Character Rigging in Adobe Animate and After Effects | Tutorial

hello there thank you so much for stopping by my name is chit chad and on this video we're going to talk about how to rig for 2d animation [Music] now when i say 2d animation the first thing that might come to your mind is something that was more traditionally animated like the original disney animated movies or maybe even the original looney tunes which followed a traditional frame by frame pose to pose style animation but there is another method to animating and that is using tween-based animation to talk about this concept i think we need to get a little animated ourselves tween-based animation is often associated with the movement of an object through digital means which is how i'm being animated right now this is where you create the keyframes and the computer interprets the in-between movement before with hand-drawn animation you would have to draw all the in-between movement whereas now the computer can do the work for you now there are many different ways to go about setting up an object or a character this can depend on aesthetic choices what that object or character needs to do and even what program you're working in but one thing that can be considered constant is that there are dependencies and hierarchies in the way that we move which leads us to the topic of this video rigging in animation there are two main ways you can go about simulating these hierarchies and that is with either forward kinematics or inverse kinematics or fk and ik for short let's start with forward kinematics now if i were to move my upper arm my forearm and hand are going to move along with it if i move my forearm my hand is going to move along with it this also provides a natural arc to the movement which is one of the core principles of animation now with inverse kinematics the hierarchy is reversed if i move my hand the forearm and upper arm are gonna follow with it you'll often see this method used in 3d animation for things like walk cycles or if a character is interacting with an object say for example this block as you can see in this example you would want the object affecting the rest of the chain as it's the driving force of the animation the block is forcing the arm to move backwards and forwards thus affecting the rest of the links in the chain now these hierarchies can be simulated inside of animation programs like adobe animate and adobe after effects either utilizing the built-in tech or by downloading third-party plug-ins for the sake of this tutorial we are not going to be using any plug-ins just what comes out of the box when you open up adobe animate or adobe after effects and also because of that we are going to be focusing on forward kinematics for the most part however i will touch on how to do inverse kinematics inside of adobe animate towards the end of this video so be sure to stay around for that now with all that said let's launch adobe animate and adobe after effects and get started step 1 separating your character or object into pieces now when deciding on rigging an object or a character we need to consider any and all parts that we want to have move each of those parts will need to be isolated from the rest in after effects this is as easy as having all the parts placed on their own layers however in adobe animate you'll not only need to place each object on its own layer but you'll also have to nest each of these objects into their own graphic or movie clip you can do this by right-clicking on the highlighted object and selecting convert to symbol be sure to give each of your symbols appropriate names this not only helps you find things in the library but will also come in handy when we distribute these to your layers each part needs to be crafted individually before we can assemble it all together for movement if you're working with a full character the face is often where you're going to be spending the most amount of your time because you have to account for the eyes the mouth the hair and any other distinguishing features you want to have moved so definitely take your time a quick and easy way to disperse all of these pieces into their own layers is by selecting all of your objects right-clicking and selecting distribute to layers you will now see that all of your symbols have been placed on their own layer and have been given the name of the symbol if you notice anything out of order you can easily drag these layers to the correct spot once you have all your moving parts separated out into their own separate layers we can move on to the next step step two adjusting the point of rotation aka the anchor point in both adobe animate and adobe after effects points of rotation aka the anchor points are the driving force behind how a character moves in adobe animate changing the point of rotation is super simple make sure to have your free transform tool selected then select your object you should see a white dot placed somewhere on your object once it's selected normally by default it'll be in the middle this white dot represents your point of rotation it can be moved around by clicking and dragging that point to where you need it to go on your character or object in after effects changing the point of rotation requires you to select the object then select the pan behind anchor point tool once that tool is selected you can then click and drag the point of rotation to the appropriate place be sure to rotate the object around and test this out to make sure this is where you want this anchor point to go because believe me when you start animating it's a lot more difficult to change now continue adding and modifying your anchor points until every moving part is performing the way you envision for your character step 3 creating your hierarchy aka parenting chain now that our character or object has all of its pieces separated as well as all of its anchor points in the correct locations we can now start creating our parenting chain in order to make the forward kinematics work in adobe animate make sure the parenting view box is enabled on the timeline panel with that selected we now have a new section next to our layers that'll allow us to click drag from these color boxes to chain to another object for example we will chain our hand object to our forearm and then from our forearm to our upper arm and then from our upper arm to the main body we now have created a successful fk chain now in after effects we follow a similar method next to your layer name you should see a section labeled parent and link to the right you can either select the name of the layer you want from this drop down list or you can click and drag from the swirl icon and connect it to the layer you want it to connect to continue doing this method until everything is chained together if you are applying this to a character that last link will often be to the main body so that when the main body moves everything else should move along with it again be sure to test out how these connections are working by applying rotations to individual objects and remember it is often a bit tricky to change these connections or anchor points once you start animating so definitely take your time and once again you have created an fk chain and by utilizing these techniques and using forward kinematics you can make all sorts of dynamic motion for either your objects or your characters much like i'm doing here with my animated avatar but before we wrap this video up i promised that i would show you a method for using inverse kinematics and luckily adobe animate has you covered with the bones tool now this method works a little differently from what we previously discussed and will require using the bones tool in adobe animate this method still requires each object to be separated and nested however you will not need to adjust the anchor points as the bones tool places those depending on where you click on the object now by default the bones tool is often not visible on the toolbar so what you need to do is go over to these three dots and click on them in order to bring up the expanded toolbar from there you should see the bones tool icon and can click drag it to the main toolbar with the bones tool selected we want to start from the main point of the character or object in this case it's going to be the body we will click on where the center of rotation will be from there we will click on the next part in the chain in this case of the upper arm we're going to place it where the shoulder would be and then from there the forearm where our elbow would bend and then the hand where the wrist would be as you can see adobe animate has created a new type of layer called an armature this also utilizes its own style of keyframes for animation so just keep that in mind by click dragging the end of this chain in this case the hand we now have a successful inverse kinematic chain you can also give yourself more control by applying restrictions to do so you can select an individual part of the chain then go over here to the object panel and adjust the constraints once again keep in mind this object now exists all in this new armature layer so it will take some getting used to and that was just a small example of what you can do with rigging for 2d animation i hope you found these techniques and tips helpful and can maybe use them in your next project or animation and if you found this video helpful consider leaving a like and maybe even subscribing i would really appreciate it once again thank you for watching and as always i will chat with you on the next video

Channel: ChitChad

Views: 56,813

Keywords: Chad, ChitChad, Chit Chad, ChitChadShow, ChitChadPlays, adobe, adobe animate, adobe flash, flash tutorial, animation tutorial, animated, animated character, animated avatar, adobe tutorial, cartoon tutorial, vtuber, adobe flash tutorial, rigging, 2d rigging, IK and FK, FK and IK, IK vs FK, FK vs IK, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, how to rig a character, differences between forward kinematics and inverse kinematics, character rigging, after effects, after effects tutorial

Id: iMuG6okkm58

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021