Character Rig in After Effects with Duik

[Music] what's up [Music] hello guys and welcome today I'm going to show you how you can rig a character a way to do it bringing a character with joique is super important especially if you're into character animation I'll show you how you can real character and that would be my way of doing it you can download the free Vector file and you can practice from there I recommend using free pick you have a bunch of free Vector files here that you can download one thing I would recommend is when you're just starting out with rigging and juic try to find a more simple character design don't go with something like this that's a bit more complex I would recommend you start with like a more flat character like this one or this one and actually we're going to use this one for uh for the tutorial today I'm going to add the link in the description below if you want to download this one and practice uh rigging a character with me open your character in Adobe Illustrator and our first step would be to prepare this character for rigging so we need to separate the body parts and name them properly and then we're going to import the character into After Effects we're going to be bringing this one so this option so you can delete all the other layers because you won't need them let's look at our layers I'm going to hold Ctrl and delete these two there you go yes uh great so now let's open our character what let's see what what we have here inside this group I can see the face I can see that the arms and the body are on the same layer and I can also see that the legs are on uh just like on the same layer which is not ideal for animation we'll need to separate these layers we need to have the hand on a separate layer the forearm on a separate layer the arm on a separate layer the body Etc so let's start doing that I'm going to click on the group and here from the hamburger menu click release two layers sequence now select these three bring them down here you can delete these objects so the first one uh now I'm gonna open up the the face layer the group and I'm gonna repeat the same thing I'm gonna hold these two and bring them up here I'm gonna delete this one and same here okay these are all the layers inside the face bring them up here I'm going want to delete this one and same here this is a group again I would like to separate it great awesome that's the face the ears that's the neck I believe great so now let's do the same thing with the body release two layer sequence move these here delete this one what do we have here so we have the body okay the right arm and the left arm so as I mentioned we'll need to rig these arms and we'll need to have the hands the forearm and the arm on a separate layer that won't do because uh otherwise if we import that into After Effects we will move the arm as one element and we'll need it to bend I in order to be able to rig it so I am going to repeat the same process here separating the forearm the arm and the hand and I'm going to speed this up but essentially I'm going to repeat the same process with the other body parts just one quick thing that I noticed here the sock the sock in this design needs to be parented to the calf and not the shoe so just grab this layer and move it here needs to be above here and same here so this sock needs to be inside the cuff layer here great move it down here so we have the shoe and the shoe needs to be above the cuff you can name your layers from here uh but I would I typically like to name mine in After Effects because it's easier uh there is like a a better shortcut for that so let me just um uh see if this so I'm going to name this character make sure you save us type is Adobe Illustrator not EPS PDF or the rest because otherwise you have problems later on in After Effects so great so uh here's my character now let me open a new project in After Effects when you open your project right click here import file and find your file okay here is my file import us make sure it's composition between layer sizes and click import great I'm gonna open this composition okay my first step always is to click Ctrl a select all the elements and click on this icon here my next step is always to check on the bottom left corner to see if there are any empty layers there aren't any empty layers here so that's great and the third thing I would like to do would be to change the composition size uh to let's say um 500 to 500 pixels so it's a square composition great let me move this guy here and we are going to start my next step is to click enter and rename all these layers that will be here I'm gonna click enter again that's hair side side hair side here enter side here and I'm gonna speed this up while I rename all the stairs okay I'm ready I just renamed all my layers and now it's time to start parenting these layers and organizing my After Effects file uh I'm selecting everything from like what we have here hair side here eyebrow mouth Eyes Nose all these should be parented to the Head the ears should be parented two the head and for this tutorial we won't need any of these I'm just gonna exclude the heads for now and I'm gonna click on this there so I can hide them and then click on this one uh great so the head should be parented to the neck the neck is printed to the body and I will hide the neck now let me zoom in um the hands should be parented to the forearm the forearm to the arm and the arm to the body same here hands should be parented to the forearm the forearm 2D arm and the arm to the body now the shoe uh would be parented to the cows the cow will be printed to the tie the tie would be parented to the body and same here calf Thai okay uh so the shoe needs to be planted to the calf the calf two dirt the cow to the tie uh the Thai to the body and the pelvis to the body and I'm gonna hide this one all right so now let's start rigging so if you don't have duric and stone you can download it from their website it's free when you download it you need to install it there are instructions that you can follow and then once you do that you should be able to open Windows and see your direct here at the bottom uh so when you do that you should be able to see the panel you need to click on this icon and you see the options for rigging our first step when we start to bring a character would be to change the Anchor Point and make sure they are rotating properly one thing that I'm noticing right away is that when I zoom in this is really pixelated and I can just quickly fix that by scaling this character a bit more so we can see everything better and this is a very small composition this is why it happens but it's okay first we are going to start with the hands I'm going to isolate it by clicking this little dot here I'm going to click y on my keyboard or this icon over there and I'm gonna move the anchor points I think right here so um this is I'm yet not sure if that's the that's the place where this Anchor Point should be so I'm going to isolate the forearm as well and I'm going to click r on my keyboard and I'm gonna start rotating the hands so that I can see if the Anchor Point is where it is supposed to be and right away I see that it is not because do you see that there is like a little Gap here when I rotate um the the hand so I can do two things I can either move the Anchor Point somewhere around here or I can create an extra element for now I will uh try it with the Anchor Point yeah well uh it needs to be adjusted a bit more um there is another trick that I can tell you in a in a in a minute but I think this one is fine okay I'm gonna click on the forearm and again I'm gonna move the Anchor Point I think somewhere around here okay here's a trick that I mentioned if you're not sure where your Anchor Point should be uh you can draw a simple Circle so like this let me show you let me remove the stroke The Fill can be yes like this make sure the Anchor Point of your circle is at the center if you don't have the Anchor Point over um you can do that with the same Tool uh but for now yeah I'm gonna uh yeah do it like that if you don't know where your Anchor Point should be you can just simply create a circle like mine you can change the color you can make sure the Anchor Point of the circle is at the center and then you can parent the forearm to the circle the circle to the arm and when you rotate it this is where your Anchor Point should be let me move this up here uh and the just isolate the arm again and yeah as you can see this is right where it is supposed to be the other way would be to just move the Anchor Point of the forearm let me isolate the arm and see okay yeah this is not where it is supposed to be so it should be maybe somewhere down here okay I think this is better maybe a bit down like here okay it needs to be up again there okay great amazing and same here um again you can use the same hack that I mentioned but uh for now I'm going to uh they said I think somewhere around here I'm gonna un isolate everything and see how this moves okay I think this is good this is very important we need to select the hand the forearm and the arm that should be the order if you do it the other way around uh you mess with your array so uh hence forearm arm and then click auto wreck and I okay and as you can see what we have here okay so our arm is rigged there are a few things here first of all do you see how these elements get separated when I move the handle a bit more I can untick the auto stretch from here uh also I can just click this one and make sure it's not reversal this is how it bends and then from here I am going to hide all these layers that I already rigged so now I'm going to basically repeat the same process with the other arm remember first change your Anchor Point next click are on your keyboard start rotating it to see how it works with the other part of the body that this is parented to and then we will need to erect let's speed this up I'm moving the anchor points all my anchor points are working they're rotating properly so again hands forearm arm and outer rake Let's test this okay this is beautiful great just remember to uncheck the stretch here again hiding these two and I am going to show you how you can break the legs basically the same exact thing I am moving the Anchor Point of the shoe okay uh this is a bit extreme but otherwise it works great now the cow moving the Anchor Point here and the tie I need to move it down a bit more okay I think this is good and again select the shoe the cow the tie and click Auto rig okay amazing it bends the other way around so just click reverse here and boom we have it okay great so uh this is the process of rigging we do it uh I I won't rig this other leg because it's basically the same exact process that you can follow I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial if so make sure you like comment and share it let me know if you have any questions in the comments below and thank you so much for your time

Channel: Kashu Academy

Views: 21,781

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Id: 2txpN_SOBtQ

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023