Hey Steve, I wonder if there's a way to make a bone curvature with a tapered leg, or a way to make a square end with a bone rig?
Yes. Have a look in the limb library and you'll see a couple of options for curved tapers - probably 'Tapered Bone' is the best one. For a bone with a squared end, you could do it a few ways. One would be:
1. Use '3 Part Bone with Foot' from the limb library and twirl open the limb layer's Contents
2. Delete the group 'Foot'
3. Twirl open the group 'Lower' and then the Stroke, and change the Line Cap to Butt Cap
or
1. Make a new bone and twirl open the limb layer's Contents and then the group 'Limb'
2. Select the Path property and add a Trim Paths, set the End to 50%
3. Select the group 'Limb' and hit Cmd/Ctrl-D to duplicate it
4. In the new 'Limb 2' group, delete the Trim Paths (or just set the End to 100%)
5. Not essential, but maybe expression-pickwhip the duplicate Path property to the original one. This just saves AE running through the bone path expression twice.
Hey Steve, I wonder if there's a way to make a bone curvature with a tapered leg, or a way to make a square end with a bone rig?
Yes. Have a look in the limb library and you'll see a couple of options for curved tapers - probably 'Tapered Bone' is the best one. For a bone with a squared end, you could do it a few ways. One would be:
1. Use '3 Part Bone with Foot' from the limb library and twirl open the limb layer's Contents
2. Delete the group 'Foot'
3. Twirl open the group 'Lower' and then the Stroke, and change the Line Cap to Butt Cap
or
1. Make a new bone and twirl open the limb layer's Contents and then the group 'Limb'
2. Select the Path property and add a Trim Paths, set the End to 50%
3. Select the group 'Limb' and hit Cmd/Ctrl-D to duplicate it
4. In the new 'Limb 2' group, delete the Trim Paths (or just set the End to 100%)
5. Not essential, but maybe expression-pickwhip the duplicate Path property to the original one. This just saves AE running through the bone path expression twice.
Hope this helps!
Steve
Thanks A LOT for the answer!! helped me a lot, and Limber is such an amazing plugin, underrated AF! keep going with the amazing job!
Hey Steve, I got another question, I wonder if there's a way to rig a character that came from Photoshop, and got bunch of textures and stuff like that?
Hey Steve, I got another question, I wonder if there's a way to rig a character that came from Photoshop, and got bunch of textures and stuff like that?
It's not officially supported but some people do use it like that. You'd basically need to:
Draw a new path shape layer with the Pen tool with three points where you want your hip, knee and ankle to be, in that order.
Click the Path to Bone button
Click the Add Joint button to add a joint controller. Then set the Joint controller to rotate 'With Lower'.
Turn up Rotate Start and Rotate End to 100%.
Parent your PSD upper art layer to the Start Controller and the lower art layer to the Joint Controller.
See how you get on. You won't get any stretchiness and if you animate the Lengths things will probably break… like I said, it's not officially supported. But I am animating like this right now and for the odd move in one short shot, it can work.
Hi, I am having some strange issues where I can't use limber at all because anytime I add a keyframe to any of the layers to animate it, everything grinds to a halt - I can't move any lymbs without the spinning color wheel of death sitting there or even a freeze for a minute or so... and I have the latest imac with intel and plenty of RAM... (and a good video card) - so its not my specs... so not sure what to do there....
Hi, I am having some strange issues where I can't use limber at all because anytime I add a keyframe to any of the layers to animate it, everything grinds to a halt - I can't move any lymbs without the spinning color wheel of death sitting there or even a freeze for a minute or so... and I have the latest imac with intel and plenty of RAM... (and a good video card) - so its not my specs... so not sure what to do there....
Hi Ilya. I have not seen anything like this before so I would guess it is something unrelated to Limber. Have you tried Edit>Purge>All memory & Disk cache ?
Hello, I'm having a strange issue where the upper limb disappears on random frames. Makes the animation kind of glitchy.
When pinpointing one of those frames, there's an expression error with this message:
"Error at line 16 in property "Path" of [limb layer] in comp 'Comp 1'.
invalid numeric result (divide by zero?)"
Hi Maxime. We have fixed this issue in an upcoming release but for the time being, try setting your sizes to be very slightly different. It can happen when Middle Size is the same as Upper or Lower size. So if they are both 100, make one of them 99.99 and you should be ok.
Hello, I'm having a strange issue where the upper limb disappears on random frames. Makes the animation kind of glitchy.
When pinpointing one of those frames, there's an expression error with this message:
"Error at line 16 in property "Path" of [limb layer] in comp 'Comp 1'.
invalid numeric result (divide by zero?)"
Hi Maxime. We have fixed this issue in an upcoming release but for the time being, try setting your sizes to be very slightly different. It can happen when Middle Size is the same as Upper or Lower size. So if they are both 100, make one of them 99.99 and you should be ok.
Do you have any plans for adding features for Limber to be able to create reusable characters, beyond just a cut and paste? It would be nice to be able to create a character as a pre-comp and then drag it into a comp which could extract the controllers in the parent comp. With Joysticks and Sliders you can do this with Essential Graphics but I assume it's much more complex with Limber.
Limber does this problem of changing stroke cap when I stretch the limb or set anti-pop above 0%, however when it is not curved limb and anti-pop is 0% the problem seems to be gone. I tried Rubberhose on the same machine and it doesn't have this problem, taking off the fill or the outer stroke doesn't change anything.
Limber does this problem of changing stroke cap when I stretch the limb or set anti-pop above 0%, however when it is not curved limb and anti-pop is 0% the problem seems to be gone. I tried Rubberhose on the same machine and it doesn't have this problem, taking off the fill or the outer stroke doesn't change anything.
Hi Amine. I've tried to reproduce your issue but I am not able to see this problem. I might need to see your actual project file in order to understand what is going on. Can you raise a support ticket and attach a copy of your AEP? Thanks, Steve.
Im wanting to animate Octopus tentacle, Is limber capable of doing this, Id been needing more that 2 rigging points, probably up to 8 to get the bendiness of a tentacle. Is it possible to add more rigging points?
Im wanting to animate Octopus tentacle, Is limber capable of doing this, Id been needing more that 2 rigging points, probably up to 8 to get the bendiness of a tentacle. Is it possible to add more rigging points?
Hey Paul. No, Limber is really for limbs with one or perhaps two joints. Anything super wiggly like a tail or tentacle is better off done by hand or maybe another solution.
Hi Steve, can you do a tutorial on how to use bones? Keyframe Academy did a brief overview of how to use bones to animate, then use the copy paste tools to add artwork to the (animated) bones. But he didn't go into detail...and I think this workflow would benefit a lot of people. Thanks
Hi Steve, can you do a tutorial on how to use bones? Keyframe Academy did a brief overview of how to use bones to animate, then use the copy paste tools to add artwork to the (animated) bones. But he didn't go into detail...and I think this workflow would benefit a lot of people. Thanks
Hi Dixie. We recently published a couple of tutorials for Limber Lite which uses bones exclusively, this one might be helpful:
The workflow of using bones to animate and then changing them in some way was something we used to recommend when Limber was first released because After Effects was much slower then and bones run very fast, so it alleviated slowdown. These days most limbs run fine so we don't recommend that workflow - it can be destructive and a little bit complicated for some users. We think it's easier to rig the design you intend to animate, and then animate with it.
But if you want to experiment with a different workflow, that may work better for you personally. Since v1.7 bones can now be rigged with artwork, and this is probably the simplest way to approach this. You could animate with bones and then draw artwork over the top (or import and convert to shape layers) and then rig that art to the bone. Just remember to rig the art when the limb is not foreshortened at all - so both parts are a 'normal' length for your character.
You can try copying other limbs (eg from the limb library) and pasting them into a bone. Pasting is essentially replacing - the old bone limb layer will be deleted and the new limb layer put in it's place and kind of re-wired to link it to the right controllers. I can imagine more issues with a workflow like that where you paste a totally different limb into an animated bone… but maybe if the animation is a pretty rough first pass it might work out.
Can we get a "set/delete key frames" button that enables faster posing while animating? One of the features of Toon Boom that makes it very fast on animation is the ability to select as many layers as you want, then with a single click set keys for everything, scale/position/rotation (or remove keys) with a single click
Make pose > Set keys for entire character > make next pose
Ive been looking at various AE rigging systems after many years in toonboom - and its not having the "single click = set keys" function that makes AE character animation vastly slower. (all that toggling open/shut layers or specific properties individualy)
Can we get a "set/delete key frames" button that enables faster posing while animating? One of the features of Toon Boom that makes it very fast on animation is the ability to select as many layers as you want, then with a single click set keys for everything, scale/position/rotation (or remove keys) with a single click
Make pose > Set keys for entire character > make next pose
Ive been looking at various AE rigging systems after many years in toonboom - and its not having the "single click = set keys" function that makes AE character animation vastly slower. (all that toggling open/shut layers or specific properties individualy)
Hey Fraser. This is an interesting idea but I think it would probably work best as a separate tool. To be useful as a posing tool, it would need to be able to set keyframes on several layers, not just Limber layers. Different animators would want different properties to be keyframed and perhaps be able to load and store different groups and perhaps sub-groups of properties into the tool, so you could keyframe both 'everything' and 'face' or 'hands', for example, which might be helpful for first passes and then secondary animation etc. There might be a way of using the new keyframe colour labels too. I'll have a think about it. Thanks for suggesting it.
I often prefer having my controllers to be stroked instead of filled, it'd be nice to be able to do this quicker than going and adding a stroke and copying the expression to it.
I often prefer having my controllers to be stroked instead of filled, it'd be nice to be able to do this quicker than going and adding a stroke and copying the expression to it.
Hey Tony. Have you tried out the other controller shapes we added in v1.7 ? Some of them have a more skinny, stroke-like style. I played around adding a stroke to our existing shapes instead of a Fill - is this how you've been using it? To me it looks more like we would need to draw the shapes differently for strokes - the crosshair in particular has twice as many strokes as it needs… It is something we could consider for a future version if enough users wanted it.
I often prefer having my controllers to be stroked instead of filled, it'd be nice to be able to do this quicker than going and adding a stroke and copying the expression to it.
Hey Tony. Have you tried out the other controller shapes we added in v1.7 ? Some of them have a more skinny, stroke-like style. I played around adding a stroke to our existing shapes instead of a Fill - is this how you've been using it? To me it looks more like we would need to draw the shapes differently for strokes - the crosshair in particular has twice as many strokes as it needs… It is something we could consider for a future version if enough users wanted it.
Thanks Steve, I had not seen those! Yeah I've been using the standard Pin controller with a stroke like you displayed, it's easy to see through the controller where needed on certain characters.
Using Limber and suddenly I can't change the curvature settings when creating new Taper limbs. Updated and reinstalled the latest version of Limber (1.7.5), still doesn't work.
Arms and Legs I made last week work fine. Just installed Limber Lite and curvature works as well.
Using Limber and suddenly I can't change the curvature settings when creating new Taper limbs. Updated and reinstalled the latest version of Limber (1.7.5), still doesn't work.
Arms and Legs I made last week work fine. Just installed Limber Lite and curvature works as well.
I'm using After Effects 22.6.
Hey Jodi. You're probably better off opening a support ticket for this. But Tapers have never responded to the Bone Curvature property. It's just for Bones (and some of the limbs in the limb library). Whatever you made last week doesn't sound like a Taper if it's curving.
Can After Effects files with Limber-rigged characters be shared with people who don't have Limber installed, or will they end up getting error messages?
Can After Effects files with Limber-rigged characters be shared with people who don't have Limber installed, or will they end up getting error messages?
I send my projects out to freelancers all the time with Limber characters. They can still manipulate the limbs, they just don't have access to any of the creation properties.
I send my projects out to freelancers all the time with Limber characters. They can still manipulate the limbs, they just don't have access to any of the customization/properties.
Just to clarify: the main properties such as clockwise, lengths, anti-pop will remain fully usable and accessible. But there are certain animation features that Limber provides which can’t be added in without the script installed. For example , if you want to use FK, you usually need an FK controller. That is added with a single click in the Limber panel, but if you don’t have Limber you have no way of adding it. If you wanted to hand off a character to an animator you might choose to add FK controllers before you hand it over. Without them, the animator would be limited to IK (which might be fine anyway). There are also joint controllers (knee/elbow trackers) but those are less common.
TLDR : it’s basically fine but if you want to cover more bases, add FK controllers before you handover.
Is there away to have the duplicate limb function also mirror the new limb? I am use custom art and rig & pose and often the art is not symmetrical, mainly with things like subtle shoulder curves that need to flipped when duplicated.
Can this happen now? If not could it be added in the future?
Is there away to have the duplicate limb function also mirror the new limb? I am use custom art and rig & pose and often the art is not symmetrical, mainly with things like subtle shoulder curves that need to flipped when duplicated.
Can this happen now? If not could it be added in the future?
Thanks.
Hey Mike. That's a great idea, thanks for sharing it. This would need to be an optional behaviour because people often want a literal duplicate without any mirroring, but I'll definitely consider how we could add this function.
In the meantime, one workaround you could try would be to select your new limb layer, hit Cmd / Ctrl F for Find, type 'Rig' into the search bar and you should see two shape groups inside the layer - Rigged Upper and Rigged Lower. Twirl each of those down. Then, select all the shape group or groups INSIDE the Rigged Upper group and hit Cmd / Ctrl G. That will make yet another group probably called 'Group 1' - which you can twirl down and set the Transform: Group 1 > Scale to [-100,100]. Then you'd need to repeat for the Rigged Lower groups. I think that will flip all your artwork correctly but let me know if you run into problems.
How can I adjust the angle of the crease to run across the top stroke of the forearm?
Hi Gaetan. Is that Kurt's Elbow Crease from the limb library? If so, it doesn't have the ability to change the crease angle built-in to it, it's always halfway between the angles of the upper and lower parts of the limb. We could get the result you want, but how we do it would depend on how you need the crease to behave as the limb moves. It would be easier to help you if you open a support ticket or just email me - steve <at> animatable.co
Is it possible to "flatten" a character? Basically I have a character with bones as limbs. He's in position and now I want a perfect copy I can merge in to a single shape layer so I can add a repeater to it (and a few other thing that require it to be all one shape). I thought maybe I could go through and delete the expressions but then, of course, the limbs disappear.
Is it possible to "flatten" a character? Basically I have a character with bones as limbs. He's in position and now I want a perfect copy I can merge in to a single shape layer so I can add a repeater to it (and a few other thing that require it to be all one shape). I thought maybe I could go through and delete the expressions but then, of course, the limbs disappear.
It wouldn't be too hard for me to explain how you could combine 4 simple bone limbs into one shape layer. The tricky bit would be also combining your other body layers into the same layer. Limber's limbs use their shape layer like a comp-sized canvas - the layer itself just sits at [0,0] and limb components are arranged by properties inside the layer Contents. You would need to figure out a way to embed your body layers into this same Contents, bearing in mind that shape group contents don't have a parenting hierarchy that you can pickwhip one to another like layers do. You CAN place shape groups inside one another and simulate a parenting-like chain of transforms, but it can easily become really unwieldy. Another approach would be to use expressions to drive the position and rotation of the groups, based on the existing layers you already have, but you would probably run into other problems.
If you want to repeat an entire character, you'd almost certainly get good results way quicker by precomposing it and duplicating the precomp instance, then arranging the instances. But it sounds like maybe that's not what you need exactly.
I'm having trouble with AE2023. When i click on the cogwheel "configure" in the upper left of the plugin. Nothing happens.
Is there another way to open the menu or to change the controllers icon ?
Thanks !
Hi Jeoffrey. Sorry to hear this. I'm not seeing this behaviour on my installation. Try closing the Limber panel and re-opening it. If that doesn't fix the issue can you please open a support ticket? Thanks.
Hi! I wanted to say that I REALLY love Limber. Makes my life A LOT easier Also I have a technical question - is there any option to release license from a computer? I'm just right after clean installation of my OS and while I was setting up new computer/OS I had to switch to my laptop to finish the job. Now on my new, clean OS I got a message that current license is already in use. I don't need it anymore on my laptop and want to switch fully to my work station so would be great to have this option.
Hi! I wanted to say that I REALLY love Limber. Makes my life A LOT easier Also I have a technical question - is there any option to release license from a computer? I'm just right after clean installation of my OS and while I was setting up new computer/OS I had to switch to my laptop to finish the job. Now on my new, clean OS I got a message that current license is already in use. I don't need it anymore on my laptop and want to switch fully to my work station so would be great to have this option.
Thank you!
Hey Krzysztof, thanks! I’m sure we can sort this out but can you please open a support ticket? Licensing stuff is usually better handled by the aescripts team and I can get them involved through that process.
Hi! I wanted to say that I REALLY love Limber. Makes my life A LOT easier Also I have a technical question - is there any option to release license from a computer? I'm just right after clean installation of my OS and while I was setting up new computer/OS I had to switch to my laptop to finish the job. Now on my new, clean OS I got a message that current license is already in use. I don't need it anymore on my laptop and want to switch fully to my work station so would be great to have this option.
Thank you!
Hey Krzysztof, thanks! I’m sure we can sort this out but can you please open a support ticket? Licensing stuff is usually better handled by the aescripts team and I can get them involved through that process.
Hi, I am trying to rig a character whose limbs have a gradient that is going from left to right. I found some resources for expressions where you can link the Start and End Points of a Gradient to Wrist and Shoulder Points of the limb. But that obviously makes the gradient go from top to bottom. Basically I would need it rotated by 90 degrees then. Is it possible to link it somehow, so it goes left to right and moves with the limb?
Hi, I am trying to rig a character whose limbs have a gradient that is going from left to right. I found some resources for expressions where you can link the Start and End Points of a Gradient to Wrist and Shoulder Points of the limb. But that obviously makes the gradient go from top to bottom. Basically I would need it rotated by 90 degrees then. Is it possible to link it somehow, so it goes left to right and moves with the limb?
Thank you.
Hey Nils. This should be pretty straightforward but these comments are a really bad place for me to help you - can you please email me at help<at>animatable<dot>co ?
Hi Limber Team! I'm loving this plugin and making my way through lots of great youtube tutorials. Can Limber be used for quadrupeds and do you have or know of any tutorials for rigging walks cycles for dogs and cats etc using Limber?
Thanks much and keep up the great work on this tool!!!
Hi Limber Team! I'm loving this plugin and making my way through lots of great youtube tutorials. Can Limber be used for quadrupeds and do you have or know of any tutorials for rigging walks cycles for dogs and cats etc using Limber?
Thanks much and keep up the great work on this tool!!!
Hey Joanne! I wrote a blog post about dog rigging here. Personally, I always prefer to rig quadrupeds with simple 2-bone IK and then add an FK extension by hand. You can see this in the GIF where I mention carpal and tarsal joints. Whichever section of the legs that are not inside the Limber limb, will have Limber's end controller parented to them. Lower in that post is a link to a project file you could check out. If you need more help, hop over to our Discord server where it's a lot easier for everyone to keep track of things.
I wonder if there's a way to make a bone curvature with a tapered leg, or a way to make a square end with a bone rig?
I got another question, I wonder if there's a way to rig a character that came from Photoshop, and got bunch of textures and stuff like that?
Hi Ilya. I have not seen anything like this before so I would guess it is something unrelated to Limber. Have you tried Edit>Purge>All memory & Disk cache ?
Hi Maxime. We have fixed this issue in an upcoming release but for the time being, try setting your sizes to be very slightly different. It can happen when Middle Size is the same as Upper or Lower size. So if they are both 100, make one of them 99.99 and you should be ok.
Hey Paul. No, Limber is really for limbs with one or perhaps two joints. Anything super wiggly like a tail or tentacle is better off done by hand or maybe another solution.
Hey Benjamin. On the limber product page just under the price is a link to the License terms. Hopefully that explains how a license works.
Can we get a "set/delete key frames" button that enables faster posing while animating?
One of the features of Toon Boom that makes it very fast on animation is the ability to select as many layers as you want, then with a single click set keys for everything, scale/position/rotation (or remove keys) with a single click
Make pose > Set keys for entire character > make next pose
Ive been looking at various AE rigging systems after many years in toonboom - and its not having the "single click = set keys" function that makes AE character animation vastly slower.
(all that toggling open/shut layers or specific properties individualy)
They will work just fine.
Just to clarify: the main properties such as clockwise, lengths, anti-pop will remain fully usable and accessible. But there are certain animation features that Limber provides which can’t be added in without the script installed. For example , if you want to use FK, you usually need an FK controller. That is added with a single click in the Limber panel, but if you don’t have Limber you have no way of adding it. If you wanted to hand off a character to an animator you might choose to add FK controllers before you hand it over. Without them, the animator would be limited to IK (which might be fine anyway). There are also joint controllers (knee/elbow trackers) but those are less common. TLDR : it’s basically fine but if you want to cover more bases, add FK controllers before you handover.
I'm having trouble with AE2023. When i click on the cogwheel "configure" in the upper left of the plugin. Nothing happens.
I'm just right after clean installation of my OS and while I was setting up new computer/OS I had to switch to my laptop to finish the job. Now on my new, clean OS I got a message that current license is already in use. I don't need it anymore on my laptop and want to switch fully to my work station so would be great to have this option.
Hey Krzysztof, thanks! I’m sure we can sort this out but can you please open a support ticket? Licensing stuff is usually better handled by the aescripts team and I can get them involved through that process.