All My Character arms do not bend properly

[ubanim95860298]

I created a character in Illustrator alongside the default puppets provided. Everything looks good but while the default puppets arms bends in spaghetti like along X,Y- clockwise, my puppets arm bends in a Z direction (3D) or comes forward-ish meaning they can never wave. When I add the stick tool to make it bend better, it acts as if its pinned with only skin being pulled/warped.I even took the arms from the default character and put them on mine, but they react the same warpish way. Please see screenshots. HELP!!

[kglad]

[moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to Illustrator]

[Kurt Gold]

Does that really belong to the Illustrator forum? Default puppets? Never noticed them …

I think it should be moved to the Character Animator forum.

[kglad]

he said, "I created a character in Illustrator..."

if you think that's incorrect, or i misunderstood, feel free to move it again.

[Kurt Gold]

Yes, I've read the first sentence as well, but if you take a look at the entire distress it is pretty obvious that the issue most likely cannot be solved in Illustrator.

I would move it to the Character Animator forum if I had the privilege to move it. But I don't have it.

[kglad]

[moved from Illustrator to Character Animator]

[ubanim95860298]

Eureka!!! It was a simple matter of adding "+" to the main layer(puppet name) that holds the Head and body layers. Took me a whole weekend tracing my steps to see where I erred.

[oksamurai]

Glad you figured it out. This is an old existing issue that makes puppets add weird if that initial "+Character" folder isn't present. We hope to fix this in a future update so you won't have to do this again!

[El Wombat]

Does that mean that you will get rid of the "plusses" and, "crowns", respectively?

Please don't turn too many things upside down, it would be confusing. It's a lot of stuff to binge-learn, and it's inevitable that these kinds of issues come up when you do. Happened and happens a lot to me…

[oksamurai]

No, we're just talking about removing the need to add a + to that first folder.

[El Wombat]

Hmmm, to me this seems already confusing. For instance, when I have a "scene puppet" (like the example puppets are made) then I have subpuppets and maybe layer groups that are simply "scenery", then I would like to distinguish those from the subpuppets with those plusses.

But you are talking only about the top-top-layer probably? I guess if I would still use the plus for whatever reason I could do that.

[El Wombat]

Hi guys,

I have two questions concerning the arms, having re-read this thread I think they might fit here…

1.) How can I make the (independent) arms in a front view move nicely together with the rest of the body when I move my (and the puppets) head, tilting from right to left?

Right now, I have "hinge" and contour "auto" selected, but I have tried several settings without real success…

2.) Why do the arms warp so heavily when I do said motion when "Weld" is activated for those arm layers?

Bottom line: Hinge seems to stiffen them unnaturally, Weld seems to convert them into jellyfish arms…

"Free" doesn't work with x90…

Note: I remember that in some tutorial or help doc changing the mesh type for the whole puppet did the trick, the example puppet was bunny dude. That have s.th. to do?

Thank you…

[El Wombat]

P.S.: Yes, the arms have "bones".

[oksamurai]

Hard to say for sure without seeing what exactly is happening, but:

• Contour mesh shape works for whatever you select and its interior groups. Sometimes I've found it helpful to dig in more and manually change more stuff to contour instead of auto if I notice rectangular-style warping.
• Ideally, stapling independent arms to the body should help them move along with the body as you'd expect. If they're moving differently, changing the arm's origin/staple location might help, as will changing the origin of the head, body, or whole puppet. If the head movements are pulling the arms too much, you could attempt adding more fixed handles/tags/sticks to keep things pinned down more. But in general the head is going to move the body if they're both non-independent, and that especially affects the shoulders / upper torso area.
• Weld is like blowtorching one part to the other, merging them together at the attach point - which tends to lead to some non-compromising situations where the origin doesn't want to budge and the rest of the mesh is forced to bend accordingly. Depending on the character, different starting positions might work better than others - we recommend the "A" position for arms but maybe a "T" pose or other variations might work better for others, depending on the style.

[El Wombat]

That helps digging more deeply into the matter, thank you!

[El Wombat]

I don't know how and why, exactly, but thanks to your input things are getting better.

A comment: I have the impression that the whole topic "attach to:" and what it does and when and how could be more illustrated. After so much time working with Ch it seems what puzzles me most. This is especially true for "Walk" rigging. The difference between an "ok" walking character and a completely wasted one is sometimes a few little clicks, sometimes moving a handle button a few scraps to the left, sometimes changing a handle tag to fixed, etc., you know all of this better than I. So, I believe that for people are doing first steps in Ch it can get frustrating.

____

S.th. a little different:

What about a "trouble-shoot" document? Maybe there is one already?

Could look like this:

- The eyes are warping around.

--> Try adding a "blink" layer to the eyes like here: (…)

--> (alternate troubleshoot opts.)

- The legs are moving all over the place

--> Try changing the attach style from free to hinge in the leg's layer props. …

--> (alt.)

Etc. pp.

This would be a great place also to document the changes that have been going on. I came aboard with beta 4 only, and look at all the changes that have come since then, starting with the "set origin point in photoshop" thing…

This would also cover a big part of the forum enquiries from what I am reading over the many months in this forum so it could make life easier for you guys, as well, maybe. 

[oksamurai]

Agreed. I've started to do some of this with the Video FAQ: FAQ: What are some video examples of common issues?

But we could do a better job for sure. Great suggestion - I'll work on it for the future.