Mastering Character Rigging in After Effects

Now when you move Control all sprites move too.

IMPORTANT! Enable the pixel mode so pixels stay in place when the layer moves. It is required for all layers in this project.

Place Control so the character stands on the ground.

You can turn off the Jump layer so it does not distract you for now.

In order for our character to understand when it is in the air we need to set the ground level. The easiest way to do it is manually. Thankfully it does not change.

Add a Slider Control and call it Land Level.

As a value set Control’s Y Position (it is on the ground right now).

Add another slider and call it [Character] (I use square brackets for properties that will have an expression).

Add the following expression to the slider:

Land = effect("Land level")(1); //ground level
y = transform.position[1];  //character's y position

if (y < Land) 1 //if character is higher than ground level then 1
else 0 //0 in all other cases

The only thing left is to set opacity.

For Jump layer:

M = thisComp.layer(“Control”).effect(“Character”)(“Slider”);

if (M == 1) 100
else 0

For Static layer:

M = thisComp.layer(“Control”).effect(“Character”)(“Slider”);

if (M == 0) 100

else 0