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Working with layers

A puppet has many layers to control specific body parts. These layers are often grouped. You can select layers to modify their properties, rearrange and reposition layers, and hide or show layers. Read on to know more about working with layers.

Puppet layers

A puppet has layers, some of which are groups. The layers that have twirl-down arrows are referred as groups. You can select layers to modify their properties, assemble a puppet from parts in the Project panel (including parts from multiple puppets or artwork files), rearrange and reposition layers, and hide or show layers.

At any time, you can switch to Photoshop or Illustrator to make artwork changes or use tagging in Character Animator to control behavior.

The layer list in the left sidebar of the Puppet panel indicates the following:

  • The number of behaviors applied to and number of handles in a puppet layer’s source puppet.

These details can help you determine where behaviors and handles exist in a puppet hierarchy, and the letters available to press to trigger various actions (showing or hiding layers, cycling layers, and so on).

Puppet layer information displayed on the left panel

Organize layers

Modify layer properties

To change the properties of a layer (such as position, scale, and rotation): 

  1. Select the layer in the left sidebar.

  2. In the Properties panel, adjust the following layer-specific properties:

    • X and Y (for position), X Scale and Y Scale (for size), Opacity, and Rotate (for rotation) of the layer relative to its original transform. You can also reposition a selected layer by dragging inside the gray highlighted area.
    • Warp Independently controls whether a layer warps on the same rubber sheet as other layers in the puppet.
    • Attach To controls the handle to stay attached to (for example, if you have a hand group that wants to move with an arm).
    • Trigger section: Specifies the trigger key to use to show the layer or start a cycle of layers. For more information, see the Editing keyboard triggers section.
  3. To modify a warp mesh associated with the layer, adjust the following Layer Mesh properties:

    • Mesh Shape controls the form of the source puppet’s warp mesh. Rectangle uses the content’s rectangular bounding box, Contour follows the outline of the content, and Auto (the default) automatically uses Contour for most cases or Rectangle if disconnected content is detected.
    • Mesh Expansion specifies the number of pixels to extend the mesh from the layer’s boundary (contoured or rectangular). Higher expansion values can reduce the possibility of curved edges appear cut, but can cause regions that warp separately (for example, a character’s legs) to warp together.
  4. If a puppet layer is selected, adjust the applied behaviors for the source (primary) puppet in the Behaviors section. You can add or remove behaviors or adjust the behavior parameter values like you would if the puppet item in the Project panel was selected. For more information, see Control puppets using behavior.

    Note:

    Because you are changing the source, all instances of that puppet in the scene and other puppets are affected.

  5. If a layer is selected, enable the Render As Vector option if you want to use a more accurate representation of the artwork.

    Note:

    Because you are changing the source item, all instances of that layer in other puppets are affected.

Layer blending modes

Blending modes control how layers interact with the layers beneath them. Character Animator provides a set of blending modes, which you can apply to any layer or group in a puppet. You can set the opacity and experiment with the various blending modes to achieve different results.

To adjust the blending modes, follow these steps:

  1. Select the layer or group in the Puppet panel.
  2. In the Properties panel, select the Layer section and adjust the Opacity and the Blending Mode.

 

Rasterization control for vector artwork

Puppets based on vector formats such as Illustrator or SVG artwork are rasterized by default at 200% resolution, but you can adjust the rasterization scaling or render the artwork as vectors. However, some features are not currently supported when rendering as vectors.

To control how vector-based puppets are rendered:

  1. Select the puppet in the Project panel or open the puppet in the Puppet panel.
  2. In the Puppet section of the Properties panel, select the Render as Vector option to keep the artwork as smooth as possible (but with rendering limitations) or deselect the option to rasterize the artwork at a specific resolution but with full fidelity.

To adjust rasterization control for a vector-based puppet:

  1. In the Puppet section of the Properties panel, uncheck the Render as Vector option to rasterize the artwork.
  2. Adjust the Resolution to control the maximum quality of the vector artwork when it is rasterized.

The default is 200%, but you can increase it to 400% to scale it up for better quality but requiring more memory, or reduce it to a draft (50%) or low (100%) resolution if scaling down and wanting to preserve memory usage.

Note: Scenes sent via Dynamic Link to After Effects, Premiere Pro, or Adobe Media Encoder are rasterized, so if you wanted to scale up the footage in those other applications, it’s still recommended to use a larger scene size in Character Animator instead to retain as much detail.

The image on the left shows a low quality resolution (draft 50%) and the image on the right is set to high (400%).

Add content to a puppet

Drag the content you wish to add from the Project panel onto the puppet open in the Puppet panel. If no puppet is open, the dropped items are added to a new puppet. If dropped on the left sidebar, you can control where in the hierarchy they are added; when dropped on the right side of the panel, they are always added at the top level of the puppet. The dropped items become layers, and are selected. Unlike puppet layers, layers are the “flattened” representation of its content.

Note:

When a puppet is added as a layer, you can twirl the layer open to reveal the layers inside that added puppet, and modify that puppet’s layers within the context of the current puppet. Be careful when doing this as you are modifying the modifying the source (primary definition) of that added puppet.

Reuse a group

  1. Context (right)-click the group in the layers list (left side) of the Puppet panel, then choose Make Sharable. The source group item for the layer appears and is selected in the Project panel. The menu command is disabled if the source item is already visible in the Puppet panel.
  2. Open a different puppet in the Puppet panel.
Note:

If the target puppet was created by importing Photoshop or Illustrator artwork, you can turn off the “Auto-sync with Artwork” option (in the Properties panel) for the puppet to avoid losing layer modifications done in the Puppet panel due to structural content changes in the artwork. Or, create a New Empty Puppet and open it instead.

3. Drag the revealed source item into the Puppet panel.

Using clipping masks to mask layers

A clipping mask lets you use the content of a layer to mask the layers above it. The masking is determined by the content of the bottom or base layer. The non-transparent content of the base layer clips (reveals) the content of the layers above it in the clipping mask. All other content in the clipped layers is masked out.

You can use multiple layers in a clipping mask, but they must be successive layers. The name of the base layer in the mask is underlined, and the names for the overlying layers are indented. The overlying layers display a clipping mask icon.

To create a clipping mask, follow these steps:

In the Puppet panel, arrange the layers in a way that the layer with the mask is placed below the layers you want to mask.

Select the layers you want to mask and choose Puppet > Create Clipping Mask (Command+Option+G (mac) or Ctrl+Alt+G (Windows). Multiple selected layers can be masked if they are adjacent in the layers list and don’t include the last layer in a group.

Note:

If a layer is inserted between layers in a clipping mask, it becomes the base layer for the layers above it and is not clipped.

The name of the base layer in the mask is underlined in the Puppet panel and the names of the overlying layers are indented. The overlying layers also display a clipping mask icon.

Masking layers using clipping mask
Masking layers using clipping mask

Release layers in a clipping mask

To release clipping masks from layers, follow these steps:

Select all the successive clipping mask layers (with  icons) which are above the base layer.

Choose Puppet > Release clipping Mask (Command+Option+G (MAC) or Ctrl+Alt+G (Windows).

Note:

The clipping masks you create in Photoshop artwork and import to Character Animator is converted into clipping masks in the puppet panel. The ones created using Illustrator artwork (<Clip Group>) is not converted into clipping masks in the puppet panel. But, you can create clipping masks from Illustrator sourced layers in the Puppet panel.

Layer picker behavior

You can trigger a specific layer in a puppet or group using the Layer Picker behavior.  For information about this behavior, see Layer Picker: Choose a layer to show or trigger.

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