Make your motion more organic with these easy-to-use, built-in distortion tools in After Effects.

PuppetTools 3 An easy to use rigging tool for After Effects that will save you hours of work. Make customized controllers for anything and add IK in 1 click. Hey, I just wanted to animate some pictures and I was looking for a tool like the puppet pin tool from After Effects with which you can put joints in your subject and animate them. Is there such a tool in Fusion? I just found the grid warp tool, but thats not as precisely as the puppet tool. The Puppet Pin tool can be used for rigging in After Effects, but it can be pretty clunky for character work. If you need a very quick character with limited movement this could be a good tool for you to use. After Effects works very well when it comes to Puppet Warp Animation as it helps add life to animation, especially when working with image assets, particularly vector designs. In this example below, Puppet tool is used to give subtle movement to the bird, which otherwise seems lifeless. Puppet Pin is one of After Effects’ most powerful tools. With just a few clicks and keyframes, you can transform a static image into a lively animation! The tool has its own idiosyncrasies and methods, but with this tutorial, we’ll help you learn the ins and outs of this great tool.

These four distortion tools in After Effects allow you to easily distort a layer to whatever extent you need in order to give your animation a final lifelike touch in that “squash and stretch” kind of way. All four effects will “loosen up” the movement of your graphics and, best of all, they’re all already built directly into After Effects and super-easy to use. Let’s take a look.

1. CC Bend It

CC Bend It is a limited tool, but it’s an extremely quick way to give an object a consistent and natural-looking bend. All you need do is set your Start and End Points, and keyframe your bend amount.

This effect doesn’t work well with excessive movement, but it is a great choice for something like, say, a palm tree swaying back and forth or a character dancing. Just be sure to enable rasterization on layers you apply this effect to.

2. Warp

Warp (like CC Bend It) features minimal controls. However, it allows you to choose from a variety of warp styles with adjustable axes.

You can also independently adjust the horizontal and vertical distortion levels. For animations with lots of movement, this is a great choice. The Squeeze Warp style is arguably the most useful, and is very effective for bouncy movement.

3. Puppet Tool

The Puppet Tool is one of the most crucial parts of animating characters. This tool allows you to place pin points anywhere on your layer, and drag them to distort your layer accordingly. This effect is extremely versatile and works well for really specific movement.

Just be sure to not to keyframe the position of a layer that is using the Puppet Tool. You can instead precompose your Puppet Tool animation, then keyframe the position of the resulting composition. Here’s a tutorial from lynda.com that demonstrates the tool.

Youtube Puppet Tool After Effects

Puppet Tool After Effects Cc 2018

4. Bezier Warp

Bezier Warp is arguably the most precise of these effects, automatically providing you with twelvepoints that you can move to distort your layer. It almost always creates a smooth surface and can be modified regardless of how much the layer is moving and rotating. It is certainly time consuming, but it allows for a lot of possibilities.

What other After Effects tools do you use to sell your organic motion? Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Use Puppet Tool After Effects

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