Rig ANYTHING with Rubberpin // Rubberhose Tutorial

I created the most comprehensive intro to After Effects, ever. Join Launch Into After Effects today: www.jakeinmotion.com/launch-i...
Rubberhose: battleaxe.co/rubberhose
Void: www.battleaxe.co/void
My Scriplets: www.jakeinmotion.com/scripts-...
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There's no way around it, rigging characters in After Effects is complicated. But that doesn't mean it's impossible! Rubberhose has 3 unique rigging systems that make rigging any type of artwork MUCH easier to manage. In this tutorial, I'll show you my entire process of rigging up a dog illustration using the Rubberpin system. We'll take advantage of the Puppet Tool in After Effects but actually make it useful through Rubberhose. I'll also teach you how to rig up puppet pins and custom rig controls without Rubberhose and finish it all off with rig cleanup and preparation for animation. It's a packed tutorial, so strap it and get ready to take notes!
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:33 Artwork Prep & Project Setup
03:52 Canine Bone Structure
05:29 Placing Puppet Pins
06:27 Using Rubberpin
07:54 Creating Custom Bends
10:09 Parent to Hose
11:14 Repeating the Process
13:57 Rigging the Tail
16:20 Placing Pins for the Body
18:14 Take Control of Pins with Void
19:23 Rigging the Body
21:56 Designing Custom Rig Controls
27:21 Custom Rotation Controls
29:09 Rigging the Eyes & Eyebrows
31:08 Locking Properties That Won't Change
31:49 Rigging the Eyebrows
33:10 Blink Controls
35:12 Controls Walkthrough
36:28 Zeroing Values with Void
38:21 Final Rig Cleanup
39:36 Correcting Mistakes

[@denomdemon]

Your dog is a beefy boy! You didn't do him justice with that caricature 😂

[@oakhousemedia]

Hands down the best tutorials on the internet.

[@GoDuffdaddy]

This is AMAZEBALLs! Thank you for going all in and end to end. This puts to shame about 90% of the other tuts out there. Yes it's long but what a ton of insights. Worth your time!

[@ergophonic]

Simply outstanding tutorial. It amazes me the time, effort, dedication and patience needed to perform such a simple task. Very soon, AI will replace the need to do all of this, giving you hours of time back.

[@RobertoCecchi]

Thanks for this tutorial, really

[@asl2025]

Great tutorial, but I’d recommend Moho to anyone regularly creating 2D character rigs. After effects just isn’t optimised for this sort of work, the plugins are great to give you options for when you need them but not ideal if it’s a common task you’re doing. Just my two cents for anyone interested in doing more character work.

[@MrBrazilero]

Honestly, I don't know how much patience you need during animation when each controller moves so slowly, and I'm thinking you also have to wait a bit for the preview to see the result.

[@heinschultz8970]

yep. agreed. AE is rubbish with realtime feedback. I moved my entire character rigging and animation over to Moho. Its just better. I love how you can keep everything in AE and I too own and have used Rubberhose a lot in the past. But its just too damn crazy slow for animation.

[@gregkrazanski]

it is really annoying, but it helps to turn layers/effects that you don't need off and reduce the resolution to 1/4. usually the comps are so hi-res anyway it still looks totally fine for animation. but agreed, it's a huge sacrifice. i'd still rather keep things in AE for relatively simple rigs, though, but will probably introduce moho one of these days

[@MrBrazilero]

@@gregkrazanski If you have a character at a size of 2000 pixels, I think even when hiding features and keeping only what you need, it will still run slowly. Only if you work with its shapes, but not with Illustrator files.

[@jonfrickey8231]

Hi everyone, @MrBrazilero @gregkrazanski @heinschultz8970 do the new Apple M2 chips help with this significantly? Any ideas or experiences? The rigging lag (also with joystick n sliders) is indeed so so annoying.

[@heinschultz8970]

@@jonfrickey8231 i dont think you’ll pickup a remarkable speed difference to be honest. Anything CPU based will be laggy as these plugins rely on expressions which is CPU intensive. After Effects do have a GPU accellerated UI now. In Beta as far as I’m aware, which is a step in the right direction. But the viewport is still relying on the CPU and ram. I’ve had various high end PCs and obviously various versions of AE through the years and never have I not had lag with rubberhose, joysticks or even DUiK. AE rewrote their expression engine after CC2014. Ive actually gone back a few times to CC2014 when it was still available to apply fixes or updates on those projects with rubber rigs. It definitely was a watershed moment when Adobe changed the expression engine. Everything slowed down since. Moho has completely rewritten their viewport and graphics engine to be GPU based, hence the speed and response time. I’m sure AE will get there, at some stage. Unfortunately it’s no easy task. Holding thumbs though.

[@danielterrazas]

Thanks to this tutorial I´m seriously considering moving away from Duik towards Rubberhose. Very powerful yet simple to use. However, my only gripe doesn´t have to do with Rubberhose but with AE. Thanks to Expressions the more complex the rig is the slower it becomes and it is sooooooo distracting when animating that it is infuriating. I know Adobe doesn´t have the incentive to optimize its software so I´m considering moving towards Toon Boom or Moho now that I´m animating 2D characters more and more. A huge part of animating characters effectively is having fun while working and with After Effects I always end up stressed and mentally drained.

[@AndrewMarston]

Welp, there goes my main reason for riggin with DUIK.

[@affedoom]

I could not get the Void Script to work properly as soon as I tried parenting the nulls the Void Scripts created, my character just deformed completely

[@JakeInMotion]

Make sure you are updated to the latest version of Void. We just updated it to fix an issue with parenting void pin layers.

[@RobertoCecchi]

I have the same problem: I installed version 1.2.1 as a script UI Panel and when I parent a void element with another one, the image crumples like a leaf… :(

[@RobertoCecchi]

Wait a sec!!! In the Video @JaleInMotion is using 1.2.15!!! Where I can find it?!?

[@RobertoCecchi]

FOUND!!! :)

[@samreed9848]

@@RobertoCecchi I'm having the same problem. Where did you find 1.2.15? I only downloaded it yesterday, and on Battle Axe website it's still only 1.2.1.

[@conservativeliberal]

i really hope he does one with a human or also maybe intergrate it with joysticks n'sliders

[@jaysonfontela5761]

💖

[@Hix066]

Hey Pixel!!! :D

[@kfirlubko5139]

Hey Jake, i did not notice, the dog character available for download?

[@conservativeliberal]

if ur going to do this do not use overlord!! this is too complex for it ur gonna need to export the files urself from illustrator

[@JakeInMotion]

I do not recommend using shape layer artwork with the puppet tool, which is why I was using illustrator layers. AE will not cooperate with vector graphics being distorted and manipulated with many layers of expressions and parent layers.

[@MrBrazilero]

Omg!!!.. so Lagggggggg