Puppet pins
The puppet tool deforms flat artwork by generating a triangulated mesh over it and letting you drag pins that pull the mesh around. Everything between the pins follows, as rigidly as it can.
The solver is ARAP — as-rigid-as-possible. It resists shearing and squashing, so a limb bends rather than smearing.
Requirements
The puppet tool is disabled unless the selection is a riggable leaf — a single shape or image layer. The tooltip tells you so, and points at Rig Logo for Animation for groups and pre-comps.
Workflow
Pick the tool
Ctrl/⌘ + P.
Drop pins
Click on the artwork to place pins. Three or four is usually enough to start — one at each end of the thing that should move, one where it should stay put.
The PuppetOverlay draws the mesh wireframe and the pins on the canvas so you can see what the solver is working with.
Drag to deform
Drag a pin. The mesh deforms; the pinned areas hold.
Tune the mesh
In the Rigging inspector tab:
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Density | How fine the triangulation is. Finer means smoother deformation and more computation |
| Expansion | How far the mesh extends past the artwork’s silhouette |
Changing either triggers a deterministic mesh rebuild — the rest mesh is cached by key, so the same settings always produce the same mesh, and your pins stay where they were.
Tune the pins
Per pin:
- Static rotation — lock the rotation at that pin.
- Stiffness — how strongly the surrounding mesh resists deformation.
Stiffness is the control that turns a floppy noodle into an arm.
Keyframe
Pin positions are keyframeable. Set the playhead, drag the pins, and keys are written like any other property.
Puppet sketch is the faster route: record pin movement by dragging in real time, and what lands is ordinary keyframes.
Pin types
| Pin | What it does |
|---|---|
| Position | The ordinary one — pin a point, drag it, the mesh follows |
| Bend | Derives its position from the other pins rather than being placed independently |
A bend pin is the one to reach for when a shape should curve between two things you are already controlling — the middle of a tentacle, the arch of a banner — instead of you keyframing the midpoint by hand and fighting to keep it consistent with the ends.
The mesh is generated from the layer’s alpha silhouette, not its bounding box. Artwork with holes and thin parts meshes sensibly; artwork on an opaque background meshes as a rectangle, which is rarely what you want.
Every edit is one undo step
Puppet edits route through the command system, so a mesh rebuild, a pin move or a stiffness change is a single Ctrl/⌘ + Z.
Puppet or bones?
| Use puppet when | Use bones when |
|---|---|
| The motion is squashy, organic, cloth-like | The motion is jointed and articulated |
| You want to grab a point and pull | You want a chain that bends at defined places |
| There is no obvious skeleton | There is — an arm, a leg, a tail, a mechanical linkage |
You do not have to pick one. A puppet rig and a bone rig compose on the same layer, over the same mesh — a skeleton for the limbs and pins for the cloth is a normal setup, not a workaround. See Bones & IK.
Related
- Rigging a logo
- The assistant’s
create_puppet_rigandset_puppet_pin_keyframestools: Tool reference