Moho Forum

Hitfilm has a new puppet tool... Has anyone tried it or seen evidence?
I'm off island right now and only have an old tablet with the capacity to put more software on.
Be interesting to see what is possible.

Was wondering that myself. On the fence about upgrading from Express to Pro.

Do you have a link with info for this tool? I have Hitfilm Pro at home but haven't used it for a while, so not sure what version I have. Wonder if it's a free upgrade.

I haven't seen Hitfilm's Puppet feature yet. Is it like Puppet in AE or more like DuIK in AE? I still use Puppet in AE a lot, sometimes applying it to Moho renders. We used DuIK for the earliest Croods cave painting animations. DuIK rigs share certain functional similarities to Moho rigs but it got really clunky with multiple characters, which is why we stopped using it.

Curious about Hitfilm's Puppet but think it's unlikely to be like Moho...a full puppet animation systems seems overkill for what Hitfilm is meant for. But if the workflow is better than DuIK in AE, I might use it for some things I normally use AE for.

Edit: Did a quick search for Hitfilm puppet demo videos. The few things I found were pretty basic, like simpler AE Puppet demos. I haven't seen any workflow videos but I'm guessing it's another pin-and-mesh warping system.

I actually seen nothing at all, very curious though.

chucky wrote:I actually seen nothing at all, very curious though.

Yeah, there really isn't much about it presently even coming out of FXhome which is strange because you would think they would want to showcase their new features.

What Is The Puppet Tool?

Hit Film wrote: Puppet tool: Use the Puppet tool to quickly add natural motion to raster images and vector graphics, including still images, shapes, and text characters. The Puppet effect works by deforming part of an image according to the positions of pins that you place and move. These pins define what parts of the image should move, what parts should remain rigid, and what parts should be in front when parts overlap.

I decided to byte the bullet and purchase Pro during their special offer to us Express users. It appeared to be only $10 more than the upgrade price.

You bought it ? Great do share your findings and I'd love to see a video of the tool at work.
Any info would be great.

chucky wrote:You bought it ? Great do share your findings and I'd love to see a video of the tool at work.
Any info would be great.

Yeah, that isn't going to happen for awhile. I plan on continuing to use Express since FXhome has gone to a maintenance program where you get 12 months of upgrades from the point of activation. So I don't plan on activating it till I build my new system which will coincide with the release of Ryzen 7 2nd generation. At least that is the current plan.

Okidoke. No rush.

How to use the Puppet tool...

So...triangulated mesh and pin bones.

...or Puppet in AE.

Puppet in either program is not a replacement for Moho rigging but I can see it being useful if you want to add warping fx to the rendered Moho output in compositing. I sometimes do this using AE's Puppet.

But I probably use AE's Liquify more often. Liquify is brush driven, so the warping effect looks more organic, and is suitable for making subtle (or not so subtle) face expression tweaks and flowing distortions that need to precisely conform to shapes in other layers. It's essentially the same tool found in Photoshop except it's fully keyframeable in AE.

Thanks for the link.
Pretty poor use of it in that video though.
There were a bunch of settings he didn't even look at and the dude was more interested in his lame borealis effect than the animation.
I liked how the tessellation could be adjusted with a slider and the warping looked pretty good.
Still nothing compared to Moho.

I guess it all depends on how much movement you need to tell your story. This short movie was done in AE with the puppet tool.

A few improvements to the puppet workflow in Hitfilm 7.0