An easy to use rigging tool for After Effects that will save you hours of work. Use it to make highly customized controllers for puppet pins, shape layer path points and just about anything else. If you're running CC 2018 or newer, you can make controls for Shape Layer & Mask paths! 2.0 Major Update (07-03-12). 6 days ago - Tools Intent: In this tutorial we will cover how to use the puppet tool in After Effects. One of the most fun areas to explore in After Effects is using.
Ahead of the 2018 International Broadcasting Convention that kicks off later this week, Adobe today shared details on updates that are coming to Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, and Audition.
Premiere Pro, Adobe's video editing software for professionals, is gaining new Motion Graphics templates and support for infographics created by dragging and dropping spreadsheet files into the Motion Graphics interface.
New Reduce Noise and Reduce Reverb sliders have been added to the Essential Sound panel, the Lumetri color panel features Selective Color Grading tools for more precise color editing, and there's a new Timecode shortcut entry.
Other new features include support for Google VR 180, Spatial Markers for easier editing of VR content, and a Theatre Mode for working within the Adobe Immersive Environment. Performance improvements have also been included, with hardware-based encoding and decoding for H.264 and HEVC along with improved image processing.
After Effects, used by designers to create motion graphics, is gaining simplified authoring for streamlined content editing, font controls for quickly changing fonts, new selective color grading tools for Lumetri Color, and new in-app learning tools for those who are new to After Effects.
Advanced Puppet pins for the Mesh Sculpting feature let users define position, scale, and rotation for a pin, offering better control for more organic movements, while a new Javascript engine enables faster expressions and Depth Passes allows for 3D objects to be positioned in space to add dimensional elements to videos.
There's a new native Mocha plug-in for After Effects, along with end-to-end support for VR 180, H.264 and HEVC video support on macOS, and performance and GPU optimizations to improve effects like Fill, Curves, Exposure, and Noise.
Audition includes new DeReverb and DeNoise effects for removing background noise and reverb with support for real-time adjustments, a revamped multitrack feature, one-click session management, and more.
Character Animator is gaining the Characterizer, a feature first unveiled at Adobe Max. Characterizer lets users import art and then record words and facial expressions to generate a new, unique character, automatically creating a puppet in just a few seconds.
Character Animator is also getting Replays for reusing facial expressions and signature moves, Magnets for letting puppets interact with objects, improved walk behavior, and a squashiness parameter for the physics behaviors.
Full details on all of the new features coming to Adobe's Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, and Audition software can be found on Adobe's website.
Adobe plans to roll out these Creative Cloud updates later in 2018.
Premiere Pro, Adobe's video editing software for professionals, is gaining new Motion Graphics templates and support for infographics created by dragging and dropping spreadsheet files into the Motion Graphics interface.
New Reduce Noise and Reduce Reverb sliders have been added to the Essential Sound panel, the Lumetri color panel features Selective Color Grading tools for more precise color editing, and there's a new Timecode shortcut entry.
Other new features include support for Google VR 180, Spatial Markers for easier editing of VR content, and a Theatre Mode for working within the Adobe Immersive Environment. Performance improvements have also been included, with hardware-based encoding and decoding for H.264 and HEVC along with improved image processing.
After Effects, used by designers to create motion graphics, is gaining simplified authoring for streamlined content editing, font controls for quickly changing fonts, new selective color grading tools for Lumetri Color, and new in-app learning tools for those who are new to After Effects.
Advanced Puppet pins for the Mesh Sculpting feature let users define position, scale, and rotation for a pin, offering better control for more organic movements, while a new Javascript engine enables faster expressions and Depth Passes allows for 3D objects to be positioned in space to add dimensional elements to videos.
There's a new native Mocha plug-in for After Effects, along with end-to-end support for VR 180, H.264 and HEVC video support on macOS, and performance and GPU optimizations to improve effects like Fill, Curves, Exposure, and Noise.
Audition includes new DeReverb and DeNoise effects for removing background noise and reverb with support for real-time adjustments, a revamped multitrack feature, one-click session management, and more.
Character Animator is gaining the Characterizer, a feature first unveiled at Adobe Max. Characterizer lets users import art and then record words and facial expressions to generate a new, unique character, automatically creating a puppet in just a few seconds.
Character Animator is also getting Replays for reusing facial expressions and signature moves, Magnets for letting puppets interact with objects, improved walk behavior, and a squashiness parameter for the physics behaviors.
Full details on all of the new features coming to Adobe's Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, and Audition software can be found on Adobe's website.
Adobe plans to roll out these Creative Cloud updates later in 2018.
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Add subtle animation and bring your designs to life with the Puppet tool in After Effects. Here’s everything you need to know.
When working with image assets (especially vector designs), subtle application of the Puppet tool in After Effects can add life to your animation.
In this example, I’m animating a background design of a bird and other design elements scaling up.
The bird feel pretty lifeless, so I’m going to use the Puppet tool (the pushpin icon in the menu bar, as seen below) to give it some subtle movement. The Puppet tool lets you add “pins” in the image, then move and warp the image based on where you move the pins.
Each time you click on the image with the Puppet tool, you add a “pin” which acts as a kind of soft joint. I’m going to start by adding my initial joints, as well as adding a few joints that I won’t be keyframing, to keep certain parts of the image from moving. I’m going to place pins on the tips, middle joint, and beginning of its wings, the tips and beginning of his tail, and the middle of the head and the neck.
By default, as soon as you add a pin, it puts an initial keyframe for that pin wherever your playhead is.
From here, I’m going to move back a few frames and do my deforming. I want it to look like the bird is spreading his wings and tail as it scales up, so I’m going to deform it by bringing the tips of its wings down a little and the mid-point of its wings down and a little towards the center of its body.
I’ll take the three bottom points on the tail and move them all in a bit towards the top tail joint. Then I’ll take the head pin and drag it up just a little, so that it looks like the bird is lowering its head as it spreads its wings into a flying position.
Previewing this, it does look like its wings are stretching out, so now I’m going to move those keyframes to line up with the scale I already have on the layer.
You’ll notice it looks a little… funny. This is because the Puppet tool movement isn’t eased at all. I’m going to select all of the deform keyframes and right click, setting them to “Easy Ease.”
After that, I’ll jump into the Curve Editor and drag the influence on the end keyframes to about 50%.
This gives us a nice, eased movement.
Subtle application of the Puppet tool can make a big difference to still designs by adding a hint of life-like movement that simple transforms simply can’t. There are all sorts of places this can be applied, just remember to do small movements – they’ll translate well without looking too fake.
Got any After Effects tips/tricks/techniques you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below!