3D Perspective Extrusion

With puppet warping, you can also simulate a 3D perspective of 2D images. We will use the samurai from our Character Sheet Example to showcase an example of this. However, it is not necessary to use a character sheet, you can also use a standard model for this purpose and achieve similar results.

You should have read and understood the Puppet Warp Introduction Guide before attempting this tutorial.

Puppet Warp Geometry Setup

Navigate to the Geometry step in your puppet warp and make sure you are satisfied with the parameters you have set up there. Changing the number of subdivisions and the padding option in the Geometry settings may require you to re-do some of the following steps, so it is important you finalize these options before you continue with the 3D perspective extrusion feature.

It may be tempting to use a high subdivision value to have more fine-grained control over the mesh later, but this can make depth painting more difficult and reduces overall performance of the wallpaper. Alternatively, try using a subdivision value of 0 or 1, then click on the mesh to place subdivision slice points in places where you want to extrude later. This will give you better control over the mesh and keep things simpler, with less geometry to take care of.

Once you are satisfied with the basic geometry setup, enable the 3D Perspective Extrusion in the Geometry step of the puppet warp.

Painting the Depth Map

Click on the Paint Depth button to bring up the depth painting options on the left-hand side. Select one of the paint options (Raise, Lower, Flatten, Smooth) to raise or lower the perceived depth at any given location that you are painting the depth mask. You do not need to be very accurate for a good result, but if you need perfect accuracy, you can export the depth map, edit it in a third-party image editor and then import it back into Wallpaper Engine.

While painting the depth mask, hold the left Alt key and click and drag with the mouse to rotate and pan the model. This will allow you to get an idea of what type of perceived 3D depth your object will have in your animation later.

Once you have finalized the depth mask, you can fine-tune the Extrusion Scale option to increase or decrease the perceived depth of the 3D effect. The Culling option is only relevant if you intend to rotate the object on its back. If you set this option to Normal, the backside of the layer will be transparent, while setting it to No cull will mirror the texture to the backside as well. In the vast majority of cases, you can ignore this option, it is only relevant if you rotate your object by more than 180° during your animation.

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By clicking Lock Geometry for Vertex Editing, you will even be able to change the depth of each vertex individually in the upcoming Deformation menu.

You can see an exemplary video of this process here, where we paint a depth map for our character:

Adding 3D perspective effect to an animation

In order for the effects of a 3D extrusion to become visible, you will have to animate the X or Y axis of the angles. In our example, we only take the first bone with animations after the root bone and animate the Y axis of the angles up and down a few times during the animation, in order for the character to appear as if it is continuously turning left and right. Keep in mind that the order of bones matters, if you want the whole body of your character to turn, it's likely a good idea to add this to the first bone with animations.

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Animating the Y axis will make the movement appear left / right and animating the X axis will make the movement appear up / down.

We select the bone and hide all properties except the Angles Y option. The angle Y keyframe starts at a value of 0, then transitions to -15 a few frames later, followed by transition to an angle of +15 before circling back to an angle of -15 again. The animation ends where it started at a value of 0. This already suffices in our example to create the perception of left and right movement. You can see this process and the final result in the following video:

Alternative ways of utilizing perspective

Alternatively to actually animating the perspective, you may also find it useful to simply enable the Perspective option at the bottom of your layer, in the Miscellaneous section. This will enable the 3D extrusion at all times and might not fit your model very well, but you can experiment around and see if it works well in your specific case and tweak the Extrusion scale option of the 3D extrusion.