Greeting Gerry,



Thanks for investigating and reporting on this. Much appreciated!
I'm relieved to know that the missing "Puppet Mark" is not a problem with my re-installation of iClone!
It would be good if Reallusion updated its manual AND provided more helpful information about using Motion Puppet.
It's a very useful tool!

:)
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia

Greetings Michael & Everyone,

Watched the video you linked me to.
It was packed with very helpful instructions on how to modify, layer, fix, and fine-tune animations.

Regarding the Motion Puppet tool, although what was shown was good to know, what it didn't
show was how to use the "move mouse" option for Motion Puppet.

I played around with it a bit yesterday.
When using the MOUSE control option in Motion Puppet, it looks like it works best when the mouse traces/follows
an imaginary circle around the centre of the viewport. 

In contrast, moving the mouse left & right or up & down does not work very well.

From what I could see when playing with Motion Puppet in "mouse" mode, it works like this:

Within Motion Puppet we select an animation clip.

We have the option of "masking" out different parts of the body -- which means that the unselected/masked out parts
of the body are left out of the animation clip. For instance, we select a "cheering" animation which, by default,
would move a character's arms, head, legs, waist, chest, whatever. But we unselect/mask out the legs and waist,
so now only the other parts of the character's body will be affected when we apply this animation.

When mouse control is selected within Motion Puppet, it looks like the complete animation cycle -- from the
start of the animation until the end of the animation -- is sort of mapped onto a circle. The circle seems to
be centred at the centre of the iClone viewport.

When we start to preview or record a Motion Puppet session, we can move the mouse clockwise or anti-clockwise
around this imaginary circle and go to any part of the animation "cycle".

If we follow our imaginary circle clockwise we go forward through the animation cycle.
If we trace an anti-clockwise circle, we move backwards through the animation circle.
i.e. we make the animation move in reverse.

Using the mouse we can confine ourselves to a very particular area of the animation cycle,
such as a particular gesture within the total "cycle" of the animation clip
and move our mouse more-or-less clockwise &/or anti-clockwise within that area.

But doing this in a way that produces a smooth, non-jerky animation is a bit of an art.

The other thing is that we can control/change the speed at which the Motion Puppet animation
clip plays out, by simply controlling/changing the speed at which we follow our imaginary circle.

Utilising the Motion Puppet tool's mouse control option, it's possible to completely transform,
let's say, the "angry" animation (that's found within Motion Puppet) into a clip that looks like a
teacher patiently explaining something to his classroom -- by controlling the speed, location,
and direction of the mouse around the imaginary circle.

Reallusion's instructions and guidelines for using Motion Puppet leave out some of it's most interesting functions and features.

:)
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia

Thanks Michael.
I'll check it out!
:)
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia

Greetings.

Do you use iClone's Motion Puppet?
I've just started getting acquainted with it.

The iClone manual  --  located HERE  -- refers to a "puppet mark" and has a picture of it also.
But I don't see any such mark when I'm using Motion Puppet.

Screenshot of the iClone manual:


75% of original size (was 668x19) - Click to enlarge


Question: Is there some way to display the "puppet mark"?

Also, I haven't been able to find any video tutorials on using Motion Puppet.
If anyone can point me to one or more, that's be really helpful.

Thanks!

:)
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia