Duik Ángela (17) Changelog

This is the list of what has changed since the previous major version of Duik (Duik Bassel, 16.2).

▹ 17.0.0

17.0.0 will be the next major release of Duik for After Effects, which brings a lot of changes.

New Features

(Auto-)Rigging

Note

There have been some changes in the way tools are named in Duik Ángela, compared to Duik Bassel.
• Structures are now named Bones (single item) or Armatures (complete limbs).
• Bones are now named Pins.
This changelog and all the documentation now use these new naming.

New Auto-rigs:
- Wings rigging is now a thing.
- Hair rigging is now a thing.
- Arthropod leg rigging is now a thing.
- Fish (fins and spine) rigging is now a thing.
New Bones: previously known as Structures, Bones have been redesigned, and new limbs for all kind of animals are available (fish and their fins, snakes, wings…). Note: the bones from the previous versions of Duik are now named Pins.
- Bones now have optional envelops and noodles. Bone envelops are very useful to design limbs and make sure the joints work well, and combined with the bone noodles they’re a quick way to create and animate customizable limbs in a single click and a few settings.
New controller shapes:
- Vertebrae
- Rib cage / Torso
The Link art button in the bone panel will (try to) automatically parent all artwork layers to their corresponding bones.

Constraints

The Connector has many new abilities:
- it can now use the audio from a layer to control properties.
- it has a new Layer list mode to quicklly connect a bunch of layers to a dropdown menu effect.
- its UI has been made simpler.
New type of IK/FK: Bézier FK, which is used by the Auto-rig for spine and neck rigging.
The Move anchor point tool can move the anchor points of the selected layers to their bounds or center. It works with pixel layers and shape layers, and can use the masks too. It can also take a custom margin into account. This tool is located both the the links & constraints panel and the animation panel.
Key Morph: also known as Shape Keys, Pose Morph, Blend Shapes or Morphers in other software, they’re now available in After Effects with Duik, and can be easily connected to nice controllers using the Connector.
- A property can be connected to a selection of key morphs using the Connector. Note that the master property must use keyframes (it can not be controlled by expressions).
UI Tweaks:
- Kinematics Constraints button: quickly add IK and FK constraints to the layers.
- Parent Constraints are assembled under the same button group.
- Tranformation Constraints are assembled under the same button group.
2+1 layer IK is a new way to use IK on a 3-layer chain, which is useful for arthropods and the new way of rigging ungulates.

Automation and expressions

The Kleaner is back and it’s been completely redesigned.
- It now uses general intuitive parameters to control the whole animation (like the size, weight, friction, etc.), but you still can fine-tune it with more detailed and advanced parameters.
- It is now able to correctly handle easing, anticipation and follow through on spatial properties without separating the dimensions. In this case, just use roving keyframes when the layer is moving, and keep linear keyframes when it stops. The Kleaner will precisely follow the trajectory while handling the speed.
- Ease is automatically computed for the motion to be as smooth as possible. If you want to stop at a specific keyframe, switch it to maintain.
- The overlap (and soft body simulation) has been improved a lot: the animation is better and smoother, and performance is a bit better.
- It now has (soft) limits too!
The Walk Cycle is now also a Run Cycle. Its controls and performance have been greatly improved.
The Swink tool replaces the previous Swing and Blink tools. It makes a property regularly switch between two values, with advanced options to manage the frequency and interpolation between the two.
- The frequency of the Swink can be animated.
The Random automation can be used when a property needs to be completely randomized; e.g. when a Wiggle automation is too smooth.
The Bake expressions tool is able to bake selected expressions or the whole project expressions to keyframes. It comes with two algorithms: a precise algorithm which adds a keyframe per frame (or less, according to the precision factor you can set), and a smart algorithm which automatically adds as less keyframes as possible, and the resulting keyframes are easy to edit.
The Bake Composition tool bakes all expressions in the comp (or on selected layers), and removes all non-renderable layers (guide layers, nulls, etc.). If a renderable layer was parented to a non-renderable one, its transformation properties are baked to keyframes.
Edit Expression in the Automation and Tools panel opens the selected expression in your favorite external editor to edit them more easily, then reloads them in the After Effects properties when you’ve finished editing them.
Expression tools: various useful tools to fix and work with expressions (in the automation panel toolbar).

Animation

New Non-linear Animation (NLA) tool replaces the previous Animation Blender tool. It is a great and very easy way to edit animations as you would do with video clips in a Non-linear video editor like Adobe Premiere.
A Tweening section in the animation panel helps you tween your animation, if you’re working with hold keyframes before going to curves for example (using the Kleaner or not). Includes three new tools:
- Tween Slider: adds a new in-between to the current time, according to a ratio between the previous and next pose.
- Split Keyframes: splits the selected keyframes into couples of keyframes with the same values (freezing the pose for a predefined time).
- Freeze pose: freezes the previous (or next) pose up to the current time (copies the previous or next keyframe to the current time).
- Sync Keyframes moves all selected keyframes to the current time. If multiple keyframes in the same property are selected, they’re offset to the current time, keeping the animation.
- Snap Keyframes snaps the keyframes to actual frames if they’re in between (like it happens when changing the duration of an animation or the framerate of a comp).
The Sequencer distributes your layers or keyframes in time.
New Interpolator tool (animation panel). The Interpolator is a tool to help you.... Interpolate keyframes. It’s a bit like the Kleaner but on a low-level where you can really choose and tweak how the animation is interpolated, for more advanced users.
- It includens extrapolation methods to loop in or out, with different modes: constant, continue, ping pong, cycle, bounce, follow-through.
- When an extrapolation is animated, for example when stopping a loop, the property now stays at the right value.
- It is able to extrapolate motion (loops) in between keyframes if the property is still.
Quickly save, export, import, apply animations with the new Animation library (animation panel).

Tools

DuCop (Duduf Comp Parameters) is now included in Duik (Tools/Composition panel). It enables you to change the composition settings of all selected compositions including their precompositions. It will also adjust the duration and size of any layer which should match the new composition duration and size if it’s changed.
Use Crop precompositions to… crop precompositions. The tool uses the mask(s) found on the precomposition layer to crop the source composition: just draw a quick mask on the layer then click on the button to crop the composition, without moving any of the layers using the same source composition.
The Layer Manager will help (re)naming layers and setting useful tags for rigging and grouping layers.
The Note panel can now also save composition-specific or project-specific notes. These notes are savec in the project file.
The Script library helps you sort all your scripts. From there, you can easily access, edit, and launch your installed scripts and dockable panels, or any other stand-alone script.
The Script editor is a basic script to let you edit and run simple scripts. But even if it’s basic, it includes the whole Duik API to easily use Duik’s advanced functions in a few simple lines.

Miscellaneous

New User Interface: Along with a complete code refactor, Duik underwent a complete UI redesign. Performance (loading time) has been improved, Duik now fits better in the interface of After Effects, it is more discreet and let you focus on your work.
Complete code refactor: Duik is easier to maintain, code is better organizezd, performance has been improved…
A progress bar is available at the bottom of the panel to show the current funding status…
We’ve finally dropped support of After Effects CS6, sorry, it was too much work to keep compatibility for too few users. CS6 (v11.0.2) dates back to October 2012, it’s time to update! Duik should now work on all versions of After Effects starting with After Effects CC (v12.0, July 2013).

Improvements