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Scene_2.mp4 - Google Drive I've switched from the AE I was using at the beginning of this clip to the CA I used at the end....much prefer the CA!! Now I need to bring 'Lizzy' back in and her wings need to flutter, any ideas how I might best achieve that in CA before I get in there and start noodeling around?
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Yes - do a cycle layers sequence. Keyboard Triggers & Cycle Layers (Adobe Character Animator Tutorial) - YouTube
Make a group with slight variations for each layer inside and then add the cycle layers behavior to it in CH. You could probably get away with just a super fast 2-frame in/out animation.
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I can't figure out why she's disappearing in 'record' mode....I see a wire frame....LizzieCA.puppet - Google Drive
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You have cycle layers added at the top of the character - instead, you want it on the group you want to animate. Watch the video or check out any example puppet with cycle layers and see where they put the behaviors - it's on the groups themselves. In this case, you'd want 2 - one for each wing group (right and left).
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I DID watch the video I always watch the video! I'll find an example to copy.
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How are they "at the top'?
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OK I'm completely stuck .And I can't figure out what "You have cycle layers added at the top of the character"means!
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I thought I did put them on the wings! I had them selected, I don't get what I'm doing wrong...thanks for all this work, I'm going to try to figure this out...
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If you still have trouble and can't get it working within the next day, @ me again and I'll do a real-time screencast of me fixing the puppet from your Google Drive upload. It only takes a minute or two, it's a super easy fix. I did save a fixed version of your puppet just in case but I'd rather see you fix the problem yourself instead of me just handing you the solution--it's best to be told what was wrong, what needs to be changed, and become the solution yourself (as the best way to learn!)
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That's very kind!! No doubt I'll be needing help again soon!
What if I want to speed up the wings or slow them down? How is that achieved?
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No problem! Glad to hear you have it working.
Also, just a thought--if the wings will always be in sync and will always mirror one another, then I don't see any real reason to have them in separate layers like Right and Left. So if you have more problems with syncing in the future, one solution would be if you kept them on the same layer and just cycle through a dual Wings Group.
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So the fastest it can possibly go is one frame?
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It went out of sync again, so I tried putting them in one group, and added another cycle when that didn't work, still out of sync!! LizzieCA.puppet - Google Drive
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Thanks PortablePawnShop​ for the help!
Yes, the fastest it goes is one frame, but that is dependent on your scene framerate too.
Tom is right - the issue is having a left wing and right wing group. You should remove that and make one group called "Wings" and in Photoshop merge each together so both wings show up in each layer. That way you can ensure they will stay in sync because they'll both be showing the correct artwork on the same frame.
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I did that! It didn't work
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If you do it this way, it should be impossible to have any syncing problems no matter how hard you'd try, accidentally or not.
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Nailed it!! Pawn Shop, Thank you SO much for really spelling it out for me, it's super helpful and quite frankly the only way I ever seem to understand anything! Here's the cartoon you helped me with Lair of the Lizard Queen Sizzle Reel - YouTube "Lair of the Lizard Queen" The Best of Quinton Flynn - YouTube Scene_2.mp4 - Google Drive
Dave I LOVE the way the cycles were used on the skeleton character for talking in your latest YouTube! Now I can start experimenting with it. I like how my characters look and perform in CA better than AE and Animate (which i learned a little bit in school but it mostly just confused me.) :}
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Is this the fastest her wings can flap? I have 6 cycles of wings going, thinking that might speed it up? https://photos.google.com/search/_tra_/photo/AF1QipPtcieg5Rs4xDZ0wnCRtkzZSXAg4KibAqOS3TNz
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Nice cartoon! I get a 404 error from your latest link though, unfortunately. So for speed, there are a few possible solutions. The more frames you have in an animation, the slower that animation will be, but the higher your framerate is, the faster all frames will wizz by. Take the example below:
Notice how smooth the 60 FPS (frames per second) animations are compared to 30. This is because it has twice the framerate, which means each frame in the 30 FPS example lasts twice as long as a single frame for 60 FPS.
If you were to set your puppet to a higher framerate, the wings at one frame cycles would automatically become faster because the frames will be quicker. 30 frames is 1/30th of a second per frame, 60 frames is 1/60th of a second per frame. You'll need to plan things out a bit if you intend on bringing this back to AE and putting it into one of your videos (because we should be working with both programs in the same framerate).
There are also animation techniques specifically for speed. I'd recommend looking at page 96 of the Animator's Survival Kit (here's a free pdf version, it's a must-read for any one interested in animation) where it demonstrates the 'Elongated Inbetween' method, which is essentially a one or two frame blur between two extreme poses. It looks like it wouldn't work on still paper until you try it in animation, you'd be surprised at how well it works. That's one possible technique to use for these wings but you also need to consider that, in order to make it faster, you need to shorten the cycle. You'll have to find a point to sacrifice in having inbetweens (assuming you have 6 inbetweens and two extremes, that makes an entire wing flap take 8 frames), frames total, and frames per second (which you change in the Scene before clicking on your puppet).
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How are you loading animations on to these replies??
Thank you so much!! I'll have to do some experimenting tonite, and look at that e-book!
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Definitely look at the e-book, it has almost everything you'd ever need to know about animation.
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Wow it works!!!
Thanks again, I appreciate all the time, knowledge and effort you offered up!!
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I've started studying the e-book and it said to turn my radio off!!! No more Howard Stern as I work?? I'm doing it, as it clearly states it makes a huge difference!
The frame rate thing works perfectly, begging the question, what if I wanted the wings to beat slowly at the beginning of a scene, and more quickly at the end? Is there any way to key-frame that?
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Yes. The best way to do this currently would probably be to have several duplicates of the groups, and have them each with different cycle layers "advance every" frame settings and triggered by different keys. Even the difference between 1, 2, and 3 is huge in animation. So I'd do something like 1 for slow, 2 for medium, and 3 for fast.
This will be even easier in the next release, which will let you drag the "advance every" into control panel layout mode and connect it to a slider you can manually adjust.