donQmedia Weblog

The Add Bones button creates guide layers so that you can animate vector points and their Bézier handles independently. You can use them with shape layers, including masks, as well as puppet pins, and…

If you're like me, you took no notice when Adobe updated After Effects's expression engine. This isn't about the change in the expression field, where different components of your expression are represented by different color text as well as some other changes. This is about…

While a minor bug that you may not encounter unless you use the Bake Appearance button on the Edit Bones Panel of Duik Bassel, I did want to publish this video explaining a work around in case anyone was unfamiliar with how to deal with expressions when the go bad. It will be fixed in the next release of DUIK in a few weeks.

Add Bones Panel bug to be fixed in next release

While working on the tutorial for the DUIK Bassel Quick Tips section about the Edit Bones Panel, I found a minor bug in the script. If you decide to use the Bake Appearance Button, which erases the scripts that allow you to change the size and color of the bone icons, the script doesn't do a complete job and throws you an error. I submitted a bug report and Nicolas Dufresne who responded saying the fix will come soon in the 16.2.8 release.

Vimeo and donQmedia posting dates change

From this date forward I'll be posting my tutorials on donQmedia's website two weeks before making them public on Vimeo. In the past, I published on both sites simultaneously. I'll be using this short announcement format to inform you when a tutorial is in the works and when it will be released.

Next tutorial:

Updated: 20 March 2020

The next video to be published will be in the Duik Bassel Interface section titled Add & Edit Bones Panels. It will be posted on 20 March 2020.

To be announced.

Regards,

jmg

You can Get individual keyframe control over shape layer Bézier curves and masks in After Effects by utilizing scripts which create control layers over individual points. In fact, After Effects comes with a script which allows you to place nulls (guide layers) on each vector point of…

The term bone, in animation, refers to a structure that gives control and shape to an animated object. In a character puppet, a group of bones can resemble a skeleton-like structure, often referred to as an armature, but bones can also be as simple as a single point.

As followers of this website know, when I publish a video series schedule or tell you the date something will be posted I rarely miss that promised date. Unfortunately, this is one of those rare times. The irony is the promised tutorial is finished, at least the tutorial part…

Bézier [BEH-zee-ay] curves are mathematically generated curves using parametric equations, which are equations that map out the point coordinates of a geometric object¹.

As the name implies, Quick Tips are very short tutorials focusing on one feature or concept. Most often the tutorial's focus will be around the use of After Effects and character animation. My goal is to make them less than 10 minutes long, and very much to the point. Occasionally, I will…

As you can see by the posting dates, donQmedia has been inactive for quite some time (except for updates here and there which are hardly noticeable unless you happen upon an updated page). While it is normal for me to go months before posting a tutorial series…

Besides the tutorials on this website, there are, of course, many other resources you can find to learn more about Duik Bassel. Some of the newest material has been created by Duduf (Nicolas Dufresne) himself. If you're looking …

In this final installment of the four part series about rigging Stickman for a body turn, we will modify Stickman's artwork to coordinate its visibility with the previous video's rigging…

In this video we will modify Stickman's structure rig to give him the ability to make a full body turn. This, of course, is an illusion, but it is easily pulled off by keeping the…

In this video we will do something a little different with the feet animation. Instead of creating switch layers, we will animate the vector points of Stickman's feet within…

In this video we will start modifying Stickman's rig to add more than Duik can achieve by itself. While the Duik rig is invaluable, expanding on it through modifications can create a sophisticated and versatile puppet. We'll start by…

In this video we'll polish our auto-rigged Stickman up a bit. We'll start by checking out the rig's parenting to make sure there are no errors. Then we'll use Duik to quickly modify controller position properties which will allow you to move Stickman to his resting position…

This video is a complete remake of the old Duik tutorial about rigging Stickman, and was created to reflect the massive changes made in Duik Bassel’s rigging process.The Stickman tutorials, while suitable for beginners, does assume you have a basic knowledge...

Downloadable project files are now on the page of their respective tutorials. I found keeping a separate page for downloads an unnecessary option, as it made more sense to keep the files directly on the page where the project is introduced – a one click stop, if you will.

While I wanted to start on the new Stickman rigging series of tutorials based on the Duik Bassel release as sooner, I felt I had to complete the Controllers and Expressions Series first. Now that it's complete, I will be adding to the new Duik Series here.

This series is  in 2 parts which run a little over 26 minutes.