RubberHose 2 Plugin for After Effects rar: The Ultimate Guide to Rigging Anything in AE

Hey, this is Jake Bartlett for school of motion. And I am very excited today to be talking to you about rubber hose, a version two. Now, if you're not familiar with rubber hose, it's a rigging script for after effects that allows you to generate very easy to use limbs using shape layers inside of after effects Adam, over at battleax, who came up with this script is a mad genius and I'm blown away by all the things that he's been able to pack into rubber hose and version two is even more amazing. So today I'm kind of going to just walk you through some of the new features of version two. So you can get an idea of what they'll allow you to be able to do and how they'll speed up your workflow when doing character animation. So right down here, I have my rubber hose to script panel.

RubberHose 2 Plugin for After Effects rar

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And as you can tell, it's very compact, which is great because you probably have lots of little script panels floating around your after effects, workspace, and version two is broken down into three different sections, build style, and manage. It's very nice and organized color-coded so it's easy to keep track of. So let's just start with build just like the name sounds. This is where you're going to actually generate your limbs. So you have this nice compact little panel to be able to name your limb. So I could type in the left arm here. You can choose your start and end point labels just like in version one. So shoulder wrist would be what I want. And then right here, we have the new rubber hose button. So if I click that the script runs its magic and just like version one, it generates a limb with two controllers that very easily allow me to pose my arm.

Then I can name this tube. Sock press save after effects will take a second to refresh my preset list. And then if I scroll down right there, tube socks. So if I click on this new limb, click on tube sock and apply the style. Now I have that style saved as a preset in my list. And what's great about this is that they're actually after effects presets. So if I open up my preset folder, I could then share this effects preset with anyone, and they could generate this style just as easily. So the style panel is an incredibly powerful new feature of rubber hose version to the next section is the manage panel. And this panel allows you to do some really nice management once you've styled your limb. So instead of every hose, having auto flop automatically built into it. Now you just click on this button right here to add in auto flop control.

This can be extremely useful for attaching things to limbs or even applying textures. On top of them. There are a few other buttons in this panel that are very similar to version one, like showing or hiding controllers, selecting layers in a group, as well as these two new buttons right here that allow you to bake the animation into key frames so that all of the crazy math that's generating all of the limbs movement and allowing rubber hose to behave properly can be calculated all at once and converted into key frames so that after effects doesn't have to process that math all the time. You won't be able to adjust the animation once you bake those key frames, but you can adjust the styling of the hose. And if you ever need to get back to being able to adjust your animation, you just convert your key frames back to math. So it's totally non-destructive. So let me get rid of this limb real quick. And I'll just quickly show you this character that I rigged completely with rubber hose version to everything, but the hands and feet were generated using rubber hose version two, even the torso is a hose and that button on the hot dog is part of that same hose. So I've got two arms, the head and then two feet.

And I've also added this master Nall that controls the entire body so that I can pose that easily, but rubber hose very quickly and easily allow me to create this very flexible character completely in after effects. For the next example, I'm going to jump over to my next character rig. This is my hipster man designed by the amazingly talented Alex Pope. And this is a character design that you get to work with in rigging academy, which is pretty much the holy grail of 2d rigging in after effects. You should definitely go check that out. If I come back to my build panel, the second button here is called a rubber rig, and this is a brand new rigging system for version two that allows you to rig any type of layer. It doesn't have to be a shape layer. So if I grabbed my characters controllers, I can move this around and you see that his arms and his legs behave pretty much the way that you would expect.

Morgan Williams (01:10): You can get started with my free tutorial on doing a basic Dwek rig, but my rigging academy course at school of motion will give you a much more complete and comprehensive look at how to rig characters in aftereffects with Dick Bassel. Now the simple truth is these are both great tools, and if you do a lot of character rigging, you really should have both of them as part of your toolkit. But before we dive into some specifics, let's just talk about some kind of big overarching differences between the two. Now, one of the real big advantages to rubber hose is that it's incredibly simple. It's very quick to learn. It's very quick to use, and it does what it does extremely well. Now on the flip side of that, it's simplicity comes with the cost of it being fairly limited. It does what it does very, very well, but it doesn't do a whole lot else than what it does now do it facile on the other hand is a much more robust and comprehensive tool overall.

Morgan Williams (02:19): It does a lot of different things, both to aid with character rigging and animation, but it'll also help with all kinds of situations in after effects beyond just character work. It allows you to create many, many different types of rigs, very complex rigs, as well as simple rigs, and is in many ways a kind of one-stop shop for character rigging and after effects. Now all of that comes with the cost of it being more complex. It's in many ways, surprisingly easy to learn and use kind of on the surface level, however, but it has a lot of depth to it. So the learning curve is a little higher and it's a little more time consuming, especially when you're creating more complicated rigs. But again, what you lose in simplicity, you gain in ability when it comes to do it, Bassel now do it is also free, which is a pretty wonderful advantage right there, especially for such a powerful and robust tool, but rubber hoses cost is really extremely reasonable.

Morgan Williams (09:09): And, and, uh, and it has a knobby knee that's kind of automated, but rubber hose will allow you to create custom presets like our sleeved arm here. If you need a specific look for your limbs. So the biggest disadvantage with duet here is that we lose that perfect vector. Look with the pinching and distorting of the puppet tool and keep in mind, that's not really doing X fault. That's really the puppet tools fault puppet tool is a much more imperfect tool than it should be. And quite honestly, the recent quote unquote advanced puppet tool engine was actually a huge step backwards in my opinion, from the standpoint of character animation, because they really messed up the starching system. As I'm recording this, the brand new after effects has just been released. I haven't had time to install it and test it, but supposedly there are some new additions to the puppet system that I haven't reviewed yet.

Morgan Williams (41:01): So I hope this little comparison and contrast between rubber hose and do it has given you a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these two terrific tools. In my opinion, they're both awesome, especially because some of the things rubber hose can do are really quite difficult in doing so. Using them in tandem is a really smart approach. If you do a lot of character rigging, I honestly recommend them both and consider both of them a must have in your character rigging toolkit. If you're interested in learning more about animating these types of rigged after effects puppets, be sure and check out character animation boot camp at school of motion. And as I already mentioned, rigging academy will give you a deeper and more comprehensive guide to rigging characters and after-effects with Dwek Bassel.

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