54 | So I'm going to select my X
Position, Animation > Add Expression.
| | 04:00 | What I need to do is figure out which
changing variable I'll use to create my X Position.
| | 04:08 | In this case, I want to use the frame
number of my HEAD, so I'm going to use
| | 04:12 | my Time Remap number.
| | 04:15 | So I'm going to start by taking
my Pick Whip, and going Time Remap.
| | 04:19 | With just that open, you can see
that not much is happening, because this
| | 04:23 | is just going from 0 all the way up
to 0.7. And that's because, even though
| | 04:29 | I'm displaying frames, it's actually
spitting out seconds, so we need to do
| | 04:32 | some conversions here.
| | 04:33 | So the first thing I'm going to do
is say, a Equals, and then just that same
| | 04:37 | expression: thisComp, layer, HEAD,
timeRemap, semicolon, and then I want to add in a
| | 04:44 | function called timeToFrames of a.
| | 04:50 | When I do that, notice how
this is now going from 0 to 20.
| | 04:54 | And also notice how the mouth is
actually moving left and right just a
| | 04:58 | little bit; not too bad.
| | 05:00 | But now I need to multiply that by how
much the old mouth was moving on each
| | 05:05 | frame, and in this case I remembered,
from my numbers, I could actually calculate that,
| | 05:10 | that it was a little bit
over 13 units per frame.
| | 05:15 | So what I can do is create another
variable, b is equal to that frame number, or
| | 05:20 | timeToFrames, and then we can say
the actual output is going to be b times, and
| | 05:26 | then the number I had was actually 13.5.
| | 05:28 | And when I do that, you'll see that it
pretty much moves along with the head, at
| | 05:35 | least in the horizontal
direction, but I'm a little bit off.
| | 05:40 | But that's easy to fix.
| | 05:41 | This is why I added in this
additional Null layer here.
| | 05:45 | So what I can do is I can take this
Null layer, and just use this to position
| | 05:50 | that mouth at the right place.
| | 05:52 | So now once I do that, this is
kind of like my offset control.
| | 05:58 | Let's go ahead and make
sure that that's right there.
| | 06:01 | Okay, so now once I have that, you can see
that my left and right motion is pretty
| | 06:06 | much dead on, but I still need
to add in all the other motions.
| | 06:10 | I need to add in Y, as
well as Scale, and Rotation.
| | 06:13 | Now at this point, let's go ahead
and add in the expression for Rotation.
| | 06:19 | I'm going to skip Y Position, and Scale,
because those require slightly more
| | 06:23 | complex expressions, and we'll
get to those in the next video.
| | 06:27 | But let's go ahead and add in an
expression for Rotation, and the
| | 06:31 | expression that we use is going to
be almost identical to the one that we
| | 06:34 | used for X Position.
| | 06:37 | I'm going to open up the expression
for X Position, select everything in it,
| | 06:41 | Copy, scroll down to Rotation
and then just Paste that in.
| | 06:48 | Now the Rotation is not going to be
the number of frames times 13, obviously;
| | 06:53 | it's going to be slightly different.
| | 06:55 | So let's just go ahead and see what
happens when we put in just that frame number.
| | 06:59 | So what we've got is is we've got it
starting to rotate, but it's starting from
| | 07:04 | a positive position.
| | 07:05 | So what we need to do is to bring it
positive at the beginning, and negative at the end.
| | 07:11 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
type in 10 Minus b, and let's see how this works.
| | 07:20 | It actually gets it pretty close.
| | 07:21 | You see we're kind of rotating
along the right axis at least.
| | 07:25 | Let's just go through this.
| | 07:27 | So at Frame 0, b is 0, because that's
what my slider is here, because I've
| | 07:34 | animated that slider.
| | 07:35 | So when my Time Remap is 0,
b is 0, and so 10 Minus 0 is 10.
| | 07:42 | When I go up to 20, my Time
Remap is 20, so 10 Minus 20 is -10.
| | 07:51 | So what this does is it gives me
pretty close, but what I need to do is
| | 07:55 | instead of going from 10 to -10, I need
to go from 8 to -8, but that's pretty easy.
| | 08:00 | All I have to do is multiply this,
| | 08:03 | so times 0.8, and that should do it.
| | 08:07 | So now I've got my MOUTHS rotating the
proper way, and moving along the X the proper way.
| | 08:16 | So to refresh, what we've done is we've
tied the X Position, and Rotation, to the
| | 08:22 | value of the Time Remap, and as that
increases or decreases, the MOUTHS will move
| | 08:28 | along with the HEAD.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with absolute values | 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and finish off
the expressions for our MOUTHS by adding in
| | 00:05 | expressions for the Y position, as well as Scale.
| | 00:09 | Let's go ahead and start with Scale,
because it's a little more straightforward.
| | 00:13 | So what we have with Scale is we want
it to be at 90, here at 0, then at 100,
| | 00:21 | and then back down to 90.
| | 00:23 | Now, we already have something
that's pretty close to this.
| | 00:27 | If you look at the numbers for Rotation,
you'll see that it goes from 8 to 0, and then to -8.
| | 00:36 | Well, we can certainly adapt that by
adding in what's called an absolute value.
| | 00:41 | Now, what the absolute value does is it
basically just forces whatever number you
| | 00:45 | have to be positive.
| | 00:47 | So we could use an equation very
similar to this, and then just on the top end,
| | 00:51 | if we're using absolute value, it'll
just force it to be positive again.
| | 00:55 | So let's go ahead and copy this,
and then we're going to add in an
| | 01:00 | expression for Scale.
| | 01:02 | Animation > Add Expression,
and then I'm just going to Paste.
| | 01:07 | Now, we've got a few things we need to fix,
| | 01:09 | so let's go through this.
| | 01:10 | The first lines are fine.
| | 01:13 | We're just taking the value of the Time
Remap slider of the HEAD, sticking it in
| | 01:19 | a, and then we're converting that
to frame numbers and sticking that in b.
| | 01:25 | Now we have this equation here.
| | 01:27 | Now I'm actually going to create one more
variable; we're going to create c Equals 10 Minus b.
| | 01:30 | Okay, so remember, when the
Time Remap is at 0, 10 Minus 0 is 10.
| | 01:40 | When it's at 10, it's 0;
| | 01:42 | when it's at 20, 10 Minus 20 is -10.
| | 01:46 | So all we have to do to make it
positive the whole way through is do what's
| | 01:50 | called an absolute value.
| | 01:52 | So we type in capital M, Math.abs,
for absolute value, 10 Minus b.
| | 02:00 | So what that does is it spits out 10, 0, and 10.
| | 02:05 | So what we really want is 90, 100, and 90.
| | 02:11 | So we can do that by saying c Equals 100 Minus that.
| | 02:15 | So now once we have that, we need
to stick those values into Scale.
| | 02:19 | Here is a little tidbit here:
| | 02:22 | everything we've worked with
so far has been single numbers.
| | 02:26 | Here we have what's called an array;
| | 02:27 | we have two numbers.
| | 02:29 | We have 100% and 100%, so we have 100%
in X, 100% in Y. The expression needs to
| | 02:36 | come up with a final result that
is an array, but that's pretty easy.
| | 02:40 | All we have to do is just hit a bracket,
the number c, which is, again, going from
| | 02:45 | 90 to 100, back to 90, and then c, because
we're having equal scale on both sides.
| | 02:53 | So when we do that, we should
have 90, and 90, and 100 in the middle.
| | 03:01 | We've got that, and then we have a
very similar situation for the Y position.
| | 03:07 | The numbers I had for Y -- in fact, let's
go ahead and just bring this up here so
| | 03:11 | we can see that calculated --
| | 03:13 | In the middle, it was 58, and
then on either side, it was 46.
| | 03:18 | So I'm going to minus that from 46; so
it moves 12 units down, and then 12 units
| | 03:25 | back up over the course of 10 frames.
| | 03:30 | Remember, it's 10 frames down, 10 frames up.
| | 03:33 | So it's going to be 12 over
10, which is, of course, 1.2.
| | 03:38 | So that's going to be my multiplier.
| | 03:41 | So let's go ahead and add in that expression.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to go Animation > Add Expression.
| | 03:46 | Now, this expression is going to be very
similar to the expression that I have here.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
just the top three lines, copy, and paste.
| | 03:59 | Now, this last line is the
one I need to work with.
| | 04:02 | Now, first thing I'm going to do is
going to get rid of this c Equals, because
| | 04:06 | that's not what I want.
| | 04:07 | I'm also going to get rid of the 100.
| | 04:10 | And actually what I want is I just want
the absolute value of this number, 10 Minus b.
| | 04:16 | This is going to be going from 10, to 0, to 10,
| | 04:21 | and then we're just going to go
ahead and multiply that times 1.2.
| | 04:27 | And that should snap that into place.
| | 04:29 | So now it goes there, and it goes there.
| | 04:32 | But if you notice what's
happening is it's actually going up.
| | 04:37 | So actually, I'm going to change this.
| | 04:38 | I'm going to make this a
negative Math absolute of that,
| | 04:44 | but it's in slightly the wrong position,
but we can fix that by just altering
| | 04:49 | our Null 3 position here.
| | 04:51 | I'm just going to go ahead and drop that
down, and that should work; pretty close.
| | 04:58 | Okay, so now I'm going to go over to my
HEAD composition, turn off Mouth 01, and
| | 05:04 | now we should have everything in place.
| | 05:07 | Now that goes down, up, looks pretty good.
| | 05:11 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and
hide my Null 3, and we should have a pretty
| | 05:17 | close automatic head turn.
| | 05:19 | So now I've got everything
pretty much in position here.
| | 05:24 | Let's go ahead and take off the keyframes here.
| | 05:26 | So now I've got a HEAD slider that can
go left and right, and I can change the
| | 05:33 | NOUTHS to whatever I want, and
they will all move with my sliders.
| | 05:39 | So that was a little bit intense, a
little bit complex, but hopefully, if you
| | 05:43 | followed through, you kind of get
the idea of what we're doing here.
| | 05:47 | So what we're doing here is we're
basically creating an animation, and
| | 05:51 | replacing them with expressions that use those
same numbers that we created in the animation.
| | 05:58 | And this is kind of a hard-coded way of
animating this sort of thing, but it does work.
| | 06:03 | So it is going to be specific to each character.
| | 06:06 | So you need to kind of know how to
figure out the numbers, but once you get it,
| | 06:09 | it should work pretty flawlessly.
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|
|
8. Advanced Puppet Tool RiggingSetting up null objects as bones| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to set up
a bone system where you can use objects
| | 00:05 | in your scene to deform parts of your character.
| | 00:08 | In this case, we're going to use
puppet pins combined with null objects.
| | 00:13 | We're working with the same character that we
worked with before, just one little difference:
| | 00:18 | I took the legs, and I just
made a subcomposition of them.
| | 00:21 | So I basically just took all of the leg
parts, put it into a precomp, and we're
| | 00:24 | going to use that to
deform with the puppet pins.
| | 00:28 | So I have just this separate set of legs here.
| | 00:33 | So the process starts with
adding in some puppet pins.
| | 00:36 | Now in this case, we're going to add
puppet pins to the legs, and then we're going
| | 00:40 | to add in some null objects.
| | 00:41 | So let's go ahead and zoom in to the
legs here. In fact, I'm going to go ahead
| | 00:45 | and turn off the Torso so we
can see a little bit easier.
| | 00:50 | And then just select the LEGS, and we're
going to go ahead and set up our puppet pins.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to go to my Puppet Pin tool
here, and then just position those. So I
| | 01:00 | want one here at the top of leg where
the hips are, one at the knee, one at the
| | 01:08 | ankle, and then another one
down here at the tip of the toe.
| | 01:12 | Now when we do this, when I look at the
Puppet Effect, you'll see that we already
| | 01:16 | have Mesh 1, and if I open up Deform,
I should have those four puppet pins.
| | 01:22 | Now we've just done the right leg, but
one of the key things about the Puppet
| | 01:26 | Pin tool is that it only works
for mesh areas that are connected.
| | 01:31 | So we have a lot of white
space between the two legs.
| | 01:35 | So moving one puppet pin here does
not affect this leg at all, and that's
| | 01:41 | kind of the default mode of how the puppet
pin works, but we can use this to our advantage.
| | 01:45 | So let's go ahead and select our LEGS,
and set up the puppet pin for the left
| | 01:49 | side, and notice now when I
hover over this leg, it highlights,
| | 01:55 | and that means I'm working on this separate mesh.
| | 01:57 | So let's do the same thing again.
| | 01:59 | I'm going to go ahead and do one for the hips,
one for the knee, ankle, and tip of the toe.
| | 02:07 | So now I should have puppet pins that
work pretty much for the whole character.
| | 02:12 | And if you go down here, notice
how we've actually got two meshes here:
| | 02:16 | we've got Mesh 1, which is our right leg,
and if you select each of these puppet
| | 02:21 | pins, you can see which ones they are,
but we both also have Mesh 2, which
| | 02:26 | is our left leg, and again,
four puppet pins on that.
| | 02:31 | Even though it's a same Puppet
Effect, these are kind of viewed slightly
| | 02:34 | separately within After Effects,
| | 02:37 | so just so that you are
a little bit aware of that.
| | 02:41 | So now what we need to do is find a
way to control these legs, and the easiest
| | 02:46 | thing to do is put some objects in
the scene that we can grab easily.
| | 02:50 | Now, you can use shape layers, or really
anything you want, but I like to use null
| | 02:55 | objects, because they are very easy to
get to. They kind of stand out in the scene,
| | 02:59 | they don't render, so
let's go ahead and do those.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to do Layer > New > Null Object.
| | 03:06 | Now when you bring a null object into
the scene -- let's go up here -- it usually
| | 03:12 | comes in at the center. And also notice
that the pivot point of a null object is
| | 03:17 | the top left corner,
| | 03:20 | so that's my pivot point right there.
| | 03:22 | Now what I need to do is position the
pivot point of this null object right
| | 03:28 | where that puppet pin is.
| | 03:29 | So I can kind of eyeball it here;
| | 03:32 | it's kind of the center of that
circle. Somewhere around there.
| | 03:36 | And I have one here;
| | 03:36 | it's called Null 4.
| | 03:38 | So before I do anything else,
let me go ahead and rename this.
| | 03:41 | This is going to be RIGHT HIP.
| | 03:44 | And I'm going to re-layer this. I'm going
to drag this down towards the bottom of
| | 03:48 | the stack here, and position it just
above the LEGS, so that way it's just easy
| | 03:53 | for me to work with.
| | 03:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
the LEGS, and go down to Mesh 1, and just
| | 03:59 | select Puppet Pin 1, and see how
that RIGHT HIP control is oriented.
| | 04:06 | It's a little bit down, so I can just
select that, and then just hit my arrow
| | 04:10 | keys; move it up a few bumps
here, and that looks pretty good.
| | 04:13 | Now this doesn't have to be exactly
accurate; we can do close enough for this.
| | 04:17 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my RIGHT HIP,
and then I'm just going to do a copy and paste.
| | 04:22 | I'm going to use the menu here.
| | 04:25 | And let's just go ahead and, again, right-
click, rename this, and this one is going
| | 04:29 | to be called RIGHT KNEE.
| | 04:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
that, and drag it down, and get it towards
| | 04:37 | that knee. And again, let's see;
Puppet Pin 2, yeah, pretty close.
| | 04:42 | Again, I'm a little low, so I can just
bump that up just a bit; close enough. And
| | 04:49 | again, just copy and paste the RIGHT
KNEE, rename it RIGHT ANKLE,
| | 04:56 | and again, I'm just going to drag
that down to the ankle. And one more time;
| | 05:03 | I'm going to copy and paste this, move
it to the toe, and let's rename this RIGHT TOE.
| | 05:14 | Okay, let's go ahead and turn on
my Torso here, and let's fit this.
| | 05:22 | So what I have is I have one null
per puppet pin, and right now I'm just
| | 05:27 | focusing on the right leg.
| | 05:29 | So the next step is to connect those
puppet pins to the null objects, and for
| | 05:35 | that we're going to need some expressions.
| | 05:37 | We're going to do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Attaching puppet pins to bones| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and finish up the process.
| | 00:02 | We are going to attach the
puppet pins to the null objects.
| | 00:06 | So as a quick refresh here, I've got
several null objects here, and then I also
| | 00:11 | have a layer called LEG, and that layer
has puppet pins attached, and those match
| | 00:16 | up with my null objects.
| | 00:19 | So let's go ahead, and we'll start
with the Toe and work our way up.
| | 00:22 | So I am going to go ahead and zoom in,
so we can see what we are doing here.
| | 00:26 | So the toe is at Puppet Pin 4,
and here is my TOE object here.
| | 00:33 | Let me go ahead and expand that.
| | 00:36 | Now, the first thing you would think would be, oh!
| | 00:38 | It would be very easy.
| | 00:40 | All I have to do is create an
expression that links the position of this puppet
| | 00:44 | pin to the position of the null object.
| | 00:47 | Well, it's not as simple as that.
| | 00:50 | If you notice here, Puppet Pin 4 has a
value of 41 Comma 922, and the right toe has
| | 01:02 | a position of 841 Comma 2334. They're completely
different numbers on completely different scales.
| | 01:09 | That's because the position of the puppet
pins is determined relative to the layer.
| | 01:14 | So if we look at that LEG layer,
you'll see it's a lot smaller than our
| | 01:18 | master composition, and that means
that those numbers are going to be
| | 01:21 | completely different.
| | 01:23 | So the puppet pins are working in
layer space, the nulls are working in what is
| | 01:29 | called composition space, so it's
relative to the entire composition.
| | 01:33 | So, all that means is that we need
to do a little bit of translation.
| | 01:38 | First thing we do need to do
is still add in an expression.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to go into my Mesh 1
Puppet Pin 4, and add in an expression.
| | 01:48 | Now, this expression that we have here
isn't going to work, so we need to replace that.
| | 01:53 | The expression is a little complicated,
so I just wrote it into Notepad, so
| | 01:56 | we can see it a little bit larger,
and I also saved this into the project
| | 01:59 | file, so you'll have this.
| | 02:00 | So basically, the generic expression is
we have a variable called BONE, and this
| | 02:05 | is where you insert the name of the bone layer.
| | 02:08 | So in other words, that's where I
will put RIGHT TOE. And then we will just
| | 02:11 | create a variable called A, and
basically it's just going to be equal to the layer
| | 02:16 | of that -- name of that bone layer.
| | 02:18 | Now, this is where we do the conversion.
| | 02:20 | We're going to do what's
called a toComp and a fromComp.
| | 02:21 | Now these are called layer Space
transform methods, and Adobe has these fairly
| | 02:28 | well documented if you want
to go a little bit deeper.
| | 02:30 | But just for the sake of this,
basically what toComp does is it just converts
| | 02:35 | from layer space to composition space,
and fromComp converts from composition
| | 02:40 | space to layer space.
| | 02:41 | So this combination here gives
us the translation that we need.
| | 02:46 | So in this case, I'm just going to go
ahead and copy this, go down to my Puppet
| | 02:50 | Pin 4 expression, and paste.
| | 02:53 | Now, the only thing I need to do here
is just change this to the name of that
| | 02:57 | bone layer and we are working with the
right toe, so I know it's called RIGHT TOE.
| | 03:03 | Now once I do that, I should be able
to click off of that, and it should work.
| | 03:06 | So I select my RIGHT TOE, move it,
and the puppet pin follows wonderfully.
| | 03:13 | So now that I have this expression, I
can just copy it and paste it to all
| | 03:18 | the other puppet pins.
| | 03:19 | So I am going to go to
Puppet Pin 3, which is my ankle.
| | 03:24 | Again, Add Expression, paste, and
then I just need to change the name from
| | 03:30 | RIGHT TOE to RIGHT ANKLE.
| | 03:36 | Let's see how that works; works wonderfully!
| | 03:39 | Okay.
| | 03:40 | Let's just work our way down.
| | 03:43 | So once we know the magic
expression, everything falls into place.
| | 03:49 | Again, I am just going to go ahead and paste:
RIGHT TOE, no, this is RIGHT KNEE. See if that works;
| | 03:56 | here we go!
| | 03:58 | And one more, so add in our expression, paste,
and instead of RIGHT TOE, this is RIGHT HIP.
| | 04:10 | So now that we have all of our puppet pins
constrained, we have a pretty good system here.
| | 04:15 | So the first thing I am going to do is,
actually, I am going to lock this LEG layer
| | 04:18 | so I don't accidentally select it
anymore. And then I can just move any one of
| | 04:23 | these, and now I can manipulate my
puppet pins without having to dig all the way
| | 04:29 | down into my Effects of this LEG layer.
| | 04:36 | The other cool thing is that we can
use parenting to manipulate how these
| | 04:41 | are connected together.
| | 04:43 | In fact, we are going to
do that in our next lesson.
| | 04:46 | So before we do that, I want you to go
ahead and work down the left leg yourself.
| | 04:49 | So go ahead and add in the null
objects, and then use expressions to tie the
| | 04:54 | puppet pins to those null objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Strategies for parenting legs and feet| 00:00 | So now I've gone through the rest of
character and added in the whole left side,
| | 00:05 | so I have a series of nulls that are
connected to the puppet pins on the left
| | 00:09 | leg, and everything should be connected together.
| | 00:12 | So if I zoom in to these legs, you can
see that if I select, for example, the
| | 00:16 | knee, the knee deforms properly.
| | 00:19 | I have got the toes working.
| | 00:21 | So every puppet pin is now
connected to a null object.
| | 00:25 | Now if I wanted to, I could just stop
right here, and just start animating, but
| | 00:30 | let's take advantage of the fact that
we have all of these null objects, and use
| | 00:34 | parenting and hierarchies to connect
the character together even better, so we
| | 00:39 | can have easier animation.
| | 00:41 | So the first thing I want to start with is
the upper body. So if I take a look at
| | 00:45 | this, I've got my Torso here, and right
now it's not even connected, so we should
| | 00:50 | connect that to the hips, and we can do
that easily just by doing some parenting.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my
Right Hip, and my LEFT HIP, and then just
| | 01:01 | with my Parenting menu here, I'm
going to tie those both to the Torso.
| | 01:07 | So now these are children of the Torso,
so when I move my Torso, my legs move
| | 01:14 | with it, and this is pretty cool.
| | 01:15 | So now my character is kind of connected.
| | 01:17 | I'm still getting that distortion.
| | 01:19 | Now, another place that you might want
to use some hierarchies is down here
| | 01:23 | where the feet are.
| | 01:25 | So if, for example, right now if I
move my ankle my toe stays in place, but
| | 01:30 | typically I want to move
the whole foot as an object.
| | 01:34 | So I can go down here and select my
RIGHT TOE, and if I wanted to, I can just
| | 01:39 | use my Pick Whip, connect it to the RIGHT
ANKLE, and now my foot should move as one object.
| | 01:45 | So now, because this is a child of the
RIGHT ANKLE, they both move together. And
| | 01:53 | I could do that again for the
LEFT TOE and the LEFT ANKLE.
| | 01:57 | Now when you do this, the last one
that we want to work on is the knees, so I
| | 02:03 | have my upper body, and that's moving,
and I have my lower body, in other words,
| | 02:09 | my feet, and those are moving,
but what about the knees?
| | 02:12 | Well, if you wanted to, you could go
really deep into expressions, and do some sort
| | 02:16 | of inverse kinematics system, but
we're not going to get in that right now.
| | 02:20 | One easy way to do it is just to
connect the knee either to the upper or the
| | 02:24 | lower body, or you could just leave them
so that they kind of go free, and just
| | 02:29 | animate them however you feel.
| | 02:31 | One of the things I like to do is just
connect the knee to the ankle, in other
| | 02:34 | words, the knee to the foot, so that way when I
move the ankle, it's not too bad of an effect.
| | 02:41 | It looks pretty good.
| | 02:42 | So if I did that, for example, on the
right leg as well, that would work pretty well.
| | 02:47 | And the other thing is, you want to
make sure that all of this moves with our
| | 02:51 | master nodes, so right now I've got
my Torso and everything moving, but my
| | 02:55 | feet are connected.
| | 02:57 | So I'm going to take my RIGHT ANKLE,
and my LEFT ANKLE, and connect those up to
| | 03:04 | Null 1, which is my master node here.
| | 03:06 | So now once I have them connected to
Null 1, then I can move my entire character,
| | 03:12 | but the last thing I need to do is
connect that knee, so I'm going to connect my
| | 03:15 | RIGHT KNEE to my RIGHT ANKLE, and
we should be okay. There we go.
| | 03:21 | So now we have a character that pretty
much moves in place, and if I want, I can
| | 03:25 | move the upper body separately, and the
legs, and the knees, and if I want to get a
| | 03:29 | knee bend, all I have to
do is just move these out.
| | 03:33 | So, those are just some strategies.
| | 03:35 | You can certainly parent, and arrange
this however you want, but the great thing
| | 03:40 | is that you have the freedom to do that, which
you wouldn't have with just puppet pins alone.
| | 03:44 | So go ahead and play with this, find
some hierarchies that work for you, and at
| | 03:48 | this point, the character is
pretty much ready to animate.
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9. Animating a SceneSetting up a scene for animation| 00:00 | Once you have your character set up
and rigged the way that you want, it's
| | 00:04 | always a good idea to do a simple
animation, to test out the rig and to make
| | 00:08 | sure that the character doesn't break.
| | 00:10 | What I like to do is to take a line
of dialog and just animate that.
| | 00:15 | It will give me a way to test the mouths,
blinks, some gestures, that sort of thing.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and bring in a line
of dialog, and we will just do some simple
| | 00:25 | animations against it, just to make
sure that our rig is working properly.
| | 00:29 | So you can do File > Import, and in
the Chap09 folder we should have a
| | 00:36 | file called AllWeek.wav.
| | 00:37 | And let's go ahead and bring that in,
and let's just do a quick listen to it.
| | 00:43 | You can see it's 134 frames long, and it's a
very simple line of dialog.
| | 00:47 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been
waiting for this all week!)
| | 00:52 | So it's got a lot of energy.
| | 00:53 | It's pretty a good line, because we have
got a lot of dialog, some energy, we can
| | 00:57 | really do some work with the character.
| | 01:00 | So first thing we need to do is to
set our composition to that length.
| | 01:04 | So first thing we want to do is drop this
in, AllWeek.wav, and you will see it's 134
| | 01:11 | frames long, right about there, 134, 135.
| | 01:15 | So let's do our Composition
Settings and set our Duration to 134.
| | 01:19 | So now our composition is set to the
same length as our dialog. And if we open
| | 01:27 | that up, you can see, here is
my waveform, and there it is.
| | 01:33 | So I am going to close this down,
and let's go ahead and just get things set up.
| | 01:39 | So one of the first things I like to
do is make sure that I just shy all the
| | 01:43 | layers that I don't want to animate.
| | 01:45 | Now I have already done
this, but let's un-shy them.
| | 01:48 | You will see I have a lot of
layers here that I don't need to touch.
| | 01:52 | So, for example, the MOUTHS; the LIDS,
some of these eye controls; the Head
| | 01:57 | itself, because we're using
this HEAD_CTL to manipulate it;
| | 02:02 | all of those additional arms that we created,
so that the hand can go behind the back;
| | 02:08 | all of those I've locked and I've made shy.
| | 02:11 | So I am just going to go ahead and
hit Shy, and that way I only have a few
| | 02:16 | layers to deal with, just
the ones that are important.
| | 02:18 | Now the other thing I want to do is just
set some keyframes to get the animation going.
| | 02:24 | Now a lot of times you'll want to move
something, and if you haven't set that
| | 02:28 | initial keyframe, you won't get animation.
| | 02:31 | At frame 0, just set keys for everything and
that way it makes it much easier to animate.
| | 02:37 | So I am going to go ahead and
Shift+Select everything in here, expand, go down
| | 02:42 | to Transform. And then because I have
everything selected, all I have to do is
| | 02:47 | just hit a key for Position, Scale, and
Rotation, and that should flow through for everything.
| | 02:54 | So I am just going to go ahead
and collapse that and deselect.
| | 02:57 | So now I have keyframes
for just about everything.
| | 03:00 | So let's go into our HEAD_CTL.
And you will see, I have them for the Motion keys,
| | 03:05 | but for the Custom sliders, I do not have keys.
| | 03:10 | So let's go ahead and set a basic key
for my HEAD_TURN slider, the BLINK_slider,
| | 03:16 | and the MOUTH_slider.
| | 03:17 | Now one thing we should start doing
right off is making sure that our key types
| | 03:23 | are correct, that it's
interpolating the correct way.
| | 03:27 | Now something like a head turn, you
want it to have smooth interpolation,
| | 03:31 | so you want it to be able
to interpolate like this.
| | 03:35 | But something like the mouth, you actually
want that to jump from one shape to another.
| | 03:40 | So anytime you're doing
replacement animation, you don't want
| | 03:43 | linear interpolation.
| | 03:45 | So let's go ahead and select that key
and right-click over it, and let's go into
| | 03:50 | the Keyframe Interpolation for that mouth.
| | 03:52 | So I am going to go ahead and select
that. And right now it's Linear, but we want
| | 03:57 | it to be set to Hold, because what we
are going to do is set the value. It's
| | 04:01 | going to hold that until we get the next value.
| | 04:04 | Once we do that, we will hit OK, and
you'll see how the type of cursor has changed.
| | 04:09 | And so what's really nice about
this is that now when I change my mouth
| | 04:13 | position, all I have to do
is just set one key for that.
| | 04:17 | So now if you look at the mouth here, you
can see it just pops from one to the other.
| | 04:22 | If these were set to, say, for example, Linear--
| | 04:25 | let's go in to Keyframe Interpolation
and set it back to Linear--what would
| | 04:29 | happen is that as I move this, it's
interpolating, because while I had a
| | 04:34 | keyframe at 0 and now I have a
keyframe here at 9, so it's going to basically
| | 04:40 | step between all those values between 0 and 9.
| | 04:44 | And that's kind of stepped through all the
mouths, and that's not really what we want.
| | 04:47 | So let's go ahead and select these
again, right-click, Keyframe Interpolation,
| | 04:51 | and let's make sure that they are on Hold.
| | 04:54 | So once they are on Hold, you can see
how it just pops from one to the other--
| | 04:59 | makes it much easier to animate.
| | 05:01 | So I am going to go ahead and delete
the additional keys I put in there, and
| | 05:04 | let's make sure we leave the first key in.
| | 05:06 | I am going to do same for the BLINK_slider.
| | 05:09 | I am going to go ahead and
just do Interpolation > Hold.
| | 05:14 | Okay, now do we have any other
replacement animation in here? Yes, we do.
| | 05:18 | We have the right and left hand.
| | 05:20 | So let's go in to the left hand.
On Time Remap, I already have a keyframe set,
| | 05:25 | so I only want to do is select this,
right-click, Interpolate, and again we are
| | 05:29 | going to set it to Hold.
| | 05:30 | And let's do the same for the right hand.
| | 05:34 | We have our Time Remap. Select that,
right-click, Interpolation > Hold.
| | 05:42 | So now all of these will just step
from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, and
| | 05:47 | from blink position to blink position.
| | 05:49 | So this makes it much
easier to animate these things.
| | 05:54 | So now that I have all of these set
up and ready to go, I'm ready to start
| | 05:59 | animating, and we are going
to do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking out the shot| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and start
blocking out the animation of the scene.
| | 00:04 | We're not going to go through the whole shot.
| | 00:06 | Let's just block out the
first line of dialog here.
| | 00:10 | And if we want, we can scrub through that.
| | 00:12 | If you want, you can hold down the Ctrl
key and start scrubbing through the timeline.
| | 00:16 | In fact, if you want, we can
bring up our Audio Waveform here.
| | 00:20 | And you can see him saying--
(Character: Oh boy!)
| | 00:24 | So let's go ahead and just animate that "oh boy!"
| | 00:27 | So the first thing we want to do is get
a first pose. Where is he starting from?
| | 00:31 | So let's scroll back to frame 0.
| | 00:33 | Now in the previous lesson, we
set all the keyframes for this.
| | 00:37 | So we can just start rotating joints
and putting his arms into place here.
| | 00:42 | If I bring the arms down here, with the palms
forward, that's not a very natural look.
| | 00:48 | So let's go ahead and take this right-hand,
| | 00:51 | and let's take the Time Remap, and
then I'm going to just jog that over--
| | 00:56 | I think hand number two looks like the good one.
| | 00:59 | So I'm just going to get
that nice relaxed hand pose.
| | 01:03 | And then if I want, I could
do the same for the left-hand.
| | 01:07 | And let's go ahead and put that to Hand 2.
| | 01:11 | Again, that's not a very dynamic pose.
| | 01:13 | Let's give him a little bit more, some sort
of something different in his left arm here.
| | 01:19 | And I think I'm just going to put his
hand on his hip, okay. At least that gives
| | 01:22 | him something to do, and makes him
little bit asymmetrical. Let's take the torso,
| | 01:26 | maybe rotate it just a little bit,
because he's leaning to one side.
| | 01:30 | Another thing we can do
is we can do a head turn.
| | 01:33 | Now one of the things I'm trying to do
with this animation is I want to get a
| | 01:37 | lot of different techniques into
it, so that way I test out my rig.
| | 01:41 | And one of those things I want to test
is make sure that my head turns work.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to go up my Head Control
and on my HEAD_TURN slider, let's go ahead
| | 01:50 | and turn him a little bit.
| | 01:52 | Let's start right about there.
| | 01:54 | And then another thing we can do is
we want to play with eye direction.
| | 01:58 | So let's select our left and right pupil.
| | 02:00 | In fact, this time I'm going to
kind of zoom in a little bit here.
| | 02:04 | So select our left and right pupil,
and then let's go ahead and move those.
| | 02:09 | Let's say he's looking that way.
| | 02:12 | So that's a good first pose.
| | 02:13 | In fact, let's go ahead and fit this.
| | 02:15 | So there's my first pose.
| | 02:17 | Now we need to have a
sense of where this is going.
| | 02:20 | So I'm going to zoom in a little bit on my
timeline here, and let's scrub through it.
| | 02:26 | (Character: Oh boy!)
| | 02:30 | Now what I'm trying to do is get a
rough picture as to where the major changes
| | 02:35 | in the dialog happen.
| | 02:37 | So if we scrub through here, you can see
that he starts talking around frame 12 or so.
| | 02:43 | Somewhere between 10 and 20 actually,
probably more around frame 15 or 16.
| | 02:50 | He says oh, and that's a very long vowel.
| | 02:53 | And then in the mid 30s he stops.
| | 02:56 | So right around 32-33 is
where that kind of tapers off.
| | 03:00 | And then the word boy,
the word boy starts around frame 40 or so.
| | 03:05 | Those are three or four major points,
so where he starts saying "oh," the space
| | 03:10 | between "oh" and "boy," and
then the word "boy" as well.
| | 03:14 | Let's go ahead and relax him out
of the pose right around frame 12.
| | 03:19 | So one of the first things I want
to do is to get him facing forward.
| | 03:22 | So I'm going to go ahead and face him forward.
| | 03:25 | Okay, so I'm just rotating the head,
so I'm using my HEAD_TURN slider
| | 03:29 | here. Rotate that forward.
| | 03:32 | And again, I just want to block out this pose.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to go back over and do
several passes to in-between this.
| | 03:38 | When his head turns like this,
you'll kind of want it to dip;
| | 03:40 | you want to blink over it.
| | 03:41 | There are a couple of things that we want.
| | 03:44 | But right now, I'm just
trying to get the major poses.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to select my Rotate tool, and
let's go ahead and just get this hand rotated out.
| | 03:53 | We want to kind of relax that hand,
so right now he is kind of doing this.
| | 03:59 | Then I also want to add in some
keyframes for these other body parts. So I'm
| | 04:03 | just going to jog them a
little bit to force a keyframe.
| | 04:06 | Now if I want, I can go and create a
keyframe, and that also changes his torso a little bit.
| | 04:11 | And again, just a little bit of animation,
so he is kind of coming straight up there.
| | 04:16 | You can see how that's working.
| | 04:18 | And then his head, again, I'm just
going to rotate that so it's kind of
| | 04:22 | little bit more balanced.
| | 04:24 | I'm not going to worry so
much about the eyes right now.
| | 04:30 | Okay, so now I have some
basic keyframes for that.
| | 04:33 | One of the things I also want to do is
just kind of scroll through some of this.
| | 04:36 | Like, for example, the right-hand.
| | 04:38 | You can see that I don't
have a keyframe for that.
| | 04:40 | So one of the things you can do is
just do a copy, Command+C or Ctrl+C and
| | 04:47 | Ctrl+V or Command+V, and just do a
copy, paste of those places where you don't
| | 04:52 | really have keyframes.
| | 04:54 | And this just kind of locks in the pose.
| | 04:56 | If we want, we can go through,
for example, the forearm.
| | 04:58 | We can see we actually have a
rotation key for the forearm.
| | 05:02 | And that's mostly going to rotate;
we're not going to do motion on it.
| | 05:05 | So we're not going to do translation.
| | 05:07 | As he comes down, you'll see I'm
going to actually start animating the tie.
| | 05:11 | And then we also have some for the torso.
| | 05:15 | I just want to make sure I've got
some rotation keys here, just in case I
| | 05:18 | rotate it down the road.
| | 05:20 | Once I get one of these major poses, I
want to make sure I've got keyframes for
| | 05:25 | all the major things that make that up.
| | 05:28 | Now he is kind of going like this.
| | 05:30 | Okay, so now he is going to say "oh!"
(Character: Oh!)
| | 05:36 | I want him to kind of wind up
and anticipate that word "boy."
| | 05:41 | So we're basically going
to just extend him a lot.
| | 05:45 | So one of the things I want to
do is I want to lower his body.
| | 05:48 | As he comes in here, I want him to
going to coil up, almost like a spring.
| | 05:51 | And then when he says "boy,"
he is going to pop up.
| | 05:54 | I'm going to use my Select tool, select
my torso, and just kind of move him down.
| | 06:00 | So at 32 is where I'm going
to put all these keyframes.
| | 06:03 | Select that torso. Move him down a little bit.
| | 06:05 | When I move him down like this, the
legs are actually compressing, but to make
| | 06:12 | him more realistic, we're going
to have to spread out the knees.
| | 06:14 | But we're going to do that just a
little bit here. And then select the arms.
| | 06:19 | And again, I'm just going to use
Rotate and get kind of a good rotation here.
| | 06:25 | I'm going to rotate the torso
a little bit. Let's hear this.
| | 06:39 | (Character: Oh boy!)
| | 06:43 | You can see how he is kind of winding up "oh."
| | 06:46 | And let's go ahead and select
the head and move that down.
| | 06:49 | So with his head, I'm going to select the
HEAD_CTL node and just drop that head down.
| | 06:55 | I'm going to really drop it down, okay.
| | 06:57 | I want him to wind up here. Rotate a little bit.
| | 07:01 | And then another thing I can do is I
can actually take this tie--scroll all the
| | 07:06 | way down here, find the Tie--
and let's move that down as well.
| | 07:11 | So I'm going to go ahead and select that
and drop that down, along with the head.
| | 07:17 | So now you can see it's starting to come down.
| | 07:21 | So let's try and get this tie
down just a little bit more.
| | 07:31 | So when I bring the tie down, it looks
almost like he's leaning over. It kind of
| | 07:35 | just gives us a little bit of an
optical illusion. So we're going--
| | 07:40 | And now I've got something going on here
with this arm. For some reason I scaled it,
| | 07:45 | so let's go ahead and just
un-scale it there. Unlock that.
| | 07:49 | So I want to keep that at
100, 100. There we go, okay.
| | 07:52 | So, "oh," and then when he goes
"boy," he is going to come back up.
| | 07:57 | So we're going to start that at 40,
and I'm just going to move the torso up
| | 08:03 | and then drop the arms.
| | 08:06 | As these arms come back, of course,
the wrists are going to drag behind.
| | 08:18 | But as he is pushing up,
the head is going to stay down.
| | 08:21 | But I will bring the tie up a little bit.
| | 08:30 | And then at 45, we're going
to go pretty high up as well.
| | 08:33 | He is going to actually
hit the top of his peak here,
| | 08:37 | and then his head is actually
going to come up even further.
| | 08:40 | In this case, I'm just going to go ahead
and use the slider here to push that head up.
| | 08:50 | So we've got--
(Character: Oh boy!)
| | 08:51 | Okay, oh boy!
| | 08:54 | But the legs aren't really working.
| | 08:56 | We need to do a few things with these legs.
| | 09:00 | So let's scroll down, and let's
start working with the knees.
| | 09:04 | So I've got a right and a left knee.
| | 09:08 | So as he comes down at 12, I want to
make sure that I set a keyframe for that.
| | 09:16 | And then again, at 32 we're just going
to take each one of these and kind of
| | 09:23 | just bring it out in X. So I'm just
going to use the X slider and just bring
| | 09:29 | each one of these out.
| | 09:31 | So he's kind of going...boy. Each one of
those is going to come in, but his legs
| | 09:41 | are also going to start coming off the ground.
| | 09:43 | So one of the things I want to do is
select each of these ankles and bring those
| | 09:46 | off the ground as well.
So 32, so right there he is kind of jumping.
| | 09:52 | So let's go ahead and make that a real jump.
| | 09:53 | So at 32, I want to make sure that I
have transform keys for that, just to
| | 09:59 | lock it on the ground.
| | 10:00 | And then let's go ahead here and then
at 40, you want that to start to come
| | 10:07 | off the ground a bit.
| | 10:08 | I want to bring that up and
maybe even rotate it just a little bit,
| | 10:15 | maybe even bring that toe down a
little bit. But let's go ahead and just
| | 10:19 | play with this right now.
| | 10:20 | So right ankle, I'm just going to bring
it up, rotate it just a little bit.
| | 10:26 | So right now it's going, but you can
see that this process takes a while.
| | 10:30 | So let's just do a quick RAM preview of
what we have right now.
| | 10:34 | (Character: Oh boy!)
| | 10:36 | Okay, so that "oh boy," he is
not taking off fast enough.
| | 10:39 | But we can fix this, and
we can keep going over it.
| | 10:42 | And at this point, I'm going to stop,
because really what we're looking at is
| | 10:47 | just the process: how do we animate all
these different parts of the character?
| | 10:52 | So go ahead, and just work through the
scene yourself and animate it the way
| | 10:56 | that you think it should be animated.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating dialogue| 00:00 | So at this point, we've blocked
out the animation of the body.
| | 00:04 | So let's go ahead, and just play
what we have so far.
| | 00:08 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been
waiting for this all week! Oh--)
| | 00:14 | So in this animation, again, this is
kind of a test animation, so I wanted to do
| | 00:19 | a number of different things.
| | 00:20 | I wanted to make sure the
character has a head turn,
| | 00:24 | changing of the hands, that sort of thing.
| | 00:25 | I also wanted to make sure that we have
head turns, and here at the end I wanted
| | 00:31 | to make sure I can put the
character's hands behind his back.
| | 00:34 | So I want to make sure I can do that
front-forward-back thing with the arms.
| | 00:38 | So this is the basic animation, and so
far the character is working pretty well.
| | 00:43 | So the next thing we need to do is
add in lip sync to match the dialog.
| | 00:49 | So let's go ahead down, select our
HEAD_CTL object here, and we have a Mouth slider.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to ahead and zoom in
just a little bit, and let's go ahead and
| | 00:59 | zoom in to the character's face.
| | 01:01 | So what we need to do is start scrubbing
through the animation, listening to the
| | 01:04 | dialog, and matching up the
mouth shapes to the dialog.
| | 01:08 | Now, before we get started,
let's do a quick refresh here.
| | 01:12 | When we animate replacement animation,
such as this Mouth slider, we want to make
| | 01:17 | sure that we use the
right type of interpolation.
| | 01:19 | So if we right-click and go into
Keyframe Interpolation, you want to just
| | 01:23 | make sure that this is on Hold, okay, and
that will make this type of keyframe,
| | 01:29 | instead of the diamond-shaped ones,
and that way you will know you are using
| | 01:32 | Hold Interpolation.
| | 01:34 | So let's go through and start scrubbing.
| | 01:37 | Now, in After Effects, if you hold
down the Ctrl key while you scrub, you can
| | 01:42 | hear the soundtrack.
| | 01:44 | So let's go through this.
| | 01:46 | Okay, so that first line, "oh,"
starts right around Frame 12 or so,
| | 01:55 | so let's go ahead and
start dialing in the mouth.
| | 01:57 | Now remember, he's happy,
| | 02:00 | so I kind of want to start with a happy
mouth, actually, so let's go through here.
| | 02:04 | So he is going to go from here into kind of an
"Oh" mouth here, just go ahead and dial that in.
| | 02:13 | So I want to go from here to here
and then down into the ooh shape.
| | 02:19 | So that would be this one here.
| | 02:21 | So now we have got--
| | 02:25 | And then he is going to say.
| | 02:29 | So right here before he
actually says boy,
| | 02:36 | we want that B sound.
| | 02:37 | So somewhere right around frame 36 or 37, I want
to bring the mouth into kind of a B shape here.
| | 02:45 | So what I want to do is I like using
this kind of frowned, closed mouth, because
| | 02:50 | it gives a little bit more tension--
particularly for this vowel here.
| | 02:55 | So again, I want to go open. In fact, I
can almost use this exact same sequence here.
| | 03:01 | So I am going to go ahead and select
these keyframes, copy them, and paste them
| | 03:06 | at this keyframe. So it goes--
| | 03:10 | I don't think the open mouth works on this.
(Character: Boy!)
| | 03:13 | Boy, E, so we want kind of an E shape here.
(Character: Boy!)
| | 03:20 | Okay. So now we've got -
(Character: Oh boy!)
| | 03:28 | Now, I want to close down that mouth a
little bit, or maybe even, let's go to this mouth.
| | 03:34 | (Character: Oh boy!)
No, that doesn't work.
| | 03:38 | So let's go to this one.
| | 03:39 | So right there is I. So we are
going to start with an open mouth here.
| | 03:51 | IE, within that I, so I. Close that
down a little bit. (clip playing)
| | 04:00 | I've, I've been. Okay, so
let's actually change this.
| | 04:08 | Let's change this. Instead of to this mouth,
| | 04:09 | let's go to the V or F, so
basically, "I've been waiting."
| | 04:14 | So we want to go I've.
| | 04:19 | Been. Okay, so let's do this mouth here.
| | 04:24 | And then been. Let's try that.
(Character: I've been--)
| | 04:26 | Been, let's go to a more of a consonant
sound, which is that one.
| | 04:37 | Waiting, okay, so that would be ooh, wa, a.
That would be either one or two. There we go!
| | 04:49 | (Character: I've been waiting.)
| | 04:55 | And after a while, you start to get to
memorize the numbers and which mouth shape they have.
| | 05:00 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been waiting for--)
| | 05:03 | So at this point you can
see what the process is.
| | 05:06 | We are just scrubbing through the
timeline and assigning the mouths that work,
| | 05:10 | and then every once in a while you
do want to create a RAM Preview just to
| | 05:14 | check where you are at.
| | 05:15 | So let's go ahead and do that and see
what we have so far.
| | 05:18 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been
waiting for this all week!)
| | 05:24 | Okay. So now you can see that so
far, we've done pretty good.
| | 05:27 | So I'll have you finish out the
dialog track, and we understand the process
| | 05:33 | now, and then the next step is to go
ahead and just finish this off by using
| | 05:37 | blinks and eye direction.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating blinks| 00:00 | Now, let's go ahead and finish up
this animation by adding a few blinks and
| | 00:04 | changes in eye direction.
| | 00:06 | So let's see where we are at right now.
| | 00:08 | I have gone ahead and
finished the dialog.
| | 00:11 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been
waiting for this all week!)
| | 00:16 | So the dialog is animated.
| | 00:18 | Now, the next thing we want to do is
basically just do some eye direction and blinks.
| | 00:23 | Now blinks are, again, replacement
animation, so you want to make sure that we
| | 00:28 | highlight this first key and make sure
that our Keyframe Interpolation is set to
| | 00:33 | Hold, and that we will be sure that we
can swap out the blinks very easily.
| | 00:38 | Now the first thing I want to do is
add in a blink as he turns his head.
| | 00:43 | So the first thing I want to do is, okay,
so I have got about 12 frames to add in
| | 00:47 | this blink, so I am going to
start right around at frame 4.
| | 00:51 | So at frame 4 I am going to move this
slider to that first position there, just
| | 00:57 | to start the blink, move 2 frames in,
and then I am going to go to second one
| | 01:06 | and then just close it.
| | 01:12 | And then go 2 frames out, and then I am just
going to set that back to 0 to open the eyes.
| | 01:18 | So now we've got--okay. Now one
thing I want to do is also change the eye
| | 01:27 | direction. So this blink can cover a
change in eye direction very easily.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this pupil and Shift+Select this pupil.
| | 01:35 | In fact, we can go down here to
Left_Pupil_CTL and R_Pupil_CTL, and let's go
| | 01:40 | ahead and set a Positions key for both of those.
| | 01:43 | Then when the eyes pop open, I am going
to go ahead and move those over into the
| | 01:50 | position that I want, which
is looking straight forward.
| | 01:54 | So now we've got the blink as
covering that change in eye direction.
| | 02:01 | So we've got--okay, so now another blink we
want to add as he comes down into this squash,
| | 02:10 | now one thing we can do is we can just
copy and paste these keys. So I have got
| | 02:15 | a pretty good blink here on my Blink slider.
| | 02:19 | So if I just select those keys, hit
Ctrl+C or Command+C and then Ctrl+V or
| | 02:24 | Command+V, I can blink. But I want to
keep his eyes closed until he pops up,
| | 02:32 | so I am going to go ahead and drag this
keyframe out to about frame 40.
| | 02:36 | So there we've got, oh boy, boy!
| | 02:42 | I think another blink would help right in here;
| | 02:49 | so again, I am just going
to do this manually here.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to go ahead and put that
there, 2 frames there, 2 frames, close it.
| | 03:01 | Now you can decide whether you want to
pop open the eyes or you want to open
| | 03:07 | them a little bit more slowly.
| | 03:08 | So if you want to open them a little bit
more slowly, I am going to go ahead and
| | 03:11 | just copy and paste this one
and then open it completely.
| | 03:16 | So I am actually opening
this eye faster than I close it.
| | 03:20 | That gives him a little bit more alertness.
| | 03:30 | So then another good place would
be when he turns his head here.
| | 03:37 | Again, one of the things I like to do
is once I have a blink sequence, I can
| | 03:41 | just select that in the
timeline, copy, and paste.
| | 03:49 | So now we've got--in fact, I want to
move that back a little bit. Again, I am
| | 03:58 | just trying to get this aligned well.
| | 04:09 | And once he opens his eyes, again, I think I
want to do another change in eye direction.
| | 04:13 | So again, I am just going to select
both the left and right pupil control,
| | 04:19 | select position, and make sure I have
keyframe for position--that just locks
| | 04:23 | down that original position--and then
when he opens his eyes, I kind of want to
| | 04:29 | do this sort of. And then again,
I want to do another blink here.
| | 04:38 | So again, I am going to just copy and
paste this Blink slider. And then when he
| | 04:49 | comes back up, I want to go
back to that original eye position.
| | 04:53 | So one of the things I can do is I can
just copy this eye position to the last
| | 04:58 | place where his eyes are closed. So I
can go here to these eye positions and
| | 05:03 | just copy them, or, because it's in the
same place, I am just going to hit the
| | 05:07 | Position key, which basically does
the same thing for both the left and right
| | 05:11 | pupil. And then as he comes up, I am
going to get that centered pupil key and
| | 05:18 | make sure that I copy and paste it there.
| | 05:20 | So now, there we go!
| | 05:24 | So now let's take a look at this and
see how this works.
| | 05:27 | (Character: Oh boy! I've been
waiting for this all week!)
| | 05:32 | So there we go!
| | 05:33 | Okay, so you can see the process for
animating blinks. Typically, when you do an
| | 05:37 | eye-direction change, you want to
cover that with a blink. And remember also,
| | 05:42 | it's much faster to animate one blink and
then just copy and paste it on the timeline;
| | 05:47 | it saves a lot of time.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | So that's just about it for creating
animated characters in After Effects.
| | 00:06 | I hope you can use these techniques
on your own characters to make some
| | 00:10 | really great animation.
| | 00:12 | So until next time, I am George
Maestri for lynda.com, and see you soon!
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