In this video we review Rubberhose 2, a fantastic animation tool for After Effects.
Download Project File: https://www.schoolofmotion.com/tutorials/rubberhose-2-review/
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Partial, Auto-Generated Transcript Below 👇
Jake Bartlett (00:08): 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.
Jake Bartlett (00:50): 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.
Jake Bartlett (01:40): And in the effects controls panel, we have all the same controls that we're used to like hose length, the bend radius. So this is the same rubber hose that, you know, in love with some nicer looking controls that allow you to manage things a little bit easier. And I can even add my own controller pair labels here and add them into the list, take them out, rearrange them. It's a completely customizable little menu and that's super handy for customizing your own character rigging. We have two more options under build, but we'll come back to that in a little bit. Next, I want to go down to style. Now this style panel is brand new and it allows you to do some pretty incredible things right here. We have a list and each one of these is a preset that comes with rubber hose too. And the one that you're probably most interested in is this one right up at the top called tapered hose.
Jake Bartlett (02:24): So if I click on that with my host selected, I will then click the apply style button. And just like that, my rubber hose is no longer single width it's tapered. And if I click on the actual hose, I can adjust the width and the taper amount. So this incredibly clever pre-set should really help cut down on the number of noodley looking arms on the internet. And it behaves just like any other rubber hose layer with the same amount of controls. I can change the bend radius to be completely curvy. It all functions exactly the same way, but it gives you the added controls of the taper amount and the stroke width. So that is an incredibly powerful addition to version two. And that is just the first dial in the list. There are so many clever presets in this list and you should definitely play around with all of them. This one kind of tapers out from the middle. And again, you have controls for the thickness. One of my favorite presets is called tight pants, and it's this very detailed limb that gives you a whole bunch of controls. Let me hide my overlays, but you see all of these sliders allow you to do things like control the width of the leg, the taper amount
Jake Bartlett (03:44): You could control the length of the pants, so that they're actually shorts. The leg width is separate from everything else, cuff height, cuff width. It's pretty amazing. All of the controls that Adam has built into this single preset, again, all operating on a single rubber hose layer. And there are a whole bunch of different presets to play around with. So definitely check all of that out. Another great feature of this style panel is that if you create your own styled limb, you can save that as a preset. So let me go ahead and grab this leg, which I've kind of given a tube sock. And I modified the knob knee, which is one of the style presets that comes with rubber hose. And with any of those layers selected, I'm going to hold option and click on the copy style button, which when I hold option, we'll save a style file.