Adobe 12040118 Tutorial - Page 230

If your composition contains audio, you can sketch motion in time with the audio. Before you begin recording motion, you may want to configure settings for recording. To open the Puppet Record Options dialog box, click Record Options in the Tools panel. Speed The ratio of the speed of the recorded motion to speed of playback. If Speed is 100%, the motion is played back at the speed at which it was recorded. If Speed is greater than 100%, the motion plays back slower than it was recorded. Smoothing Set this value higher to remove more extraneous keyframes from the motion path as it's drawn. Creating fewer keyframes makes motion smoother. Use Draft Deformation The distorted outline that is shown during recording does not take Starch pins into account. This option can improve performance for a complex mesh. Note: This procedure assumes that you have already placed Deform pins in the object to animate. For information on placing Deform pins, see Manually animate an image with the Puppet tools. 1. Select one or more Deform pins. 2. Go to the time at which to begin recording motion. 3. In the Composition panel or Layer panel, hold the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) key to activate the Puppet Sketch tool. Ctrl-drag (Windows) or Command-drag (Mac OS) the pins to animate. Recording of motion begins when you click to begin the drag. Recording ends when you release the mouse button. The color of the outline for the mesh for which motion is being sketched is the same as the color of the pin (yellow). Reference outlines, for other meshes on the same layer, match the label color of the layer. The current-time indicator returns to the time at which recording began, so that you can repeat the recording operation with more Deform pins or redo the recording operation with the same pins. You can modify the motion paths of the Deform pins using the same techniques that you use to modify any other motion paths. The motion path for a pin is shown only if it is the only pin selected. Try creating several duplicate meshes and sketching motion for each mesh. When you have multiple meshes in the same instance of the Puppet effect, you can sketch motion for one mesh while seeing the reference outlines of the others, allowing you to follow their movements, either roughly or precisely. How the Puppet effect creates outlines To the top When a Puppet mesh is created, its boundaries are determined by an outline, which can be defined by any of the following types of closed paths: An unlocked mask path A shape path on a shape layer A text character's outline If a layer has no unlocked masks, shapes, or text characters on it when you apply the Puppet effect, it uses Auto-trace to create paths from the alpha channel. These paths are only used by the Puppet effect in the determination of outlines and do not appear as masks on the layer. If the layer is a raster layer with no alpha channel, the result is a single rectangular path around the bounds of the layer. For a complex image, or to configure Auto-trace settings, use Auto-trace before using the Puppet tools. (See Create a mask from channel values with Auto-trace.) A text character that consists of multiple disjoint closed paths (such as the letter i) is treated as multiple separate paths. The stroke of a shape or text character is not used in the determination of outlines; only the path is used. To encompass a stroke within a mesh created from such items, increase the Expansion value. The default value of 3 pixels for Expansion encompasses a stroke that extends 3 pixels or less from its path. Apply paint strokes to a layer using the Brush tool with the Paint On Transparent option. Painting with this option selected creates a raster layer with only the paint strokes, defined by an alpha channel. You can then use the Puppet tools to animate the paint strokes. Do not use a mask on the layer. If multiple masks, shapes, or characters overlap on the same layer, an outline is created from the union of the overlapping shapes, overlapping characters, or overlapping masks. If a mask overlaps a text character or shape, outlines are created for the entire character or shape, for the portion of the character or shape that is inside the mask, and for the mask itself. To distort multiple disjoint characters or shapes as one object, surround the individual objects with a mask (with mask mode set to None), and use the mask path as the outline with which to create the mesh. You can delete the mask after you have created the mesh. If the Puppet effect has already been applied to a layer, outlines appear with a yellow highlight as you move a Puppet tool pointer over them. You can choose the outline in which to place an initial pin to create a mesh. A mesh is created each time that you click within an outline with a Puppet tool. If the Puppet effect has not already been applied to a layer, outlines for that layer have not yet been calculated. When you click, the Puppet effect calculates outlines and determines whether you have clicked within an outline. If so, it creates a mesh defined by the outline in which you clicked. Otherwise, you can move the pointer around in the layer to select the outline in which to place a pin and create a mesh. Moving the pointer around in the layer is useful for seeing the outlines of various objects and choosing which outlines to use to create a mesh.