I would like to incorporate multiple backgrounds and characters during a live presentation, to create the look of a two-way conversation as seen on TV and film. I want to be able to switch backgrounds every time a new character speaks, and have both the new character and background appear onscreen.

I can currently achieve background switching by stacking multiple backgrounds in the timeline and then manually fading the opacity of the background(s) on top, but it is slow, manual, and very clear to the audience what is going on.

On a similar note, switching out the characters is currently possible by moving them out of frame, but again, this is not keyframe-able or instantaneous.

Ideally, I would like to be able to create keyframes for the background and character Transform values (in this case, opacity and Position X, respectively) and assign them to a keyboard shortcut or MIDI keyboard so I can instantly toggle between them during a stream.

Would this be possible to program?

It would be great to have a Teleprompter feature that prompts the person speaking with a visual text of a speech or script.

This could take the form of a Teleprompter tab or an onion skin over the scene as it's being recorded (that is, the script is superimposed over the scene as it's recorded).

Since I do most of my recordings on an iMac, I could see undocking the Teleprompter tab and placing it at the upper middle of the Desktop, just below there the built-in web cam is located. Or, reading the text as is scrolls by while in a text field that floats where I place it in the Scene tab would also be a good implementation.

If producing animations for animated shows, one would probably still have their actors learn the script and speak from memory. But, not all of us can commit a script to memory that quickly.

Can we have NESTED SWAP SETS?

When I hit "Generate Controls," it tells me I have 496 triggers. I love that the program can handle this BUT really, a lot of these are repeats from one head position or body position to the next. Adding a swap set for hands, on multiple arm positions is what created this giant tedious day (496!) with my MIDI controller.

If the Swap Sets could understand that two same-named arm positions with same-name hand positions are the same, you would TOTALLY SAVE US SO MUCH TIME!!

Also, if swap sets could be nested in the Triggers/Swap Set panel, everything would be SO MUCH EASIER TO FIND!! Especially for those of us assigning triggers with a MIDI, we have to do it ONE AT A TIME! AAAh!

Thank you!!

In the control section for triggers, in layout you can drag the icons to where you want, and you can even drag one icon on top of another, but, when you press it, it still only triggers one of the icons. It would be great if you could layer icons on top of each other, and then you only have to press the one to trigger them all at once. The reason for this is because if you create a trigger group, all the actions in that group has to be the same lengh in frames, otherwise it causes bits to disappear. Sometimes you need different lenghs of animation within one trigger. For example. If a character get mad, he may pull a scrowl in 5 frames, but the smoke coming from his ears might run for 10+. I know that you can get around this by making each of them a individual trigger with the same key to trigger, but it would be great if it could work on the touch screen too.

Currently you typically have a HEAD group in front of the BODY (so the chin is in front of the neck etc. You may also have front hair dangling in front of the body as well.

But it is hard to have +HEAD (an independent group) and rear hair (to be displayed behind the BODY). The front and rear hair should be both controlled by the head movement.

It would be nice to have a better way of having rear hair attached to head movements, but be behind the body.

I would suggest having a +REARHAIR group as a pattern, so depth of layers controls depth of display, but where you can “attach” the rear hear to the +HEAD group which is not a parent.

(A few approaches have been suggested in the forums, but none of them work properly. I only get rear hair to work when HEAD is not an independent group, so BODY and HEAD and REARHAIR are all part of the same group.)

While editing and streaming, performance is very important. For people with lower powered computers, things can become sluggish. It would be great to have a global setting that adjusted settings like resolution of images created (if that speed things up), mesh density (if that speeds things up), and so forth. Then while editing/streaming, the setting can be cranked back to what the computer supports. When doing a media export, the setting can be set back to full resolution where it does not have to be real-time display. (Just go grab a coffee for the final render.) But the setting should be global, not part of the puppets, so people on different computers can adjust for their particular machine. (E.g. I have a cheap laptop and a powerful desktop. I don’t want to have to change all the puppets to move between computers.)

As far as I can tell, if you have Frontal and Right Profile the puppet will not switch from frontal to the profile when you use the arrow key. You have to create Left Profile as well for the flipping from “Frontal” to “Right Profile”. If the right profile is the default (like walkbot), then walking works. So it is not the walk behavior that seems to be the problem, but rather the code to decide to flip from the default profile to the walk direction profile refuses to work without Left and Right profiles both defined (and rigged sensibly).

I think it makes sense to allow Frontal with only one profile. Puppets can walk backwards if the other profile is not defined - and this works pretty well! So allow only one of the two profiles to be defined, allow it to flip from frontal to the side profile, then make it walk forwards/backwards based on which arrow key was pressed.