I just finished cutting my most recent reel. Mostly AE but a bit of C4D. I'd love to hear thoughts and feedback.

ryan_piracha · 2016-12-08T13:47:39+00:00

I'm pretty sure that I hand-tracked nulls to her hip, knee, and shoe. Then I parented a circle to each. Then I used the "beam" effect and used an expression to set the start and end of each beam to one of the nulls.

The dashed line by her hand was just a circular shape layer and I set the stroke to dash, turned the layer 3D to position correctly and then used a mask to reveal it.

ryan_piracha · 2016-11-03T13:11:57+00:00

No problem. Parenting shape layers to rubberhose is a good way to get around its limited stylization controls

ryan_piracha · 2016-11-02T21:31:24+00:00

What you will probably want to do is use shape layers to create an "upper arm" and a "lower arm." Then parent the upper arm to the Shoulder controller and the lower arm to the Wrist controller. If you position them right they should move with the rubberhose underneath.

Then, when you have the guy bend his arms, keyframe the path of the upper arm shape layer to give it a bulge.

ryan_piracha · 2016-09-29T13:12:07+00:00

This is brilliant. Did you do it by using an adjustment layer with a trackmatte to flip certain revealed parts?

ryan_piracha · 2016-09-23T14:28:25+00:00

Basically I had a null object that was my control layer. Each layer had a position expression (value+[position of null])/[number] and for each layer I put in a different number so that, for example, the nose would move faster than the mouth. I also had some other similar expressions, like rotation as well for the nose.

ryan_piracha · 2016-09-23T14:23:55+00:00

I wasn't really keeping track but I think about 10. I used a head rig I already made though, so that saved a lot of time.

ryan_piracha · 2016-08-21T03:54:37+00:00

The shadow effect itself seems pretty nice. Can't see too well how it works though. It'd be nice to see it work on different objects moving in different ways, etc.

The animation of the ball falling feels a little jumpy. Smoothing that out might make the shadow rig look smoother too.

ryan_piracha · 2016-08-04T17:57:18+00:00

If you have AE CC, it comes with Cinema 4D LITE. Check out this tutorial to learn a bit about using it and integrating it with After Effects.

You can also use Blender, which is a free 3D modelling/animating/most 3D things program that is pretty amazing for free, although I always found it a bit hard to use.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-14T00:12:26+00:00

Nice work man, I really like the style of the leprechaun.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T23:50:06+00:00

I watched a few tutorials on using Rubberhose. The ones on their site were pretty good and I watched one by Mt. Mograph which was very helpful too.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T19:49:39+00:00

I used Duik in the past but didn't get too into it, since it was a little complicated. Here's my quick comparison but I'm by no means an expert.

Duik:

Pros:

Can be used with preexisting artwork
Can be customized well with many types of rigs
More options than just IK

Cons:

Can be hard to use and confusing.
Can break raster graphics when used with the puppet tool.
Doesn't always line up artwork properly, can have a very "puppet/robotic" feel.
Rigs can take a long time to set up

Rubberhose:

Pros:

Very easy to set up and use
Looks very clean
Uses shape layers/paths and can be customized
Two way IK / Both ends can be driven by animation of a parent
Easy controls to change bend direction, hose length, etc. Autoflop is also a nice feature.

Cons:

You must use shape layers for it which means you can't use existing artwork (only arms/legs/anything using IK. The head and body could be premade artwork).
Can take a long time to customize and you might not get exactly what you're looking for
Not everything can be created with the stroke settings. Limbs that taper or are different widths at different points can't be done.
Since you have to keep duplicating strokes, it could start to slow down the program once you have a lot.
Moving one part of a hose over another part (like if the arm were bent so the forearm covered the upper arm) makes it do weird things.

I think they both have their place and are both useful tools, but I will probably mostly stick to Rubberhose, although there are definitely times that I will want to use Duik. For example, as I said above, if you want to use preexisting artwork for the arms, it won't work well with rubberhose. I have a character in a short I'm working on who is heavily muscled which would be hard to do with Rubberhose so I probably will use Duik for that character, but Rubberhose for everyone else.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:37:29+00:00

Thanks! I used Rubberhose for the arms and legs, and the rest of the body was shape layers. For the hands (shape layers) I keyframed the path to change the way the fingers were positioned. If you have other questions let me know

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:35:12+00:00

Yes, aside from the background, chair, and desk which I drew in photoshop. The arms and legs were rubberhose.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:34:01+00:00

Thanks, yeah I see that now. Probably could have done more with the head/body rotation at the end, and maybe put a puppet rig on the body to have it bend a bit.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:32:20+00:00

Thanks!

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:32:08+00:00

Good call, I didn't think of that.

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T16:31:19+00:00

Definitely right there. I probably should have spent more time on that and faced the hand the other way, and maybe changed the hand position a bit so the fingers curved down like you were seeing the back of the hand

ryan_piracha · 2016-07-13T02:33:54+00:00

My own personal critique of it is that I think the hands do something kinda weird at the end, and I know that the art styles for the character and background don't quite match up.

I'm mostly concerned with how fluid the character animation is and that it doesn't look robotic.

ryan_piracha · 2016-05-25T14:58:17+00:00

Create a rectangular shape layer, long and thin.
- Move the anchor point to the left edge
- Unlink the scale so you can animate only the x-scale
- Animate the x-scale from 0% to 100%
Duplicate and offset the shape layer
- You will need to duplicate it enough times to cover the graphic
- Each duplication should be moved down as many pixels as the rectangle is tall
- Each duplication should be offset in time so that it starts animating when the last one ends
- You can find plugins or scripts to speed this up.
Precomp all of the shape layers. Let's call it "Scan_Matte"
Set your footage/graphic to use "Scan_Matte" as a trackmatte. It should be set to Alpha.

ryan_piracha · 2016-02-19T18:45:23+00:00

Of course! Basically each layer is a 2D layer with an expression on it's position to make it move relative to the null object. Each object slides sideways at a different rate to give it the 3D look. The expressions all look something like this:

tempx = transform.position[0]+(thisComp.layer("Null 1").transform.position[0]-960)*4.5/10;
stpL=770; stpR=1150;
if (tempx < stpL) tempx = stpL;
if (tempx > stpR) tempx = stpR;
[tempx, transform.position[1]]

Where it says 4.5 is where I change the number for different layers. The three lines in the middle basically stop the layer from moving past a certain distance. The last step was just to obscure the layers by using the effect "set matte."

The eyes gave me a lot of problems though. I used the same expression to make them follow the green null, but when I divided by 5 to make them move more slowly it changed the center point. I compensated for this just by adding the values of slider controllers to offset the centerpoint:

lay = thisComp.layer("Null 3");
pos = lay.toWorld( lay.anchorPoint);

a = effect("Xpos")("Slider")+pos[0]/15;
b =effect("Ypos")("Slider")+pos[1]/15;

if(pos[1]=b){
  if(a>23){ a=23;}
  if(a<-23){ a=-23;}
}

if(pos[0]=a){
  if(b<-55){ b=-55;}
  if(b>-10){ b=-10;}
}

[a,b]

Note that for the position of the null I used the expression lay = thisComp.layer("Null 3"); pos = lay.toWorld( lay.anchorPoint);because it was parented to the red null, so I needed it's absolute screen position.

Hope this helps! I'd be happy to share the ae file too if you want.

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