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Hair layer behind body is moving and distorting with the body, not the head

Explorer ,
Dec 11, 2017 Dec 11, 2017

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With the removal of the staple system in Character Animator, I can't get the back long hair layer to move and attach with the head, and definitely can't add dangle physics to it. Currently, it moves with the body no matter which way I rig it, and dangle either doesn't work or adds the body to the dangle. Attached are pictures showing what's happening. Opening up previous puppet files that used the old staple system still works, but I can't replicate it with a new puppet in Character Animator CC.

Set up 1: You can see that the back hair layer doesn't move completely with the head, and when I try to attach a dangle to the hair layer here, the body becomes distorted.

Back_Hair_Layer_01.jpg

Set up 2: Changing the hair layer to independent

Back_Hair_Layer_02_Rig.jpg

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

Sorry for the delay in my reply Jen. Glad to see others posting solutions to your problem in the meantime.

> It seems like Auto is setting the hair layers to Body instead of Head.

Indeed that's what happening. This is why: the Auto attach mode for a group means "attach this group's origin to an auto-staple in the parent group -- but only if the parent group has some solid mesh to attach to there, otherwise attach to the parent's origin". That's what the dotted green line is trying to tell you.

So,

...

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Adobe Employee ,
Dec 12, 2017 Dec 12, 2017

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Change Attach To in the properties panel to Auto — that should fix the problem (you may need to do this for multiple groups). Stapling is gone now because Auto takes care of it automatically. But only when it defaults on as it's supposed to! Because of a bug in v1.1, newly added groups defaulted it off. That is now fixed in v1.1.1 which was released last night. We highly recommend updating to v1.1.1 for everyone. It has squashed this bug and many others.

Note that updating to v1.1.1 won't fix this problem for existing puppets, so you'll still need to manually set those to Auto. But it will prevent newly added groups from falling prey to this issue.

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Explorer ,
Dec 15, 2017 Dec 15, 2017

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Hi Dave,

Unfortunately changing all the layers to Auto didn't fix the issue. I also upgraded to v1.1.1 and the same issue is happening. Any ideas on what else it could be?

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Contributor ,
Dec 15, 2017 Dec 15, 2017

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I created 1/8  and 1/4 head turns in each direction, and moved my character's hair (pony tail in my case) to the right position in each.

That solved it for me.

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Adobe Employee ,
Dec 15, 2017 Dec 15, 2017

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One more idea: after setting the groups to Attach To = Auto, make sure the origin of each group is placed where it's on top of the mesh of it's parent. If so, it will have a green circle around it. If there's a green dotted line to another handle, it's not in the right place.

If that doesn't help, you can send me the puppet file (File > Export > Puppet...) and I'll take a look.

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Explorer ,
Feb 07, 2018 Feb 07, 2018

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Hey Dave,

Sorry for the long delay, but finally got back around to this. I still haven't been able to figure this out. I had a previous character that was built in the old character animator build where individual staples were being used and dangle worked perfectly. As a test, I imported that same PSD file and tried to rig it from scratch again within the new build with Auto attachments (sans staples), and same issues are happening. It seems like Auto is setting the hair layers to Body instead of Head.

Here's the puppet with staples that worked: Dropbox - Mia_Staples.puppet

Here's the puppet with current issues without manual Staples: Dropbox - Mia_AUTO.puppet

Thanks!!

Jen

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 08, 2018 Feb 08, 2018

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Hey Jen,

I  added a "Head" tag to the Character "Mia" and that seamed to do the trick. Screen Shot 2018-02-08 at 5.09.33 PM.png

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Explorer ,
Feb 08, 2018 Feb 08, 2018

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Didn't work for me, the distortion is still completely wrong. Attached is a pic of what happens. The back hair layers moved with the head perfectly for you? Based on the pic you sent, the head circle should tag shouldn't have the green dotted line that way, it should just be a dotted circle around the tag?

Screen Shot 2018-02-08 at 5.17.46 PM.png

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Contributor ,
Feb 08, 2018 Feb 08, 2018

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Hey .... you probably have artifacts from copying/pasting, cutting out parts, etc.  Try to find any stray pixels on all layers individually, and zap them away.
I'll bet the Eyes folders are not quite right too ... and the Eyeball might not be tagged.
You'll have to rebuild the layer structure of this one too.  I can help you to do it, but not until Monday of next week.

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Contributor ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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Linda PSD Structure.JPG

I did this one last night, and it works perfectly.  Notice my "Back Hair" layer at the bottom of the entire stack.  Let me know if you need to see more of the file structure.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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I forgot a step. I selected the Layer went to the properties selected Layer / Attach to and changed from "auto" to "mia"

This is the puppet that I was playing with

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f4zxsnn0y7c9vbk/AADnrdnoCXm4uEnoW_HrukgKa?dl=0

I am guessing it's not the 100% perfect solution because the hair won't stay attached when you drag the head around but on my end the hair does appear to be attache when she moves from side to side.

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Contributor ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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Did you add a Dragger to the Head?

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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I don't remember if I did or not. I tried a lot of things to try and get it to work. I'd have to download the original puppet again to see the difference but I just don't have the time now to look again.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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There was another thread somewhere recently talking about background hair, but I could only get it to work when the head was not independent. Independent hair groups at the bottom (so they appear behind the body) could not be attached to an earlier head independent group because the hair was not a child of the hair group. If the head was not independent it was fine (just attach the hair to the root character which includes the head.

I guess I would really like "auto" to allow me to attach the independent group to any other group (not just ancestors) - or ancestors plus groups tagged with a new "global" tag to keep the drop down list under control (I would manually add "global" to the head group origin tag). Then the rear hair independent group could be attached to the head independent group, even though its not an ancestor.

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Contributor ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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The "HEAD" group(folder) should NOT be independent.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 09, 2018 Feb 09, 2018

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I abbreviated sorry - in my puppet I don't have different head turns (yet). In the provided Mia download, Head is not independent, but each "Frontal", "Left Quarter" is.  In my puppet I was playing with, Head is independent. for Mia its Frontal etc that are independent.

I started thinking more about how rear hair should be attached when there are different head turns. I don't think my previous idea will work. Head turns messes it up I think.

But I got something working!

I remembered another approach on the forums. First, I got Mia going with the rear hair inside the head group, made sure everything was working and dangling correctly. The only problem left is the rear hair appears in front of the body.

Then I duplicated the root "Mia" group (CTRL-D) so I had "Mia" and "Mia 2". I moved "Mia 2" below "Mia", so it appears behind "Mia". I then hid the two rear hair groups in Mia. I also hid the "Body" group in "Mia 2". (Probably could hide more to save some CPU during rendering.)

All the head movement etc goes to both copies of Mia and they seem to behave the same. But you are seeing the rear hair of Mia 2 behind everything else of "Mia". You probably need to be very careful if you change any gravity/springiness settings etc to keep the two copies in sync.

(Maybe this is what that other thread was saying all along, but I did not get before.)

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Adobe Employee ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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Sorry for the delay in my reply Jen. Glad to see others posting solutions to your problem in the meantime.

> It seems like Auto is setting the hair layers to Body instead of Head.

Indeed that's what happening. This is why: the Auto attach mode for a group means "attach this group's origin to an auto-staple in the parent group -- but only if the parent group has some solid mesh to attach to there, otherwise attach to the parent's origin". That's what the dotted green line is trying to tell you.

So, to fix it, you can still create what the old manual stapling process created:

1. select the Mia group

2. add a handle to the top center of her head

3. hit Return to rename it to "scalp" (so you can find it in the attach menu)

4. select both the Right Hair and Left Hair groups (click & cmd/ctrl-click)

5. set the Properties panel > Layer > Attach To = scalp

Now those back groups will move with the scalp handle -- which, since Mia and the Head group share the same mesh (since Head doesn't have a crown) moves with them too.

Frankly, I was surprised this worked so well, because having a handle in Mia that's placed off of the mesh like that usually leads to problems (which are fixed by adding an invisible eyeball-off "neck" or whatever to create enough mesh so that the handle is embedded in it). That's why Auto doesn't do this for you automatically. But this gives me hope that we can make it always do this, which would mean less rigging work for you!

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LEGEND ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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Is there anything clever like this if Head is an independent group (has a crown)?  It did not work on my puppet when I tried that.

But it does seem to work on Mia.  Is the idea that Head should not be independent, but instead make the children (e.g. "Right Quartile" for different head turns) independent? (This is what Mia has)

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Explorer ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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In case you didn't see my post, I noticed that it worked best when none of the Head groups were independent. See if that does the trick for you.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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Thanks. In my case, I want independence. I want to tilt the head without warping the neck. Duplicating the puppet (Mia & Mia2) seems to achieve this, but I am trying to do a final cut of a cartoon so won't touch my puppets until the next episode. Got to get some real work done too! 😉

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Adobe Employee ,
Feb 15, 2018 Feb 15, 2018

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> Is there anything clever like this if Head is an independent group (has a crown)?  It did not work on my puppet when I tried that.

Maybe. But the answer will probably be specific to your hierarchy. Can you post your puppet (or one with an equivalent structure) so we can take a look?

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LEGEND ,
Feb 16, 2018 Feb 16, 2018

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You can do it with Mia, but I created some "Things" to illustrate with nice easy color coding.

Thing0 is the naive attempt. Notice the red "rear" hair is in front of the body. But everything moves and attaches as you expect. The head is "+Head" so independent (I set the head positioning strength to zero to avoid confusion).  This does everything wanted, except the rear hair is in front of the body.

Thing1 moves the rear hair group to after the Body group. But I cannot work out how to attach the rear hair to the head so it follows the head movements nicely. If Head is not an independent group, then it works, but the head and body don't hinge in the same way (the body distorts with head movements). You can add lots of bones and pins to try and top the body moving, but then the chin does not move smoothly. Basically, I want independence of head movement from the body.

Thing2 is my attempt at adding head turns to Thing1. I probably really want different rear hair groups to match the different head turns. But I don't know how to get the rear hair behind the body but attached to the +Frontal and +Left Profile heads. If you get Thing1 working, I would love to see Thing2 working as well!

Thing3 is my attempt that works. It duplicates the artwork internally into "+Thing3a" and "+Thing3b" top level layers. The rear hair group is inside the Head (inside +Frontal to be precise, so should work with head turns as well), so it attaches correctly and dangles correctly with head movements. The trick is for Thing3a I hide the rear hair group, and in Thing3b I hide everything EXCEPT the rear hair group.  I made Thing3b's rear hair yellow for extra clarity.  So you can get it to work, but it involves duplicating the artwork, dangles, behaviors etc. This is painful to maintain, but it does work.

So the challenge is how to get the simplicity of Thing0 (plus head turns) but with the rear hair behind the body.  The answer may be to edit Thing3 to strip it back so Thing3a and Thing3b don't have much duplication (remove the rear hair group from Thing3a completely, remove everything exception the rear hair group from Thing3b completely, etc). That would minimize duplication at least (but you would still need to duplicate the head turner and any other settings that affects the head position).

That is why I was thinking it would be good to have the rear hair group positioned in the layer tree after Body (so it appears behind Body), but be able to attach the "+Pony Tail" independent group to "+Frontal" (a non-ancestor) so it moves with the head. You cannot do that today as you can only attach to strict ancestors.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 16, 2018 Feb 16, 2018

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americanjesus​ over in ​Confusion over UI system  had an interesting idea, if I understand it correctly. I think the suggestion is to use Head not warp independent then put +Frontal under that. Then put a neck and ball directly in Head. (I had started on this in one of the puppets, but did not get it quite right.) You then put +Frontal in front of Head to hide the neck and ball. You leave the "Head" tag on the "Head" group, and add the "Head" tag to the "+Frontal" group so both get head movement data. Character animator then distorts the neck and ball, but you don't see it because it is obscured by +Frontal.

This works reasonably well. If you put the ball too high and move your head suddenly, it can be visible at times at the top of the head due to head distortions. But it you keep the ball just high enough to attach things too (+Frontal and +Pony Tail), then you probably will never see it. Oh, unless you set the head position strength to like 200% so the head goes right away from the body. Then the neck becomes visible as a "string" between the body and head.

I tried to make the neck-and-ball transparent, but discovered 10% opacity and less disappears from the mesh outline. 20% and higher is visible. So I tried a very thin rectangle (a line did not work) and that minimizes what you can see.

Another minor gotcha is it does distort the chest unless you put sticks in place to limit the effect of the neck on the body.

Here is Thing4 using this approach. It works pretty well. I will try on my next real life puppet. My puppets don't have much head position strength, so this might work good enough for me and keeps things pretty simple.

Thing4.puppet - Google Drive

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LEGEND ,
Feb 16, 2018 Feb 16, 2018

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Well, I had a quick experiment on a copy of an existing real puppet. I cannot get it quite right using the above approach. (In the production version of the puppet I currently warp the neck to get it to work.)

The frontal with head straight up and down is fine. But as soon as I tilt the head, I have all sorts of problems keeping the rear hair aligned correctly. Getting the warped hidden neck and the independent Frontal group in front to stay aligned is proving hard with all the twisting, face zoom etc is hard.

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Contributor ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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This method worked very well for me too. With this method, I'm still struggling to get my hair Dangle to work well, but will continue to experiment.

Thanks!

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