About the Puppet tools

Adding the character

The last element in the scene is the character himself. You’ll add him to the composition and then scale and position him appropriately.

1 Drag the man.psd footage item from the Project panel to the Timeline panel at the top of the layer stack.

2 Select the man.psd layer, and press S to display its Scale property.

3 Change the Scale to 15%.

4 Press P to display the Position property, and change the Position to 575, 300.

5 Press P again to hide the Position property for the layer.

6 Choose File > Save to save your work so far.

_ Note: In the original drawing, the characterhas already slipped onthe banana peel and was falling. To make it easier to animate, the character has been modified to be more upright. Sometimes you can make yourwork easier by making some adjustments before animation.

The Puppet tools turn raster and vector images into virtual marionettes. When you move the string of a marionette, the body part attached to that string moves; pullthe string attached to the hand, and the hand goes up. The Puppet tools use pins toindicate where strings would be attached.

The Puppet effect deforms parts of an image based on the positions of pins that you place and animate. These pins determine which parts of the image should move, which parts should remain rigid, and which parts should be in front when areas overlap.

There are three kinds of pins, each placed by a different tool:

􀁴 The Puppet Pin tool () places and moves Deform pins, which deform a layer.

􀁴 The Puppet Overlap tool () places Overlap pins, which indicate the parts of an image that should be in the front when areas overlap.

􀁴 The Puppet Starch tool () places Starch pins, which stiffen parts of the image so that they are distorted less.

As soon as you place a pin, the area within an outline is automatically divided into a mesh of triangles. Each part of the mesh is associated with the pixels of the image, so as the mesh moves, so do the pixels. When you animate a Deform pin, the mesh deforms more in the area closest to the pin, while keeping the overall shape as rigidas possible. For example, if you animate a pin in a character’s hand, the hand and arm will be deformed, but most of the character will remain in place.

_ Note: The mesh iscalculated at the framewhere the Deform pins are applied. If you add more pins anywherein the timeline, they are placed based on the original position of the mesh.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-20