If I have a puppet rigged like OKSamurai's Yoga girl, and I want some draggers to be "hold in place" like the arms and feet, but I want the torso dragger to be "return to rest" then I would need a local Dragger Behavior for the independent leg layer.

But when I do that, if Ground detection is enabled, then the heel/dragger moves fine, but the toe remains pinned to the ground.

This works fine when there's only one global dragger behavior, but no matter where I put a second one, the toe information is lost.

Nesting local dragger behaviors in the arm layers works fine though, it's just the ground detection info that isn't passed through the second dragger behavior.

Is this fixable?

Thanks!

Am I not familiar enough with Character Animator or what, but here's my problem:

I have a little experience in After Effects before. There is a thing called "parenting"

It means I can parent layer "b" to another layer "a", and hence everytime layer a is moved layer b will follow that layer a movement. However I cannot find such option in Character Animator. A layer can only parent to its own group, and cannot parent to another layer outside its group. For example say a hair in the back of the head group and body group.

It looks like this:

• Character/Puppet

-- Head group

-- Body group

-- Hair

Won't it be very helpful if we can parent the hair into the head group instead of the entire character?

That way the hair will move everytime the head moves?

And this can apply to arms and torso. I have puppets that consist of two set of arm groups. Namely the back and front arm group. The front arm group is used when the hands of the character needs to be in front of the face.

It looks like this:

• Character/Puppet

-- Front arm group

-- Head group

-- Back arm group

-- Body group

And this are only a scarce of cases. Many things can be achieved if we just have this option.

I have thought about the magnet option, but the problem with magnet is the layer needs to be independent to work effectively. Many times I can't make a layer independent for reasons.

Thanks for reading!
Hopefully you can understand what I am trying to deliver...

There are a lot of ways to bring your character "to life" in Character Animator, however there is one thing that a cartoon has that life doesn't: 100% consistency.

I have an idea about triggers having an RNG system to them such as different mouth shapes for the same sound to add variation or when I hit a trigger to make a pleased expression the expression has different variations that will randomly trigger to give the same emotion but have a slightly different look to give some imperfections/naturalness to the design (such as people don't make the EXACT same face whenever they are pleased, or look the EXACT same whenever they get mad.

Same idea as script/handwriting font writers when they make multiple iterations of the same letter to give the illusion that it is actually someone's handwriting.

At present, Character Animator (v3.4) supports Swap Sets that enable users to select a single layer to be visible within a layer group.

For example, say you want to create multiple pre-drawn facial expressions for your puppet, "Normal" and "Sad". In each expression, you want to be able to change the eyebrows, eyelids and entire mouth swap set.

How would a user achieve this with a simple puppet structure like the following?

+Head

    +Eyebrow Left

    +Eyebrow Right

    Eye Left

        Eyelids Left

        +Pupil Left

        Eyeball Left

    Eye Right

        Eyelids Right

        +Pupil Right

        Eyeball Right

    Nose

    Mouth

        Neutral

        Smile

        Surprised

        M

        ... etc

    Face

A user would need to create individual Swap Sets for each facial element that needs to change, as follows:

+Head

    +Eyebrow Left

        Eyebrow Left Normal

        Eyebrow Left Sad

    +Eyebrow Right

        Eyebrow Right Normal

        Eyebrow Right Sad

    Eye Left

        Eyelids Left

            Eyelids Left Normal

            Eyelids Left Sad

        +Pupil Left

        Eyeball Left

    Eye Right

        Eyelids Right

            Eyelids Right Normal

            Eyelids Right Sad

        +Pupil Right

        Eyeball Right

    Nose

    Mouth

        Mouth Swap Set Normal

            Neutral Normal

            Smile Normal

            Surprised Normal

            M Normal

            ... etc

        Mouth Swap Set Sad

            Neutral Sad

            Smile Sad

            Surprised Sad

            M Sad

            ... etc

    Face

This example shows only 2 facial expressions, but imagine if you wanted a large range of emotional expression. Then add in support for head turns -- the puppet would get overly complex very quickly.

I am currently using this method on a production. For more detailed explanation, you can view my video tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEVwz4vpz6o

A better way to do this would be to support the concept of "Recursive" Swap Sets.

These would switch layers throughout an entire layer group tree, not just directly below a single layer group.

This could be used to simplify the above scenario. The user could create a structure as follows:

+Head

    Expression Normal

        +Eyebrow Left

        +Eyebrow Right

        Eye Left

            Eyelids Left

            +Pupil Left

            Eyeball Left

        Eye Right

            Eyelids Right

            +Pupil Right

            Eyeball Right

        Nose

        Mouth

            Neutral

            Smile

            Surpised

            M

            ... etc

        Face

    Expression Sad

        +Eyebrow Left

        +Eyebrow Right

        Eye Left

            Eyelids Left

        Eye Right

            Eyelids Right

        Mouth

            Neutral

            Smile

            Surprised

            M

            ... etc

Note that the "Expression Sad" layer group contains several layer group names that exactly match the structure in the "Expression Normal" layer group, but contains only the layers that will alter to create the "Sad" facial expression.

The "+Head" layer group would then be set as a "Recursive Swap Set" and "Expression Normal" set as Default.

When "Expression Sad" is triggered, Character Animator would recursively search through the entire "Expression Sad" layer group tree to replace layers or groups that have matching names with the target layer or group.

After the operation, the end state of the puppet, conceptually, would be:

+Head

    Expression Current

        +Eyebrow Left Sad

        +Eyebrow Right Sad

        Eye Left

            Eyelids Left Sad

            +Pupil Left

            Eyeball Left

        Eye Right

            Eyelids Right Sad

            +Pupil Right

            Eyeball Right

        Nose

        Mouth

            Neutral Sad

            Smile Sad

            Surpised Sad

            M Sad

            ... etc

        Face

Once the Trigger ends, the puppet would conceptually return to its Default state, which is "Expression Normal".

This would give users a much more convenient way to swap groups of layers for a variety of complex effects.

I use Photoshop "templates" to create multiple puppets that re-use the same pre-configured rigging structure.

My technique is to create a template puppet in Photoshop that is comprised only of layer groups. I can then tag the groups and apply behaviours as needed in order to "pre-rig" the entire template.

Then to create a puppet, I make a copy of the template and drag my artwork layers into the appropriate layer groups.

I can then import my "pre-rigged" template puppet, switch the artwork file to my new puppet and all the tags and behaviours are maintained.

However, the problem is that Character Animator removes behaviours from layer groups that have no child layers.

To work around this, I have to create empty placeholder layers in my puppet template file, and delete them when I create a puppet from it and add my artwork layers.

This creates a lot of extra work and can cause distortion and weirdness if I forget to delete any placeholder layers.

I have created a tutorial where I explain my templating technique, in case my explanation isn't clear:

https://youtu.be/GIlZntywUXA?t=303

Hey guys, LOVE CA, but Im running into a problem.

I have a character with shoulder length hair. I want the hair to be on top of the shoulder, but I want the hand to be able to be on top of the hair.

Obviously, I cant have the upper arm be one group and the forearm be another and still have it do all that fancy IK etc.

OR CAN I? :)

Maybe you could make a special kind of shared layer, where a copy of the arm with the upper arm and shoulder was transparent was above the hair, and the original version was still below. If CA could calculate the mesh and still do the layering, thatd be really amazing.

Any thoughts?

Thank you!

I need to have more control over the parallax feature. As I've seen suggested multiple times here, the ultimate solution would be something like Joysticks and Sliders- the script for AE from aescripts.com. If that's not possible, I'd at least like control over X and Y strength. I really just want X movement, but there doesn't seem to be a way to control this.
I'd also like the option of being able to drag the parallax around with the mouse rather than having to turn my head. In practice, physically turning your head to the side is pretty hard if you need the character to stay there while you do other actions. Then you can't see what you're doing until you look straight again!