This tutorial walks you through how to work with the puppet tool in After Effects (AE) and how to access other features associated with it.
In our application window, we have a photoshop file of our clown imported into AE and we will animate him as part of this exercise. The puppet tool takes images or objects and adds basic two-dimensional animations to them. The puppet tool is located at the end of the tool bar and it looks like a pushpin. I'm adding pins at the shoulders, hands torso, feet and head.
First, look at your figure. Consider how it would move if it had an internal bone structure, and use that as a guide when you add your pins.
If you move your mouse over one of the points that you've added to the image, you can move pieces of the object into new positions by clicking and dragging with the puppet tool.
If you go to the parameter bar at the top of the screen where it says Mesh and you check the box that says show, a mesh will appear over the image you are working on. As points have been added to the object with the puppet pin tool, the image becomes divided and now AE can treat different elements of the image as portions of a whole. The individual triangles on the mesh can be increased or decreased in number, and that will change the sensitivity of the animation movement. The more triangles you have, the more finesse you may achieve with the animation, but you don't always need high numbers for this parameter. You also have to accept the limitations of this animation technique.
There is also an expansion value in the Mesh parameters. If you increase this value, it expands your mesh selection and it will ensure that the edges of your object will be included in the mesh. This helps you avoid leaving little pieces of the object behind when you animate. You can see the lower expansion value leaves a piece of my clown's hand behind. Expanding the mesh includes it in the animation.
Now we want to think about how we want to move our object over time. If you're familiar with keyframing, this will start to make more sense to you. If you're not that familiar with keyframing, there are other tutorials that will help explain how they work.
Once you've added points to the object with the puppet tool, AE automatically adds keyframes to those positions in the timeline. If you move 2 seconds forward in the timeline and change the position of the hands and legs of the clown, AE will automatically create the movement between the two positions.
Recording AnimationsThe animation can happen automatically if you have AE record the movement. With the puppet pin tool selected, you can do this by holding down on the command key when you move your mouse over the points on the object. A clock pops up next to your selection tool and as you move part of the object, the playhead in the timeline moves forward. When you release the mouse, you can see that AE has recorded the movement and keyframes to the timeline.
There are options for the recording that you can access in the parameter bar at the top of the composition. When you open them, you can see that you can change the speed and the smoothing values. You can use these properties to change the way AE records the animation. If you have the playhead speed set at 50% while you are recording, the movement you make with the pin tool will be faster in your final composition. If you decrease the smoothing value, the number of keyframes goes up and the animation might be more jerky. If you increase the smoothing value, the number of keyframes goes down and your animation will play smoother. There's no best practice here, it all depends on the kind of look you're going for in your final piece.
The starch tool can be used to prevent any distortion in your object as it moves. Sometimes the results are difficult to see, but if you play with the tool and compare results, you'll start to see the difference.
Use the overlap tool to indicate which part of the object you want to be on top as elements come into contact with each other.