independent arm movements

[shooterstache]

I can't see to figure out how to make my arm independently move correctly. If you check out my puppet the Left hand and arm are nor independent and I've been getting by using this stretch/distort kind of look. When I try to make the arm/hands independent (like I have with the Right hand here) nothing works. I know I have to use the staple tool which I can never seem to do correctly, I know I must be close. Does anyone know what am I doing wrong? Puppet link below.

shooter puppet.puppet - Google Drive

[oksamurai · Accepted solution]

Nice character! The issue is how your guy is organized, compared to an example like Chloe from the Start panel:

• You have hands outside of your arm groups.
• You have your sticks and draggable handles on the Body group instead of arm groups.
• R Arm group is independent, L arm copy is not a group or independent.

If you fix those you should be in good shape.

[shooterstache]

Thanks I knew if was something fairly simple but I still am having issues. I have kept the both arms set up differently on purpose.

1. On my L arm which I use the weld tool and it still pulls away from the t-shirt. I can switch it to hinge and it basically flies away when moved.

2. On the R arm I tried to make the t-shirt leave part of the actual arm group which seems to look better but as you can see when you move it there is all kinds of distortion and the sleeve actually comes detached from the shirt.

3. Also when you drag the hand over the sleeve its a really ugly distortion which I have had issues with in other puppets. Is there a way to fix this?

shooter fixed.puppet - Google Drive

Thanks for your quick responses and patience!

[oksamurai]

So the way you have the right arm is how I would go about it - but I'd add an extra bump on the end of it instead of cutting it off as a straight vertical line. Check out Chloe as an example. Then as it turns it won't pinch / look bad. A hinge attach style might work better too.

That distortion is Z-fighting - the artwork is on the same level so everything is fighting for the same position. The only way around this is to put stuff on different levels/layers of the character. So again, see Chloe - here layer order is sleeve, hands, arm - so because those are separate layers they don't conflict.

[shooterstache]

Great info thanks for the tips i love this program.